UK Election: ILXit Poll

Streatham: will be voting as previously advised.

Hornsey and Wood Green

It's been a pretty safe Lib Dem seat the last few times.

wow, H&WG is #77 on the lib demz' hit list.

In the end it came down to a conversation I had the other night. Are you voting for the party or the constiuency MP. I believe that it should be the latter, but know it was actually the former.

So sorry Jezza, the X marked the Lib Dem box.
Islingtong Norf.

REVOLUTION NOW BAYBEEE!

Ahem.

close call and I could have gone green but sarwar will win, either/any way, it seems.

That's something I might need to check...

: (

Although I could have voted for a Megatripolis supported candidate 'Rainbow' George Weiss.

PS: When I lived in London (many years ago, in Streatham...what a great place?), Crouch End and Muswell Hill were already trendy.

Although I've voted for smaller parties before, I need to make sure the Tories don't get the swing, while the New Labour incumbent still goes loses.

xpost to dave--i just don't think you can describe what we have as democracy.

Mike, yes, Alan Simpson is probably the only reason why I would have voted Labour again, and I regularly curse the fact that he's not my constituency... BUT, why Lib Dems otherwise? I mean, one of the things I like about Simpson is his Old Left-ness, and I know that the Lib Dems are GREAT for civil liberties etc etc, but aren't they totally anti-Trade Union and pro-big business? How does skipping from an Old Labourite to a totally capitalist party work?

xposts

a vote to lib dem at islington south and finsbury. they were 7000 behind last time round, it'll be closer this time, will beat the tories at least.

chris smith was a decent MP but now he's retired and replaced by a lady who sent her kids to go to school in potters bar. i can't blame her really but still.

i am one of these, and actually i would like to change my vote now, you have made me rethink all this. voting for the libdemz was a bit silly given that i don't agree with many of their policies. i still want labour to get fucked of course, but the actual idea of a lib dem government appeals not much more.

Hurrah. S'not just me then. The Lib-Dems hate Trade Unions. Always have. I couldn't vote for a party that sees no role for organised employee representation and actively thinks it 'perverts' the marketplace. That's not, last time I checked, a terribly left-leaning policy.

or not, if they don't.

Hi Ken!!! (sorry, never done a shout-out hello to people before, wanted to try it... very interesting.)

xposts again, yes please GF, I would like to see it...

KENNEDY CALLS FOR DIALOGUE WITH TRADES UNIONS
http://www.libdems.org.uk/story.html?id=3373

= participation and discussion.

It's the tories who are Anti Trade Union, they refused to speak to them during the Thatcher-Major Govt years.

A vote for Diane Abbott for being anti-war and for being involved in pushing through the hunting ban bill. Wine splattered voting card.

They're not going to win Putney (not a chance), and there is a small but real chance the Labour MP could be unseated by the spunky, active and very personable Tory candidate. But fuck it - I am way over on the Lib Dem axis and I desperately want a genuine alternative to the big two.

but i kind of don't want an actual lib dem government because i always have mental pictures of charles kennedy shitting himself at the white house or some summit meeting and then the world would laugh at him. that's a cruel thing to make happen to somebody.

and N_RQ, yes, i don't have a lot of time for the NS as a whole, but it does occasionally hit the nail on the head.

For middle-class welfare, vote Lib Dem
Leader
Monday 18th April 2005

The horrible truth is that many thousands, perhaps millions, of people who have voted Labour all their lives will find it hard to support the party on 5 May. They may prefer a Labour government to a Tory one; but they may think it more important to cast their vote for a candidate who shares their views about the horror of launching an unprovoked war that led to tens of thousands of deaths. And the obvious beneficiaries of such votes are the Liberal Democrats - the only major UK party to oppose the war.

For many, that will be enough. A decision to go to war is the most important that any government can take - and Tony Blair's government got it wrong. All those responsible are still in office, and their responsibility includes a wilful misreading of intelligence material, if not downright lying, about Saddam Hussein's weapons. Moreover, the same ministers' Prevention of Terrorism Bill (also opposed by the Lib Dems) suggests their mindset is unchanged. Just as they insisted that the Iraqi threat justified the sacrifice of foreign children's lives, so they now insist that wider threats justify the sacrifice of British civil liberties. These ministers ask for a fresh mandate. They should not get it, many will say. End of story.

But some will want to look at the picture more broadly. What exactly are people voting for if they vote Lib Dem? A Lib Dem vote, after all, is no longer just a protest vote. True, the party is hardly likely to form a government. But, if the result is as close as some commentators predict, it has every chance of playing a crucial role in the next parliament, either as part of a coalition or as the backer of a government that has a small majority or none at all. This is a very different party from its Liberal predecessor that sustained Labour in the late 1970s. Then there were only 14 Liberal MPs; now there are 54. How would they use genuine influence and power?

