I want to commend this amazing resource which a dedicated investigator has collated on Tory Election Expenses Fraud, covering no less than 57 MPs. A huge amount of data is available locally and this is the best central repository I have seen. It repays hours of browsing. As the evidence builds it becomes plain that massive cheating was a key element of the Tory victory. That there is no chance at all that Britain’s corrupt electoral, police and legal institutions will do anything about it is, sadly, equally certain.
But hats off to Michael Crick for continuing to try at Channel 4. He did a fantastic doorstep today of Nick Timothy, a May adviser in 10 Downing Street who was one of many Tories whose party paid expenses in weeks of campaigning in South Thanet were not declared. It was also quite incredible work by the cameraman. If anyone can find a copy I could embed here…
Good evening. I don’t have any comment at this stage but may return to the matter later. For now, I just wanted to be the first moniker to appear on this new thread.
It would be good and unusual to have any comment where you had something to say. 🙂
Goss
See below. 🙂
Brilliant sarcasm Mr Goss, it brought a smile to my face. ?
Brilliant, outstanding, original and incisive, surely? 🙂
Thanks Habbakuk. I blush. 🙂
Craig
The general drift of your new post appears to me to be that the Conservatives would not have won the last general election if they had not cheated massively.
To remove any ambiguity, could you confirm that this is indeed your contention?
That’s exactly what I mean. Anybody with something to say would have developed the thesis after this sentence, rather than try to put words into another person’s mouth.
“The general drift of your new post appears to me to be that the Conservatives would not have won the last general election if they had not cheated massively.”
You could have continued with something like: “If so . . .” instead of trying to elicit from a busy man confirmation or otherwise of your speculation. 🙂
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
As you with Eastern Ukraine?
Eh?
“You could have continued with something like: “If so . . .” instead of trying to elicit from a busy man confirmation or otherwise of your speculation.”
________________________
I imagine Craig’s quite capable of managing his time without any help from you, Mr Goss. But on his behalf, thank you for your concern.
John, this is something I have also pointed out.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/02/labours-failure-and-institutional-analysis/comment-page-5/#comment-656063
Habbabkuk appears to want to draw out his opponent(s) without breaking cover himself. It is so close to the activity popularly called ‘trolling’, that it’s hard to find a better description.
The resource is amazing and well structured. A lot of meticulous work has clearly gone into it so congratulations to the author. While it is unlikely any of the Soros- Murdoch-funded outlets would run with it it is a good research-resource for the honourable, truthful and generally unpaid journalists to dip into from time to time. Respect to Michael Crick.
There is a rare disease rampant on this blog. It is called rejectionitis.
Its main characteristic is that of rejecting the outcome of any election, referendum or other manifestation of the will of the majority (as set out in the applicable rules) if that outcome is one with which the sufferer disagrees. In other words, denial. An additional characteristic is to blame that unwelcome (to the sufferer, that is) outcome on a variety of extraneous causes : the MSM, indoctrination, interference by foreign powers, fraud and cheating, etc…In the most extreme cases of the disease n blame is put onto those who have expressed their views, in that they are called ignorant, or bigotted, or racist…
It is interesting to note that the defeat of Mr Farage in East Thanet seems to have occasioned a new outbreak of this disease.
An increasingly less rare disease, fortunately. The days when those trusted (!) with power are given carte blanche to do as they please without check are gradually coming to an end.
Very well observed. If you have not done so already perhaps you might send your thoughts to Hillary Clinton – as she appears to be suffering from all of the symptoms you set out.
I am sure you will agree that the defeat of Mr. Farage in East Thanet is of much lower import than being defeated in a contest to become POTUS
Absolutely, Loony – the disease is, as I said, rampant, affecting the high and the low alike.
So now the law doesn’t matter? A disease that volk like you suffer from is far more dangerous. Turning a blind eye to illegal activity because it benefits your cause. Democracy can only work if people play by the rules. I’m sure if Diane Abbott had done this you’d be all over it like a cheap rug.
Call that fraud?
When it comes to fraud our politicians can’t hold a candle to the Americans.
https://twitter.com/RobPulseNews/status/836607507325992963
yes the scale. is. very. very. different but surely it is a case of. ‘just enough’ to get a result.
