A Place to Stand

                            2010                             %                                   Now                        %
Conservative       27,590                         53.9                               17,431                     45
UKIP                    1,954                           3.8                                10.028                     25.9
Labour                11,438                         22.3                                 6,842                      17.7
Bagley/Hospital                                                                              1,891                        4.9
Green                                                                                              1,057                        2.7
LibDem               10,246                         20.0                                1,004                        2.6
Ors combined                                                                                    454                        1.2

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      I find this a very interesting result. I wish I knew how the polling by stations had gone because then I would be making more than an educated guess which votes went from whom to whom (but then if I did I would probably have to keep it quiet out of party loyalty).

The LibDem vote collapsed losing 90% by numbers or 7/8ths by proportion (proportion is the more important - there is nothing unusual about by elections having lower turnouts because the national media isn't hammering home that there is an election today). This is way below any fall to the party's "minimum core vote" (usually assumed about half of it). The LibDem fall closely parallels UKIP's rise but I think it would be unwise to assume we picked up more than a minority of their votes. Probably most of the Green and hospital campaign votes were ex-LDs but that still means more than half went elsewhere. This article on Conservative Home suggests that a lot of them went Tory to keep us out, as did a lot of Labour ones. The BBC Radio 5 reporter also said "I met a number of Labour voters who said they are voting Tory to keep UKIP out" which is quite remarkable.

       Nonetheless, however they went this is a catastrophic result for the LDs. After a couple of weeks of "4 party politics" we may be back to a 3 party system without the LDs. Any result remotely of this order would put ALL the LDs out of Parliament. I suspect the lost LD votes split 4 ways to Tories, Labour, UKIP & the others.

A disaster  for Labour too. A 4.6% fall in their proportion is not going to get Miliband the PMship. He must expect, as the party not in government, to be polling better, during any by election, where people feel free to protest, than he will at the general election. This happens to every party. Labour won this seat in 1997 and have placed 2nd at other times. To be knocked into 3rd place is about as bad as it could be. I suspect Labour's missing 4.6% (if, say, 1/4 of the LDs went to them they would have picked up about 4.3% and thus lost 8.9%). That some of their members voted for Tory to keep out UKIP and others UKIP to beat the Tories does not suggest any enthusiasm whatsoever for his party.

       UKIP. Well we didn't take it but overthrowing a 16,000 majority when your previous vote was 2,000 isn't as easy as it sounds ;-)  We didn't come as close as we expected and that is important. We mainly lost because the Tory vote held up. Had 4,000 more of them (only 1/7th of their previous vote) voted UKIP we would have won.

       Roger Helmer had written of the enthusiasm he found on the doorstep - sometimes people are polite when they haven't yet made up their minds. The other thing is that there was a decent turnout for 2 independents (though not for the last 5). That means that though the contempt for the traditional parties is overwhelming, UKIP has not yet sealed the deal.

     I suspect, in particular, that the smear campaigns by the government media has hurt us. But it is a problem. If a significant number of actual LabConDem voters agree that "there is no difference between them" and decide they like that, we could have a problem. For that I believe we have to have a positive policy platform that will make the large majority of all parties make us their preferred alternative. We are likely to be the contender in most constituencies across the country (as the LDs used to be) and if we can persuade 3rd and 4th placing parties that we are much better than the probable winner we can sweep the country. If they unite to keep the previous winner in we won't - and British politics will lose all semblance of pluralistic democracy.


     But you can't complain about a 22.1% swing to you.

The Tories have reason for satisfaction. They won and not just by scraping in. Nonetheless an 8.9% swing against is hardly something to celebrate. This won't get Cameron his majority. This was the 44th safest tory seat so to have lost it would have been beyond catastrophic. Beyond that it looks very much like they did lose far more Tory votes than appears and filled them up with 4.3% from the LDs and 4.4% (half of 8.9%) from Labour. 8.7% of their votes are on loan and without them - that's 3.700. That didn't actually keep them in but it does explain why Nigel Farage expected it to be closer. And losing those votes (or actually not having them because they never did) would ensure electoral defeat.

    Another point here is that, at least according to Conservative Home, the Tories pulled out all the stops and ran a very heavy campaign. 150 MPs visiting. Cameron visiting 4 times - absolutely unprecedented for a sitting PM. And it worked. And Labour and the LDs, who both historically have reputations for being able to put feet on the ground, didn't come close to matching them. The old parties have hollowed themselves out because members have no actual influence on the party. I suspect this applies to the Tories too but they just pulled out every card they had. The article itself makes a point of the importance of members on the ground and I agree.

UPDATE
Nigel Farage discusses the result and points out that the Tories cannot put anything remotely like this level of effort into an constituency during the general election http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/480656/FARAGE-ON-FRIDAY-Ukip-boss-says-next-target-is-2015-general-election-Commons-breakthrough

    I got 4 election leaflets through the door. Obviously the UKIP one was perfect in every way. As for the others:

Labour  "We have no limit on our ambition for Scotland and we want no Scot to have a limit on their's"  and "Labour will build a moral economy where the national wealth is used for the benefit of all" and promises growth with "a rising standard of living". Who can be against any of that except that if equality of outcome is enforced to ensure nobody has a below average income, then nobody can have the ambition to have a higher than average one and if we have that much state control of economic outcomes we can't have the free market incentives needed for growth. So this is just cynically promising everything to everybody, knowing it is impossible. We have to make choices. I think we should choose growth because that maximises the benefit for everybody. Labour are perfectly entitled to say they prefer total equality to being better off but it is dishonest to treat us like children and promise to maximise both.

      Of course they support the EU but the only reason they can come up with for doing so is that we benefit from the British, partial, rebate!

       And they promise more foreign "aid" and to be "global leaders in tackling climate change" which is dishonestly portrayed as making money rather than destroying it.

Tories
 List a number of things they have done for us. Including to have cut Labour's deficit by 1/3rd, omitting that they promised to end it in this parliament. But most interestingly is "We've taken all the action we can under the current EU agreements to fix our immigration system". They promised at the last election to cut immigration to "10s not hundreds of thousands" which is actually a tougher promise than UKIP's to reduce it to 50,000. Of course they broke it and immigration is still well above 200,000 but the EU regulations were in place when they made the promise. This is thus a public admission that their promise was a deliberate lie - that it was  always impossible to carry out their promise while in the EU.

Greens
. It is all about nationalisation, forcing us to eat "local food", and "creating thousands of jobs in green industries" (this is a cynical lie as they know perfectly well that each subsidised "green" destroys 3.7 real jobs).

