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Elvis also said

''A little less conversation a little more action please''

Wouldn't that be nice post 6th May.

As for labour pinning its hopes on a late surge on the back of his winning the economic competence debate!

I could barely believe what I was reading!!!

Nearly fell off my chair, such rank unashamed hippocracy can surley only be considered on the principle that it is sooooo outrageous people can not possibly believe that anyone would try to attempt to concoct such a strategy, therefore it must be true. It is soooo unbelievable it must be believable... nobody could have made that up surely... its just too ridiculous.

Even an armchair novice with no training like me can pre-empt his strategy and write the responses to Browns proposed statesman like 'safe hands' performance on the economy on Thursday.

Here are a few responses for the lib dems and conservatives to fight over using on Thursday.

''He claimed all of the economic success for the boom years and took no responsibility for the bust that followed. Is that the kind of leader we want to lead us out of the current economic situation?


''This man who stands before you now on a ticket of economic credibility is the same man who stood up in parliament and declared he had abolished Boom and bust, this is the man who sold 30% of the UK's entire gold reserve at rock bottom prices against advice he was given and in so doing cost the country xxx billions'' How many renewable energy projects to serve our future needs sustainably and how many essential drugs for cancer sufferers did that genius decision cost the nation I wonder?

After all that this man still has the gaul to stand here before you and offer his talents to the nation on a platform of 'economic competence', all he did was take credit for the good times and washed his hands of responsibility for the bad times. I ask you again, is that the kind of leader we want to lead us out of the current economic situation?


''Get real Mr Brown, get real.''


I dont think he will win the debate and I dont think there will be any surge and i dont think it will matter what the labour strategy is in the end their dynamic has run its course.

You can still get 5 to 6 on the lib dems getting more of the popular vote than labour by the way. Not a racing certainty this time but very generous I think.

It probably is a certainty that he will not win the economic debate, he carries way too much easily identifiable baggage with him for that, even I can shoot him down!

That is all very interesting Paul but, with all respects, that is so typical of the so-called 'Westminster Village' and the Labour Party in particular.

I went for a 10 to 15 miles cycle ride around Swansea this afternoon - I did not see a single Labour poster or banner in my travels.

I would suggest that Labour has something far more fundamentally at fault in this election than what Mandie, Balls and Brown believe it to be in London.

So typical but it is going to be fascinating to watch this melt-down in the next 9 days.

With any luck Labour will lose and lose big.

This should allow a realignment on the Left so that a less authoritarian, more participatory movement can develop built around a realigned economy of making things we need and use in the factories, workshops and fields rather than polishing our collective backsides in a state sponsored `knowledge' economy.

Perhaps this could be called Forward to the Past or even The Campaign for Real Work.

BROWN IS TWO SEPARATE PSYCHES - IT ENSURES HIS SURVIVAL (#1)

I have absolutely no doubt that he is charming, nice to his kids and good company - as Dr Jekyll. But I have OBSERVED his demonic delight when 'pulling one', and watched him lie, openly, to defeat attack - as Mr Hyde.

RLS knew what he was describing. This was no imagining.

It has come to this: Alastair Campbell: do you need me to tell you? Peter Mandelson: do you need me to tell you? Brown+Campbell+Mandelson: do you need me to add up the sum? If Westminster has brought us to this AS THE CENTRE OF BRITISH GOVERNANCE, we are in the most monumental tish imaginable. And unless we pull free of the Black Hole of Westminster, we will all go round and round until a greater force disrupts from outside.

Oh - it's all going awfully well.

it#s ok to say if Labour lose big it will be a reallignment of the left...not true, we will have savage attacks on the poorest in our society at the hands of Dave so even with a Thatherite like Brown he is still better for schools hospitals and pensioners than the Daleks that are waiting in the wings....

#5. Stevie,

I agree. Just look at the homeless living in tents in the US. While the rest of the world are moving towards a fight against the effects of globalisation lining the pockets of a tiny few people at the expense of the majority it looks like we can not learn the lesson; we're addicted to greed ready to elect the party who will take care of the tax exiles and stuff the rest of the population. If the British public are prepared to do that, then we'll live to regret it more than we could ever possibly imagine.

I will remove the LibDems from my possibles is they get into bed with the conservatives as their preferred partner. What deal would be on offer. Would we have Boy George the historian running the economy of Vince Cable with his PhD in economics. Sensible people would choose the man with the qualifications and the experience to match the job.

Let's face it, who would you select as the best brain surgeon - the neurorology expert in surgery gowns or the electrician who thinks his boss is just brill for being able to drive a bus?

Clegg be careful. Your personal dislike of GB is irrelevant to running the country, cleaning up our economy, closing down tax havens - like Boy George will let you do that - and it will cost you dearly!

#4 Barrie

PANIC ON THE STREETS OF WESTMINSTER

The incumbents are collectively getting scared now, the cosy arrangement is under threat, this is the moment when we get to see what they are really like, the veil slips.

From what I can see in recent media coverage the incumbents are not about to disapoint us.

Expect the heat on the scaremongering tactics to keep getting turned up.

It is the only respopnse they have with the threat of the people coming up with a decision neither of the big parties and thier media like.

It is the intellectual equivalent of the riot police in iran beating up demonstrators to get their way.