The answer is not at all comforting. What the Lib Dems propose is the restoration of the middle-class welfare state. First, they pledge to abolish university tuition fees - not just the top-up fees introduced in the 2001-2005 parliament, but also the basic fees introduced in the previous one. As university students are still overwhelmingly middle class - and those from very low-income homes are largely exempt from the fees - the effect is to use working-class taxes to subsidise the children of the better-off. Even more outrageously, the Lib Dems would abolish Labour's Child Trust Fund, which builds up from birth a capital sum that becomes available to every 18-year-old. As free tuition amounts to a handout to exactly the same age group, the Lib Dems propose, in effect, to offer a bounty to children from mostly affluent homes, but not to those from poorer families. They say a 50 per cent tax on incomes above £100,000 a year would pay for it. But why should such a tax be spent on a privileged minority, and not on pre-school education for all children in the years when many from poor homes fall so far behind that they can never recover? All arguments about taxation boil down to questions of who pays and who gains. In this instance, the gainers will be students from moneyed homes who will mostly go on to make more money, so that they can pay for a privileged education for their own children, and so on, ad infinitum.

Second, Charles Kennedy's party proposes free personal care for the elderly, regardless of their means. In other words, middle-class people, owning houses worth anything up to £1m, would no longer need to sell up to cover the costs of old age. Their children, having had their tuition fees paid, could look forward to a substantial inheritance that had not been frittered away on care bills.

Third, the Lib Dems propose a "citizen's pension" for everyone of 75 and over. It would be £100 a month more than the current basic pension (£140 for a couple) and rise in line with national average earnings, not, as at present, in line with inflation. Again, the overwhelming benefit would be to the middle classes, who live longer than the working classes (a male life expectancy of 78 years against 71) and who have to fall back on their own savings and private pensions, because they do not usually qualify for pension credits.

Fourth, the Lib Dems would abolish council tax and replace it with a local income tax. This sounds redistributive because, as the party rightly points out, poor householders pay a higher proportion of their incomes in council tax than the better-off ones. Yet it is not redistributive at all. Council tax needs reform, not abolition. It is the only significant British tax on property, and inequality in asset wealth is far greater (and far more unfair) than inequality of income. The rich easily dodge income taxes, because they can move their money offshore and hide it in various other ways. That is why the working poor always end up paying such a high proportion of income tax revenues. Property, however, can't be moved or hidden. A tax on it may be tough on that familiar figure of self-pitying Conservatism, the widow living alone in a large family house, and perhaps allowances can be made for her. But is it too hard-hearted to point out that she could sell the house, make a big, untaxed capital gain and move to a granny flat?

All these policies strike a chord with those sections of the chattering class that most strongly opposed the Iraq war. Indeed, some of the policies, notably tuition fees, are as much a source of grievance among middle-class Labour folk as the war itself. The Lib Dems thus have the advantage of appealing not only to hearts but to wallets, too. But this is not socialism, and it is the reverse of redistribution from rich to poor; it is a proposal for a gigantic welfare system for people who don't need it. True social democrats should not support it.

(Doubt the LDs are much better though. Their sneaky photocopied 'handwritten' letter through the post is bound to con some people.)

yers. it's 'wilby' only ad infinitum because no-one is actually proposing changing anything, lib dem or labour. the NS's worldview somehow maintains the class structure beyond the horizon of socialist victory...

I am still feeling bad about not voting for Jezza, but he did vote with teh government on tuition fees (the reason I stopped being a MEMBER of the Labour party).

Would not have been any compunction if I had voted with the IlXors over the road (literally, I live on the boundary) in Wood Green and Hornsey. Roche is Rubbidge. Lib Dem all the way over there.

x-post: There is an awful lot of bollocks about class in that NS article (esp para 4 which complete misses the point of people paying CT on the value of their house WHETHER THEY OWN IT OR NOT) which does the now foolish thing of conflating class directly with earning potential which is even less true now than it was in the eighties where the "working classes" voted for Thatcher in droves.

Constituency:...errrr, West Berkeley!

that almost put me off voting for them.

this is the weirdest argument. it rests on the fact that working-class people live shorter lives. but it doesn't propose changing this situation... basically the NS wants the class system to be maintained by the state? i don't get it.

They say a 50 per cent tax on incomes above £100,000 a year would pay for it. But why should such a tax be spent on a privileged minority?

You can argue one of these things but not both, it seems to me.

