Alex Salmond's pocket

Miliband's in it if you believe Torie rhetoric and a Labour SNP coalition is all of our worst nightmares apparently.. But is it?

Prior to the independence vote I didn't have any issue with Salmond's ideas for Britian as a whole, I thought he got a lot right when I saw him debating English politicians on Question Time.

The argument against a coalition seems to be he wants to split up the union, but he'd obviously never manage that in a coalition with Labour, in fact I think Sturgeon and the SNP would relish the chance to have a real say in British politics.

So do you agree? Or am I missing something and there's actually some substance to the Tories scare tactics?

Lies, lies and more lies. The basis of any politics come election time and usually beyond.
It thoroughly pisses me off, none of them give a jack shit about ordinary folk.

Agreed SK. Big worry for me is how our politicians and this election seems more 'American' with the big budget propaganda, live shows, interviews at home and constant stream of baseless bullshit which seems to be streaming out of their mouths, it's a lot of words with no statistics to back anything up.

I listened to PMQ's today, as always Cameron's more interested in squeezing a joke about Miliband into everything he says than actually answering a question honestly.

My only problem with Labour is Ed Miliband. He's just too wishy washy and I'm concerned that if he did get into power he would make an absolute dogs breakfast of every major issue affecting our livelihood. I'm not over keen on Ed Balls either, simply because he was part of the Cabinet during Gordon Browns reign. I wish Labour had given the leadership to David Miliband, a much safer pair of hands, who would have got rid of some of the other Labour turncoats like Harriet Harperson and the like.
As a United Kingdom we have to respect that Scotland play a fundamental part in the Union but I think Salmond comes across as anti-British and I'd rather go with someone like Alistair ' Luvvie ' Darling, John Reid or Danny Alexander to run the show north of the border.

It's bound to be no overall majority so another different coalition is odds on. The one thing in favour of this is that no one party can spend the next 4 years dismantling what the previous lot started and starting again from scratch which just wastes money. Coalition means something in between a wider set of ideas and a brake, both of which can be useful at times. Absolutely no idea who is suddenly going to coalesce with who though. Looking forward to the inevitable surprise romance.

I have come to the conclusion that ANY political party does not give a flying fuck about anything else apart from getting elected. 

Empty promises and policy engineered to simply get votes. 

All you have to do to prove this is to look at how Nick Clegg sold out his 'political beliefs' and formed a coalition with a party who's ideology was not even in the same area of the political spectrum.

Reebok_Rebel wrote: 

All you have to do to prove this is to look at how Nick Clegg sold out his 'political beliefs' and formed a coalition with a party who's ideology was not even in the same area of the political spectrum.

We probably need Manda to comment on this, but I always thought that the weakness of the Lib Dems was that they are such a broad church pulling in middle of the road voters from left and right - so they are close to all and close to none. In a 3 party system they were a repository for those who saw Labour and the Tories as too extreme one way or the other but now that we're evolving into a more traditional European-style multi-party, multi-agenda system the discontented have a choice of places to hang their hat with the Greens sucking out voters from the left and UKIP from the right.

I would imagine that Manda or any Lib Dem worth their salt would argue that they have a distinct set of policies that sets them apart - but it's hard to see that in a changing political landscape in which issues vie for prominence and most voters can't see past the newspaper headline.

This week, a million people signed a petition to say they like Top Gear but if asked I'd be surprised if any of them would say that they believe in breaking the law and condoned punching and abusing a work colleague. Confusing "liking Top Gear" with an open and shut case of gross indiscipline/ABH (or even confusing it with BBC's predicted loss of income) just goes to show that we are at the mercy of a voting public who neither understand what the issues are really about or what the impact of policies will be. Listening to them on the radio gives the impression that these petitioners were simply expressing an opinion about the right to be "un-PC" - absolutely nothing to do with what happened although there are no doubt conspiracy theories.

Until the day that newspapers stop guessing what people are thinking and playing on public's fears/playing to their prejudices and start clearly explaining the issues objectively nothing is likely to change - and that will never happen because throwing stones sells more papers than laying out the facts.

wanderlust wrote:

Reebok_Rebel wrote: 

All you have to do to prove this is to look at how Nick Clegg sold out his 'political beliefs' and formed a coalition with a party who's ideology was not even in the same area of the political spectrum.

We probably need Manda to comment on this, but I always thought that the weakness of the Lib Dems was that they are such a broad church pulling in middle of the road voters from left and right - so they are close to all and close to none. In a 3 party system they were a repository for those who saw Labour and the Tories as too extreme one way or the other but now that we're evolving into a more traditional European-style multi-party, multi-agenda system the discontented have a choice of places to hang their hat with the Greens sucking out voters from the left and UKIP from the right.

I would imagine that Manda or any Lib Dem worth their salt would argue that they have a distinct set of policies that sets them apart - but it's hard to see that in a changing political landscape in which issues vie for prominence and most voters can't see past the newspaper headline.

This week, a million people signed a petition to say they like Top Gear but if asked I'd be surprised if any of them would say that they believe in breaking the law and condoned punching and abusing a work colleague. Confusing "liking Top Gear" with an open and shut case of gross indiscipline/ABH (or even confusing it with BBC's predicted loss of income) just goes to show that we are at the mercy of a voting public who neither understand what the issues are really about or what the impact of policies will be. Listening to them on the radio gives the impression that these petitioners were simply expressing an opinion about the right to be "un-PC" - absolutely nothing to do with what happened although there are no doubt conspiracy theories.

Until the day that newspapers stop guessing what people are thinking and playing on public's fears/playing to their prejudices and start clearly explaining the issues objectively nothing is likely to change - and that will never happen because throwing stones sells more papers than laying out the facts.

Great, well reasoned post that lusty.