General election

Well, we're a day away from the vote and I've backed the wrong horse in the last two big votes (Brexit and the US election) so bet your house on Corbyn winning and me achieving an unwanted (for me) hat-trick.

I'll be at my local count tomorrow night in what should be a rock solid Tory seat despairing at the news from elsewhere and wondering who'll be the next Tory leader.  They're aren't many viable candidates.

Quoted from grimsby pete

Anyway if he gets in enjoy the moment .

I will mate don't you worry!

The funny thing about this election for me is that where all the quotes are:

"I won't vote for Labour/Corbyn because of X"

The "X" in question has either been completely untrue or at the very least highly inaccurate.

On the other hand, when I've seen somebody say:

"I am voting for the Tories/May because of X"

The "X" in question has either been completely untrue or at the very least highly inaccurate!

May has been bad. Not just bad, but catastrophically, awfully bad. Worse than I could possibly imagine she might be.
She's lied about so many things and has relied on personal attacks on the opposition instead of saying anything positive about her own policies. She's pretty much completely ducked any interview which absolutely couldn't be avoided and has barely encountered a member of the public. Strong and stable? What a joke. I bet they are laughing their mammaries off across the channel at her shambolic performance. She's also alienated half of her own party and I reckon this will be the only election she fights as leader, regardless of the outcome.

Without the backing of the massed ranks of the right-wing media endlessly launching attack after attack against Labour/Corbyn, she'd have been toast and it still beggars belief to me that so many people will still vote for her - she'll probably even increase her majority, even though she deserves absolutely nothing from the election. I can only hope that the EU are kind to us and don't treat her attempts at negotiation with the contempt they deserve after her previous comments.

As for Corbyn - well, it's no surprise he's generally done very well during this campaign - he's always been a good campaigner. Unfortunately, just too much baggage for the right-wing media to misquote and misrepresent. Still, at least we've got a proper left-wing manifesto to vote on with left-wing policies for the first time in decades. I'd personally hope that Labour do OK and remain strong enough to be a decent opposition with Corbyn staying in the role for now. I'd imagine a younger successor with less baggage could probably be found to replace him before the next election - providing anything of the country remains after 5 years of May.

Interesting comment:

"I'm nervous.

Our country has a choice tomorrow: re-elect record employment, personal allowance growth, minimum wage growth and investment. A party which has cut Labour's deficit by 70%.

Or, undo it all. Force ourselves to relive the cuts all over again. Spend recklessly, leaving our children to pay (me). Elect people who won't defend us.

For our security, and economy, I'm voting Conservative." Beavo, 8 hours ago.

This conservative campaign has been one of the worst I have seen, yet it is still more electable than labour

I will not be voting for Corbyn because I do not like his beard  

It'll be a Tory landslide still despite May doing everything they can to sodomist it up for themselves.
Then the real fun will start with another Labour bloodbath

Quoted from Skrill

Interesting comment:

"I'm nervous.

Our country has a choice tomorrow: re-elect record employment, personal allowance growth, minimum wage growth and investment. A party which has cut Labour's deficit by 70%.

Or, undo it all. Force ourselves to relive the cuts all over again. Spend recklessly, leaving our children to pay (me). Elect people who won't defend us.

For our security, and economy, I'm voting Conservative." Beavo, 8 hours ago.

This conservative campaign has been one of the worst I have seen, yet it is still more electable than labour

I'm nervous, too.

Re-elect a government whose policies have seen the country suffer from the weakest recovery following a recession for two hundred years. No wage growth since the recession (so people have effectively become poorer because of inflation) and none forecast until 2022 ([url=https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/09/uk-pay-growth-budget-resolution-foundation]link[/url]). A government who have deliberately reduced the income of the poorest in society whilst cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy and who plan to hit the poorest even further in the next parliament with 3 million poor working families expected to lose an average of £2,500 per year ([url=https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/27/poor-working-families-losses-benefit-cuts-ifs]link[/url]).

A government who are hugely underfunding the NHS for ideological reasons ([url=https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/files/kf/media/uk-nhs-spending-as-a-percentage-of-gdp.jpg]link[/url]) as part of a plan to ultimately privatise it, who claim to be the party of security but have taken 20,000 policemen off the streets since 2010, who scrapped our Harriers to save money meaning we have two £3 billion aircraft carriers with no aircraft to put on them until 2023 at the very earliest and have cut the size of our army by more than a fifth in the past six years.

A government which called a snap election, after promising it wouldn't, who showed its contempt for the British public by failing to even bother costing its manifesto and which made an immediate U-turn over its first major budgetary policy which alienated a vast swathe of their voters after pressure from the right-wing media - then shamelessly denied there had been any change!

Vote Labour.

Now, I know that mine is less pithy than yours, but it doesn't contain anything but the truth whereas yours contains lies (investment is absolutely nowhere near record levels in any way shape or form, for example) and the deficit was caused by a world economic crash and not the previous government. That's two lies in the first paragraph, which is going some.

The second paragraph shows no understanding of economics, but that's perhaps understandable as the Tories have been pushing the "government as a household" lie for some decades and are continuing this with their 'Magic Money Tree' nonsense despite the face that over £400 billion in QE has been created to support the banks since the financial crash but the Labour Party still haven't really taken them to task for it. Also the thing about defence - that's a lie as well. Of course.

So, ultimately, very pithy but utter balderdash.

Feel free to disagree with any of my points by the way. Be sure to reference evidence, if you can.

Quoted from grimsby pete

I will not be voting for Corbyn because I do not like his beard  

Have you noticed Theresa May's chain is getting bigger and chunkier, she is like the ghost of Jacob Marley,

Quoted from Maringer

Be sure to reference evidence, if you can.

I can. Another gem, "Thought Labour were just going to tax the 5% above £80,000 yet they are planning to scrap Marriage Allowance which just affects those earning less than £11,500! Did Diane do the sums on that one Jeremy?" BedlingtonBoy, 13 hours ago.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new.....ome-tax-labour-wins/

Labour have to find their '£150 Billion' borrowing magic money from somewhere haven't they?

Don't you find it funny how the Tories are claiming four million couples will pay more tax, when only around 1 million of those eligible couples actually apply for it? Even the Telegraph reports this in the linked article.

Yep, the Tories are lying again, quite consciously as well. Very tough for the 3 million or so couples who haven't applied for this allowance. For those who have, I'm sure the loss of less than 20 quid a month won't be too damaging. How much does it cost to administer, I wonder?

It's funny that you should point out that the Labour Manifesto says that married couples would have to pay a couple of hundred million additional tax yet haven't mentioned anything about the £7.5 billion that 3 million of the poorest working families will lose due to incoming Tory cuts. That's some pretty selective excrement there, man.

One is important to millions of people in the country, one won't be noticed.

By the way, borrowing money really, really isn't a problem:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/neweconomics/magic-money-tree-dont-let-politicians-tell-otherwise/

The reason the recovery has been so dire is the pointless Tory austerity since 2010.

Your random £150 billion figure is nonsense as well, of course. The Labour Party would plan to borrow an additional £50-odd billion each year to invest and kick start the economy. As is the way, the vast majority of this would end up back with the treasury through the usual route of taxation so it would almost certainly pay for itself at the very least whilst creating jobs, infrastructure, building industries. You know, the sort of stuff that the Germans and Chinese have been doing for decades.