Ddraig posted:

I believe that in every single photo of Cameron where he's being a man of the people and drinking a pint or eating a pasty or whatever it's an amazing coincidence that any labelling on the product is always facing the camera. It's unbelievable how such a thing can consistently happen by chance.

Spangly A posted:

For what I hope are obvious reasons, I've mostly not had a chance to pay any remote attention to newspapers. Aside from Iraq doing it's thing. Is my prediction of lots of poo poo things being buried bearing much fruit?

quote:

Nick Clegg has pledged to protect education spending on children and teenagers "from cradle to college".

Unveiling the first commitment of the Liberal Democrat manifesto for next year's general election, the deputy prime minister pledged to protect an extra £10bn of education spending on top of commitments delivered in this parliament by the coalition.

mfcrocker posted:

Brovine - Honduras

quote:

Nick Clegg & the broken LibDem promises since 2010:

Broken promises from the 2010 Lib Dem manifesto

– Scrap tuition fees by 2016
– Immediate end of fees for final year students
– Put 3,000 more police on beat
– Introduce a Single Transferable Vote system for elections to Parliament
– Reform the House of Lords
– Reduce the number of MPs
– Introduce votes for 16 year olds
– Require all MPs, Lords and candidates to pay tax
– Extend winter fuel payments to severely disabled people (disabled people face significant losses under Tory/ LibDem Government’s welfare cuts)
– Transfer economic development powers of RDAs to councils
– Invest £400m in refurbishing shipyards to manufacture wind turbines
– Make grants and loans available to bring 250,000 homes back into use
– Cut rail fares (average 4.2% increase in fares in Jan ’13 alone)
– Integrate health and social care (the top-down NHS restructure prevents this happening)
– Break up the banks
– Introduce a mansions tax (they failed to support in March 2013)

Broken public commitments

– Promised to veto plans to cut the top rate of income tax – but voted for it
– Claimed to oppose the controversial Health Bill – but voted for it
– Suggested the Welfare Reform Bill would break up families – but voted for it
– Claimed to oppose cuts but supported Government cuts
– Opposed a reduction in police numbers – but voted for cuts
– Claimed to want to protect secure tenancies for council tenants – but failed to vote on this issue.
– Claimed to oppose the freezing of benefits – then froze them below inflation even for disabled people
– Claimed EMA cuts wouldn’t affect access to education
– LibDems claim to work hard to tackle poverty – but voted to cut support for disabled people (a third of disabled people already live in poverty in the UK)

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Hmm. Now I have to cheer on Argentina. For someone who has the 1986 World Cup as one of his formative footballing memories, this might hurt a bit.

thehustler posted:

So what would people have done here if they were Miliband with the photo op? Honestly?

thehustler posted:

So what would people have done here if they were Miliband

HortonNash posted:

Done the photo.

Liverpool isn't going to go Tory over a single photo, and could stand to realise that they've been played by The Scum as much as Ed was.

Easier to mea culpa to Liverpool, than to have "Didn't support England, Dad was a Commie England-hating immigrant" in the public mind in the run up to an election. And you know the Heil, Scum and Telegraph would have brought it up constantly (the context lost of course).

Pesmerga posted:

Alternatively, not done the photo, but made either a small press conference, or statement, expressing support and best wishes to the England team, while saying that it would be inappropriate for a leader of a political party to be ostensibly advertising a newspaper, particularly during ongoing legal proceedings. You express support, as well as both making the other politicians look bad and refocus attention on the newspaper's misdoings at the same time.

thehustler posted:

So what would people have done here if they were Miliband with the photo op? Honestly?

Metrication posted:

Apparently asking prices for houses in London have fallen by 0.5% this month.

Seaside Loafer posted:

This is a c&p, not mine but its good to see it all in one lump lest yee forget. This is from poster ipse on the guardian comments.


I can sort of understand the first section, after all they didnt have a majority so just couldnt do it, no idea if they actually tried putting any of that stuff through (apart from vote reform, which as I understand was basically the bribe from the torys) its the 2nd section that irks me. To vote for something as a block requires the whip doesnt it? Have there actually been any full on 'rebellions' against a Tory bill?

thehustler posted:

So what would people have done here if they were Miliband with the photo op? Honestly?

thehustler posted:

So what would people have done here if they were Miliband with the photo op? Honestly?

HortonNash posted:

That's a direct declaration of war on News International. I don't expect them to support Labour, but doing what you suggest is akin to poking a tiger in the eye with your cock.

winegums posted:

(nicked)

nuzak posted:

nuzak posted:

TinTower posted:

In fairness to the Lib Dems, they didn't break their electoral reform promises insomuch as Labour and the Tories broke theirs. There's only so much a party of 57 MPs can do when they have 570 others openly collaborating against them.

The rest is accurate, though.

Fluo posted:

The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, they love the idea of privatizing the NHS, Prisons, Pensions and other public things.

