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Labour Candidate for Bristol East
Trolls have decamped to Twitter...
Kerry McCarthy
Labour Candidate for Bristol East
A Future Fair for All
My blog = my rules!
As Monica says in Friends, "rules are good, rules help control the fun!"
First: if you're after a detailed response, please email or write to me. If you're a constituent (or perhaps a very special case), I'll respond; if you're not, you'll have to contact your own MP. Ditto if you want to introduce a subject which bears no relevance to my original post.
Second: I don't have a problem with trenchant criticism of me or the Government, or vociferously expressed opinions, but if I regard your comments as offensive I won't allow them to appear. (I don't like having to moderate comments, but have reluctantly come to the conclusion that people cannot be relied upon not to abuse my good nature!)
First: if you're after a detailed response, please email or write to me. If you're a constituent (or perhaps a very special case), I'll respond; if you're not, you'll have to contact your own MP. Ditto if you want to introduce a subject which bears no relevance to my original post.
Second: I don't have a problem with trenchant criticism of me or the Government, or vociferously expressed opinions, but if I regard your comments as offensive I won't allow them to appear. (I don't like having to moderate comments, but have reluctantly come to the conclusion that people cannot be relied upon not to abuse my good nature!)
Thirdly: I might just randomly delete comments from certain people because I'm getting thoroughly fed up with them and want them to go away and annoy someone else for a while. You know who you are.
That's all - although I reserve the right to create new rules as and when I feel like it. My blog = my rules!From under the floorboards
News from my website
Kerry's troll tolerance count
Trolls have decamped to Twitter...
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45 comments:
Forget that, word is, somethig is up with a shadow minister? Do you know?
Something is kicking off tonight. I got an interesting Email earlier.
Damien Green MP arrested
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7753557.stm
Unreal.
Best get on the pager to find out what you are supposed to say about this Kerry.
Alternatively, tell us what you really think...
His arrest for telling the truth has been described as "Stalin-esque" by the Tory Party. QED I think on ZanuLabour.
"It follows a series of leaks, including the news that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a Commons cleaner and a letter from the home secretary warning that a recession could lead to a rise in crime."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7753557.stm
I think we can expect more non ZNL politians to be rounded up
When our policies match Robert Mugabes...
Yes - I can see the similarities:
New Labour - elected in a free and fair ballot
Mugabe - rigs elections and butchers his opponents
New Labour are a minority government.
Four out of five Britons didn't vote for them and rejected their policies.
Explain please
Electoral reform then?
It's interesting, in another post OH said that the people should decide. But when he doesn't agree with the people's decision he claims it's invalid.
Come on sunshine think it through
I am sorry arresting people for stating a fact is an abomination. Crime going up in the recession, ye Gods what has Jackboot Jaqui got in store for us.
I've been on trains for the last three hours, so first I've heard of it.
And OH - who should have formed the government after the last election then?
I would have a bit of respect for OH if he made an intelligent claim for electoral reform to encourage greater representation.
Instead he makes laughable and childish comparisons between New Labour and Robert Mugabe.
I would have anticipated a more mature argument from an A Level student.
Kerry
Proportional Representation
Any one who didn't vote labour (80% of us) doesn't have a voice. That ain't right. When you are in opposition, I WANT to hear your voice.
Even with PR I doubt we'd have a libertarian MP ;)
Your statement is somewhat inaccurate. Millions who could have voted chose not to. As for introducing PR - very true.
Don't think it'll help the Libertarians much though.
As I mentioned in a previous thread - the reason for that is that millions and millions of people don't agree with the libertarian world view.
Libertarian MP?
Ye gods.
All I want, like 80% of the population, is to not be subject to New Labour
LEAVE ME ALONE
libertarian world view.
Every journey starts with a first step
Yes the Anti Terrorism Act is being used by NuLab for arresting opposition MP's and Old Men who say rubbish in Labour Party conferences
"Leave me alone"
I think if/when the Conservatives get elected, they'll still require you to pay tax - though not as much.
Will you continue your blog then?
What about Barack Obama? I don't think we're seeing the green shoots of a libertarian revolution. A recent landslide in America should be evidence enough of that.
Bottom line
There are 60,000,000 of us. There are 646 of you
51,000,000 of those 60,000,000 DIDN'T vote for you or your policies.
History is littered with examples of the people hanging those who thought they knew best. Even in Bristol
Kerry, when my money can longer finance the feckless wasters in Bristol East, it won't be me they come for. It will be YOU.
Blogsy,
New Labour, Blue Labour.
I have no time for Tory filth
PR would just give minority parties like the Lib Dems a disproportionate amount of influence. And then we'd never get anything done.
Indeed - look at the German political parties - smallest of the three has disproportionate power and acts as a 'Kingmaker' - which is even less democratic than FPTP
Yes, let's look at Germany
Long and hard
1. Let's look at their economy
You start.
(Ps. Old Holborn hat in Deutschland fuer zwoelf jahre gewohnt)
OH - it is ridiculous to claim that 51 million didn't vote for New Labour. I would have thought that a lot those 60 million people aren't old enough to vote - more still will be ineligible (and there will be one or two who are libertarians).
