THIS SHOULD FRIGHTEN LAMONT...
It's probably a small subsample with a huge margin of error, and, as such, not a true indicator, but even near parity with the Tories in Scotland should give Ms Lamont, and her boss sleepless nights. The moral, as Nick Clegg and Tavish Scott will tell you is avoid the Tories at all costs.
YOUGOV
Scotland
SNP 41%
CONSERVATIVES 20%
LABOUR 19%
LIBDEMS 9%
UKIP 6%
GREENS 5%
Who'd make best PM?
Cameron 31%
Miliband 19%
Clegg 7%
UKIPs a bit scary, also who the fek would vote for them?
ReplyDeleteFruitcakes and nutter, said Cameron... He should know. Half his party seems to be joining them!
DeleteHahahaha
DeleteThe pic of Daph Broon being "kissed" by a human being makes me boke
ReplyDeleteI thought that was Wallace, or Gromit or something....
DeleteMunguin-I very much doubt if any leaders of the onionist parties will have sleepless nights, now that the Scots have voted that they very much love the present set up to continue. They now enjoy the moral high ground, and they will revel in it.
ReplyDeleteGod help my people……….
I'd not get too secure if I were them.
DeleteWho knows, of course.
But I see that Nicola's tour was a sell out within a couple of days. One Direction would have a job competing!!
NIKO = UKIP.
ReplyDeleteJuteman the £1 a month snp member wow bid spender big commitment
Deleteniko does not support UKIP but does have concerns over uncontrolled
immigration ( which the snp is happy to see even more of ).
If wanting jobs , homes , medical care etc to go to the citisens of
the United Kinggdom of whatever ethnic origin..........is wrong
then God help us all.
No, I don;t think Niko is UKIP.
DeleteScotland needs more young people though Niko.
England probably doesn't because young Scots disappear off to London where the streets are paved with gold... or a least where there are so many fast foods and coffee shops that there are plenty of jobs... and if you're Scottish working for the minimum wage is pretty much normal.
People are people from no matter where they come.
I don't know how you can tell whether Niko is now a U-Kipper or not. He's certainly no longer a socialist and all the State Broadcaster-approved parties have performed the remarkable physiological feat of becoming FOUR cheeks of the same arse, so he could support anyone. Even his coming out as anti-immigration is no help.
DeleteThere could be a clue in his current habit of making up bullshit and repeating it until he becomes rather tiresome. Well, maybe not.
He used to be quite amusing once.
Niko...
DeleteYou need to try harder to be amusing.
To be fair to Niko, in the past he was a strong supporter of Labour, but Labour left him, and so many people behind then as Tony Blair got rid of all their socialist trappings and left them another bunch of neo-libs..
From what I've learned of him over the years I think he would find most of UKIP's policies pretty repulsive.
Even the policies that they have that make some sort of sense, are spoiled by the lunatic fringe that support them....
My favourite example of lunatics unleashed is...
Floods in England caused by gay marriage... For the love of Moses!!!
If god wanted to punish the English for having gay marriage, and had decided that flood was the way to do it... wouldn't it have been a corking idea to flood a bit of England where there had actually been some gay marriages?
Maybe Manchester, or somewhere in London? Theatreland? Elton John's home?
Somerset Levels is hardly the gay capital of England now, is it?
Hmmm -
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc8lNq0ZRCw
LOL. Point taken....
DeleteI have just been looking at You.Gov, very interesting I would say. Poor Mr Miliband he really must feel unloved. Read the article in the Courier which said Gordie doesn't want Lamont's job, would not like to take the reduction in expenses he would have, and then he would have to face Nicola across the room and we all know how good she is, Secretary for Plymouth, Help me Rona etc.
ReplyDeleteHelena
DeleteWonder how Alex feels now...........
helena
Deletehttps://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSz69Xz_mbETZW2Mt23_Dy1CbZhTujvaJh8Lqi253lzq3a7OUo-
Well Gordon's been a big cheese. He's spoken to the likes of the King of Saudi Arabia, and the Presidents of China and America. it would be a bit infra dig to move into Johann's bunker.
DeletePlus the salary of £55,000 is hardly what he's used to. Six star hotel rooms in Dubai don't pay from themselves you know, and, in any case he's probably scared stiff of Nicola.
I imagine, in honesty that the Labour MSPs are relieved. Gordon has a habit of throwing Nokia's around...
tris and barney
ReplyDeleteyou dont love me any more ? weren't my fault you lost
taking out on me so unfair
not amusing
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTP2q2fn38D1A7STx23caMcSFJkrUfCHYe0NyLM87NO_lo3RMl4kg
that better
That's better Niko.
