As election day looms, I think almost everybody in Britain who has any interest in national politics might agree that Labour's chances would be significantly improved if Jeremy Corbyn were not party leader.
Why has he not been replaced?
General Election 2019 Page 6
You might say the same about Boris. How can he make any election promises when the House of Commons has yet to pass any of his bills?
Oh what doom and gloom
If the Tories win, there won't be the kind of violent anti EU fury revolution which sets all of suburbia on fire. If Labour win we won't be dead by having to wait two months for a GP appointment. And if the Lib Dems win, it will be time to take advantage of freedom of movement and e-mail anyone who dug down if they will be the last ones to turn out the lights.
Really was very slimy and underhand of the Tory party to rename their Twitter account FactCheckUk (or whatever it was). Boris truly is elevating dishonesty to an art form.
The TV debate - probably the best I've see Corbyn perform and he's smartened up a lot since his early days as leader, something he had to do, but with that stubble constantly catching the intense studio light I couldn't help thinking of Albert Steptoe in a black suit in S&S Ride Again. If they do a remake he's your man, uncanny resemblance.
Boris just spouted empty jargon and Corbyn again failed to state his own position on Brexit, which isn't doing him any favours. Overall, lacklustre from all concerned.
So, if the Lib Dems won't enter into an alliance with Corbyn, the most likely scenario appears to be:
Hung Parliament, Corbyn replaced as leader of the Labour Party, a Lib-Lab alliance government, a second referendum and no Brexit.
It could happen!
Quote: Rood Eye @ 22nd November 2019, 8:39 PMSo, if the Lib Dems won't enter into an alliance with Corbyn, the most likely scenario appears to be:
Hung Parliament, Corbyn replaced as leader of the Labour Party, a Lib-Lab alliance government, a second referendum and no Brexit.
It could happen!
Yes it could. I have looked at the Lab targets and now assess that the SNP could lose 15 plus seats to Labour. So many of those seats were won by SNP by a tiny margin. A combination of the fact that there is many a real red blooded male Scot who is ready to drop the wet feely side of the Nats quickly for Marxism (something they will do anyway when they get independence - the macho male war like side of the SNP will no longer be relevant and only women after that will vote SNP there, thereby leaving SNP in opposition until they dwindle to nothing) and the Alex Salmond affair if escalated so as to be almost indecipherable from the one involving Prince Andrew. This is how those votes and seats will shift on 12 Dec.
Then you have the fact that Lab will get in across North England from a severe dropping off of the spliff friendly Lib Dems. Old miners will get in their zimmer frames to vote Labourite and keep the Tories out there and with them will be their not for compromising sons and daughters. They like 'em looking and sounding hard as nails there, whatever the hue. Not sadistic while pretending to be the opposite - not all Jo, all hippy, free love for goats and earrings made of wool. For Christ's sake, almost all of them were in Chumbawamba and have more coal in their veins than was ever in a mine. If there was a gun to their heads, they would vote Tory over her and so would I, having been taught north of Watford. Look again at the margins. There is another 40 or 50 there which will get Lab into the 300s and well beyond. Yet I always believed in the power of Tony Benn. He was rabidly anti EU. He and I have chatted lengthily since his death. I don't rule out he will set light to Lab from beyond the ether. So if anyone says when it happens it was spontaneous combustion they will be a liar.
Whoodle-oo, pissin' the night away, as mad as a March hare in our December-tide.........tra la la la.
We all wore posh trainers on the terraces to this one and it got to No 1 in me charts (1975-1999).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkmIyC6v00
The Tories will get through in almost all of the Tory/Lib Demmy areas so that the number of Lib Dem MPs falls to 8. So Con v Lab/Lib. It is going to be an absolute dead heat with loads of arguments about how the Lib Dems with just 8 seats and 12% of the vote could prop up communism but they will try. SNP will be severely pissed off but they can only blame one of their founding fathers. The Queen will die at that time. Charles will say something stupid so as never to become KIng.