TinTower posted:

Yeah, which is why I said the rest is accurate. You can't really blame the lack of electoral reform this Parliament on Clegg, though.

(Although, that said, the Orange Book is basically the same as Blue Labour: an ideological faction with current hold over their parties, including their leaders and their frontbenchers being well versed in the politics.)

nuzak posted:

That's exactly the kind of attitude that NI get their power from, the idea that any feeble statement, no matter how mild, could be seen as an attack on NI and thus provoke negative headlines.

baka kaba posted:

I got ENGERLAND somehow - if you like and if it's not against the rules you can swap with me, like when we swap ownership of Las Malvinas later. ¡Adelante!

ThomasPaine posted:

Just wondering if someone could explain this properly to me, as clear information on it doesn't seem to be easy to come by. Obviously, anyone can stand for parliament in the general election if they're willing to put forward a deposit, but they're very, very unlikely to win the vote if they stand as independents/members of small parties. How then does one get themselves nominated as a candidate for one of the big three? Does it differ between parties? Is it a case of joining up and getting yourself noticed in campaigns etc? Or are there actual interviews with senior party folk that anyone (/any member) can apply for? Or is it just a case of knowing the right people? The party websites are perfectly clear about who they are nominating, but less so on how exactly they got to that position.

Not that I'm actually considering trying for that sort of stuff, just something I was thinking about the other day. The fact that the nominated candidates all seem to just appear with no real explanation as to how they earned the privilege might well be a major factor behind voter alienation etc.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Differs between parties in detail but the broad steps are much the same. Candidates are either selected from a "local list" by the constituency party or, for the safest seats, are "parachuted in" by the national party.

So assuming you don't have the time, money, or family connections for the latter and want to go with the former, you start as a volunteer - canvassing, stuffing envelopes, observing counts, that sort of thing. From there you can possibly go for an actual salaried role (Labour have the most of these, the Tories the least) or internship within the party machine as an assistant to an MP, which may eventually lead you to the heady heights of SPAD-dom from where being parachuted in might be possible.

The more conventional route though is once you've got your feet under the table in the local machine you can try to get yourself a council seat (and this can often be the most vicious and political part of the process). Do your job well as a councilor and, well, you'll probably disappear into worthy obscurity, but earhole the right people in the regional machine, get good at golf, join the right Masonic lodges and learn to laugh at the local constituency party leader's godawful jokes and maybe you might get onto a local list (and then get some fat-faced school chum of the Deputy Chairman parachuted in over you).

Notice that at no point in this process are things like competence, knowledge, or basic human decency required or even particularly advantageous.

ThomasPaine posted:

Thank you for this. I am now very angry.

HortonNash posted:

Why?

goddamnedtwisto posted:

Notice that at no point in this process are things like competence, knowledge, or basic human decency required or even particularly advantageous.

tdrules posted:

With Labour you also have to take into account the National Executive Committee who will decide whether it's an All Women's Shortlist (which is the case near me even though local members protested strongly against it) or an open selection.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

(It's interesting as an aside to that to see how the massive increase in the cost of elections has almost entirely homogenised party structures this century - until very very recently (late 90s) all three main parties gathered the majority of their budgets from local parties and membership dues, giving the local parties (and the unions for Labour) an almost completely free hand in candidate selection. This is why some back benchers were so likely to revolt, as we last saw with the Eurosceptics at the end of the Major years; withdrawal of the whip held no fear whatsoever if the local constituency or your union were behind you because - if you stayed excommunicated - you could easily afford to finance your own independent campaign and indeed the national party would be hurt by the loss of your constituency funds. Nowadays most of the party budgets come from corporate donations to the national party so the constituencies are reliant on the central party, so everyone gets in lock-step as soon as the whips so much as look funny at them)

quote:

Doctors now have a legal duty to consult with and inform patients if they want to place a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order on medical notes, the Court of Appeal in England ruled.

The issue was raised by a landmark judgement that found doctors at Addenbrooke's Hospital, in Cambridge, had acted unlawfully.

Janet Tracey, who had terminal lung cancer, died there three years ago.

Her family say she and they were not consulted when a DNR notice was placed.

Guidelines for doctors already recommend that patients and families are involved in such decisions, but the court ruling now makes it a legal requirement.

In the judgment, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson, said: "A Do Not Attempt Cardiac Pulmonary Resuscitation decision is one which will potentially deprive the patient of life-saving treatment, there should be a presumption in favour of patient involvement.

"There need to be convincing reasons not to involve the patient."

He went on to warn that "doctors should be wary of being too ready to exclude patients from the process on the grounds that their involvement is likely to distress them".

The ruling does not give patients the right to have CPR, but it does mean they should be consulted.

quote:

In such circumstances the RC (UK) emphasises the importance of clinicians documenting clearly their reasons, should they decide not to discuss a DNACPR decision with a patient or explain it to them. The judgement recommends also that the court should be very slow to find that such decisions, if conscientiously taken, violate a patient’s rights under Article 8 of the European Convention.