DeleteThe lovable clown....
Thanks for the selfie, Niko,. Fair cheered me up.
DeleteLike I said in my article for your site Tris, SLAB are in deep trouble 6 months out from this General Election. I honestly think the SNP can manage the necessary 8% swing from Lab to SNP to start taking 8 or more SLAB seats in Westminster.
ReplyDeleteAnd the complacency of SLAB is almost laughable.
UK polling Report (side bar) has been keeping record of (all?) the polls along with a guesstimate of what majority it would give the government.
DeleteIt's been doing this for years.
The Labour majority has been falling and falling.
I'm not sure if they pay much attention to what is happening in Scotland (given that a UK-wide poll may not concentrate on Scotland at all), but at present Labour look like having a majority of 12.
This is before the campaign and promises.
If Slab are going to loose seats to the SNP, and Liberals to possibly the Tories, in Scotland, that could wipe out the notional 12.
I doubt an opposition has ever been in such a poor way this close to an election.
tris and the broken hearted malcontents
ReplyDeleteSeems I have worn out my welcome within the Republic I do understand
the lose of the referendum is almost a grief to hard to bear even I thought
you was within a smidgen of winning didn't think it would be 55 to 45 to NO.
But it was and its like your in a deep dark prison called the UNION and the
gates have just been prised open a little the golden sun shines through and
through the gap you can see the shining city Independence on a hill .
Just as you finally push towards the gate some inmates rush forward and
start to aid the union guards to push closed the gates and with there help
they succeed and once again you are locked up in the dim dark soulless
Gaol they call the UNION .i really do understand.
The issue is as i see it no matter what the downside to being in the UK
and there are many the solution is not to me Independence. In a big
nasty world a little Scotland is just going to be carved up.
The Conservatives are only a political party even if you run away
from them you still are living in a capitalist owned nation and the
same policies will in the end be imposed in Scotland by Scots no doubt.
Some / many perhaps say I should go away and perhaps I should but the
reason why they say it is they are unable an unwilling to see the world and
Scotland as it really is.
I only hold a mirror up to them and they say take it away we dont want to look they dont want to hear hard facts....many Scots cant stand other scots at least 45 to 55
lots of the snp are feather bedding themselves just as the other political partys did and
do.
But I can see you all just want to hold a snp glee club meeting singing out praises
to the snp and how wunderfull and great they are and every one agreeing and
nobody singing out of the snp tune or marching to the beat of a different drum.
Thats a tyranny or even worse...ITS....ITS.....its Boring !!
Anyway i shall fold me tent shoulder me bag and march out
of the republic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtU351zHM8w
I know Im bad its in my nature..
Well you say all that, Niko, but Scotland is surely no more likely to be gobbled up by capitalism than Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Iceland, Ireland, and dozens of other small states.
DeleteAnd there are conservatives and conservatives. The Icelandic conservative party for example believes in free education and health care...
The right wing parties in Sweden still believe in excellent welfare (and I mean welfare, not just social security).
Seriously I can't see why Scots are so much stupider than these other people who surround us. Why would we fail to set up a decent system where everyone counts, not just the rich?
Life isn't perfect in Denmark (or any of the others) but there's no REAL poverty and no billionaires. Of course people are poor, and that's all relative anyway, but they aren't grindingly poor and denied help. There are no food banks in most of these countries and no one dies of the cold in the winter.
And yes, we know Ireland and Iceland had a crash, which underlines how imperfect life is anywhere. But they are over it, and no one has used it as an excuse to put the thumbscrews on the poor. Only in Britain . They really were all in it together. We are not.
We could live like that. But we don't. We are heading for more and more austerity, at the same time as there will be tax cuts for the rich and the royals will get more; the MPs are taking a massive rise and the Lords are looking for one.
In the meantime you will have to live in a poky little house with your mum until you are 26 because risking setting out on your own will mean that if you are paid off you will get nothing, be homeless and starve....! And if you move out your mum will have to downsize or pay the bedroom tax.
And that is with Labour or Tory.
And what for... to pay for a war in the Middle East that is nothing to do with us, and we will undoubtedly make worse? To pay for more nuclear weapons stored in Scotland only 20 miles from Glasgow? To pay for MPs and Lords and the royals to get more money? To pay for the massive increase in the amount of champagne that these people consume (as recently reported)? To find inheritance tax reductions? To fund income tax reduction for the rich? To build infrastructure in England (because the Scots get no consequentials for this)? To allow companies to dodge tax?