     In an accompanying "newspaper" they attack the SNP for pouring insufficient billions into windmill subsidy and define the catstrophic global warming we are supposed to be experiencing as "the defining issue of our age". On that we agree. Catastrophic warming is not happening, indeed there has been no warming, of any sort, for 19 years - it is a totalitarian lie designed to give the political elite more power and more of our money (as they all provably know or it would not be necessary to suppress discussion). It does indeed define all the parties promoting this lie.

     Sorry I didn't get anything from the SNP and LibDems.

      Other polls have similar though not quite as bad for Labour, result.
YouGov/Sun – CON 35%, LAB 36%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 14%
Populus – CON 35%, LAB 36%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%
Ashcroft – CON 34%, LAB 32%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 15%
ICM/Guardian – CON 33%, LAB 31%, LDEM 13%, UKIP 15%


       One might think, looking at UKIP's 15% that should be worrying but I am very pleased with this.

       Labour's vote is falling. As the economy "recovers" (still only half world average growth despite it being fuelled by an artificial house cost boom) and equally, as we get nearer the fateful moment of an election, where being against the government really could put the other rascals in, we can only expect the Labour vote to fall.

      At 31% Labour cannot reasonably be expected to produce a majority.  Their policy seems to have been to hope for 35% and thus over 50% of seats but at 31% almost any parlay of votes leaves them in a minority.

       Because of our corrupt electoral system the Tories won't either. Indeed on the shares in the chart Labour will be the larger party - Tories 284, Labour 307, LDs 31, UKIP nil according to Electoral Calculus

      On the face of it that looks bad for UKIP. But -

    It spikes the Tories greatest, argument against us. Indeed the only one they have been using. The "if you vote UKIP you will put in Labour" one. Labour aren't going to be in. The people, including their core voters, have recognised how crap they are.

    For my lifetime  few people have voted Labour because they want Labour but because they fear getting the Tories. Equally, probably more than equally, few vote Tory because they like their policies but because the fear Labour's.

    Now the Tories don't have to fear Labour - and I am quite certain that even most Tory party activists would rather have UKIP's policies than their own party's (mass immigration, EU membership & gay marriage).

   And Labour voters are also free - to vote against a party who have nothing but contempt for their voters, and secretly promoted mass immigration to replace them.

    We are very close to a tipping point. Suppose UKIP picked up 6% from each of these parties.

    We get Tories 200, Labour 223, LibDems 12 UKIP 186 MPs

    Now this takes no account for targeting of winnable seats which UKIP is doing for the first time so almost certainly understates the UKIP and LibDim votes but you get the picture.

     Another regular factor in elections has been a swing to the LDs during the campaign because they got little TV coverage at other times, but they could not be denied coverage during actual election campaigns. This, obviously, applies in spades to UKIP.

    History also shows that Tory voters have less tribal loyalty to their party than Labour which is why elections against a Tory government have generally been more successful for the LDs than ones against Labour. Disaffected Labour just stayed home.

    And the EU elections

    So a 6% reduction for each of these parties - to UKIP seems not merely possible but quite likely.

    Lets have a bit of fun and try 7% on 36% of the vote: Conservative 127, Labour 172, LD 7, UKIP 316 MPs - 10 short of a technical majority but easily able to negotiate one with Ulster if nobody else.
 

Mike Kane (Labour): 13,261  58%

John Bickley (UKIP): 4,301  18.5%

Reverend Daniel Critchlow (Conservatives): 3,479  15%

Mary Di Mauro (Lib Dem): 1,176  5%

Nigel Woodcock (Green Party): 748  3%

Eddy O'Sullivan (BNP): 708  3%

Captain Chaplington-Smythe (Monster Raving Loony): 288 1.2%

Turnout: 28%

   Obviously that is a remarkably good result for UKIP. It strongly suggests that across the North of England (and points north) UKIP are the opposition and the Tories the "splitters". Their entire propaganda against UKIP has been, not that there is anything they can criticise in our policies, but that we are slotting the anti-Labour vote. Presumably, not being a complete hypocrite, Mr Cameron will now advise those north of the Wash, not to split the vote and thus to vote UKIP apparently not.

   This is how Electoral Calculus had previously said this seat should go at a general election

10,412

17,988

9,106

3,245

40,752

Tory      Labour  LD    Others Total

     Actually that would not have made it a marginal for the Tories but at 7,500 difference, it is not a no-hoper either. At the beginning of the campaign Tories were ahead of UKIP
 
    The by election turnout was poor but then it normally is at by elections, particularly when the result is expected not to be close.

    It also looks like a good result for Labour (they got 58% when the equivalent in 2010 was 44%)  but there are 2 major reasons, one ethically dubious and the other worse, why this is not so.

   The ethically dubious one is that, as with almost all other  by elections recently, they went  for the shortest possible campaign (presumably also an influence for a low turnout). That means the voters don't get a true political debate, which is particularly damaging for UKIP since we are censored from the "legally balanced" BBC

   The worse one is that 40%, yes 40% of votes cast were by postal ballots (9,200). Even when they are carried out honestly postal ballots favour established political machines, who have the likes of our Fascist friend O'Hare from yesterday's post to set them up. At the best it also means that these votes were cast 3 days into the campaign.

   But most seriously, the words of the judge in the Birmingham Vote Fraud trial cannot be ignored particularly in present circumstances. He said that the evidence was "overwhelming", that " There are no systems to deal realistically with fraud and there never have been. Until there are, fraud will continue unabated", that "Frauds of this magnitude require a considerable degree of organisation and manpower, not to mention supervision and co-ordination. It would be unthinkable for them to be the work of a few hothead activists", & of Prescott's reforms which made fraud possible on this scale that this was "positive assistance to fraud "...... "Short of writing 'Steal Me' on the envelopes, it is hard to see what more could be done to ensure their coming into the wrong hands".

Richard Mawrey QC, sitting as an electoral commissioner in Birmingham, found evidence of fraud in last year's city council elections that would "disgrace a banana republic". The elections, where several Labour candidates bucked the trend to win, were dogged by claims of intimidation, bribery, "vote-buying', impersonation and even the creation of a "vote-forging factory".

       The Labour cabinet was subsequently widely described as having considered making the system more secure but decided against it because they would lose votes. The Tories and LibDems (later shown in Eastleigh) also have long established political machines and aren't all that much more interested in stopping fraud than Labour. Originally postal votes were only available to those who were provably incapacitated and there was no corruption problem.