There will be one political and one royal suicide. Trump will be impeached and there will be another global crash, all coinciding. And it will turn out that the Tory in Peterborough really did decide to pretend he wasn't standing so as to let the Brexit Party bloke in (can't remember if it was BBC2 or C4 but it looked well suspicious) and he will enable a Tory-Brexit majority of one with the Brexit Party on just one MP,. Which is hilarious as many see him as a gobshite who has a load of money while just happening to be on the right side. He could have all the appeal on QT as an unwashed dank flannel. Still, it will put the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein in their boxes. Oh what happy times to look forward to. I predict a riot.
Surprising number of seats have raving loony candidates.
Here is their "contract with the people":
According to reports, Boris is on course to win a 48-seat overall majority.
Strangely, the right-wing press are filling their pages with shock-horror anti-Corbyn propaganda as if it were in fact Jeremy, rather than Boris, who's looking set for a huge victory.
I think the right-wing press might, in reality, believe the result is going to be much closer than they're predicting.
PS. Having clicked on Horse's link above, I might well vote Raving Loony! 
Election Monitor 87 - Day 5 : Mitford and Jacques Zone
So under a Conservative Government the pot holes will be filled in. Sadly it turned out that the policy had nothing to do with addressing the legal loopholes in enforcing the laws on cannabis which have led to a rapid rise in people and squirrels being killed by speeding drugged up drivers. Nor was "holes" an abbreviation of "arseholes" or "filled in" a euphemism" for "beating the shit out of someone" as defined in the great Urban Dictionary. That is, when it comes to. dope crazed cinema maniacs waving machetes at petrified small children. Consequently while Ms Patel may keep responsibilities for Home Affairs, her hard as nails approach hasn't quite yet seized the agenda but hopefully it will do.
Elsewhere there was a pledge to plant 30,0000 dandelions - oh no sorry "trees" though one senses Bojo wouldn't recognise ash die back if one of the half of ash that is to decay hit him on the bonce and said "concrete me over". So to, quote Coldplay one way or another "it's all yellow". Still, although it isn't in their pamphlet - what we used to call a manifesto - Tories may at least once such a crush happens send all GPs on a course to address their Munchhausen Syndrome by Proxy. The sort which none of them will pass until they are no longer inclined to say "I'n not goin' out to see that old cow of 90 - she could kill me and I ain't riskin' that for no moosh - jus' let 'er peg it : where's me loadsamoney?"
Officially GPs are now the second most evil and disgusting people in the UK. Hence Tories plan to have more nurses. This is a truly great thing, Let's replace all GPs with nurses from now on. They will bring back the phrase "ooh matron". Regrettably, their strategists again speculated whether Mr Corbyn's special glasses revealed that, quote, "the old man" had indeed had a stroke. If ever there was an example of needing to make ageism an equal offence to racism and homophobia it was that but, hey, let us not change the key laws until we know Trump and Biden will not be President in 2021.
Labour announced that it would be helping the WASPI women. So as to address their concerns there will be a level of borrowing which exceeds the entire defence and education budgets in the UK. Eye-watering figures but for a party which is on its own defence from accusations of anti-semitism one had assumed that they were still sound in other racial areas. So why on earth just prioritise White Anglo Saxon Protestant Inglanders? Oh hold on. Did I get that wrong too?. It might imply that men who were misled are also to be compensated which is obviously not the case. Whatever, the extreme or "progressive" (natch) nature of the Labour manifesto which at least has as its title a real touching nostalgia - "Would The Last Person To Leave What Remains of The Country - Not a Lot - Turn Out The Eco Lights", was belittled by what emerged as the private Lab-LIb Dem deal to try to ensure big numbers of Lib Dem seats in the riviera of the South West,.