The. Full Stop Curse
p.s. I recently.upgraded to Sierra. OS. One. of the. peculiar. effects has. been that. my various text. producing activities such as. comments here and. my. email(gmail) now. inserts.unwanted full stops mysteriously. It. is something to do with the space.bar but I can’t seem to. determine exactly the circumstances. Sometimes. it does. it. and sometimes,especialy when. I am looking or testing for it. it. doesn’t do it. Maybe. it. is not the space. bar of. course or. maybe it. is a quantum gremlin that. disappears as soon as. one observes.
Are there. any. clever. IT. people able to offer any. advice?
Neglecting the declining support for UKIP, whose prominenti are now fighting like ferrets in a sack, with Humphries on the Today programme today sparing no effort to stir the shit…it’s easy to see what the ‘fraud’ site’s less overt purpose is: to demonstrate that Cameron maybe didn’t have a majority when the referendum was held, and thereby to cast doubt on its validity. Well, it’s a different tack, I suppose. We have to expect the vested interests to try anything they can rake up.
Fact remains, Cameron was able within the constitution to call a referendum, no-one can know what the outcome Might Have Been, had the alleged Tories not allegedly cheated, and we remain (only) with the situation as it is. Which is that quite enough people registered a Leave vote to require this to be government policy. End of.
Back to Farage, who managed to get one salient point across between Humphries asking facetiously if he wanted a knighthood, at ten-second intervals, for half the interview. And that is, while the Tories have taken ownership of Brexit in name, they have not grasped the substance of the discontent that led to it, even yet, and are not addressing it. Should that continue after our departure, the question of whether some bent MP’s ran a notionally illegal campaign might just seem a little trivial.
I have no idea why this is a reply to DGP’s post. It followed from one of Anon’s. Apologies, DGP. Try Linux, is my standard answer in your case.
OMG -mistaken for Anon? That is like a dagger to my heart. Must. admit to some kind. of inverted sympathy to Habbabkuk though. He can be harsh, annoying but incisive, if also somewhat repetitious.
Google keyboard (on Android devices) inserts a period when you double-press the space bar …
Thanks-it is something. like that. It appears I have double space bar typing ‘tic’,when trying to type fast, which is causing the full stops, but the peculiar thing is that it has only happened after updating with Sierra OS. It is also not happening 100% I am using a macbook pro.
‘There is no chance at all that Britain’s corrupt electoral, police and legal institutions will do anything about it is, sadly, equally certain.’ And isn’t this, in part, why they are sticking to the equally dodgy ‘result’ of the Brexit referendum? If their whole house of cards falls down on the exposure of its inherent fraudulence at every level, then where will the establishment be?
I used to know a few of the Birmingham Post’s journalists back in the day when this was Birmingham’s serious daily. It appears once a week now. For old time’s sake I took a look at Jonathan Walker’s exposure of the Dudley South MP, Mike Smith, in the resource and note that Channel 4 gets a mention for its doggedness. This is an important revelation.
“The spending includes more than £38,000 putting up volunteers in hotels across the country.”
http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/regional-affairs/west-midlands-police-investigate-conservative-11327192
I had this to say about the scandal, however I didn’t realise the number had risen to 57 MP’s.
Still no word on the Tory expenses scandal, that could see 29, (now 57 with regards too this article) Tory MP’s face charges over spending declarations. The police have been given a years extension to look into the matter under the, Representation of the People act.
It would only take 9 Tory MP’s to be convicted for the Tories to lose their majority, it could also lead to another general election being called for, probably Labour’s only real chance of winning a GE.
There hasn’t been much media attention of late on a situation that could potentially blow up in the faces of the Tories, and lead to a GE. Apart from Channel Four’s coverage, the rest of the media has been pretty quiet on the matter.
Will it be kicked into the long grass? Will the police quietly drop their investigation? And what stance will the Electoral Commission take?
Rejectionitis, RoS ?
I wonder how large the overall Conservative majority would be if there were a general election three weeks from now.
Larger than the current majority I suspect.
Just wait until after May’s ‘Hard Brexit’. When it all goes belly-up for the DisorgaTory Party and the electorate perceive they have been stuffed royally by sheer incompetence, it will be tears before and after bedtime. We’ll just wait and see. And I’ll be back afterwards. Either proved badly wrong-or to gloat.
I fear you will be proved badly wrong.
And I feel I shall be back here to gloat-long and often-in my style which owes much to that of Walter Pater.
