A Grand Tour of the Political Parties

[Deniseam]

. Evan Davies showed the latest satirical Parisian cartoon on Newsnight so fleetingly it was impossible to properly see or read it. He was shaking with fear that he could already have been in the sight of a sniper’s bullet.

Yes, I watched Newsnight and it was strange how he only half showed it to the camera. The production team must have debated whether to have a close-up of the cartoon but decided against it....

[wheels]

Blimey BG, I can't spell it out much more clearly!  You can change the conditions whereby people are allowed to move to another EU country, without breaching the overriding principle of free movement.

But why would you want to. We are all European citizens we should be able to move anywhere within the continent. I don't understand this desire to restrict all our freedoms.

[Dave]

Angela Merkel has made it very clear, in the reports I have read, that free movement of people across the EU is, from her viewpoint, absolutely non-negotiable. So what's to negotiate?

Blimey BG, I can't spell it out much more clearly!  You can change the conditions whereby people are allowed to move to another EU country, without breaching the overriding principle of free movement.

[Bowden Guy]

Dave, winning a Nobel Prize is a seriously high bar for taking someone's view seriously.......!

[wheels]

Angela Merkel has made it very clear, in the reports I have read, that free movement of people across the EU is, from her viewpoint, absolutely non-negotiable. So what's to negotiate?

Nothing. Thankfully I suggest she represents the majority view across the continent

[Bowden Guy]

Angela Merkel has made it very clear, in the reports I have read, that free movement of people across the EU is, from her viewpoint, absolutely non-negotiable. So what's to negotiate?

[Dave]

As Wheels will, no doubt, tell you, Dave, the free movement of people is an absolute right under EU law.

I'm fully aware of that. The point I was trying to make, and my apologies for not explaining it clearly enough, is that we are not the only country where there are concerns about the level of internal migration within the EU - far from it.  Another is Germany of course.  If Cameron hadn't cut himself off from Angela Merkel and other EPP political leaders, I have little doubt that he would have found them much more ready to reach a compromise though private discussions, on ways in which internal migration can be controlled without breaching the overriding principle.  I'm thinking especially of approaches such as further restricting the rights of migrant workers to draw benefits.  There would be ways and means of achieving that without compromising the sacred principle of free movement of workers.

Camero is hopelessly undiplomatic.  The more he issues noisy ultimatums to other EU leaders, the less likely he is to achieve concessions. 

As for this: 

Krugman!! The darling of the Guardian reader. Krugman is an idealist full of theory that should never be applied to real life.

When Duke Fame wins a nobel prize for economics, the rest of us might take him as seriously as Paul Krugman, who already has one.   

[marplerambler]

"the good that men do is oft interred with their bones".

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to quote ‘The evil men do lives after them. The good that men do is oft interred with their bones.’ Your reference to the Mark Anthony speech seems to be particularly apt after listening to the Today Programme this morning and hearing Nick Clegg arguing that interception of mobile phone messages to and from those with proven terrorist links who do not seem to be have been active in terrorist activities in recent months is a step towards totalitarianism. Times change, letters are no longer sent to be steamed open (costs too much to send them!) or telephones tapped because messages between terrorists are now sent by mobiles with apps on the phones can ‘destroy’ the message sent within seconds. The power of the mobile phone to instigate anarchy from a section of society which is intellectually capable of little more than sending an email stating ’CU Piccadilly at 6. Rob every shop in M/cr’ was demonstrated on the day of the Manchester riots. Clegg’s statement that the consequence of increased surveillance in response to increased terrorist threats could be the revelation of an old lady’s shopping list to the local garden centre and therefore be an infringement of civil liberties is a total red-herring and pure nonsense.

The architects of the latest terrorist threat to our country are not the idiots who ransacked Manchester, they are extremely intelligent people trained in the art of war against defenceless civilians. They control zealots who wish to die what they believe to be a martyr’s death and kill as many people as possible as revenge for an irreverent cartoon. Interception, recording and keeping of mobile messages is a vital anti-terrorism measure: if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear! By labelling this as a ‘snoopers charter’ really makes you ask which planet Clegg is now living on and really makes you question if he has any role in a future government.

I am proud to be British because I can choose, reject or be indifferent to religious belief. I am proud to be British because I may see a political cartoon which highlights evil individuals within my own faith and look upon it and find it humorous, with sadness because there may be truth in the satire or with disdain and simply throw it into the bin. Most of all I respect that others may have different beliefs: good luck to them as long as they do not expect to impose their values upon the rest of British society. Evan Davies showed the latest satirical Parisian cartoon on Newsnight so fleetingly it was impossible to properly see or read it. He was shaking with fear that he could already have been in the sight of a sniper’s bullet.