You are either misleading or stupid to make that claim.
That bit of sophistry isn't very convincing Kerry. Most European nations have PR and they get things done. I agree with little of OH's viewpoint yet 27 million voted in the last election but 9.5 million Labour votes provided them with over half the seats. PR is fairer. With 5 million votes, the Lib Dems are hardly a minority party.
NL
Labour have a minority government.
Simple as that. Most people DON'T want Labour.
How is that a democracy?
Which is it? Misleading or stupid?
NL,
Be careful. I am a European. I study European politics. I speak three languages fluently and four more to conversational level.
If you think you're hard enough, have a go. I DARE you.
Kerry Darling,
Without PR, where would the Greens be in Europe?
Yet you support them in the UK?
Tsk. Hypocritical n'est pas?
I think that answer speaks for itself.
At least OH wins in the 'who speaks the most languages' competition.
ps - intimidation is the last refuge of a lost argument
Hence the arrest of the opposition?
How very "Mugabe"
pps - 'Be Careful I am a European' is the funniest threat I've ever heard :)
"That bit of sophistry isn't very convincing Kerry. Most European nations have PR and they get things done." Maybe, but they don't have the Lib Dems!
And supporting the Greens? I seem to recall standing against them at the last election.
"Don't mess with me, I speak three languages fluently,'basic' Portuguese, and a few words of Japanese I picked up from the Yo Sushi menu." Be scared, be very scared.
I know 'beard' in Japanese.
I know 'crisps' in Spanish.
I know 'hello' in Vietnamese.
And I can make a respectable attempt at pronouncing most of the Brazilian first team.
Bring it on
Shame none of you aplogists seem to want to address the serious issue of the outrageous and politically motivated unecessary arrest of an opposition politician in a mad witch hunt for whistleblowers.
Nine counter terrorist police.
Have they no serious work to be getting on with?
And how come they warned Boris, Dave, Speaker Martin etc but NOT Jackboots or McBroon?
Any comments?
The Penguin
Oh, and on QT Osborne wiped the floor with wee Dougie, who looks more and more like pouting trout Wee Bendy Wendy every time he is allowed out.
The Penguin
Back to FPTP for a second, can someone explain to me how this voting system is even remotely fair?
I live in an area where most people vote Labour, they always have done and probably always will. Because I don't want to vote Labour, my vote is totally and utterly worthless, because I know that whatever party I vote for, the Labour MP will win regardless with a fairly large majority. I know I'm unable to make any kind of a change at the voting booth because of the voting habits of my neighbours.
The ONLY way of making my vote count would be to move, probably to an area where the party I want to vote for has a high majority.
All these years growing up being told at school that people died for the vote, and your vote REALLY counts - turns out they were lying.
First past the post means that minority governments can bully the electorate as much as they wish.
Both of the main parties LOVE it.
There have actually been general elections in the UK where not even the party with the most votes overall has won.
Proportional Representation means that if your party gets 10% of the vote, you get 10% of the seats in Parliament. Parties actually have to negotiate with each to get legislation through.
The first past the post system only works if the elected party then govern for all the people, otherwise anger amongst those who persistently ignored or highly taxed or targeted etc grows. Brown has forgotten this (if he ever understood it). Blair understood it perfectly which was why he consitently blocked Brown's tax hike proposals.
This talk of PR has prompted me to leave a comment. I am not sure whether anyone reads my comments, I suppose I am a bit random, which I put down to my artistic temperament, mainly sanguine and melancholy, or in laymans terms barking mad. I think Kerry finds me a bit creepy, shame really, because I think she is quite nice, even if she does like Gordon Brown.
So then, PR. I remember lovely Shirley Williams in tears when she lost her seat to a tory landslide, (a bit like Michael Portillo losing his in 1997). She left the Labour Party and formed the SDP with David Owen and the other two. Then there was the merger with the Liberals led by anorak lover David Steel. Thing is, PR was the big topic. Liberals, who then became the LibDems, and that wonderful Paddy Ashdown, were getting a high percentage of votes overall but just a handful of seats.
Anyway, that 'push' for PR seems to have gone in the mists of a bygone age, the last millenium even.
If you have got this far with my ramblings, here is something I posted on Paul Flynns blog (another of the MPs you can count on one hand who are brave enough to have a blogsite).
I was speaking to a gentleman recently who has a phenomenal knowledge of many subjects, inluding political matters. His interest in these things began when he went to what was then Czechoslovakia, in 1968, just after what has become known as the Prague Spring. He had been given a grant to go there to research a PhD (that would not happen today would it) and was picking his way through Russian tanks to get to the libraries and museums.
Why am I telling you this? He shocked me when he said that he had not voted for eleven years. I asked him why. He said that there are now only two political parties in this Country who get elected to government, and they are both the same, so in this archaic 1st past the post system you are only voting for which dictator you want next. Guess what, he is thinking seriously of making a permanent move to the Czech Republic, because it is more democratic!
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