     Postal votes will not be nearly as important during general elections because the political machines are spread much thinner and also because there will be a longer and genuine campaign. We cannot know exactly how many of these votes went to which parties. If all of them had been Labour their ballot box vote would have been 4,000, putting them just behind UKIP but, attractive though that is, I don't think it can be so. Labour won fair and square. But they cannot take much heart because had it been a general election, as it will soon, it would have been much closer. And had it been conducted as honestly as elections used to be, closer still.

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* For those Beeboids who prefer picking up politically incorrect phrases by UKIP members to broadcasting any actual discussion of real political issues I would point out that the description of our electoral system as "would disgrace a banana republic" was not mine but the judge's. 

     This was the result of the Cowdenbeath by election.

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labour	Alex Rowley	11,192	55.78	+9.28
	SNP	Natalie McGarry	5,704	28.43	-13.17
	Conservative	Dave Dempsey	1,893	9.44	+2.44
	UKIP	Denise Baykal	610	3.04	N/A
	Liberal Democrats	Jade Holden	425	2.12	-1.78

     On the one hand we thrashed the "LibDems" and the Greens didn't even dare to stand so that makes us clear 4th, despite never having stood there before. On the other hand the Tories actually gained votes and the overall turnout at 38.41% was abysmal and makes "they're all crap" the real winner.

     "It would have been nice if UKIP had beaten the Tories too but the party recently went through a reorganisation here and weren't at our best. Also the fact that the BBC "balanced - our Charter legally requires it" deliberately excluded UKIP from debate and included the LDs must have cost a few % points.

Expect a public apology from the BBC, invitations on a few dozen programmes and an assurance that they will not censor against UKIP & in favour of the LDs as soon as the BBC obey the law and stop being a wholly corrupt state propaganda instrument. But don't expect that any time soon.

Pity the Greens, who get massive, entirely supportive, coverage from the state broadcaster were scared to stand since we have long outpolled them 3:1."

       On the Newsnight debate for the previous by election they included 5 candidates though, as Peter Adams pointed out on air, the beeboid managed to avoid inviting him to answer as he did the others. This time they just kept it to 4 which clearly was "unbalanced".

      I suspect this does show that there are an awful lot of votes out there but we have to offer some real policy meat, directed specifically at Scotland. Bearing in mind how totally devoid of ideas Scottish politicians are I think that is not a difficult problem. Apart from having the world's most destructive "Climate Change Act", an idea unanimously endorsed by all 5 old parties and deliberately intended to push up prices and fuel poverty, new ideas are scarce among the old parties. - the only one I can think of off hand was the SNP promise to cut corporation tax to Irish levels at the election before last, which they ignored after winning and have essentially dropped.

     However I do think the BBC and others, who at least pretend to impartiality, will now take a little care about showing their bias. It is now impossible to invite either the LDs or Greens but not UKIP without displaying total bias. Cynically I suspect this means the LDs will be less often on air (as has previously happened to the Greens, rather than actually allowing Britain's 3rd party to speak. Newsnight's next "debate" may be limited to 3 players. And next tear to 2 as we pass the Conservatives.
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  On what some may think the major issue the SNP 13% fall us obviously disastrous. Beyond that, their tactics for the referendum have been to focus on the poorest on a "what have you got to lose" desperation strategy. If there is that sort of swing against them in traditional Labour country that suggests it isn't working.

       I  put this comment on the main "LibDem" blog LibDemBlog. The bad news is that it hasn't been answered but the good news is that, for once, it hasn't been censored:

   "One question not asked here, following UKIP’s success is are the LibDems still enthusiastic for PR. For all my life this has been the one policy all LibDems were known for and agreed on but when the council elections were declared Simon Hughes went to great lengths to insist that UKIP had not overtaken the LDs because the latter may have had fewer votes but because of the FPTP system they still have more councillors.

Paint me cynical but the LDs principled support for PR seems little mentioned now. Does the party still actively, not just nominally, support it?"

     The "political consensus" is that the establishment saw off proportional representation for a generation by winning the "not actually PE but all we'll let you consider" referendum by refusing to debate the issue and being rude about Clegg.

     However it got a no vote precisely because it wasn't PR. This is a graph of polls which shows long term support for PR


     You don't get much more conclusive than that, though to be fair the producers of it made a desperate attempt to say otherwise.

     Also interesting is that there seems to be a total halt to polling on the subject since, which shows how much the agenda is set from on high.

    However an absence of looking for evidence is not evidence for a change of view and it seems overwhelmingly likely that there is still a similar disparity between supporters of democratic elections and of the present corrupt system.

    I suspect that this is both going to become more of an issue and an issue on which opinion is even more unanimous, as we approach the next election. It seems likely that the largest party, even if it doesn't get an absolute majority, will have little over 30% of the vote. Labour might even pull an overall majority on that. UKIP and the Conservatives could each get about 25% and the LDs 10% with drastically different (& smaller) representation. The old defence of FPTP, that it produces stability and strong government will be completely exposed, since whatever the law, any Labour government behaving dictatorially would merely make the nation ungovernable.

    UKIP is committed to PR (& as the comment above shows) may be the only party now fully so committed. PR is also the one policy on which all "LibDems" agree so it would be extremely difficult for the party to advise voting Labour or Tory in preference to UKIP in seats where their own candidate has no chance. It is also one of the issues for which the accusation that UKIP is "right wing" is clearly proven false.

      Lets see. Click on this poll. If you choose the 3rd answer please comment here.

      http://www.bloggeries.com/blog-polls/view/113355

     I have recently read Nigel Farage's autobiography Flying Free and it confirms my opinion that the party he leads is basically reinventing the Liberal party as historically defined, the Pseudoliberals having sold their inheritance for a mess of parasitism. 

Ed Miliband's Conference Speech

I have taken out most of the anecdotes about people who liked him and the "caring" crap which shortens it considerably:

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I want to start today with the simplest of thoughts...Britain can do better than this....a politics that hears your voice – rich and poor alike – accepting their responsibilities top each other. One Nation, we are going to make it happen, and today I am going to tell you how.


I want to start with leadership...I when I became leader I faced a decision about whether we should stand up to Rupert Murdoch. It wasn’t the way things had been done in the past, but it was the right thing to do so I did it. And together we faced them down. And then the other week I faced an even bigger decision about whether the country should go to war. So I said no.....

And he said to me, "Is anyone ever going to do anything about those gas and electric bills that just go up and up, faster than I can earn a living?" He wanted someone to fight for him. ....For generations in Britain when the economy grew the majority got better off. And then somewhere along the way that vital link between the growing wealth of the country and your family finances was broken.... this goes beyond one party or one government.....