A) the country is a shithole with no jobs
B) the country is a shithole with no jobs
C) see above

After University: graduates work 40 + years and pay enough taxes to repay the cost of their education. So don't play the class card of the working class funding others to get an education.

As for the Child Trust Fund, scheme what a waste of resources ! instead invest the money in education 4-18 - to give all kids a better start in life, a decent education !

Those that go into Higher education will have to use that money to pay back the government re student loans and tuition fees.

Those that don't go on to Higher Education will just have a mad spending spree at 18 - they will not save this money.

Redistrubution of Wealth
I would go even further than Liberal Democrats, stick an extra penny or two on tax, between incomes on £50, 00 - 100, 000. Use this money to fund state pension increases, increase money into the NHS, Education, Police etc.

Spoken like a true Conservative...

Sarwar, Labour, Glasgow Central.

http://www.conservatives.com/UploadedFiles/GRAPHIC/PORTRAIT/portrait-brianbinley-2.jpg

is gonna run us back into the ground.

Premise number one: Graduates earn on average £10,000 a year more than non grads*
Premise number two: We can expand the HE system and produce more grduates without a reduction in quality of said graduates
Conclusion: Everyone will be richer and we can get more taxable income off of them.

Missing premise: Number of graduate jobs.

*This figue made up here, but actual figure was used in construction of thsi argument.

They turned "not without a second resolution" into "we are the party that opposed the war" as soon as they could see it was a vote-winner. I am just plain opposed to the Iraq war, whatever the UN said about it.

They are quite happy to go along with PFIs and PPPs, which I am very against.

I think they'd be wrong to scrap tuition fees. Universities are desperately underfunded, and they can't be properly funded through general taxation if 50% of us are going to go. The Lib Dems are claiming to be able to fund investment in universtities through raising income tax on the top 1% of earners. They are also claiming to be able to fund a lot of things through doing this.

Charles Kennedy said on Question Time that he would impose a graduate tax of £2,000, which would go into a fund to help students from low-income families to go to university. Now, I'm all for encouraging less well-off students to go to university, but what's the point if when they get there they find the universities in the state they're in now, or worse? If I'm going to pay a graduate tax, I want it to go directly towards improving university standards.

It is the first one, above all.

-- Cathy (cathyleec...), May 5th, 2005.

Again - the solution to the university problem is simply to have less going to university and sink funds into a select few unis as how it used to work. Hate to break it to you but the reason we are at the stage we are now is because unemployment was at a record high under Thatcher. She felt that the way to solve this was to plough more people into further education. The only problem was this:

*Traditionally you go on to further education if you are academically gifted. Not a great deal of people are - so universities fulfilled the demand - there were not a huge amount of them and getting a degree really meant something once.

So Thatcher turned a lot of former polytechnics into universities. These polys, which traditionally catered to thousands of people, now needed to cater to thousands of degree applicants. As a result entrance standards for these so-called universities fell and any half wit could get in and get a three year degree.

With more people with degrees, and many dumb fucks with degrees too, the meaning of a degree plummeted. Blair has continued this. Only now people are up to their eyeballs in debt for a worthless piece of paper that will do nobody any good in the long run.

We need fewer unis - and the ones we do have should be well funded and cater to the country's future academics. If you're not bright enough to get into a proper university then you shouldn't be allowed to go and this is the whole reason behind top up fees:

"Oh now employers are complaining that they don't know one degree from one uni from the next. So we'll need to bring in top up fees for the better ones".

A fucking farce. This country will never recover from what Blair has done to undermine the value of a proper university education.

As we all know, the election was called on April 5.

Unfortunately, the deadline for overseas voter registration was... all together now, March 11.

Hooray.

Small point that, but I can't say I agree with the thrust of the argument anyway. Universities were in a similar state prior to the change anyway; in that it mattered which university you got your degree from, same as it does now.

Finsbury and Islington South people - I was pleasantly surprised to see that Emily Thornberry, who ran up against bumbling Tory wacko Julian Brazier in Canterbury four years ago, was the Labour candidate there. She drove me into the middle of the country to interview (funnily enough) Chris Smith where we drank beer and ate black pudding sandwiches. I liked her and would have voted for her if I had the chance (far more than all my completely anonymous candidates including the Labour MP who I have never seen say or do anything ever). The party must rate her quite highly to give her that seat.

Missing premise: Number of graduate jobs.

Missing premise B: Graduates earn more on average because they are graduates.

I am dangerously close to agreeing with Political Pete on this one - I don't see that there's anything wrong with a large proportion of over-18s in education, but I do think that changing the status of the polytechnics was a mistake.

