Metal Reviews

Huh. Still not sure how I got such a high UKIP score.

It's quite a misleading thing... I mean: "working time should be regulated by Europe: Agree or Disagree". Well, disagree, but in practice that puts you as someone who doesn't think there should be any regulation on working time. "There should be a referendum on the EU". Again, agree, but if you put that it's going to lump you in with UKIP or some nonsense.

Still, these things are always interesting.

Absolutely.

Edit: took it again, thinking more, and got

LibDem - 89
Green - 63
Labour - 49
UKIP - 38
Conservative - 37
BNP - 29

The LibDems are open-minded when it comes to Europe, apparently.

Liberal Democrats:
74%
Green Party:
72%
British National Party:
56%
Labour Party: 49%
UK Independence Party: 48%
Conservative Party: 35%

I'm really bored. I hate how those questions are phrased.

Yeah those questions are kinda irrelevant or unhelpful to anyone who has some opinions outside standard parliamentary axes.



Time to troll Goat:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/ ... icle/8367/

What, like you extremists? Heh.



How original, attacking a LibDem for not being socialist. That's a bit like moaning about the Tory record on the environment... you should see what George Monbiot thinks of O'Neill. And



You agree with that?

I think Brendan O'Neill talks a total load of shit, a great deal of the time. However, I agree with quite a lot of the article. Vince Cable, before having any particular political vision or new ideas, is first and foremost someone who has developed the knack of making what he says seem like "common sense" compared to people like Darling and Osborne. Nice skill to have, but so what?

Like O'Neill says, and in fact like the Lib Dems in general, he's found some niche from where he can tut tut at the "old politics" or "class struggle" of the other two parties, as if they still represent two completely opposed ideological forces.

Where O'Neill is quite insightful, IMO, is in arguing that the Lib Dems are for people who think the world should be a bit fairer (hence the bank bashing) but who shit themselves at the first sign of people at the bottom actually standing up for themselves. Therefore, the bankers and "militant trade unionists" are always two sides of the same scary coin in Lib Dem land. In other words, they talk about social justice, but are terrified of it, and so stick to some happy "common sense" middle ground.

As for the last bit, he has a point but I don't agree. Just because some of us think that OBJECTIVELY there is still a class struggle, it doesn't mean that the ideologies that hold sway in politics actually reflect that. On the other hand, I searched Spiked for articles on the BA or RMT strikes, and there is only one quite perfunctory one about the latter and nothing about the former. So, maybe if they looked a bit harder they might find something.

All fair enough, of couse, although it depends on your viewpoint. In terms of sorting out those pesky bankers, Cable talks a lot of sense, yet socialists will find a lot to be annoyed at, expecting the moon on a stick as ever.

I see them as the best of a bad bunch, as you know - they've been left of Labour since Kinnock's days, and considering that Brown and Darling are hesitant over things as simple as cancelling trident, the only real choice at the next election. They are a middle-class sort of party, without a doubt, but most articles like that come over as tribalist Labour smear jobs to me. I think you're being unfair in terms of their supposed fear of social justice, and it's interesting that the latest LD campaign is actually to paint Labour and the Tories as exactly the same -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/ma ... dvertising

All part o'politics, I suppose. Still, if the worst mud you can fling at Cable is that he's a smooth operator and isn't either Labour or Tory, that's not so terrible. It's actually a pretty poor article - I was expecting whining about the Orange Book and how he used to work for Shell.

Actual "left wing" political activity happens day in day out, and is doing so currently, but people like Cable have nothing but contempt for it because it doesn't happen in the cosy world of parliament- and therefore must be a bunch of militants trying to hold the country to ransom or whatever.

What is this nonsense about "the moon on a stick"? If that's the way they regard extremely basic positions like striking to resist pay and job cuts, then you've probably found your reason why the Lib Dems will never get elected. Because they are completely unable to see beyond what is going on around us at the moment (er... bankers? Oh yes, boo hiss! Trade unionists? Oh yes, boo hiss!) and actually envision something substantial about the way they want society to be. I hate to sound like David Brent, but most progressive change over the years has surely come from people thinking "outside the box"- something the LDs are wholly incapable of doing.

Sure, Labour and Conservative aren't either, but then for a hundred years the whole thing has been their box. Lib Dems could use their position as outsiders to come up with something interesting, but... oh well.

