Yup.

By that metric you're saying we should only vote Labour or Tory.

There's little nobility in tactical voting, but there's little clever about refusing to consider it.

With FPTP there's little value in most people voting at all. I might not bother. Or move to a marginal where my vote actually matters.

It's no wonder young people are so disenfranchised.

He didn't say I shouldn't vote for those parties with policies I believe in, just that he didn't think they were likely electable, at present at least.

I didn't take it as an instruction not to vote as I believed at least, but I'm sensible and will balance up placing my vote to adhere to what I most believe as well as where I believe it will do most good in the current political landscape.

The whole point of the voteforpolicies site is to make people consider who they vote for, and if people actually believed their vote would count then yeah, we might see a green or Lib Dem government.

But (let's say 80%) of people who would otherwise vote Green say 'oh my party will never get in - i'll vote labour instead'

And then Labour get in.

If only we weren't all too thick for STV.

In a safe seat, I think you're better off voting for what you believe in. Ok, so it'll be swept under by the blue/red tide, but at least you'll have signalled that people with your views exist.



So they don't vote, so parties have even more reason to ignore their needs and carry on screwing them over whilst showering older generations with bribes favours and promises because they are the ones who vote.

If people can work out who needs to score what to win the Six Nations, they can handle ranking candidates.

I think the process of round elimination in University Challenge and Only Connect is perhaps an experiment to see if we can handle the minor complexities of STeVe.

tch.... Steve.

Twisted motherfucking flax!

Only Connect is brilliant.

Horn-ed viper.

Monday's are best days.

Then Thursday (sewing bee)

Lib Dems - 50% - Democracy; Economy; Environment; Health/NHS; Welfare
Con - 20% - Europe; Foreign Policy; Defence
Green - 20% - Crime; Immigration
Lab - 10% - Education

Especially when my alma mater thrash the opposition on 'University Challenge', or if I get 3 points on 'Only Connect'.

Amusingly I cam out as 40% UKIP*.

Yeah, don't think I'm going to be voting according to that.

* - They came out as my choice on the ones where I thought "I don't care and there's little to choose in any of them. Pick any one at random.

Fuck me, that got dull quickly.

The 'pre-answering' is a usability nightmare.

Yup. Especially on the NHS. It's not like any of the parties are gonna say: "Yeah, we're gonna fuck this up so our mates can make a packet".

People didn't like it when Mr Farage did exactly that.

It's also another website designed for people with tablets.

Some of us are retro!

Assumed that my result would be a mix of Lib Dem and Green, ended up with 75% Lib Dem and 25% Labour.

You right-wing bastard

Natalie Bennet gave a couple of car-crash interviews this morning. This one with Nick Ferrari on LBC is worth listening to: http://www.lbc.co.uk/incredibly-awkward ... LtMIy9D.97

Yeah, excruciating.

Yeah I was listening to the Today programme interview this morning. I had to turn it off as it was just awful - reminded me of Nicola Murray.

Good on her. Family first.

Labour
50%
Liberal Democrats
30%
Green Party
20%

grauniad article here which I found quite scathing on the Bradford labour party. It calls into questions the local practice of block voting.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015 ... line-smear

This is getting embarrassing

Galloway threatens defamation claims against people on twitter

Candy Crush is a bitch for that.

The Tory party apparently offered Rifkind's safe parliamentary seat to Frank Lampard!

But he said he could only commit to the second half of the administration having signed for another government

*nice*

Cleggy wants a Cornish Assembly. Hasn't made a cast-tin pledge though, which is possibly just as well.

He's always been strongly in favour of devolving a lot of powers to local authorities, so this is no different to Manchester or Birmingham really. If it puffs up the Corns' chests and makes them feel important I'm all for it though.

Yes, I'm very interested to see how the Greater Manchester experiment pans out and if gets rolled out to other areas. Undecided on whether a mayorlty is the best structure, but some devolution is better than none.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31745808

Who didn't see that coming? They should just "empty podium" him and do the election debates without him. If he doesnt show up for the first 3, then the 4th one with Ed vs Dave on 30th April they can cut to 15 minutes rather than the full 90.


Rather a lot of comments on that page too.

Cameron's position seems to be that the idea of a 7 sided debate is a farce, so let's just do it and get it over with, and move on.

That has some merit to it

Cameron started that by insisting that the minority parties be represented, however.

The more parties involved, the better it is for him. He is such a little toad.

Wasn't it more of an effort to 'de-emphasise' UKIP?

R4 played a lovely clip of Cameron from 5 years back calling Brown scared of the debate and emphasising its importance.

Yes, it always puts the incumbent at a disadvantage, that's why he's trying to weasel out of them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31771198

Broadcasters have called PM's bluff.

"Just who do the broadcasters think they are, that they can set down a diktat?" said the Northern Irish dick to Sky News.

Well, it's their fucking broadcast, so, yeah.

I agree with Mr Chris."We are organising on these dates, come along" and he said no.

I think the debates were blown out of all proportion last time and detracted from the election. There is no point in having the two main brains and five losers. Just have Ed and Call Me Davebig we have to. We aren't America, we're more civilised than their system so why try and copy it?