Hardly a confidence inspiring characteristic being demonstarted by our would be 'leaders' is it.

"not experiencing any erosion of the C2DE Labour vote," what you mean is the support for Labour spoken on the door step because no vote has happened yet.

A year ago I wrote to the Guardian (unpublished) "Many Labour voters would willingly swap their current predicament for the ‘Winter of Discontent’ and now there is that nice Mr Cameron. The morning after the 2010 general election could see the Labour Party reduced to between 100 to 150 seats.

Gordon Brown is an unqualified electoral liability. He is ideologically retarded, obsessed with security and social control, bored with civil liberties, terminally confused on climate change, endowed with ‘clunking’ political judgment, overawed by the City and displaying the media skills of a Dalek."

I have no reason to think differently a year later. It is probable that in many areas the Labour turnout will collapse.

#8 watriler: -

It is not just Brown though is it? I have yet to meet a man on the street who has anything nice to say about Harman.

I am genuinely shocked, and interested, by the numbers of Labour supporters I know who are adamant they will not vote Labour - Brown is often cited as one reason, Harman is the other, immigration is the biggie, the expenses scandal another.

When I listen to diehard Welsh Labourites fearing the return of the Tories but saying that they will not vote Labour, because "they do not deserve it", then something very big is obviously going to happen when the results come in on the morning of May 7th.

But what is really shocking is how badly, IMPO, Labour are running their campaign. It is as if they are living in their own goldfish bowl where, because everyone within their circle agrees with their views on there being no immigration problem, the economic mess not being their fault, etc, etc, they appear to be in complete denial how tens of millions of the rest us - us ordinary folk - feel.

To quote a line, bizarrely, from Star Trek:

"I wonder if the Emperor Honorious, watching the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill, could truly realise that the Roman Empire was about to fall."

OK, New Labour is not Rome... but you get my drift...

Clegg's risk is that he has peaked early, and so been pressured into declaring his intent (ie rather too clearly for Cameron). This is no great surprise given his background - Tory at uni, worked for Leon Brittan at the EU - or to anyone who has ploughed through The Liberal Moment.

It will go down badly not only with his party grassroots (and some MPs) but crucially with the non-aligned progressives hitherto seduced by the "more left than Labour" pitch.

So what will the progressive vote do in this context over the next 10 days? One to watch carefully.

As for the "iPhone" vote, one can see them come late 2010 as part of the nostalgia backlash for solid economic management and stable public services under Labour - just as the shaky Tory-LD coalition falls apart, the cuts start to bite and the double-dip arrives...

#10

It is more likely there will be another election this lot dont even know how to work together for the common good because they are not in politics for that.

All this talk of alliances will come to naught, it will be an irrelevence.

IMPO the Welsh Language Nationalists want an independent Wales as long as England keeps paying them for all the five and six figure salary Welsh language QUANGO jobs.

Probably the best thing that could happen to Wales, in the long-term, is for the public sector funding in Wales to be dramatically slashed - this would not only force Wales to stand on its own two feet but it would bring to an abrupt end the English indulgence into the Welsh language.

An idependent Wales, forced to stand on its own two feet, would have, IMPO, short shrift with the language zealots. The English-speaking Welsh majority would spend what money we had instead on schools, hospitals, etc, and not on endless Welsh language media indulgences.

Alas, no one ever gets round to asking the Welsh nationalists such things when they are on UK national TV!

In the coming public sector cuts are we really going to see nurses and teachers fired, schools and hospitals closed, but hundreds of millions still spent on Welsh language TV watched by effectively zero audiences?

Hmm, probably.

LET'S GET REAL AND HAVE A CHANGE TO 'MITIGATED UNFAIRNESS'.

I have a feeling that a deadlocked Parliament might be just what we need, on top of all else, to precipitate some degree of revolution. God forbid that Tony should return to save us, but putting that aside, the whole lie in which Westminster functions, and in which we are required to live, might come into stark relief.

If a second election were called, it is then that the worm might fully turn, and all the tishy stich-ups, gerrymandering, safe seats, postal votes, obscene donations and - yes - perniciousness of the party system, with its feudalism, presidential leaders and whipping might, at last be rejected. So hang the lot of them, I say.

Like the man said: 'Vote Radical'- THEN REBEL.

5 stevie

The Daleks are waiting in the wings anyway whoever gets returned to power.

Brown is the person who let them loose in the first place so don't be deluded that Labour in any shape or form represents any hope for the poor.

The poor should organise themselves rather than wait passively for handouts from the Labour apparat. Remember Britain is now even more unequal than it was under Thatcher.

At least talk of a hung parliament is making people think about how they are governed.
If there is a hung parliament & electoral reform, hopefully people will think even more about governance & democracy.
And such questioning about what is democracy will come at a time when the 'representative' politicians are attacking the standard of living of those they 'represent'.
Hopefully, this will mean more people demanding direct, participatory democracy.

For "pluralists" read "power-at-any-costals", those who have lived their entire adult lives in the shelter of Government and the public sector, and who are understandably quite worried at the prospect of joining "The Public" (as they refer to the rest of us) in the real world.

Still, they don't have to cope with pension funds depleted year on year (apart from practically worthless annuity rates), like those of us who had to make our own provision for retirement, thanks to their beloved leader.