Perhaps Labour HQ will finally get the message that their 'heartlands' want an actual Labour government, not the lame excuse that is New Labour (fail) .

 

Hell, even we (the single biggest donor of the Labour Party) are finally speaking out against New Lab/Brown/et all.

Unfortunately it's not that far off how bad they did last local elections. They never do well in local elections (lately, past decade or so) but always bounce right back for general elections. From like ~20% up to ~30+%.

Annoying but there it is.

Trouble is those heartlands aren't enough to get them elected and they have to appeal the the middle classes. The middle classes choose our government which is like 99% of what makes me (fail) at democracy.

Also, I'm pleased to note that an absolute majority of 65% voted for not voting.

This is true.

 

:(

Are you as dismayed as most right-thinking people that we appear to have selected a joke candidate for mayor of the capital city? LOL! Sigh :(

Toryboy

They seemed to be concentrating a lot on Bury on Newsnight, it went blue. I'm not happy :(

Are you suggesting that Ken wasn't a (tragically unfunny) joke?

An awful lot less of one than Boris's campaign appears to be. Congestion charge! Silly hair! Routemaster buses! LOL stupid comment! Start a Facebook group in support! FFS.

Still, so long as people can drive their colossal SUVs through Chelsea and then get on an old fashioned bus, that's ok.

In all seriousness, Boris does actually have some very sensible transport policies:



*My personal favourite.

I'll be impressed if he gets Oyster pay as you go at the overground stations, isn't that a problem of all the other train operators needing to be cut in on it, and therefore more or less unworkable for now? It'd help me out a bit if it got sorted. Apart from that, hrrm. A massive new expensive bus project for no particularly good reason - I have no love for the bendy ones but the stats suggest they're not nearly as bad as made out from what I read, even the cyclist association said they weren't any more dangerous than regular ones. And another empty promise to do aircon on the tube? When I see it.

I like the free busses :(

I like they way he's magically finding money to pay for all these projects and police officers without saying how he's going to fund it...

That would be from sales of the oysters being served at all stations.

What do you mean? He always gives clear, concise and transparent information regarding the costs of his policies.

I think most of the money is going to come from the cessation of pointless, expensive, self-aggrandising advertising.

wow! That I will have to see to believe!

I agree. They don't need to advertise London int north :@

It strikes me that what will happen is probably very similar to what has happened re: the Liberals and Conservatives here in Canada. It's a somewhat different system, but the general situation seems a lot like a re-run of what we saw here in 2006. The party in power had been there some while and public opinion of them had gradually been going downhill, so when general election time came around the Liberals got kicked out and the Conservatives formed a minority government. Despite it being a minority they've successfully (for them) metagamed their way through the last two years to hang on to power despite a slew of decisions which most Canadians I've talked to disagree with.

Meanwhile the Liberal party were unable to elect themselves a charismatic enough leader to seriously fight back and so we're stuck with a government definitely worse than the previous one, but with no serious option to get them out any time soon.

Of course one could say that the British situation now is also analogous to the situation with Major in the early 90s.

Meh, I don't like Cameron (which is not to say I particularly like Brown either) and I think when he (I think virtually inevitably) takes office at the next election a lot of people who currently think they like him will be disappointed that he's no better and not even significantly different from either Blair or Brown - all the people who blame the Labour government for Britain's woes will just carry on blaming the government, it'll just be a Conservative one.

However, more... concerning (?) is Boris. The man is infamous not for being the butt of jokes, but simply for being a joke. The reason they loved having him on HIGNFY was that you could literally guarantee he would do or say something that would have damaged the reputation of the person performing the action, except that it's not as if he really had a reputation that could be hurt by that kind of thing in the first place.

Then again, what do I know - I've never lived in London and I don't even live in the UK any more. Still, I do try to pay attention to what's going on in limey-land.