As for scrapping Trident? I've no idea what Lib Dems were doing in the 80s when nuclear war was actually an imminent threat, but I'd wager a good few of them were complaining bitterly about CND being too militant.

Haha, and then they try and paint Labour and Conservatives as being identical! Bah humbug to the Lib Dems I say.

Having said that, I would still quite like the Lib Dems to do well.

Aha, so you can troll me, but one little quip about moons and sticks and that friendly Trotsky-ite crumbles into Stalinist ranting!

Heh, well reading Spiked-Online is essentially an act of masochistic self-trolling for me anyway, so it's all well and good.

I don't see anything Stalinist about the above rant in the slightest, but it is true that the Lib Dems, by their very tedious nature, wind me right up.

Labour Party: 67%
Green Party: 57%
Liberal Democrats: 56%
Conservative Party: 40%
UK Independence Party: 27%
British National Party: 24%

It turns out the BNP are standing in my constituency after all!

http://bnp.org.uk/2009/03/jean-purdy/

Good luck persuading all the local Asians, Poles and Jews.

Just in case anyone outside of Britain cares, the leaders' debates are being shown here

http://wwww.c-spanvideo.org//program/293014-1

live. It's quite interesting, a typical part of the election process for you Yanks, but even Thatcher and Blair turned it down in the past.

Good luck, anyone who isn't a Tory!

Heh, was expecting some sniffy post from you about how you'd be watching HIGNFY instead. The possibility for meltdown's higher than the pundits reckon, I think; considering that Nixon lost it over a sweaty lip and that Brown is apparently going to be telling jokes tonight... it'll be so cringeworthy that Larry David will look away in embarassment.

As you know, I'll be cheering Cleggo on. He regularly has the whole of Parliament shouting at him, and he walked Paxman the other night, so Broon and Poshboy should be no problem.

Edit: heh, rethought that post, did you?

Edit2: apparently Cameron is doing dreadfully from the Guardian liveblog thingy. Not watching live (tv licence bastards might detect it with their magic sticks).

I watched the first hour. Yeah, it was ok, actually... the format was a surprisingly good one, I thought, and the standard of debate was higher than I was expecting.

Most people think Clegg one, so it seems. It's very stupid, acting as though he was this big revelation. I mean, I thought all those jokes about nobody knowing who he was were, you know, JOKES, but apparently half the country really WAS like "oooh who is that person, what a surprise!".

Pa Broon is supposed to have lost but that's nonsense- he wasn't the worst, it's just the fact that nobody likes him anyway. I thought he was OK, although Cleggo was probably the best. He just had this annoying schtick whereby he introduced EVERYTHING HE SAID with some variant on "look at them arguing har har- old politics at its worst!" before going on to, er, argue with them. I'm amazed at the number of people who seem to have bought it.

THE HORROR!

WHY, RIO, WHY!

Yeah, anyone actually bothering to take any notice should have known that, y'know, there are more than two political parties in Westminster. I suppose they thought Paddy A. and Charles K. were some sort of independents.

Having watched it, Clegg was the smoothest, most normal, and outright one-ner, but Broon did much better than I thought he would. Clunky jokes, yeah, weird grin, yeah, but he has the facts at his fingers and came over as authorative. Dave really surprised me at his incompetance - I mean, I saw that gay interview (hurr) where he lost it, but saying that we needed nukes because of China?! That would have lost a US politician the election, right there. I'm sure there'll be plenty of 'Vote Tory for Nuclear War!' posters. He was cringeworthy throughout, telling us how he talked to a black man (!) being the worst, but getting flustered when interrupted and nakedly sucking up to the soldier and nurse were nearly as bad. Clegg knew the format, spoke to the camera, and came over as quite friendly and engaging.

Having said that, and being a LD, he wasn't perfect (the Obama comparisons popping up here and there are ridiculous). He was nervous at the start, and the other two gave him a fairly easy ride - the Tories are going to push this anti-Trident thing to make him look Labour-lite. He did well distancing himself from Broon, but will need to do more. I expect next week's debate on foreign policy to be even livelier - hopefully Cleggy can bring the noise on Trident and Iraq, and pummell the others.

On a side note, I hope that little Jewish kid in the audience who asked about schools becomes a kind of Joe the plumber. He was the one who asked Nick Griffin about the Holocaust on Question Time.