Centred around Mick Cash of RMT who spent many years copying the accent of Bob Crow but can't quite shrug off the tones of Essex and Irish Travellers from County Kildare from whom he comes, that non existent rail service throughout December "and all because of the Tories" is, they hope, going to be a winner for the centrists. That's especially when Devon dislocates from Cornwall and Somerset from this week's floods. Not that we should overstate his influence or that of the parties mentioned. South West Train staff are the most revolting, world hating people in England at any time. Even worse than modern GPs. It is like they are the bastard kids of Scargill and Hatton. I found that personally when purely by coincidence one went permanently missing in Southampton and another disappeared and was never found in Exeter on a day when I just about managed to get a train. .My visits were roughly at the same time but it was like the revolving door of a hotel. I had no idea what was going on because thousands of people were walking less in than out. OK, I did end up driving those trains myself. But one is confused. Don't gypsies as a matter of blood standard normally faciliate travel?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, once plain Natalie Bennett of the vehemently anti elite Green Party, popped up from nowhere to say that one return trip from the UK to Australia a year by aeroplane should not have a climate tax attached to it (she herself is Australian) but anyone taking two flights a year from London to Dublin or Edinburgh should be taxed until their pips squeak so as to save the planet. Is it small wonder that she has largely been replaced by Jonathan "don't ask him about young male drivers and road deaths" Barclay and Sian "ok I used to - but stop permanently inspecting my model look nostrils" Berry as an alternative voice to The Queen Caroline of Brighton Pavilion. That one gets more like her authoritarian Tory father daily. She hardly needs at what would have been pensioner age in the good times to play the rebel. It was also a remarkable kick in Remain Alliance pal Jo Swinson's teeth given she has flown 77 times in the last 18 months. Sure, she could still be the first PM with a 603 seat majority but one needing to file for ecological bankruptcy.
Talking of gerrymandering, the SDLP and several other candidates in Belfast North have stood aside so as to ensure a win for Sinn Fein in Belfast North. Oh thank Christ, We won't have to put up with seeing its sitting MP Nigel Dodds on our television sets ever again and it comes with the added bonus that Sinn Fein themselves refuse to sit in Parliament. One guesses he will speak in the future simply as a male Arlene Foster - totally unelected in Westminster terms and obnoxiously over-powerful while SF when it comes to proper peaceful politics will still refuse to sit in Stormont too or get up out of bed in the morning. At least with Sturgeon who is equally unelected in Westminster terms, not that Joe Public knows it, you get a bit of energetic all winning if manipulative confidence. The reasonable presentation is especially attractive when you realise that it took her or her helpers four months to find an outfit that was the exact colour of the Brexit Party just so as to subliminally rub their noses in it. BXP blue from not M & S (or S & M). Bespoke and all luvverly.
Was there anything in this time segment that could be relied upon? Oh yus. Nige declared for the umpteenth time that he would abolish the House of Lords as he still hasn't been made Baron Farage of Biggin Hill and Plaid have been out in force in Gwent breaking off road signs near the English border. It's been happening since time began and it's a bit belt and braces from an English view when we are more than content whatever our persuasions with simply having Offa's Dyke. In this era, I am reminded of the evening when I went for a meal in the village of Stoke Saint Gregory and was amazed to find the piano player was black. The spitting image of Nat King Cole and he did such a wonderful rendition of "Trouble" that I was totally enraptured and completely forgot about my overly expensive just outside of Taunton steak pudding. No trains, No GPs, No politics. On balance, ideally the world should have ended in that moment. With a friendly nuclear bomb,
So, as far as I can see,who ever gets the trains to run on time,you'll vote for?
Quote: john tregorran @ 24th November 2019, 7:20 PMSo, as far as I can see,who ever gets the trains to run on time,you'll vote for?
Anyone who gets the trains to run on time is clearly a great organiser.
However, society can sometimes be a little too organised.
Quote: john tregorran @ 24th November 2019, 7:20 PMSo, as far as I can see,who ever gets the trains to run on time,you'll vote for?
Oh yes. I'm going to vote for the Swiss Cuckoo Clock Party. It is entirely a fantasy but I don't see why the fantasy concept shouldn't be pushed beyond the manifestos from all the "real" political parties which are pure Cuckoo, Cuckoo.
So anyhow here are Questions 1 and 2 for you all on your Oxbridge Entrance Paper:
The UK is (i) deeply in debt and (ii) the fifth richest country in the world. Given it naturally follows that the four richest countries are also deeply in debt:
Q1. Are all countries officially in greater poverty than any homeless wino who while he has no money has no debt whatsoever?
and
Q2. How can it possibly be that African countries are in lower than fifth position when most of their economies are less than 1% the size of ours and hence cannot possibly have anything like the same level of debt than the UK in actual terms ?
I do accept, though, that cuckoo clock manufacturers are the third most disgusting sadists in the universe.