Comments on: This is Rather Spectacular

By: Flix

Flix — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:31:53 +0000

Hah, Jenny I had you down as a full on Guardian hugger. I swear you’ve had some Murdoch based rants?

I’m The Times. Largely because it’s the one I was brought up on and I like real life newspapers rather than online news sites, most of the time.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:32:30 +0000

I read The Times mainly, and The Guardian. my opinions are slightly left of The Times but I lose patience with The Guardian sometimes. I probably mainly agree with much of what the Beeb says.

What about you?

By: Dickie

Dickie — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:53:47 +0000

I don’t particularly read any newspaper. I read the occasional article online, when someone else links to one (usually saying something along the lines of “look how stupid this is”). Much of my news comes from the BBC, as well as a variety of blogs and things that I follow (and that are listed to the right).

I do have a subscription to Private Eye though, which is very good indeed.

By: Flix

Flix — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:14:23 +0000

As a point of curiosity…what newspaper do/would you read?

I’ll pass on political commentary, for now. :P

By: Lucy

Lucy — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:06:30 +0000

Awesome, thank you. It really isn’t complicated, but somehow my brain has made it that way…

By: Dickie

Dickie — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:20:35 +0000

A lot of the criticism is mad. Criticising the Lib Dems for changing their stance on things is stupid – it’s a coalition, and the Lib Dems are the junior partner in that coalition! If it was a Liberal Democrat majority government (and isn’t that a thought?!), then the criticism might be fair. But it isn’t, so it’s not.

And yeah, I agree. I’d obviously rather not have Tories in charge, but at least with the Liberal Democrats there in the Cabinet we’re seeing some good stuff happen, and they’re helping to alleviate some of the pain where possible.

Labour’s opposition at the moment seems incredibly childish. They’re just opposing everything without saying what they’d do. Or realising that some things (eg the budget) have roots in their own policies in government…

Are Clegg/Lib Dems really announcing all the bad news? The worst so far (that I can think of) is the budget, and Osborne announced that. Clegg’s announcement yesterday about electoral reform is (well, to me) pretty good news. And seeing as he’s the one with the responsibility for looking after that, seems fitting for him to announce it.

A vote of no confidence requires 50%+1 MPs to pass (and the current reform proposals do nothing to change that). If passed, the government must resign. As I understand it, if at this point a government can be formed which can hold a confidence vote, that government takes power.

So lets say everyone but the Tories wanted to gang up in a coalition in THIS parliament. They could call a confidence vote, and if every non-Tory MP voted against Cameron, the government would fall. At this point, the non-Tories could appoint their own government, which would last until the next election.

A dissolution of parliament means that a new general election is called. All MPs have to re-stand if they want to retain their seat, and the result of the election determines who governs. Currently, the PM has the choice over when to dissolve parliament (which makes the criticism of the 55% proposal look ridiculously stupid). It’s good that they’re giving parliament this power (and requiring a 66% majority) because it stops governments from calling an election when they think they’re most likely to win.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 19:26:40 +0000

I still don’t entirely get this. Actually I think I do, if someone can explain to me what a dissolution of parliament is (as opposed to a vote of no confidence) – but I least I know that I am confused!

I’m quite irritated with the massive number of Lib Dem ‘deserters’, saying that Clegg’s betrayed them. It’s not that I like having a Tory-led coalition, but at the end of the day, Clegg stuck to his PR principles in seeking to form a government first with the party who got the majority share of the vote. A LibLab minority governent would have been completely untenable, and a Tory minority government still wouldn’t have got anyone anywhere on electoral reform (and we’d have just had a thoroughly unsatisfactory repeat of the election x months later).

Cameron’s blatently getting Clegg to announce all of the bad news to the press, though, which also pisses me off, and I do worry that in the future the Liberals will receive a lot of flak for what will have actually been Tory-led policies.