Mark Anthony states that ‘The evil men do lives after them.’  Nick Clegg is striving to ensure that the evidence of the perpetration of the evil may no longer live in the form of recorded telephone calls from mobiles which hitherto would have been used to convict them. Is this bleeding Liberalism or a bleeding newspaper reporter, policeman or innocent bystander?

Are you voting LibDem at the next election?

[wheels]

As Wheels will, no doubt, tell you, Dave, the free movement of people is an absolute right under EU law. As a result, controlling who comes into our country is not compatible with continued membership of the EU (an organisation that is so corrupt and inefficient that its accounts have never been signed off). The Conservative Party is not prepared to acknowledge this fact to the electorate.

I will tell you that we are all Europeans first and formost and yes free movement of people must surley be a basic right. That seems perfectly reasonable.

[Bowden Guy]

As Wheels will, no doubt, tell you, Dave, the free movement of people is an absolute right under EU law. As a result, controlling who comes into our country is not compatible with continued membership of the EU (an organisation that is so corrupt and inefficient that its accounts have never been signed off). The Conservative Party is not prepared to acknowledge this fact to the electorate.

[Duke Fame]

Not at all.  His ten years as Chancellor was the longest period of continuous economic growth for the past 60 years.  What more do you want!

Anyone can create growth if they keep spending, it's a major problem is that income is not actually there and dries up quickly. In Keynesian economic, he was supposed to spend in the dry years and save in the rich years. He completely forgot about the saving part. He ran a deficit in 2005-7 which is utterly stupid and as I say, it meant he was unique in spending his way out of a boom.

Also not at all.  No less an authority than Paul Krugman, who knows more about economics than me or even, dare I say it, Duke, wrote in the New York Times of Brown's initiative in recapitalising the banks:  "Mr Brown and Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer have defined the character of the worldwide rescue effort, with other wealthy nations playing catch-up." He also wrote "Luckily for the world economy,... Gordon Brown and his officials are making sense,... And they may have shown us the way through this crisis."

Krugman!! The darling of the Guardian reader. Krugman is an idealist full of theory that should never be applied to real life.

Alistair Darling is actually OK, his book showed how frustrated he was with Brown. Interesting that the conservatives were very happy for him to do the Scottish job rather than be across from Osborne.

[Dave]

The Coalition has signally failed to tackle our national debt (which has risen massively since 2010, with only a one-third reduction in the deficit) and has completely lost control of our borders, completing the job started by Tony Blair in the 1990s.

Agreed.  To be fair to the government (why not, just for once!), the first of those was never on the cards so quickly, and unlike deficit elimination, which Osborne promised and failed to achieve within the 2010-15 parliament, it was never promised.

The second of them is a genuine failure, however, and it's something which in due course I think history will hold against Cameron.  He has through his own naivety and incompetence, and weakness in the face of his eurosceptic backbenchers, found himself in a hole and then kept digging!

It goes back even before Cameron was PM.  Back in the late noughties, after he became Tory leader, Cameron aligned the Tory MEPs not with the European People's Party (EPP), the main centre-right bloc of MEPs and the biggest and most powerful group within the European Parliament, but with a smaller group further to the right, called the ECR.  That was a huge tactical error.  Cameron should all along have been at the top table of centre-right European leaders, negotiating behind closed doors with Merkel and (at the time) Sarkozy.  Instead he was bullied by his backbenchers into exiling himself (and us) to a relatvely insignificant fringe group.

If he had not shot himself in the foot by doing this, I think the more recent history of our discussions with other EU leaders about control of our borders could have been very different.

As I've suggested before in this thread, in the end politicians are judged at least as much on their competence as on their policies.  Sadly, this was one area where Cameron has been woefully incompetent. 

[wheels]

Very simple Dave. The Coalition has signally failed to tackle our national debt (which has risen massively since 2010, with only a one-third reduction in the deficit) and has completely lost control of our borders, completing the job started by Tony Blair in the 1990s.

Ah so now were against the free movement of people are we

[Bowden Guy]

Very simple Dave. The Coalition has signally failed to tackle our national debt (which has risen massively since 2010, with only a one-third reduction in the deficit) and has completely lost control of our borders, completing the job started by Tony Blair in the 1990s.

[wheels]

Your wrong Dave Labour introduced the idea of the bedroom tax for the private rented sector initially, using the benefit system to make people leave there homes buy not paying the landlord the rent.

This was then picked up by the Tories who extened  it to public sector housing