It’s no good mate. These creatures of habit come back time and time again regardless of the egg on their faces, spoiled copybooks or bloody noses. They are impervious to the truth. When it bursts their bubbles they pop up in other bubbles trying to shine through the ephemeral prismatic spectrum as things of beauty.
You are delusional, John. What you and your fellow Trots have achieved with your infiltration of the Labour Party is to ensure its complete irrelevance and inability to provide any opposition to the Tories. You have paved the way for a de facto one party state in which the Tories will be able to carry out much needed reform of the NHS that would have been impossible with an effective opposition.
Give yourself a pat on the back, John. You destroyed the Labour Party.
Ignorant is a harsh word gullible is probably more suited to you.Labour under Corbyn is the largest political party in Britain we are all motivated to vote and despite what you hear on the BBC and other sources of misinformation most are Corbyn supporters. Bring on an election and save the country from the inept greedy pawns of the 1%
You mustn’t mistake membership for public support. Corbyn’s Labour is polling just about the worst for any opposition in history.
“Polling”. Ah, that curious mixture of inaccuracy and ineptitude which is seldom within a country-mile of verisimilitude during the last few years.
Now that newspapers no longer depend on news-stand sales and advertising for their revenue, their loyalty is being transferred to their new paymasters: rich donors. So they have every incentive not to report the truth, but to report what the donors want.
Polls are frequently wrong, but not that wrong. Labour has been consistently slumming it at about 26% compared with the Tories’ 41%.
It’s dire.
That’s what they said about Trump.
Anon1,
How do you explain Labour getting 19,454 votes in the 2 recent by elections compared to the Cons 18,907 if they are so unpopular?
What happened to the police enquiry into the tory election expenses fraud? (I haven’t had a chance to read your link yet, Craig)
Here’s how the Guardian explained why their big, grown-up journalists couldn’t report on the scandal…
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/13/tory-election-expenses
A ‘Square-cut’. Not for four, but into the long grass, Rob.
What’s your take on the fake news shooting at the Hollande rally Rob G?
Michael, French people are just as much inside the Matrix as folks in the UK and USA. The news media is totally controlled and it’s very difficult to figure out what’s really going on. Two obvious recent examples of this are Brexit and Donald Trump. The pundits, the pollsters and the bookies got it all completely wrong, and I mean big time. These days nothing is certain.
With regard to me, you call Jean-Luc Mélenchon ‘my dog in the race’ (with regard to the forthcoming French presidential election). Here’s a recent interview with Mélenchon. Note his sense of humour and intellect and grasp of world affairs. It makes UK and US politicians look like geeks in a circus show. Likewise with the neo-cons that Uncle Sam is trying to push into the next French presidency, following on from the traitor Hollande. There should be English sub-titles on this Mélenchon interview. If the sub-titles don’t show click on the first little icon on the right of the toolbar…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkPJIf2gi40
You might not like Mélenchon, but I’d strongly advise people to watch this clip because it really reflects the mood of France at the moment, as opposed to the total bullshit that the mainstream media tell you.
A French military policeman accidentally fired his weapon during a speech by French president François Hollande on Tuesday leaving two injured and the president briefly shaken.
The gendarme, who was part of the security operation in place to protect Hollande accidentally fired his weapon while the president was making a speech to inaugurate a new high speed rail line in the Charente region of western France.
The local authority for Charente confirmed the incident in the town of Villognon, although the circumstances surrounding how the officer discharged his weapon are not yet known.
With France on a high state of terror alert the incident would understandably have sent pulses racing among the the president’s security team, the police and gendarmes on duty and not least panicked the president himself.
http://www.thelocal.fr/20170228/french-policeman-shoots-himself-in-foot-during-hollande-speech
Must be fake news?
The Conservatives broke election law by overspending and are guilty, but so is everyone else which makes it difficult to prosecute them without prosecuting every election agent without whom no elections can be contested. In other words enforcing election law would kill democracy in UK. This is because its almost impossible to meet the election law requirement to make an accurate return of expenses and therefore if election law was enforced no one would agree to being an election agent.
The solution isn’t to enforce existing election law but to change the law and the voting system too and thereby remove the importance of money in election campaigns.
In politics the stakes can be high and if spending more than your opponent is thought to be the way to win, whether it does or not, that will happen. But if you change the voting system to proportional representation then its the message rather than the money that will secure representation.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying the following:
under first past the post : money spent more important than message
under proportional representation : message more important than money spent.