Don't leave Niko. Just do understand that this isn't wickedness on the part of the "separatists". It's not about Nicola or Alex or bonnie purple heather. It's a desire for the kind of life that most other Europeans take for granted. And try to bring that into your debate.
Labour would be foolish to take their traditional Scottish voters and MPs for granted especially if their policies reflect the need to attract English voters who are at present it seems attracted to some of UKIP's policies. Niko mentioned uncontrolled immigration and attributed that to the SNP but my understanding was that the SNP's policy was controlled immigration?
ReplyDeleteWhat Scotland needs is reduced emigration. Immigrants follow jobs, they do not create them. I like many of my age (67) had to leave Scotland to find a job, any kind of job at all.
DeleteWhen the best the load of numpties at Westminster can do is create 4 jobs in London for every one in the rest of the UK, it becomes very clear where the problem is.
That's true. I remember that Alex quoted a figure of how many people the economy needed annually to be viable.
DeleteI was, I think, something like 22,000 (although that could be wildly wrong.)
It turns out that the emigration figure is around 20,000. So we would need around 2,000 people a year.
Please correct me if these figures are a figment of my imagination!
The thing is that up to now, that has worked, John.
ReplyDeleteDespite the party UK-wide espousing right of centre policies, generally harmful to the poor (uncontrolled rents; ridiculously low minimum wage, the lowest pensions (bar Mexico) in the developed world, ATOS, doubling income tax on the poorest) they seem to have got away with it. There are still people who think that the Labour Party is the answer.
That they haven't continued to vote for them in the same numbers in Scottish general elections suggests that it really is the: "a vote for anyone other than Labour is letting the Tories in) that is doing the trick.
But in 2010, when they retained all their seats and took back one seat from the SNP (John Mason's) we still got a Tory government. Even if they had taken ALL the SNP seats we would still have got a Tory government.
The SNP's policy (and it's as well to remember that in an independent Scotland it might be a labour government, or Liberal/Labour government, or a Labour/SSP government or any number of combinations) is to allow controlled immigration, so that we can encourage young talented people from all over the world (including Scots) to come and work here and pay taxes to support our elderly population. The alternative is a population fuelled by Baby Boomers, that lives to be in their 90s, and a comparatively small number of younger folk trying to pay enough tax to keep services running for them.
To be honest, it has to be the policy of many Western governments because there is a dire shortage of really educated people of working age and a massive post war boom of old folk who pay very small amounts in tax.
All the UK needs this. The English health service, for example, would collapse completely tomorrow were it not for foreign born doctors and nurses.
Unfortunately the British press (like others) has done its damnedest to set people against anyone who comes from outwith the UK. So the minds of the population are poisoned against immigrants.
Same with the EU. I wonder how many people prepared to vote the UK out of the EU in 2017 would find, if they looked into it, that their job is dependent on EU membership.
I see that long streak of misery Philip British Virgin Islands Hammond is telling us that the UK is leading the way to reform of the EU. Funny man. It must be his charisma that's doing it.
To get back to the original post, if you feed the numbers into Electoral Calculus, you get
ReplyDeleteSNP 50 seats
Con 4
Lab 3
LD 2
Wouldn't that be a good result?
More pandas in Scotland than Scottish labour? Well..almost...wouldn't that be nice!
DeleteYes, it would Weegie. Of course that won't happen, unfortunately.
DeleteIt would be wonderful to see some of those pretty talking, self serving red Tories bite the dust and find themselves looking for jobs. They couldn't stick ALL of them in the HofL?.
You'll need to bring another panda home with you Dean!!!
Tris he needs to bring home two, they seem to come in pairs.
DeleteI'm sure he can manage that. He's a very capable boy!
DeleteTris,
DeleteThere is an interesting piece by Gerry Hassan which says something about what Niko is saying: "Is social justice really what defines modern Scotland?"
I have written a submission for the Smith Commission about health inequalities. Very long. Too long. But I had in mind the possibility of some of it, after editing, forming part of a blogging or campaign piece. May I send it to you?
Sam
I am not sure what defines modern Scotland...
DeleteTo an extent of course it depends on the part of Scotland... or the amount of money you have... or whatever... but I'd say that we are a more leftish society than certainly the south of England is. Maybe because we are a lot poorer.
Maybe it's another reason. The Scandinavians are rich societies but they are well to the left of the UK, even when they elect right wing governments.
Anyway... yes please do send it.
Instead of sending it as an attachment (which I've been having trouble with) could you send it as text which I can copy and paste...?
Cheers Sam.
trispw@gmail.com