{Cameron} has been Prime Minister for 39 months and in 38 of those months wages have risen more slowly than prices. That means your living standards falling year, after year, after year. So in 2015 you’ll be asking am I better off now than I was five years ago? .... Now of course it would have taken time to recover from the global financial crisis [there never was a global crisis, there was no "world" recession] he thinks for Britain to win the global race you have to lose, lower wages, worse terms and conditions, fewer rights at work. But Britain can’t win a race for the lowest wages against countries where wages rates are pennies an hour and the more we try the worse things will get for you. Britain can’t win a race for the fewest rights at work against the sweat shops of the world and the more we try the worse things will get for you. And Britain can’t win a race for the lowest skilled jobs against countries where kids leave school at the age of 11. And the more we try the worse things will get for you. It is a race to the bottom. Britain cannot and should not win that race.

.... to make Britain better we have got to win a race to the top, not a race to the bottom. A race to the top which means that other countries will buy our goods the companies will come and invest here and that will create the wealth and jobs we need for the future but we are not going to be able to do it easily.... It is going to be tough; it is not going to be easy. And I’m not going to stand here today and pretend to you it is. We are going to have to stick to strict spending limits to get the deficit down. We are not going to be able to spend money we don’t have and frankly if I told you we were going to you wouldn’t believe me, the country wouldn’t believe me and they would be right not to believe me. ... let me tell you how. It is about the jobs we create, it is about the businesses we support, it is about the talents we nurture, it is about the wages we earn and it is about the vested interests that we take on. Let me start with the jobs of the future. The environment is a passion of mine because when I think about my two kids who are 2 and 4 at the moment and not talking that much about the environment ..... In 20 years’ time they’ll say to me ‘were you the last generation not to get climate change or the first generation to get it?’ That is the question they’ll be asking.

But it is not just about environmental care. It is also about the jobs we create in the future. You see some people say, including George Osborne, that we can’t afford to have environmental at a time like this. He is dead wrong. We can’t afford not to have an environmental commitment at a time like this. That is why Labour will have a world leading commitment in government to take all of the carbon out of our energy by 2030. A route map to one million new green jobs in our country. That is how we win the race to the top. [in fact he knows that for every "Green" job created 3.7 jobs in tthe real economy are destroyed so that is a promise to destroy 2.7 million real jobs] we’ve got to support the businesses of the future. Now many of the new jobs in the future will come from a large number of small businesses not a small number of large businesses. And this is really important. If you think 15 years ahead, the rate of change and dynamism is so great that most of the new jobs that will be being done will be by companies that don’t yet exist. Now that changes the priorities for government. When this government came to office, since they came to office they cut taxes for large business by £6 bn but raised taxes on small businesses. Now I don’t think that is the right priority. Yes we need a competitive tax regime for large businesses but frankly they’ve short-changed small business and I’m going to put it right. If Labour wins power in 2015 we will use the money that this government would use to cut taxes for 80,000 large businesses to cut business rates for 1.5 million businesses across our country. That is the way we win the race to the top. One Nation Labour. The party of small business. Cutting small business rates when we come to office in 2015 and freezing them the next year benefitting by at least £450 a year [the AOLs that barely existed 15 years ago didn't grow beccause government returned £450 to them]. ....we’ve also got to nurture the talents of the next generation. The skills of people. There are so many brilliant businesses in our country who provide amazing training for the workforce, but look, we have got to face facts, leading businesses say this to me too which is there aren’t enough of them and we have got to work to change that so we will say if you want a major government contract you must provide apprenticeships for the next generation. And we’ll also say to companies doing the right thing, training their workforce that they will have the power to call time on free-riding by competitors who refuse to do the same.

... If the school system fails our young people they shouldn’t be ending up on benefits. They should be ending up in education or training so they can get back on the road to a proper career.

.... we want every primary school in Britain to have the breakfast clubs and after school care that parents need and that's what the next Labour government will do.[nothing about actually improving education]

To win the race to the top we've also got to deal with the issue of low pay. The National Minimum Wage, one of the last Labour government’s proudest achievements,.. The minimum wage has been falling in value and we’ve got to do something about it.

..... there are some sectors which actually can afford to pay higher wages,... the banks. So we've got to look at whether there are some sectors where we can afford a higher minimum .... the next Labour government will strengthen the minimum wage to make work pay for millions in our country. That’s how we win the race to the top.

.....Rogue landlords, putting 15 people in tied housing - it's a race to the bottom; not under my government.....

Take the gas and electricity companies. We need successful energy companies, in Britain. We need them to invest for the future. But you need to get a fair deal and frankly, there will never be public consent for that investment [which means it will all be state investment] unless you do get a fair deal.....

If we win the election 2015 the next Labour government will freeze gas and electricity prices until the start of 2017. Your bills will not rise. It will benefit millions of families and millions of businesses.....Now the companies aren’t going to like this because it will cost them more but they have been overcharging people for too long because of a market that doesn’t work. [so preumably he accepts the private sector won't invest]... So we will pass legislation in our first year in office to do that, and have a regulator that will genuinely be on the customers’ side but also enable the investment we need.

.......we'll say to private developers, you can't just sit on land and refuse to build. We will give them a very clear message - either use the land or lose the land, that is what the next Labour government will do.

We'll say to local authorities that they have a right to grow, and neighbouring authorities can’t just stop them. [I assume this means high spending Labour Councils will have an automatic right to take over and plunder surrounding councils] We'll identify new towns and garden cities and we'll have a clear aim that by the end of the parliament Britain will be building 200,000 homes a year, more than at any time in a generation.

......National Health Service, the greatest institution of our country....Just putting a £50 grab rail in the home stops somebody falling over, prevents them ending up in hospital

　

we can’t just be a party of 200,000 people. We have got to be a party of 500,000, 600,000, or many more. .... not satisfied that 33% of Labour MPs are women, they want it to be 50% and they are right. ....devolution works.... I’ll be the Prime Minister who repeals the bedroom tax.

the easy path for politics is to divide, that’s the easy part [which is by definition what class war is]. I’ll lead a government that fights for you.

[Which reduces it to a short speech but you aren't missing anything but platitudes and cheesy anecdotes)

    In all the fuss about Godfrey Bloom using the word "slut" in what was undeniably a humorous manner (but the word ticks a box) expect to see almost zero coverage of a journalist hitting a UKIP woman. Granted he is a minor reptile but has worked for the Observer which is the Guardian at weekends.