Can you expand a little on why you think that is so? In particular, why would “removing the importance of money in election campaigns” make it more likely that it will be the message that secures representation, given that most spending in electoral campaigns is intended precisely to get messages across?
______________________
BTW I agree with your first para.
____________________
PS – good evening Lysias, how’s Washington these days?
As a matter of fact I think you will find that most spending in electoral campaigns is intended precisely to ensure that no message gets across.
Surely not a controversial view as most of the message free political elites are now busy complaining that the Brexit vote was based on the gullibility of the general population in swallowing lies. Some are even claiming that they were Russian lies. Strange that none of the remainers ever thought it worthwhile to seek to impart a message of their own especially as they were so well funded.
It seems pretty obvious.
Under First Past The Post there is a massive advantage to the party who can identify which voters hold the most weight and put resources into those areas. The Tories in 2015 pioneered a new technique using massive databases created from online surveys to create policy specifically tailored to the needs of the voters they had identified as vital. That is how they ended up with their bizarre manifesto of free child care, rail price freezes etc. It is politics reduced to marketing.
With PR every vote is equal and the geographic component is essentially removed which means that parties have to appeal to a broader spread of voters rather than targeting smaller groups. Also as every vote is equal flood swing seats with canvassers will be a thing of the past.
9 comments out of 22.
So much for the quantity, pity about the quality.
“Its main characteristic is that of rejecting the outcome of any election, referendum or other manifestation of the will of the majority (as set out in the applicable rules) if that outcome is one with which the sufferer disagrees..”
This shockingly original thought is simply an apology for corruption. One imagines that, were the subject of the allegations George Galloway, Habba would be singing a different tune.
We can however be grateful that he makes no effort-ever- to affect an honest or decent attitude, by pretending, for example, that the flagrant injustice demonstrated against Farage ought to be investigated properly. No, Habba’s line never changes- The Establishment is always right. The enemy is democracy. The fear is of ordinary people governing themselves and not allowing the idlers to pick their pockets.
Thank you for your most interesting contribution, Bevs.
I wonder if you would agree with Dave that proportional representation would lessen the importance of money spent on electoral campaigns?
________________________
As for your supposition about Mr Galloway, I would have had no objection had he overspent a little in the process of getting elected for some East End seat a couple of elections ago. But I admit I was not too pleased to have read reports that he used his opponent’s (Oona King’s) mixed race and religion (Jewish) against her when canvassing for votes among the largely Muslim electors.
What do you expect? Galloway is a well know racist as he supported Brexit. Very much cast from the same mold as other well known racists like Michael Foot, Tony Benn, Peter Shore and (almost certainly) Jeremy Corbyn – All of whom loathed the EU or EEC as many of them would have known it.
What do you call a facetious fascist ?
President Trump has announced that he will increase spending on the US armed forces by an unprecedented amount in his forthcoming first federal budget.
As a very highly educated former Navy officer (and Air Force enlisted man!) who now works in the nation’s capital, would you care to share with us your thoughts on this development?
Be as prolix as you feel necessary, your thoughts are awaited with interest.
The Electoral Commission was set up by ‘double-speak’ New Labour to subvert democracy in UK. It does this by professing to promote democracy by putting administrative legal hurdles in the way, which are in practice ignored, but can be enforced if the wrong people get elected. For example UKIP faced being de-registered as a political party, because someone donated money who wasn’t on the electoral register.
Although in some elections there is a clear overspending, in most elections, most candidates underspend as they don’t have any money, but they are still faced with having to fill in a return of expenses that wants micro-details of spending that its almost impossible to give and so the return would not be accurate as required by law. The return should simply ask the agent to confirm they spent below a certain amount and leave it to others, if they so wish, to challenge with evidence to the contrary.
Correction: but puts administrative legal hurdles in the way.
Habbabukuk, i despair at your smug dismissal of electoral fraud.
Alleged electoral fraud.
AIUI it all hinges on whether campaign buses taking campaigners around the country count as local expenses or national. I wouldn’t like to say as I don’t know the exact rules or what exactly the circumstances were. The police are investigating the circumstances then an expert in electoral law will decide if any fraud has occurred.
