FlyTheNest

mikems

He is a fan of villas, and looks a lot like ham, to be fair.

mikems

What kind of resistance will a (wealthy) vindictive minority launch against a democratically elected government? Will the ugliness get called off? Tory campaign strategy shows no sign of calling off their attacks. They'll shut up when they lose, right? Traditionally they line up some sort of market...

mikems

If Ed won't say it I will. Cameron and Clegg are responsible for the deaths in the Mediterranean because they withdrew funding for the rescue operations.

What a shame that our politics cannot speak the truth for fear of being attacked by the media.

mikems

The Guardian's headlines are following every twist and turn...of the tories' arguments. What the tories want to talk about is almost always the headline in the 'left-wing' Guardian. Today we had EVEL - after days of ignoring the NHS and focussing on the SNP devils - and now it has moved on to tory '...

mikems

I think Libya was a crime and should have been opposed, not supported by Labour on media/intelligence services claims of imminent disaster in Benghazi. Sadly, out of fear of being accused of 'weakness' or whatever, Labour caved in and went along with it all. There is real disaster for the Libyan peo...

mikems

This is a statutory offence. The words mean what they mean. There is no mens rea requirement. It is an offence of strict liability (there are lots of them). Of course there is a mens rea requirement. Therein lies the difference between crime and mistake. And that is if we must accept your assertion...

mikems

But, I think it is arguable that by tweeting pictures of completed postal ballots saying "isn't this great" you induce others to do the same (ie post pictures of their completed ballots). And that is an offence. Equally, it could be argued that it is not inducement, so it is not an offenc...

mikems

You are not allowed to publish information about how somebody has voted until polls have closed. How somebody else has voted, surely? It can hardly be a surprise if Creasy votes for herself and there is nothing wrong with telling people how you have voted. People have already been on the blogs publ...

mikems

Comments at LabourList are still infested with trolls. So is the Labour party facebook page - it is full of fascists and racists 'having their say' on Labour's pages and being left unmoderated out of undue respect for the 'rights' of people who would destroy democracy if they got the chance.

mikems

Both united and divided? That's dialectics, innit.

We are all split and we are all united all the time. We are all united against the right but divided on strategy and tactics. If we didn't have capital skewing society in its interests and had democracy instead, that's what it would look like.

mikems

David Cameron and Boris Johnson stage joint campaign visit

David Cameron and Boris Johnson are doing a campaign visit together in Surbiton. They have been visiting a nursery.(Election Blog, Guardian)

Why?

Probably be able to deal with mental arithmetic questions the toddlers may lob at them?

mikems

I don't know where I stand in the illness/disability spectrum - I have congenital structural problems and suffer from chronic pain and other things as a result and none of this is ever going to get better, yet I am in the ESA WRAG and have been since 2012. Though I have told my assessors that my pro...

mikems

Andrew Neil tweeted last night that a major Tory donor told him the party’s campaign was “useless”, believing that David Cameron’s “heart is not in it”. — Tim Montgomerie ن (@montie) April 21, 2015 @afneil DC has wanted out for a while. He has just wanted to go out on some sort of high and hasn't b...

mikems

There will be polls very soon on the Scottish question - that most people would never have offered an opinion on unprompted - that will underline this latest piece of media coordination and keep 'the story' in the headlines so that real issues can be ignored.

mikems

Jeez. And here was me thinking that they really were trying really really hard to do their best for us, they just weren't very good at it. Yes. It is a pure side-effect that society's wealth has been hi-jacked and stashed away offshore in tory bank accounts. Just resting in their accounts before be...

mikems

I'm not so sure about North East Somerset. We've got the data from 2010, and two Ashcroft polls that vary wildly. I know there have been boundary changes, but many people will have voted Liberal in the past to keep the tory out, so why would they vote tory now, especially if they have found the LIbe...

mikems

Just saw Rogers post so deleted my nonsense.

mikems

'And if the person whistling the Internationale doesn't come forward immediately, Mr Osborne will be keeping you all behind for extra P.E.'

mikems

At various times in our history English Kings have also claimed the title of King of France (although never actually taking the throne officially), I thought Henry V was king of France legitimately. It was his useless son, Henry VI, who lost it again. West Lothian Eric - thanks, I hadn't thought of...

mikems

A thought just struck me, sorry if I'm being an idiot and this is well-known to everyone else. How can Scotland become independent when it is a kingdom, part of the United Kingdom of England and Scotland. The English queen is just as much the Scottish queen now as she would be after an independence ...

mikems

"I want to talk about the nightmare scenario of me not winning"

Boris!

mikems

I note that not just one, not just two, but three polling companies are connected to tories : yougov, Ashcroft and Populus. Any more? I'm not implying anything about their methodology, but have long thought that polling is a means of checking whether the (mainly tory skewed media's) propaganda is wo...

mikems

I'm still getting a steady stream of anti-gull literature. Somehow, I seem to have been included on the local conservative party mailing list so, as well as all the glossy literature and full-colour four page tabloids, I get direct mail from them too. Helpfully, the last letter I received contained ...