   This is from Lord Ashcroft's new poll. I mentioned his previous one on why people are supporting UKIP, which showed it was for our range of policies and even moreso, integrity, rather than simply anti-EU policy. Then he said the Tories should expect UKIP to win the EU election but not worry about it to much.

   This poll is a very large and thus fairly trustworthy one. News for UKIP in Scotland is good and for the Tories appalling:

the SNP’s continued lead on voting intention for the next Holyrood election: with 40% of first votes I found them 5 points ahead of Labour, with the Tories on 15% and the Liberal Democrats on 5%.
The Lib Dems did rather better among those who said they would use their second vote, rising to 13% and leapfrogging the Tories on 10%. The SNP and Labour would fall to 36% and 24% respectively, with UKIP’s share rising from 4% in the constituency vote to 11% on the list.

   If UKIP pull ahead of the Tories in Scotland what is the purpose of their party here? By spending decades "detoxifying the brand" by ensuring they put forward no policies that take on the alleged "leftist consensus" here they have merely ensured they are not worth supporting. Murdo will, of course, have been proven right, belatedly.

   There is also this which confirms my belief that the next election, like most of the others, will turn on the economy, something on which, because of our opposition to overpricing electricity and support of economic freedom, UKIP are well placed for.

 Asked what they thought was at the top of the administration’s agenda, half spontaneously named the independence campaign – seven times as many as mentioned the economy and jobs. Only just over a third said they thought the current priority was right; asked what the Scottish Government should focus on instead, the economy topped the list comfortably
      
   Brian Monteith has also highlighted this report today.

Rotherham


Sarah Champion (Labour) 9,866 (46.25%, +1.62%) 16,741
Jane Collins (UKIP) 4,648 (21.79%, +15.87%) 2,220
Marlene Guest (BNP) 1,804 (8.46%, -1.96%) 3,906
Yvonne Ridley (Respect) 1,778 (8.34%)
Simon Wilson (Conservative) 1,157 (5.42%, -11.32%) 6,279
David Wildgoose (English Democrat) 703 (3.30%)
Simon Copley (Independent) 582 (2.73%, -3.58%)
Michael Beckett (Liberal Democrat) 451 (2.11%, -13.87%) 5,994
Ralph Dyson (TUSC) 261 (1.22%)
Paul Dickson (Independent) 51 (0.24%)
Clint Bristow (Independent) 29 (0.14%)
Labour majority 5,218 (24.46%)

7.13% swing Labour to UKIP

Turnout: 21,330 (33.63%, -25.37%)
   
       The highlighted numbers are the results at the last election.There is some distortion because turnout is way down as it always is at by-elections.

       Ukip have more than doubled our vote; Labour & BNP have halved; the Conservatives down to 1/5th, behind the BNP & Respect & the LudDims have lost 12/13th of their vote and sunk to 8th place.

       That is an unheard of result.For silliness I tried putting that proportionate loss into the Electoral Calculus site (they don't do \UKIP and are clearly a little put out by reality) and the result is Labour get 18 seats and neither Cons nor Pseudo-Liberals get any.

   That is not going to happen but we are certainly in uncharted electoral territory.

    It can reasonably be argued that the UKIP result was skewed by the child siezure case.

    But it can equally be argued that UKIP is, according to all trends, on a rising tide and we can expect to do better in future.

    It is certainly proof that the British people are sick to the back teeth of our corrupt parasitic ruling class. I have said that I think there is at least an even chance that the child seizure was a deliberate ploy by Labour activists to frighten people to "Vote labour or we'll take your children".

   That sounds, and is, incredible but we know (A) that this has been done before when thev EDL lady's child was stolen and (B) that it is less insane than government paid warming hacktivists thinking that showing a video of them killing children who think for themselves would persuade people.  They undeniably did think that.

     If the political class is that diviorced from reality & so cosseted, we must expect more such lunacy from an increasingly hysterical political class. Remember that though the child murdering video went viral online proving it was a real news story it remained and remains to this day, entirely censored by the state owned and regulated broadcasters and most of the allegedly free, but undeniably censoring for totalitarian ends, media.
    The other results are eclipsed by Rotherham but in any other circumstances would have been earth shattering:

Middlesbrough


Andy McDonald (Labour) 10,201 (60.48%, +14.60%)
Richard Elvin (UKIP) 1,990 (11.80%, +8.10%)
George Selmer (Liberal Democrat) 1,672 (9.91%, -10.00%)
Ben Houchen (Conservative) 1,063 (6.30%, -12.48%)
Imdad Hussain (Peace) 1,060 (6.28%)
Peter Foreman (BNP) 328 (1.94%, -3.90%)
John Malcolm (TUSC) 277 (1.64%)
Mark Heslehurst (Independent) 275 (1.63%)
Labour majority: 8,211 (48.68%)
3.25% swing UKIP to Lab

Turnout: 16,866 (25.91%, -25.44%)
UKIP again second - the Tories 4th in another safe Labour seat.   Croydon North

Steve Reed (Labour) 15,898 (64.71%, +8.69%)
Andy Stranack (Conservative) 4,137 (16.84%, -7.28%)
Winston McKenzie (UKIP) 1,400 (5.70%, +3.97%)
Marisha Ray (Liberal Democrat) 860 (3.50%, -10.48%)
Shasha Islam Khan (Green) 855 (3.48%, +1.51%)
Lee Jasper (Respect) 707 (2.88%, +2.35%)
Stephen Hammond (Christian Peoples Alliance) 192 (0.78%)
Richard Edmonds (National Front) 161 (0.66%)
Ben Stevenson (Communist) 119 (0.48%, +0.17%)
John Cartwright (Loony) 110 (0.45%)
Simon Lane (9/11 Was an Inside Job) 66 (0.27%)
Robin Smith (Young People's) 63 (0.26%)

Labour majority: 11,761 (47.87%)
7.99% swing Conservative to Labour

Turnout: 24,568 (26.4%, -34.25%)

This time the govwerning party managed to hold 2nd place - a good result for the Tories by the standards.   Note, however that lots of other minor parties took serious votes between them. - though the BBC supported and government paid Greens could only find a candidate for 1 of the seats.  The old parties have lost all credibility but UKIP, while the clear leader among alternatives, have not yet sealed the deal with the voters. #######################   There were 2 straws in the wind on Question Time last night.   Having, yet again refused to have a representative of what seems now unarguably Britain's 3rd party, the BBC arranged a question on "whether UKIP supporters should be allowed to adopt" & Dimbloeby twice broke in to suggest that UKIP, who were refused any right of reply, were racist. This is the only claim the totalitarian fascists have, and with no factual support, but expect more smears.     On the other hand a couple in the audience said that they had been refused a chance to adopt because the husband was also an American citizen. The social worker specifically told them, this after it had all been  set up and the girls prepared. She had told them that if he were only to give up his citizenship of the the supposed capitalist heartland they could look after the girls.      That is obscene, corrupt, bullying, fascist and child abuse typical of the most disgusting section of our political establishment. It is something up with which the British people will not permanently put.