Fred
Actually it is perfectly plain. Taking a coach around the country counts as national campaigning and is not declarable against a local constituency expenses limit. Sending coachloads of supporters to a specific constituency, and feeding and lodging them within a specific constituency to campaign for an individual candidate does count against the constituency expenses limit.
Only the Tories have done the latter. That all the parties do it is a lie.
I didn’t say that all the parties do it I just said I don’t now the exact circumstances or the intricacies of the law.
Which is why we have the police to investigate and the electoral commission to give a judgement.
If they are found guilty I’ve no doubt they will be fined. I don’t think any of the parties would welcome another election right now and most likely the Conservatives would end up with an increased majority taking votes from both UKIP who are now redundant and Labour who have internal problems.
The Conservatives with a risky majority is about the best we can hope for, the Conservatives in power with a healthy majority would be a disaster and move the country even further to the right.
Hi Fred,
Indeed it was Dave who quite wrongly claimed that all parties are guilty.
My point was all election agents fail to return an accurate return of expenses as required by law, because its almost impossible to do so. On investigation their offence may be deemed small, but remember the Labour Party were fined £20,000 for failing to mention the cost of the (mocked) Ed Stone. Some agents are more guilty than others, particularly when the stakes are high, but the influence of money, as opposed to message, can be overstated.
I mean if I had a glossy leaflet put through my door everyday saying Remain, which would indicate a well funded and supported campaign, I would still be more persuaded by one cheap leaflet saying Leave!
I am sure I have read somewhere that you are of the opinion that one Jack Straw engaged in electoral expenses fraud by way of “treating” – which if I recall correctly involves the feeding of supporters or potential supporters.
For all practical purposes the activities of Mr. Straw would appear to be indistinguishable from the activities of the Tories.
That all parties do it may be a lie – but only equal to the lie that only the Tories do it.
That’s just a small part of the alleged fraud. There were letters from David Cameron endorsing specific candidates which a few declared as a local campaign expense (correctly) and others did not. Some MP’s had a personalised version of a Conservative Party video produced – and failed to declare it as their local expense (wrong). During the long campaign (mid December ’14 to March 29th ’15) some potential candidates received help from day tripping groups of campaign volunteers and were invoiced £500 by The Conservative Party for RoadTrip2015 – we know this because they declared it (correctly) as a local expense and the party obviously agreed with them at this point in the campaign because they had invoiced them. A large number of candidates had visits from these campaigning groups, some teams even stayed for a few days, but virtually none of them declared any kind of expense associated with it. As far as we can see The Conservative Party had stopped invoicing for these visits by the time of the Short Campaign (30th March to 7th May ’15) even though the teams were busy generating evidence that they were campaigning for local candidates #RoadTrip2020 (as they later renamed it).
…and thanks to Craig’s reach – new allegations that Amber Rudd hired a train to deliver campaign leaflets to Hastings.
After this blog was so misled about the Hillary Clinton coin tosses I’m afraid I’ll have to wait for the official report.
This blog was NOT misled over the Coin Tosses. If anyone doubts that Clinton rigged the primaries, Iowa included, he should look up the emails.
There was an attempt to mislead us by a series of increasingly implausible denials by Clinton campaigners.
I feel your pain.
Under first past the post you need to come first to win. So the temptation is to spend whatever you can to secure that extra vote needed to win. But under proportional representation as long as you win significant support you get representation. Now all parties need a certain amount of money to operate, but once you have that, it doesn’t take much money to spread a message and a bit of cheap paper with a good message is more effective than a glossy brochure with the wrong message.
Police forces had one year to investigate alleged electoral fraud.
They could only carry on past May 2016 if they were given an extension – which the Conservatives opposed.
The police got their extension for another year.
So expect a whitewash report sometime in May 2017.
http://archive.is/JIjMf
“under proportional representation as long as you win significant support you get representation.”
________________________
Would that mean having to have much larger (and therefore fewer) constituencies with several members for each constituency – or even national party lists? And increase the likelihood of coalition governments?
The news clip expenses fraud : https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/836642834644103168
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HJIznd65BA
Josef Locke
The Bold Gendarmes
enjoy
There was a guy at the Birmingham Traditional Folk Club, Steve Stokes I think his name was, who used to do a tremendous version of the Bold Gendarmes. I have not seen him for years and the club has now closed after many successful years. Thanks for that entertainment Michael Norton.
