Not playing the game as you say but the Tories could have spent nothing and still ended up with a majority thanks to the inadequacies of the Labour Party leader...
The most innefectual leader since Michael Foot ?
A french friend even suggested cynically that Moribund was kept on as leader in order to lose the election because the party didn't fancy forming a government in these tough times !
Reply by Bob Craske 56 minutes ago
@ Margaret Schooling
I'd add that I'm no longer interested in your lectures .......
Ma'am, why exactly are you posting on a discussion forum if you're not interested in (or at least open to) other people's viewpoints ...............?
No, Bob Craske, taking a phrase out of context won't do. When someone misrepresents what others have written it's not discussion but just point scoring. Here's my post in full:
"I can see the holes in what you think I wrote but it's not what I wrote. I didn't suggest the £3m should be "distributed". I was thinking of more people all over the country getting a living wage for the work they do etc.
"I'd add that I'm no longer interested in your lectures or your autobiography especially after so many weeks of the same stuff in the electioneering. They smack to me of self-aggrandisement and they're certainly not persuading me that Mike Kearney's view of things is not valid no matter how fed up you are with us "blatherers"."
Good policies or not you can spread your message deeper and further... with money.
Why do you think hedge fund owners have given such huge sums to the Tory party? In the past four years the Tories have raised £78,010,807, with £21,072,508 (27%) coming from hedge fund donors. George Osborne’s 2013 budget abolished stamp duty reserve tax on funds - a £145m giveaway to hedge funds.
If your policies are good then the fact that you have spent a small amount of money won't matter-your policies will speak for you. The opposite is also true. If your policies are c**p then no matter how much money you throw at it- the policies will still be c**p.
Spot on Kent!
Here's the party we should have voted for
Tories spent three times the amount Labour did. They have rich donors (knighthoods all round!)
Cameron was accused of an unjustifiable bid to “buy the general election” as it emerged that ministers quietly slipped through an unprecedented hike in the amount that parties can spend during the campaign. He ignored Electoral Commission recommendations and secured a 23% increase in spending. With the Tories having amassed a £78m war chest over the past four years, they can now funnel huge amounts of cash into key seats.
The change to the law on candidates’ election spending, passed without parliamentary debate, was made despite a direct warning by the commission against such “excessive spending to prevent the perception of undue influence over the outcome of the election”.
Lucy Powell MP, Ed Miliband’s key general election strategist, admitted that Labour “can’t match the depths of Tory pockets” and accused the prime minister of seeking to “buy an election they don’t deserve to win. She went on to say: “With only a record of failure to run on, David Cameron’s campaign is reliant on smear, fear and fat cats’ cheque books. This is a party flush with big money backers but without the empathy or ideas the country needs, so they are rigging the rules of our democracy in their favour.
“When he was first leader of the opposition, David Cameron said he wanted to take the big money out of politics. He promised to address the ‘big donor culture’, arguing that we should, ‘cut what is spent on a general election’. Yet he has now cynically changed his tune. Desperate to hang on to power, the Tories have quietly changed the rules to allow them to spend big in the runup to the election. The changes would allow them to spend millions more than they’re presently allowed, paving the way for Tory propaganda to flood constituencies.”
Hmmm
I'm not left wing but this isn't playing the game. Is it?
If you understand good social behaviour you can go anywhere without feeling uncomfortable. It is a shame that this is not so well understood nowadays.
Of course, good manners is really consideration for other people.
Yes and what was socially acceptable or desireable has come not to matter. I rememebr being told to judge people on the basis of the way that people held their knives or cleaned their shoes. Hold doors open for ladies, raise your hat, give up your seat etc. Now it has all changed. Often if you express yourself in anything other than current PC terms you invoke a torrent of abuse, demands for explanation etc. Of course rules in one place even in the same country, town or street may prove to be very different in one house than another. Removing your shoes as you enter a house in London is now commonplace- people would have thought you quite mad! Swearing at political opponents was and is I think undesireable and unproductive at least. I remember I was actually asked in a Glagow pub one night "What you'se looking at?". Just thoughts. These things come to mind as you age.
It is strange, but there are those who reject all forms of correct behaviour.
I know because I often seem to have them in my line of sight in restaurants.
My last comment was a joke!! Class as in class act. High class workmanship. Classic perfrmance I agree that social classes are totally outmoded but why do left wing people rabbit on about them all the time? It's along there with working people. People who use the phrase "Upper Class" these days scarcely realise what it used to mean. Some socialists made it part of their election campaign because they thought that some people would vote against old Etonians and former members of the Bullingdon Club. Maybe some did. Most people didn't rate it as important
@ Jonathan
I don't think it's a question of fault - I had dealings with the MPs because I needed their help. Just one meeting was more pleasant at a "do".
Fought ye meant a public khazi mate, 'e used 'em all a time...
Are you saying that just because he didn’t go to no Public school Alf ain’t got no class 
Sssshh, I am a Scot, bad subject :-(
Actually, no since in real terms the SNP vote was close as spitting representative of 70% in real terms on a PR listing system that balances out to make up those who do not/cannot vote (as in Germany) yes it would have been 44 seats and on a Scotland only basis 45. That has already been written up in one of the newspapers from official source X comparing with PR. That there are two lists in a PR vote, balances out the local and national but it takes an age to explain the mechanics of how it works so web search it and have a (pleasantly sleep inducing) read. It is not unlike the MEP election in Norfolk you describe at the local level. You always have the local connection with the MP as had, but then how many MPs in England live in their constituency, have local clinics or even actually see constituents? The average, as I remember it, is to be available for roughly two hours a time an average of four times a year within their constituency. Less than a third until this election even kept a room in their constituency.
The vast majority of European governments are coalitions. All Nordic/Scandinavian ones are, so too below there down to France where there is not a gap on the way, then Spain has not, turn left and all the way to Turkey is coalitions, in the middle on Slovakia and Hungary do not. Bear in mind here in France it is actually Socialist Party, Europe Ecology, Greens and Radical Party of the Left in coalition. It also allows alignments of small parties to form blocs, which can be a bad thing, but actually all of that is possible with FPTP too as the coalition until last week showed and the many calculations about who could do what with whom up until Friday illustrated perfectly well.
In terms of party (or coalition programmes) there is only advantage to PR since people may want a particular politic and vote as a majority with the wrong distribution of votes seeing the largest number of MPs from another party taking power and a popular programme killed in so doing.
In terms of effect and outcome PR and FPTP may not have enormously different ultimate outcomes but the former is more representative of the will of an entire population. That is fairer by far than FPTP.
With respect Elizabeth you would need to have been around the british tv in the late sixties to understand the humour. It comes from a very popular tv programme of the time.
Thanks for reminding me about that. Great idea and useful on this site which is hard to follow, although intriguing it what it reveals about prejudice
What is class. What is a public school. Why mention all these resume details. Explain please. What is this about accents etc. isn’t that all a bit passé.
So sorry Margaret - I would not have posted any comments on this thread if I had not felt it necessary to counter some comments being made by others. I am sorry if my opinions largely conditioned by quite wide experience don't interest you. All opinions are valid, but if you raise and publish your opinions then you must anticipate the odd comment. It was of course the electorate that made the decision. When the socialists won elections in the past I don't recall the Conservatives slagging off the electorate. Beams and motes.