   At the end of the Obama reign, with China growing at 10% and the USA either barely or not at all, the US economy will be half, or less, as big compared to China’s as it was at the start. China is now bound tio become the world’s leading economy.
. Everything else, even the fact that Obama’s victory depended on blacks voting, with a soviet style almost 100% for him and hispanics by 73%, despite his abysmal record, it seems unlikely the Republicans can ever win, pales into insignificance.

  This is current GDP for both:

1 United States $15,075,675 million


2 China 11,299,987 million

Thus the US is still 33% richer. However with 4 years of 10% growth China will be, excluding inflation in both countries, $16,544,309 million.

On Sunday I suggested that if Obama won it would mean that it is now impossible to elect a free and progressive government for the USA:

"If Obama gets back in I think the only hope for salvaging something will be that those states that want progress and growth quit the Union. History teaches that the most innovative and progressive societies are those where states are smaller than the cultural unit and so creative individuals are free to move and create beyond the reach of authoritarian small regimes.
Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy and Europe of the ages of empires are examples. One example would be that when Christopher Columbus couldn't get support from the king of Portugal he was free to try the kings of England, France and Spain until he hit - while at much the same time, following the voyages of Cheng Ho, the Chinese emperor could simply order that ocean going travel would stop and it did.
Would SpaceX do better in a free market Florida or Texas than in a United States of America. Almost certainly. Perhaps absolutely certainly if Obama was running the USA. I would not guarantee it would do better in both, but it wouldn't have to. The original Federal US government was an attempt to fuse the individual freedom of small states with the ability to preserve internal peace of an empire. We are about to see if that vision is unsalvagable."

   I think that is clearly true. One factor affecting it is that both California and Pennsylvania (both Obama states) are going to go bankrupt before the \USA does. It seems unlikely that obama would be able to resist pressure to bail them out or that most of the other states would do so.

   Obama has presided over the worst recession since the 1930s and the most avoidable ever. I have described repeatedly how government simply getting out of the way would end recession. More importantly the rest of the world has proven it too. Growth outside the US has averaged 6%; outwith the US and EU. 7% and in China, 10%.

    Because of the effects of compound growth, after 8 years of Obama the rest of the world will have grown 60%, the non European bit by 72% & China by 2.14%.

    Romney made a remark about that in the final debate and he was completely correct. In the long term the diplomatic or "leadership" power of a nation ultimately depends on its national wealth. Making smart or stupid decisions about relations with Russia, China or our al Quaeda allies in Libya, Syria and elsewhere have short term effects but they are ultimately less important.

   Actually if it wasn't for the shale gas breakthrough, which has greatly reduced energy prices in the US, there is no serious question that the US economy would still be in sharp decline and it is undeniable that this revolution has happened against Obama's strenuous efforts. He said that his objective was to reverse the rise in sea levels - though no significant rise had actually been happening and that his policy was that electricity prices would thus "necessarily skyrocket" (as they are doing in Britain). In a second administartion, with no worry about having to be re-elected he would be able to carry out that policy.

   On the other hand Romney looks like a President tailor made for the present crisis. America's underlying problem is the massive growth in state parasitism, particularly regulatory parasitism that strangles the economy. Romney's greatest talent, the one that made him rich, is to be able to take a business that us stifled in its own bureaucracy and lack of innovation and remove the parasitic growths strangling it (though I have considerable respect for the fact that he was able to give his home state the best education systenn in the USA - something which, on its own, would justify his election in a normal era). There could hardly be a better fit for the times. Obama had never run anything before the presidency, and has, according to even his supporters, made a disappointing go of it. Romney has massive and successful experience of running many things - from companies to his home state to the Winter Olympics and left them all in a far stronger state that when he arrived.

   Personally I can't see that if the USA were not already a deeply failing society, that there could be any comparison between the 2 candidates.

   If Obama gets back in I think the only hope for salvaging something will be that those states that want progress and growth quit the Union. History teaches that the most innovative and progressive societies are those where states are smaller than the cultural unit and so creative individuals are free to move and create beyond the reach of authoritarian small regimes.

   Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy and Europe of the ages of empires are examples. One example would be that when Christopher Columbus couldn't get support from the king of Portugal he was free to try the kings of England, France and Spain until he hit - while at much the same time, following the voyages of Cheng Ho, the Chinese emperor could simply order that ocean going travel would stop and it did.

   Would SpaceX do better in a free market Florida or Texas than in a United States of America. Almost certainly. Perhaps absolutely certainly if Obama was running the USA. I would not guarantee it would do better in both, but it wouldn't have to. The original Federal US government was an attempt to fuse the individual freedom of small states with the ability to preserve internal peace of an empire. We are about to see if that vision is unsalvagable.

  From Delingpole:

Here's one thing we can be sure of about the Benghazi affair: almost everything we've been told since by the mainstream media is a lie, invariably one designed to shore up the creaky and desperate Obama administration.



Consider how quickly the story was spun by Obama's amen corner in the liberal MSM. It should, according to any objective news sense, have been a shocking tale of how a woefully unprotected ambassador was murdered in cold blood by Al Qaeda affiliates
-----------------------------

My comment:

Jerry Pournelle uses his military experience to show how, with the attack on the "consulate" taking 7 hours, it would have been easily possible to fly in a marines detachment had "the One" had the gumption to make a decision on the matter.



Another point totally unmentioned by our media is the reports that Ambassador Stevens was raped by the gunmen before being killed - this seems similar to the treatment of Gadaffi by our democracy loving allies. The official government line is that he died of smoke inhalation & the picture showing him conscious and in the hands of his captors are to be ignored.


The truth could easily be told by the autopsy but, more than a month after the event, it is unaccountably undisclosed.
--------------------------------
This is the Pournelle statement today that inspired me

 Last night Greta van Sustern of Fox News showed a printed copy of an eMail from the State department delegation in Libya that apparently went to the situation rooms in both the White House and the State Department in Foggy Bottom. It stated quite clearly that the consulate in Benghazi was under attack by armed terrorists with AK-47 rifles and RPG’s. This was about two hours into the attack. There was no mention of any protests against any video.