(I don't like Fife much either)

Why do you think changing the status was a mistake? It's really just a name. The only 'major' change I can see is that now, in Glasgow, people don't refer to Strathclyde as 'the poly', because the poly's now not a poly. I guess my point was that in the past, if you had a degree from Oxford, then that was not treated by employers in the same way as a degree from . I can't speak for employers, but surely this is much the same now. I mean, if you have a degree from Napier University, everyone certainly in the area knows that this is basically Napier College. Plus the papers publish a league table of the best universities every year.

And Fife is a run down skank hole.

I'm just an elitist, I guess. If the degrees from Napier really aren't as good as the degrees from Edinburgh or H-W, then why are they still degrees? It's not as if an A-level from Exam Board A is different to an A-level from Exam Board B.

I only did one A-level, but my understanding was that some were considerably harder than others... O&C for example? At least that's the way I understood it at the time.

green, hackney sarf and shoreditch. hovered for ages in the booth over green/lib dem.

it's a weird one: solid labour stronghold - in 2001 labour had 64% with lib dems and tories on 13 or 14% each and greens/other minorities 7ish i think - but rebellious old-labour backbencher brian sedgething has been mp for this area for like evah, and when he retired the other week he defected to lib dems. i haven't lived here long enough (only been here since september) to know if ppl here just voted for him cos they knew and trusted him or cos they're just lifelong labour voters or what. his replacement candidate is labour lapdog m3g h1ll13r. will ppl here take brian s's hint and go lib dem or do what they've always done cos that's what they always do? hmmmff. in the end, last time i couldn't vote for what i actually thought (was in shepherds bush and got scared into voting nu labour) so this time i did.

I have complex feelings about Fife, but a thread about the general election is perhaps not the best location to air them.

-- N_RQ (bl0cke...), May 5th, 2005 2:39 PM. (later)

Exactly the same for me. Lib Dem, Hornsey & Wood Green. I voted Labour in 92, 97 and 01.

The new bug got in in Tooting but he's an anti-war Muslim so I hope he'll do a bang-up job of representing the area. I do wonder whether Poles were mentioned on the doorstep.

I walked into the polling booth at 9p.m. yesterday with no more idea of who I was going to vote for than I've had for the past year or so. Our Local MP was (hopefully still is) Lynne Jones, who has stuck to her principles to the degree that the local party tried to de-select her not all that long ago. On the one hand, I felt she deserved my support. On the other hand, there hadn't been anything through the door from her that deviated from the party line. Although Tony Blair wasn't mentioned on any of her propaganda, it still felt like voting for the ID Card and Top-Up Fees party.

So, I didn't vote for her. I regretted it almost immediately, and if I could have snatched my paper back out of the ballot box and drawn a cross next to Lynne Jones's name I would have done. Unfortunately, they don't seem to like that sort of behaviour at the polling station.

I found/find myself in the strange position of hoping the person I voted for hadn't got in after all.

The BBC's results were much better last night. ITV's "faster" service seemed to consist of guessing the results from constituencies that hadn't declared yet. Cheating, in other words..

Oh yes, let's slag off Media Studies, because its an easy target, isn't it?

As one of those "prats" who did Media Studies (with English, fwiw) at a POLYVERSITY (OH THE HORROR!) I think I have some insight to offer into the merits of such courses. It wasn't the best course in the world, by any means, but it changed the way I thought, it broadened my horizons and it exposed me to a huge number of viewpoints that I wouldn't otherwise have encountered.

Its easy to knock Media Studies - it can be made, by those of a reactionary standpoint, to seem trivial and a Mickey Mouse course. The reality is that everything we hear, read, see, encounter has, at some point, been shaped by media. Media keep our society going. Knowing how they operate, and how they can be (and are) used to make us think in certain ways is vital to anyone who wants to keep some semblance of a less spoon-fed perspective (although I'd be surprised if any of us are entirely free from media influences).
More people should study this subject, not less. If not at degree level, then at GCSE level. This is one of the most important areas of study for the 21st Century, and as our lives become more fragmented the importance of looking into the nature of this fragmentation cannot be overstated.

Okay, it isn't strictly vocational. I agree that not everyone is suited to an academic degree. but I find the New Labour ethos that the only worthwhile education is that that gets you a job or a piece of paper to be reprehensible. Education shouldn't be measured in such terms. Its something much more fundamental than that. Otherwise let's just call it "vocational training" and dispense with any pretense that it could be otherwise.

And yes, I'm aware of the irony of talking about the value of an English Degree from a NEW UNIVERSITY and then producing a sentence like that one. They didn't teach us how to rant coherently. Perhaps they do at the proper universities.

i helped gain a 0.5% swing from the tories!