If you don't like it, go and live here:

Saudi Arabia - take home 96.86% (so you take home $387,400 out of the $400,000 salary)

Q: Why is the vermin Nuttall getting a one-one with Dimbleby but the Greens ain't - in light of UKIP having 1 local councillor and the Greens having loads and an MP?

I'm assuming it's based on share of the vote at the last GE. Ukip got more than 3 times as many votes as the Greens. Wouldn't be surprised if they get less than them at this election though.

The BBC is showing its lefty bias by allowing Nuttall to speak.

Fight the good fight brother, Money can not buy true happiness only temporary.

seems appropriate

^ genius.

So much for there being a big swing towards the Tories, my local idiot in a blue rosette is the same 1/100 to retain as he was last time

I dont knew if I go that far. A free firkin or real ale to all on their birthday seems like a good idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RShIimANB-g

Theresa May loses the ability to speak when talking to real human beings. Media says nothing. Followed by nothing but propaganda about Jeremy Corbyn's 'fuzzy' position on Brexit which is in fact clear as day. All funded from your license fee.

So today is potentially the day 20 odd conservative MPs get kicked out due to campaign finance irregularities.

I'm assuming Teresa May didn't want to call a snap general election and was forced to because of, what must have been a high % chance, that they would lose their parliamentary majority as a result of the investigation.

I think it will be today as they have till 4pm on Thursday to finalise the list of standing MPs - would be funny if they announced it 2 weeks before the election a la Comey tho.

Dropped all charges. Boooooo

The public understand that corruption happens and that most politicians get way with breaking the rules in a way that they would never be allowed to themselves in their work. This has been going on for a long time, but has probably got worse as the years have passed.

Little wonder that elections turnouts are low and some of those on the fringes are turning towards non-democratic parties when the main parties behave like this.

Green Party in Scotland have been taking pelters for being SNP lapdogs for a while now but they're taking things to a whole new level in this election. There's been some doubt about the number of candidates they'd stand as they don't want to split the SNP vote in anyway and it turns out they're going to have a grand total of......3 candidates. Less than Ukip. In 2015 they fielded 32 candidates.

Patrick Harvie even had the cheek to demand that he be included in the upcoming Leaders debate, and got support from Sturgeon funnily enough.

Sarah Champion doing a good job against a fat murdoch troll

Think I finally worked out who to vote for. Then I realised I don't live in south west Surrey and it's not 1984, back to the drawing board

Funny how this bash Labour and Corbyn thread has gone all quiet.
Excellent manifesto and some good interviews by Corbyn.
Meanwhile Maybot and Mr Maybot awkwardly do The One Show.

Not worth bashing anymore, surely everyone accepts its going to be a Tory landslide, Im resigned to it.

I have been slightly irked by the Corbyn love in recently.

Yes the choir is loving it, meanwhile non church goers are all queuing up to vote Tory.

I think this encapsulate's Labour's problem - they have been unable to put popular policies into a credible programme or sell JC as a credible leader. I do actually agree he's doing better but he was starting from a very low base.

"Yesterday I wrote about how manifesto policies don’t really have much effect on voting intentions. Today’s ComRes poll for the Daily Mirror neatly illustrates it.
The poll asked about the individual policies in Labour’s leaked manifesto and found strong support for almost all of them. Banning zero hours contracts, renationalising railways, building more council homes, keeping the pension age at 66, increasing tax on those earning over £80,000, bringing back train conductors were all backed by a majority of respondents (and most of the other policies they asked about received more support than opposition).
After all those questions on Labour’s policies ComRes went onto ask which party people thought had more realistic and well-thought through policies. After having approved of nearly all of Labour’s policies, respondents went onto say that the Tories had the more realistic and thought through, by 51% to Labour’s 31%. Asked if they would be more or less likely to vote Labour having heard about all these new policies 34% said more likely, 47% said less likely. Asked who was running the better election campaign, 42% said the Conservatives compared to 20% for Labour.
One can perhaps rationalise this as people liking Labour’s policies but not thinking they are realistic or thought-through (supporting something is, after all, not necessarily the same as thinking it’s realistic), but it does underline that what makes a party attractive or not to voters is about an awful lot more than a shopping list of policies that meet with public approval.
ComRes also asked the “like the party/like the leader” question (getting people to say if they like both the party and its leader, just one or the other, or neither). While the results don’t come as a great surprise, it nicely illustrates exactly why the Conservative campaign is focusing on their leader rather than their party and the Labour campaign really isn’t: 49% of people said they liked Theresa May, 11 points ahead of the Conservative party on 38%. In contrast only 27% of people said they liked Jeremy Corbyn compared to 46% who like Labour, a nineteen point deficit compared to his party."
Anthony Wells - http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/ May 12 post -

What we are seeing is, obviously, an incredibly controlled Tory campaign. And for good reason, Theresa May is a terrible leader and the Tories know this which is why they are at pains to praise her and then walk off before being probed any further. The public at large are being spun just like they were with New Labour, seemingly without their knowledge. The media bias against Labour continues and intensifies, which is to be expected given the kinds of re-distributionist policies being tabled.

The above report is interesting, people support progressive ideas but don't think they're workable or realistic, or don't trust Labour can deliver, which is consistent with the media campaign against them.

People support progressive ideas, but support lower taxes slightly more.

The FT costed Labour's manifesto at £60bn a year in spending, and £25bn in tax rises. The main chunk of this £25bn to be funded by corporation tax, but when companies find a way of avoiding this rises, who will then foot the bill? The rich? and how about when they manage to avoid the increase??

I think there is some media bias against Labour - particularly in the press - but i think that it's a) nowhere near as much as you are suggesting and b) no where near as powerful. People are not that gullible.

The problem that Labour has is that it has not won the argument about austerity. People don't think we can afford Labour's programme, it will be interesting to see the costings when the manifesto is published - but in any case it's too late. A coherent economic case has not been made.

But what annoys me is that under Corbyn / McDonnell seem to have stopped trying- they just seem to assume that they can deny the "need" for austerity without arguing why. They may be right - but they haven't made the case. People won't suddenly start agreeing with them without good reason.

8/10 people don't know what the word austerity means (heard Owen Jones say this, don't know how true but seems likely) so yes there is a massive argument to be won and it needs to be phrased correctly for people to understand. Re-nationalising rail is great, but how many people really have a clue what this means. So yes it's not all media, but, let's be honest whatever they say they will get crucified. Taking back rail will cost the owners billions, of course they will use their media networks to fight these ideas, however well phrased. It's incredibly difficult to build an alternative narrative, in a split party, with a hostile media. Labour is actually doing ok all things considered.

People understand the crux of the austerity argument -" we're in debt so we need to cut spending." Under Brown and Miliband there was some kind of counter-argument - "we need to control debt - but we mustn't cut too much as it will cause / deepen the recession" They couldn't sell it but it had some kind of a chance -
I don't know what the current Labour position is - I think McDonnell has said some stuff about infrastructure spending but nothing resembling a coherent case. They're just putting together a wish list that has zero credibility as a programme for government- don't kid yourself -they're doing terribly.

And the sad thing about the poll I quoted is that despite the current shambles people still say they like Labour more than the Tories - Labour could have been winning this election.

The economy is seen as a sticky wicket for Labour, and they have been far to complicit in letting that happen.

The national debt has risen by over 555BN since 2010, it has risen over 50%.

Interest payments are about 5% of GDP.

The thing is that is not even bad though really.

What is far worse for the UK economy is the really weak aggregate demand and historically low growth, both things helped by the government increasing borrowing.

Austerity does a terrible job of solving a problem that is not even that bad.