Incidentally your link ran into another favourite of mine, Eric Bogle’s “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” which always brings a tear to my eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VktJNNKm3B0
John, do please try this version. I hope you like it.
Oops, edit please! Here’s the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPFjToKuZQM
I like it. The message is the same through eternity.
“The young people ask what are they marching for,
And I ask myself the same question.”
Remembrance Day is nonsense. It is nonsense not because we should disregard people who have died, soldiers or civilians – we should remember them all if we have a connection with them – but because those who manipulate us make a big thing of this Horace lie, as they do with the Holocaust, to try to make dying for your country seem an honourable thing.
You need to be Wilfred Owen to know wheter it is or not.
Dulce et decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind ;
Drunk with fatigue ; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas ! GAS ! Quick, boys ! An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitten as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie : Dulce et decorum est
Pro -patria mori.
W.O.
The resource doesn’t seem to extend to Labour election expenses or SNP election expenses.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/25/labour-fined-20000-for-undeclared-election-spending-including-for-ed-stone
Do I detect a whiff of bias?
The resource covers potential investigations – which as far as we know only involves The Conservative Party. It’s not a record of all allegations. The alleged Labour, SNP, UKIP and LibDem expenses irregularities were looked into by (one or both of) the Electoral Commission – the appropriate Police Authority and quickly dropped – with one notable exception: Labour were quickly fined £20,000 because they forgot about Ed’s Stone. Many of the allegations against other parties were made by Conservative MP’s during interviews questioning their Election Expenses.
In Scotland our politicians don’t campaign by bus, hell no they use a helicopter.
And the police are centralised under government control.
first mark on the way to a Police State.
Groupthink or else.
It’s Groundhog Day again here in Scotland, the main news is that we might have another referendum…but then again we might not.
How long can they keep this up? The donkeys can’t keep following the carrot till after 4th of May can they?
Yes, it is Groundhog Day here.
The Ed Stone illustrates my point about the anti-democratic nature of the Electoral Commission. I don’t think anyone believes the Ed Stone was a good idea that won any votes, in fact it was mocked, so almost a complete waste of money. But the Electoral Commission fixated on spending limits and accurate return of expenses, fined Labour £20,000 (money they don’t have) for failing to enter the cost of the stone in their return of expenses and presumably could de-register Labour as a party if the money wasn’t paid.
The reason conservatives won election is because their message of Labour in bed with the SNP was effective at rallying their vote and killing their coalition allies that ironically resulted in a victory that required Cameron to deliver on a promise (he didn’t want to honour) to hold a EU referendum. I.e. the election wasn’t about the Ed Stone, but the Electoral Commission could de-register Labour (Her Majesty’s Official Opposition) for failing to mention it in their return of misspent expenses.
Great work.
Overspending is illegal, but candidates spend money on the basis that, if they have it, they may as well, as their desperate to win and it wont do any harm. But in reality most voters are set in their way, know who their going to vote for, there may be some floaters and some tactical voting may make a difference.
I mean in Copeland Conservatives won because UKIP voters switched, in Stoke UKIP failed to win because Conservative voters failed to switch and the Labour vote held up in the Brexit seats despite all the hostile coverage directed against Corbyn/Labour. I don’t think all the campaigning and money spent made much difference to the outcomes.
Yes FPTP is obsolete in our multi-party disenfranchised democracy. You need constituencies big enough to make a PR election work and the change in culture towards coalition politics is becoming widespread in local and devolved government and even reached Westminster, but needs voting reform to ensure fair representation everywhere. And following Brexit this is the democratic reformation needed to strengthen the UK by ensuring Unionist parties have representation throughout the land.
Parties should also be obsolete. In an Athenian-type system, there would be no need for parties.
I agree we should go forward to the past. Let’s reintroduce slavery and above all, no votes for women citizens. And if people mock religion, offer them a refreshing drink of hemlock (no ice).
Ever wonder why Obama did so much for the banksters and the rest of the 1%? Record-breaking auction for Obamas’ book deal tops $60m: Two memoirs by former president and first lady kick off blockbuster bidding war.
Politics here in the States is also corrupt.
Sorry to go O/T, but this is a story that should be of great interest to Brits. Why did Robert Hannigan resign as head of GCHQ on Jan. 23? Is There More to the Flynn Story? A strange resignation in a UK intelligence service suggests U.S. partners may have been involved.
