Indeed. Or perhaps the book thread under 'fiction'.

Odd how he knew about this epic and long-running conspiracy from the beginning yet failed to mention it at any point.

If nothing else, he made me chuckle on a Monday morning. No mean feat.

There isn't a "conspiracy theory" thread.

In any case, browsing the entirity of this thread suggests people have no issues offering their own "conspiratorial" rationalisations. Perhaps you should take this issue up with them?

The latest figures from the OBR show that:
Public sector net borrowing in 2014-15 was £87.3bn (£3bn less than expected in April's budget)
In five years the deficit has come down from £153.5bn that the coalition inherited in 2009-10. This is a drop of 43% or relative to GDP it has fallen from 10.2% to 4.8% by more than half.

These latest figures show the Public sector net debt at the end of March (end of 2014-15 year) was £1,484bn (80% of GDP) up from £956bn at the end of 2009-10. This is a rise of 55% not 100% as you remarked with your repeated "DOUBLED" shout.

If you would like an example of the "doubling" of debt you need look no further than the five years between 2004-5 and 2009-10 when the debt increased from £448bn to £956bn. In fact this was more than "doubling" it was an increase of 113%.

We also now know that "No More Boom and Bust" Brown's supposedly fiscally responsible government was running a structural (or underlying) overall budget deficit of around 5% of GDP in 2007 - before the world economic crash!

So to call call others "thick, economically illiterate" is a tad more than the pan calling the kettle black!

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to change your comic book name from General Zod to the Numskulls - now that would be a 'Beezer"

My understanding is that it is not these rights that will be repealed but rather the Act which means the judgement of the highest court in our land can be overturned by an EU court based on by broad stroke so called human rights. To suggest our country will not honour real human rights is a nonsense. We have a proud and well earned history of justice and the human rights in our country are the envy of the world.

Depends which of the various versions of PR you choose. However one of the biggest arguments against PR is that smaller parties gain too much power. It may seem fairer but are you happy with Ukip having 82 seats? or the economically irresponsible Greens having 24 seats. In any case the 2 right of parties votes would total 324 and the 4 left of votes would total 305 so the majority is still 19 - so how would that make a difference?

Also PR would mean manifestos are totally worthless as coalitions have to compromise on their promises and the LibDem vote shows how well the voters like that idea.

Whilst the UK is not as bad as a lot of places I would suggest that it has and does breach several Articles. By the way, the right to a fair trial should be extended to include the people's right that certain people should not be able to avoid fair trial by virtue of their status within the establishment.

You wish!

Cameron will enjoy a honeymoon period because the Tories like winners. During this period they will put through all the contentious stuff and continue with their economic plan to reduce the deficit. Cameron and Osborne will have much greater authority to win some real reforms of the EU and as there will now be a referendum the back-benchers will be free to campaign as they wish so no need for infighting. Rumour has it that the PM may bring forward the date of the referendum which will please the 1922 committee.

I think he will try and implement all his manifesto commitments. If some gets voted out not his fault.

With regard to the Labour - they were routed by a party further to the left in Scotland and in England/Wales well beaten (by 99 seats) by a party to their right. The voters rejected their smug leaders and regarded their policies as too left wing, too anti business, too anti wealth creation, too metropolitan and economically too risky. If Labour do not except this result and move back to the they risk Ukip routing them in their remaining strongholds in the North and Midlands next time.

I never said it was perfect however I believe it right that we should bring back to our country the final say regarding the law.

So you do not seem to believe in democracy then? Can you produce proof your allegation of "election- rigging" Can you provide some proof of the "truckloads of cash" to spend?

I did not vote for Ukip but I know they have had good results in the Local elections for some time now and more than a decade ago they did well in the Euro elections and last year they became the largest party in the EU parliament. So like them or loath them to suggest they have not earned a platform is undemocratic. Will you be suggesting that at the next election Labour gets 1/59 share of the media coverage? I wonder!

No. Please spare us more of your "we was robbed" fiction. The public voted fair and square having listened to and rejected all the Labour scare stories about the NHS, zero hour contracts, the rich not paying taxes, food banks etc etc. The sooner you accept the result and move on the less angry you will be.

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It would also impact on the quality of our MP's in my opinion, by letting in the lower echelons of the minor parties.

Would our Parliament be improved by having the 82nd best UKIP candidate in it, or the 24th best Green party candidate (given that the leader could barely string 2 sentences together)? How rigorous are the selection policies of the minor parties? How does the 82nd best UKIP candidate compare in experience, education and intellect to the 243rd best Conservative candidate?

I suspect there are a few of their own MP's that the SNP would rather not have in Parliament now, and would have had a more rigorous selection process if they knew they would win 56 seats.

At least with the current system you know exactly which candidate you are casting your vote for.

Who's "we"?

Not really. It was a disaster when it was first implemented in Greece (at the business end of the phalanx) - bringing down the entire Athenian empire within years. The Greeks very quickly discovered that he who controls the flow of information controls the democracy and the entire system was wide open to be "gamed" by the likes of Alcibiades and other such demagogues.

Plato nary had a good word to say about it. Alexander The Great paid little more than lip service. The Romans thought it was quaint etc. etc.

The notion that democracy is self-evidently the finest political system in the world is a relatively new idea. In truth it was the Spartan system which right up until the first World War was universally admired.