mikems

I agree Hugo, they are no intellectual heavyweights. But put yourself in the shoes of someone with views like the ones I have expressed here - a direction of travel away from what might be thought of as the Thatcher/Blair consensus. They can't simply jump to their desired position in public statemen...

mikems

(a) free market libertarian or (b) a denial that markets ever work, so that any market distortion just has to be accepted. I say explicitly that we should be aiming for a regulated, mixed economy, with cartels and monopolies broken up or taken into public ownership. Once that has been achieved we s...

mikems

You take evidence of monopoly extortion - the oppression of farmers - as proof of free markets? These farmers have no choice. There is no market for them. It is the supermarkets or bankruptcy. Why see only one side of the equation? Why no concern for these suppliers, but plenty of defence for the mo...

mikems

Aldi and Lidl are new entrants to the cartel. You or I couldn't start up an international supermarket chain. They are large players expanding to get their share of the cartel action in the UK. Tesco and others are suffering because they are being undercut, not be free market competition, but by othe...

mikems

Monopoly utility and service monopolies are not properly regulated. They are simply not allowed to extort beyond reason. If they were subject to proper regulation, based on the public and national interest, they would be broken up. If they were anything but a means of channelling money from the wide...

mikems

The supermarkets were declared not to be a cartel by the captured regulator. How can any sane person see three or four large companies dominating high percentages of total trade and not see monopoly? That's the blooming definition, fgs! Also, we used to have a powerful Monopolies and Mergers commiss...

mikems

The point about Teddy Rooseveldt was that he was a capitalist himself, yet could see that the overwheening power of the industrial moguls was throttling enterprise and 'free markets' for everyone else. Of course the idea that we again have a monopolised nexus of economic/political power weilding an ...

mikems

Cheers, LC!

mikems

There are none so blind...

mikems

Fixing the price of things has been tried before, in lots of times and places. It doesn't work. It's an easy thing to say, but no so easy to show, I would think. In fact prices are fixed all the time, not by the variations of supply and demand - or even by government, which I suspect you are referr...

mikems

What should we do when 'markets' fail? Let them? and bugger the consequences, because regulation is an affront to the Gods or something? Reverence to market freedom is the same as letting the rich and powerful do what they want in their own interests. And TE is right : the fraudulent boom years earn...

mikems

I hate pre-distribution, which is for me just market fixing by regulation under a new name.

Yes, the biggest problem poverty-pay workers face is the risk of regulated markets, isn't it?

mikems

That Lynton Crosby is a political genius.

We should get a banner made up, like the Liverpool fans did.

mikems

They had an extra day to think about it...and came up with this load of old cobblers.

mikems

I want the right to buy my privately owned flat. Why can't I?

mikems

As 1983 proves there are no votes in offering to give up nukes unilaterally. As if there was a sensible, fair debate about it, or as if the tories weren't shrieking about Labour 'being soft on defence', and ratcheting up the non-existent threat from the Soviet Union. I agree it is not a vote winner...

mikems

For tories social media is more or less just another way of hurling abuse at 'lefties'. They don't make good use of it, because they are bereft of rational arguments which people can agree with.

mikems

I don't think we should be opening old wounds right now.

mikems

It was the wrong thing to do politically, even if Blair's reason for doing it was admirable

With all due respect, no one knows what his reason was. We can all only guess...until Chilcott reveals all.

mikems

Why do most people think that the number of 'immigrants' is much higher than it is? Why do people think that benefits are much higher than they really are? Why do people think that they are 'middle class'? Why do they think that wealth is much more evenly spread than it really is? Take a bow, boys a...

mikems

Why are most people wrong about everything? For example, after 30 odd years of reporting 'the troubles' in NI, most people thought that a) it was all about religion and b) the catholics were oppressing the protestants. Another example : after 40 odd years of reporting the Israeli occupation of Pales...

mikems

Can someone ask Clegg if he will support Osborne's budget in government? Or not? Simple enough question.

mikems

Shameless Clegg is now condemning the 'deeply dangerous' man he has helped for the last five years. If he is that worried why not say now that the Liberals will not go into coalition with this reckless, dangerous extremist? That would be 'doing all he can to stop' Osborne. What he really means, I su...

mikems

utopiandreams wrote: Should people come to our country to reside then they must adopt British Values. No I'm not speaking of tastes or even religion, but of equality. If they cannot treat those of different gender or background as their equal then they have no place here. Who decides who does and d...

mikems

Re: councils and casual labour. Have we not spent the last thirty years or so hearing how overstaffed and inefficient councils are? How essential it is to cut out waste etc? Yet now the tories seem to be demanding that casual workers - just like the people who will be counting their votes on May 7th...

mikems

ohso I'm going to say LibDem and spit as I go into the Polling station... And I'm sure there are many more like me If it is a choice between Liberals and Tories, you may as well vote Labour or whatever else you fancy. The Libs are the only party willing to go into coalition with the tories, so one ...

mikems

In 1936, during the general election campaign, Leon Blum, the socialist leader, was attacked in the streets of Paris by right-wing thugs and had to be rescued by building workers coming from a site nearby. The right was lurching towards extremism and was badly divided. Blum went on to win and form t...

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