The existence of the eMail is now confirmed by the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/email-state-department-told-white-house-militants-claimed-responsibility-for-libya-attack/2012/10/24/b4cd09b0-1def-11e2-8817-41b9a7aaabc7_story.html. There was no mention of this in today’s Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times although Ms. Van Sustern was displaying the memo at 7PM Pacific Time last night. I saw it.


We do not usually do breaking news here, and we certainly do not have all the data; but it does seem to me that the President certainly knew by Wednesday morning 12 September that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was an organized attack by a terrorist organization – or at least that such an organization was claiming it.


We also have reason to believe that the White House was aware of the attack within two hours of its beginning. The attack continued for some seven hours, and at least two of those killed were killed in the last hours.


The United States maintains forces that could have reached Benghazi by helicopter within two hours from Italy. I do not have a list of other assets in the Mediterranean, but it does appear that we had some resources in the area. They were not sent.


From the first debate:



"ROMNEY: And there was no demonstration involved. It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people. Whether there was some misleading, or instead whether we just didn’t know what happened, you have to ask yourself why didn’t we know five days later when the ambassador to the United Nations went on TV to say that this was a demonstration. How could we have not known?

But I find more troubling than this, that on — on the day following the assassination of the United States ambassador, the first time that’s happened since 1979, when — when we have four Americans killed there, when apparently we didn’t know what happened, that the president, the day after that happened, flies to Las Vegas for a political fund-raiser, then the next day to Colorado for another event, other political event.

At that time the official US position was that the attack on our consulate was a demonstration against a U-Tube video defaming the Prophet Mohammed PBUH that got out of hand. That was still the official position of the United States Department of State – and one presumes the White House – as late as Sunday September 16 when the US Ambassador to the UN declared it on several Sunday news shows."
As of now there has been no statement from the White House in explanation.
-------------------------

  The reference to ambassador Steven being raped before he was murdered comes from a Lebanese source. Snopes describes it as Undetermined but the photo of him in terrorist hands when the government story is that he was dead of smoke inhalation is given.
  I think undetermined is a reasonable conclusion, as many stories are, including the large majority of what is said about Savile, but that does not mean it is, or should be, unreported.

  I stand by the point that the autopsy would show the truth. Or perhaps, like "bin Laden's body" it was instantly buried at sea?

  When those in power are hiding things the default assumption must be that there is something to hide - even if, in this case, it is only Obama's incompetence. Undrelinings my own.

    Ann Coulter (who traced the smear stories against Cain back to Obama's minder and who supported Romney from the first) gets it right again. This time over the war against Libya and the current one against Syria, both fought to put our "democracy loving" al Quaeda friends in power.

Obama said: "We must stand alongside those who believe in the same core principles that have guided us through many storms ... our support for a set of universal rights, including the freedom for people to express themselves and choose their leaders; our support for the governments that are ultimately responsive to the aspirations of the people."

The Libyan mob was the equivalent of our founding fathers! (If you overlook the part about it being a murderous Islamic mob.)

Meanwhile, Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, said: "The people we are fighting for in Libya, the backbone of that movement, are former mujahedeen from around the world." We are "enabling people who may not be formally aligned with al-Qaida but who want the same things to grasp ever closer to power."

Scheuer said the media had taken "a few English-speaking Arabs who are pro-democracy and a few Facebook pages out of the Middle East and extrapolated that to a region-wide love of secular democracy," adding, "It is as insane a situation as I've ever encountered in my life."

No wonder Obama's running for re-election on his foreign policy expertise!


Among Republicans, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum all called for aggressive action against Gadhafi, including enforcement of a no-fly zone.

Santorum cited Reagan's 1986 bombing of Libya (after Gadhafi had killed American servicemen in Berlin), saying, "If you want to be Reaganesque, it seems the path is pretty clear."


Gingrich took all sides, first demanding: "Exercise a no-fly zone this evening. We don't need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we're intervening. This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with."


Then, two weeks later, he said: "I would not have intervened."

Only Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour resisted calling for aggressive action against Gadhafi, with Romney merely criticizing Obama's deer-in-the-headlights response, and Barbour stating more directly, "I don't think it's our mission to make Libya look like Luxembourg." No offense, he said, "but it is not ever going to look like what we'd like." ..

Learn your history, Americans. The American Revolution was not the revolt of a mob. It was a carefully thought-out plan for a republic, based on ideas painstakingly argued by serious men in the process of creating what would become the freest, most prosperous nation in world history.



The much-ballyhooed "Arab Spring," with mobs of men gang-raping American reporters, firing guns in the air and murdering their erstwhile dictators, is more akin to the pointless bloodletting of the French Revolution.

  I think she may be overplaying the insanity of the mobs. There is also the fact that people chosen by the western powers as catspaws are inherently unlikely to be self effacing uncorrupt patriots. We recruited gangsters, drug lords, sex slavers and organleggers in Kosovo as our police. They cannot honestly avoid responsibility for them now being gangsters, drug lords, sex slavers and organleggers. We recruited the openly corrupt in Iraq and Afghanistan and got corruption. We recruited al Quaeda in Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria and again that is what we are getting.

    As, unfortunately, are the peoples of these countries More our fault than their's.

    But if she is right to blame Obama for warmongering remember that he had to be dragged into a relatively background role in the war against Libya (providing most of the military capacity while Britain and France provided the bluster). The real enthusiasts for bombing Libya were Sarkozy (gone) and Cameron. If Obama is shown to be an ass what is Cameron?

      Remember when the  war against Libya was justified by a UN ruling which claimed it gave us some temporary claim to prevent Gadaffi defeating the "democratic" forces in Benghazi, which we parlayed into thousands of civilians bombed elsewhere.

These oppressed destroyers of war graves .
& ended the oppression of the US ambassador, well this one anyway

and are disappearing so many Gadaffi supporters/members of other tribes.

  You know how the BBC & British media always play up when some Republican politician says something where they have clearly got the phrase slightly wrong [like the "legitimate rape" line where he was actually talking about rapes which were real rather than false accusation, not about it ever being legal]; or indeed perfectly correct, but not known by journalists [Sarah Palin's remark that Paul Revere warned the British off from messing with the local militia]; or really rather brilliant [Rumsfeld's "known unknowns" remark] which you have to listen to to get, again a problem for journalists; or which they just never said, but don't let that stop anybody [Palin's "I can see Russia from my house" actually said by Tina Fay]

    And they never do the same for Democrats, or indeed for approved British politicos.