Would that we have the original Greek interpretation of representative democracy anyhow - where politicians are selected purely on the strength of their abilities, must balance the books at the end of each year, are forced to account for the actions under direct inquiry from the citizenry, fight at or near the front of the phalanx during war and face the threat of ostracism (or worse) in the event of incompetence.

Politicians these days have it easy.

What it will mean is that instead of our Supreme Court making decisions, based on ECHR agreements. For as long as we remain a member of the EU, then any UK subject will still have the right to appeal to the European Court of Justice. Repealing the Human Rights Act will just help serve the lawyers.

Unless of course, this bunch of misfits really are intent on leaving the EU

This seems to sum things up nicely: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -tree.html

This seems to sum things up nicely: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -tree.html

Quote ="Dally"This seems to sum things up nicely: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -tree.html'" Only if you happen to be a rabid neo-liberal

Quote ="Dally"This seems to sum things up nicely: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -tree.html'" Only if you happen to be a rabid neo-liberal

The HRA was brought in to do exactly the opposite. Too many cases were being taken to the ECHR to overturn a British decision (and mostly under the 1990s Conservative government...), so the principles Cod'ead listed were brought fully into British law in 1998 to enable British courts to consider them and make decisions. Hopefully this would (and probably did) save the exchequer a few pennies by avoiding government lawyers having to schlepp over to Strasbourg to defend a case when it could more easily be done here.

If the HRA is repealed (unless we also decide to withdraw from the convention and join Kazakhstan and Belarus outside it), all that will happen is that millions of £ of public money will be spent defending HR cases outside the UK. It's a knee jerk policy in response to successful applications by people the government don't like, and those applications are based largely on crappy decision making by the government's own staff in the first place.

We do have a "proud and well earned history of justice and ... human rights". Let's not ditch it for the sake of a political soundbite and media crying.

Yep. Our courts can decide these cases and either losing party can ultimately go to the ECJ. In practice there's little point as a group of senior judges has already considered your case and rejected it so you may as well accept the decision. Repealing the HRA will mean that every case can now go there.

Mind you, with all the restrictions to legal aid introduced by that clown Graying and no doubt to be exacerbated by that bigger clown Gove, who the hell would be able to afford to take any cases to our Supreme Court, let alone the ECJ?

What do you mean "the 82nd best UKIP candidate"? I assume you are talking about some sort of list based system where parties MP's are chosen in order of preference from a list drawn up by the parties. If so what makes you think the person at the top of the list isn't the worst candidate of the lot? The fact Farage would be top of the UKIP list rather proves the point.

Also if a party is under-represented compared to it share of the vote, how do you know parliament isn't missing out in the services of some very capable people?

At the moment we have safe seats which are just as bad as list system and require just as much patronage to secure one as getting your name high up on a parties list. Portillo and Balls moments are rare and so the idea FPTP delivers quality compared to a list system doesn't stand up. Safe seats deliver MP's like Grant Schnaps (AKA Mr Green) and Rees-Mogg. With a list idiots like that might find themselves at the foot of it so rather than a list system delivering poor MP's it could do the opposite.

Arguing against PR because the electorate is going to vote in 78 kipper MP's is complete non-starter whether you use a pure list based system, STV, AV or AV-plus. It is just anti-democratic.

In any case just because the kippers got 12% of the vote under FPTP doesn't mean that is how things would have turned out under a PR system. Quite often you see stats published that say "If the electorate vote as they did in 2015 then under PR the seats won would be....". It's total rubbish because under PR you wouldn't get tactical voting.

As to think an MP has to his constituency is this really so strong? I'd never heard of our ex-Tory MP Stephen Mosley (I think he came from outside Cheshire) before he was the candidate in 2010.

I think some people are getting a bit carried away with thinking the Tories can just push through whatever they want now that they have a majority.

But in a way their position is actually weaker now than in 2010-2015.
The Tory-Lib Dem government had a majority of 33.
The new Tory government has a majority of just 6.

The Lib Dems jumped in with the Tories so willingly that there was never a chance of them bringing down a major Tory proposal, as they'd all been agreed to in the formation of the Coalition and the Lib Dems were determined to not be the ones who broke up the Coalition.

With the Lib Dems licking their wounds and the SNP very anti-Tory, there's probably a much higher chance of a controversial Tory proposal being beaten.

Actually, most people when asked about why they voted Tory said that they didn't feel that Milliband was Prime Minister material and/or they were frightened of the SNP. Even so, Labour's share of the vote actually increased slightly. Practically nobody mentioned the factors you list.

It's also worth remembering that the majority of UK voters were happy to vote for a party other than the Tories. They may have a narrow majority of MPs thanks to our crackpot electoral system but they command the support of a minority of the population.

Labour lost the election by sitting on their hands for 4 years waiting for the wheels to come off the Coalition, then panicking and producing an ill-thought-out and uninspiring campaign that failed to present a compelling alternative to the status quo.

Most right-wingers have a weak grasp of the realities of Parliament. And of pretty much everything else for that matter.

The Conservatives have an overall majority of 6 but an effective one of perhaps 15 when you count the Nth Ireland abstainers. On some Bills they will gain the support of other minor parties and so they will push through the difficult stuff early doors while their back-benchers are still onside.

The Tories were supported in coalition but in many respects were a hindrance in that they prevented the Tories fulfilling their full manifesto. This time they are free to try for the full monty. If some Bills get voted down they will just move on.

You think it's possible to lower the quality of our MPs?

How cute.