Debate chat #16
Debate getting really angry now – brilliant! Gordon showing some proper idignation at the Tories. Maybe he’s just remembered why he went into politics before his sole aim became to suck up to the City.
Yearly archives: 2010
Debate chat #15
Clegg makes perfectly true point and very important point about poor people paying higher percentage as income tax than the righ pay on unearned capital gains income. Director cut to close up of Brown shaking his head as though this wasn’t true.
Debate chat #14
Gordon said “ordinary hard working families”. By which he means bigots.
Debate chat #13
Cameron doesn’t understand Keynsianism – which is not surprising really.
Debate chat #12
Cameron attacking benefit payments – like it was the unemployed who caused the financial crash.
Debate chat #11
Cameron quotes his supporters Corus – who just pocketed millions of pounds cash from carbon credits by reducing pollution in closing their Teeside plant and making thousands redundant.
Debate chat #10
Everyone dodging the question about where the cuts will fall. Brown talking about the cuts in investment – but we’ll be paying his PFI bills for decades already.
Debate chat #9
Cameron staring again into the camera manically as instructed
Debate chat #8
Brown sounding like manager of Murmansk tractor factory giving production statistics c. 1965
Debate chat #7
Brown simplistic but much better than Cameron
Debate chat #6
Clegg much better than Cameron
Debate chat #3
Cameron superbland – nothing anyone could disagree with, even me.
Debate chat #2
Switched over to HD. Improbably plucked eyebrows in the audience.
Debate chat #1
Over on BBC now for the debate proper
If you put a large condom over William Hague’s head
he wouldn’t look any different.
The real bigots are the 51 “entrepreneurs” who wrote to the Times
this morning arguing anything but a Tory government would be a disaster. They argue that only massive tax cuts for themselves will save the economy, by “trickledown”. Not one of them opposed the banking deregulation that actually was an economic disaster.
Liveblogging starting with weird werid comment by Michael Thrasher
on Sky. He says Birmingham is a red/blue battleground with only Lib Dem interest in Solihull. Absolute bollocks. At least two Birmingham Lab constituencies are set to go Lib Dem
YouGov: A Clarification
Before the debate starts, I wish to make one thing crystal clear.
The CEO of YouGov PLC, “Stalwart Stephan” Shakespeare (whom I may have earlier called “Sleazy Stephan” by typographical error), is a business associate, close personal friend and former campaign manager of Mr Jeffrey (formerly trading as “Lord”) Archer.
Any suggestion that “Stalwart Stephan” would ever have any truck with anything dodgy would therefore plainly not be worth wasting time to weigh the merits.
Forced Sterilisation in Uzbekistan
Many congratulations to The Times for giving us an article on the revitalised programme of compulsory sterilisation in Uzbekistan.
Karimov is increasingly crazed. The only disagreement I have with the article is that the population of Uzbekistan is only increasing in official statistics. In fact, about a fifth of the population (including nearly all the ethnic Russians) have emigrated since independence.
It is very worthwhile to see articles in the mainstream media which reveal something of the truth about the situation in the country. This is particularly chilling, and perfectly believable:
Activists say mass sterilisation began in 2003, but was eased after two years following an outcry. It is said to have restarted in February this year, when the health ministry ordered doctors to recommend sterilisation as an “effective contraceptive”. Critics claim every doctor was told to persuade “at least two women” a month to have the procedure. Doctors who failed faced reprisals and fines.
“We estimate that since February, about 5,000 women have been sterilised without consent,” said a local human rights campaigner who fears detention if she is named.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7107200.ece
Remember, this is a country which is our “Ally” in the war on terror, whose ruling family personally have the overland supply contracts for allied forces in Uzbekistan, which the Home Office claims in asylum cases has no human rights problems. Miliband’s FCO offers not one word of criticism of perhaps the world’s most despotic regime.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/britain_boosts.html