    Well here is a doozy the entire Democrat Party managed.

On the last night of the Democratic National Convention, a retired Navy four-star took the stage to pay tribute to veterans. Behind him, on a giant screen, the image of four hulking warships reinforced his patriotic message.




But there was a big mistake in the stirring backdrop: those are Russian warships.



While retired Adm. John Nathman, a former commander of Fleet Forces Command, honored vets as America’s best, the ships from the Russian Federation Navy were arrayed like sentinels on the big screen above.....



These were the very Soviet-era combatants that Nathman and Cold Warriors like him had once squared off against.

For example, the ship in the foreground, on the far right, has a square radar antenna at the top of its masthead. That is the MR-700 Podberezovik 3-D early warning radar, commonly identified as “Flat Screen” for its appearance, a three-dimensional early warning radar mounted on the Kerch, said Eric Wertheim, editor of “Combat Fleets of the World.”





Similarly, the third ship has a MR-310 “Head Net” air search radar, shaped like two off-set bananas, at its masthead and is mostly likely the guided missile destroyer Smetlivyy. The first two ships seem to be Krivak-class frigates, but it’s hard to discern from the silhouette, experts said.



But the fact they are Russian ships is not in doubt. In addition to the ship’s radar arrays and hulls, which are dissimilar from U.S. warships, the photo features one more give-away: a large white flag with a blue ‘X’ at the ships’ sterns.



Polmar, who authored “The Naval Institute Guide to the Soviet Navy,” recognized the blue ‘X’-mark: “The X is the Cross of St. Andrew’s, which is a Russian Navy symbol,” Polmar said. (An anchored U.S. warship, by contrast, flies the American flag on its stern.)



Based on this specific group of these ship types, one naval expert concluded that this was most likely a photo of the Black Sea Fleet.
-------------------------------

   Expect to see zero Beeboids laughing at this one and saying it proves they are not competent to run the show.

   A less silly event at the same convention was when the chair, at the behest of Obama, asked for them to change previously agreed convention rules which would have prevented any mention of God or of the capital of Israel being Jerusalem. All rather trivial but the sort of tokenism that annoys people and if they had been sensible would never have done in the first place. Because this was a late alteration it had to be accepted by a 2/3rds majority. So. early in the morning when there were few delegates there the chairman asked the assembly for permission to change it. To his obvious surprise delegates failed to pass it by acclimation.

    So in the best traditions of the EU telling the Irish or Danes they had come up with the wrong answer, he asked them twice more. The third ended with opponents being at least a little louder than supporters. So instead of actually carrying out the vote as any democratic organisation would do, he just declared that his ears said it had passed anyway.

   The issue itself is of little importance and the organisers were certainly right that to keep out God and Jerusalem would have unnecessarily annoyed a number of potential voters.

    The real issue is how much contempt the party leaders have demonstrated they have for, in reverse order, their delegates, democracy, their own party constitution & that they think, correctly it seems, that the media would keep quiet about it.

   People who will do that will break real laws when they have the real power and media which will censor silly stuff like that, even when the proof has been videod, will censor important and unquestionable lawbreaking too. 

  Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate.Thus we have a very serious, economically competent team which says a lot about how Romney intends to rule.

  Romney himself is a man who became a billionaire through taking over failing companies and either setting them up as success or asset stripping, or both. This is capitalism at its toughest but also its best. The ultimate difference between free and government control is that when a free enterprise institution fails to make a profit it goes bust and is dealt with as Romney did, whereas when a government department fails to achieve its targets it calls for and gets a bigger budget to try again.

  Ryan's many claim to fame is running the Senate Budget committee, which he has done in a way that shows he is strongly committed to fiscal sanity. He opposes the catastrophic warming fraud and even opposes allowing the government EPA to ban fire. He has an "all of the above attitude to energy - supporting more shale gas extraction, oil drilling and nuclear power. On space development he has never said anything of interest, which is not inherently a bad place to start.

  Like Romney he appears to be so squeaky clean it hurts.

  Since most of Obama's previous campaigns have been based on leaking sealed court reports on his opponents divorces and Obama is clearly unable to run on a record of any sort of success it is probably important to be bulletproof to smears. Obama having nothing else to offer.

  All of that looks like and intelligent campaign, on the issues, at least on the Republican side. There is a very clear divide between the parties on issues - free market V government control of everything; fiscal prudence V endless stimuli; honesty V catastrophic warming scares; small government V big government; growing energy production in the free market V declining in a controlled one.

  So far media coverage here has been muted since they don't know how to report what he actually stands for since it is so outwith allowed discussion in out media. |These are the sort of policies that will get the US out of recession very quickly & which are also endorsed by UKIP - which causes problems far a British establishment which censor any attempt to discuss them.

    On space development it looks like we are going to have to rely on Newt Gingrich cutting a deal whereby NASA's budget is to a large extent put into an X-Prize fund. That should not be difficult. Newt made a decent run for the nomination and giving him leadership of NASA would get him both enthusiastically supportive and out of the way. Newt has never asked for more money than NASA gets - just that it be used for prizes - and this suits the free market philosophy of both Romney and Ryan
 
-----------------------

   As an example of the censorship of any debate in Britain on what are going to be the main issues in the US election see this BBC report of the Bank of England chief wittering about his "deep sympathy" for the people of Britain whom he helped has put into recession and his inability to suggest any way out.

  "Unfortunately there is no easy remedy" he says knowing this to be a lie. He knows we could be out of recession in days if he and the other corrupt parasites wanted it.

 2 clear signs that what we are experiencing is not a true recession but that in fact we are in the boom phase of an economy that is in underlying technological decline.

1 - Employment is rising not falling while per capita productivity is falling. This just does not happen in a true recession - then employers shake out all the labour they can. This is consistent only with labour becoming a larger component of production as technological inputs, primarily electricity, become less. Less of it being produced and more expensively. Technologically we are in steep decline, purely because government prevents it. In the meantime print and spend (quantitative easing) is being used to produce a bigger bubble, but not a bubble growing quite as fast as the technological decline.

2 - Though all the state media keep pushing the line that much of the recession is due to the Euro problem because we do 40% of our trade with them. But if this were a factor we would be getting a far larger push from the fact that the rest of the world, providing 60% is growing far faster than the EU is declining (6%). This is proven by the fact that our trade balance with the EU is getting marginally better while with the rest of the world it is getting worse. That can only mean that we are being marginally less restricted by Luddism than the \EU average but that the rest of the world is becoming more competitive because it isn't in the hands of the ecofascists.