That is, I suspect, only the tip of the iceberg, important though it is. Britain is effectively a very cleverly disguised one-party state. The Tories are the establishment front given every advantage to win while the opposition are hobbled by the electoral system and the media – and, as you say, outright cheating, which is not investigated and/or reported. Yes, Labour can occasionally ‘win’ but only by following the establishment line and for the sake of appearances to hide the democratic con. The reason the establishment are terrified above all of people not voting is it would reveal the enormous charade they’re presiding over, where the people are corralled into giving them a ‘mandate’ for their nefarious ends. I hope Crick’s documentary does some good but it seems too llitle too late to me.
Great journalist reporting by Michael Crick. Watch on catch up on Channel 4 news last night.
This is defiantly not Fake news !
They will do anything to prevent Nigel Farage from becoming an M.P. Only 3 months left for the investigation to continue. Never reported on the BBC !
The June 23 vote for Brexit was a nationwide rebellion against Tory electoral fraud at the last general election.
Something of that catastrophe for the Conservative Party has been redeemed by the rise in UK share prices engineered by the City of London. But Hard Brexit is a spiteful and revengeful campaign by the Tory party against the British people for destroying Cameron.
The colonial project of USUKIS to conquer the world lies at the door of Blair, Brown, and Cameron. The UK electorate refuse absolutely and categorically to give a mandate to war criminals who serve the Zionist neo-cons. The US and EU electorates are exactly the same. We all know that project neo-con initiated by Craig and his generation of useful idiots in the expansion of Europe, and continued by the useful idiots of Al Qaida and Daesh are what have created the tide of immigration.
Asian immigration was granted by the Queen as a consequence of 250 years of Imperial oppression by the British Raj in India in compensation for past British criminal activity. The UK public do not see why they should stand idly by while their properties and services are made available to the victims of neo-Imperial USUKIS aggression in a continuous ongoing process of reparation.
The neo-colonial campaign against Yugoslavia was intitiated by Mrs Thatcher and executed by Blair, who went on to use Al Qaida in Afghanistan. We disposed of them. Cameron used Al Qaida in Libya. We disposed of him. None of the tyrants of the neo-con swamp are electable anywhere in the neo-con USUKIS region.
Boris Johnson is a neo-con. Hollande is a neo-con. Merkel is a neo-con. May is a neo-con.
When Volker Perthes says about Syria: ” No order , no hegemon. ” he is a lying neo-con. The project of neo-con USUKIS global hegemony is not going to be stopped in its tracks by a fucking referendum. The people of the Western world need to wrest the steering wheel from the madmen and madwomen who run our countries.
The war against Islam was funded by banking fraud, which we discovered in 2007. The future wars planned for the Muslim satellites of the former USSR, starting with Iran, moving on to Azerbaijan Khazakstan, Uzbekistan will be funded by the oil stolen from Iraq and Libya, when those puppet states have been adequately ruined and subjugated by ISIS and Al Qaida.
The stakes are very high because the people now know what is going on. Our zoom lens is focussed keenly on the neo-cons. They are scared like gazelles sniffing the wind. Trump comes along like a vet and tranquillises the beast, not to kill it, but to return it to its natural habitat of feral war against the species of Islam. This is the moment to finish the Zionist neo-cons.
My early morning rant was a bit OTT. I didn’t mean that Craig is a useful idiot and I don’t think that. The EU is a valuable institution and will continue to be. My point is that all the time that constructive and imaginative ideas such as the free movement of people and a single market are being put together by good people, there is a malignant deep state pulling the strings for an unelected Federal NWO agenda.
Every time the USUKIS global hegemony plan has manifested itself in another round of chaos and state terror, the democratic system we have, fortunately, will experience a shockwaves after the horse has bolted.
Apologies for any offence caused.
Brit killer Tanveer Ahmed, who murdered a Glasgow shopkeeper for ‘disrespecting Islam’, has a growing fan base in Pakistan.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39112840
Oslo departs 10,000 criminal immigrants and crime falls to lowest levels in 14 years shocker:
http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.3704/frp-we-did-this.html
*deports
@D_Majestic @John Goss @Purple Viking
Update:
Tories now polling at 42%, Labour 25%.
Those figures mid-term for the opposition – it’s a complete disaster for Labour.