She could possibly go for a job as a Police & Crime Commissioner, then you can get paid for travelling to work it seems: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24903805 Gravy train anyone?

She could possibly go for a job as a Police & Crime Commissioner, then you can get paid for travelling to work it seems: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24903805 Gravy train anyone?

If people want a say then they should join the party. Then you get one.

So if people have a particular political view they can attempt to influence who their candidate for MP is.

It might be the person selected is not the one you favour but if you are completely at odds with the politics of the candidates from the other parties you have a simple choice. Vote in a way that may end up helping a government be formed you are opposed to or accept the fact you took part in the process of candidate selection, move on, accept nothing is perfect but at least you took part in the process and vote in what you see as the national interest.

It's no excuse to vote for an MP who is good at dealing with local issues who is going to vote to privatise the NHS (to give an example) when it is within everyones reach to actually at least try and influence the selection of a candidate locally from the party they would want to see govern nationally.

People vote the way they do for some bizarre reasons. Relatives once voted Tory because they felt John Major was a "strong leader". I was baffled by that and tried to explain you aren't voting for him anyway but for a set of polices that in my view would do the country no good.

It's the same here and there is no excuse not to get involved if people feel that strongly.

According to her twitter timeline she appears to have been very involved in local issues

Quote ="BartonFlyer"She could possibly go for a job as a Police & Crime Commissioner, then you can get paid for travelling to work it seems: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24903805 Gravy train anyone?'" Meanwhile, many home carers do not get paid for travelling between visits – that's their own time, apparently.

Quote ="BartonFlyer"She could possibly go for a job as a Police & Crime Commissioner, then you can get paid for travelling to work it seems: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24903805 Gravy train anyone?'" Meanwhile, many home carers do not get paid for travelling between visits – that's their own time, apparently.

I'm sure I read somewhere that carers had expense accounts.

Following yesterday's Opposition Day debate on the Bedroom Tax, I wonder how many LimpDem MPs will be worried about facing their constituents. After the grassroots voted overwhelmingly against the Bedroom Tax at the national conference, a grand total of TWO voted against the government's amendment (which was basically a repeat of the "it's all Labour's fault" mantra).

So by my reckoning that's 54 LimpDem MPs who either abstained, voted for the government amendment or simply couldn't be bothered to turn up.

Spineless 2@s

@ChriswMP seems to have tweeted quite a list of votes - plus a link to a full list. Also claims that Tory MPs Kwasi Kwateng and Therese Coffey were laughing during Jack Dromey" speech about a constituent who killed themselves as a result of the bedroom tax. He says tha presumably they weren't bothering to listen.

Valid points.
Looks like we're stuck with it.

I saw some of the comment about this posted on the Guardian rolling politics blog. A couple of things stood out.

First whoever it was speaking for the government, they reckoned they had done a better job if it then IDS ever would as they reckon IDS would have totally lost it pretty early on in the debate. This made me think IDS didn't run away to Paris but was sent there to be kept out of harms way!

Secondly, despite the liability that is IDS not being present Labour still carried the day morally with their arguments with the Interventions by MP's supporting their motion particularly telling. This one stood out:



From [url=http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/12/ed-daveys-speech-to-energy-firms-telling-them-not-to-be-greedy-politics-live-bloghere[/url

With cases like that the fact the majority of Lib Dems still voted as they did shows they simply can't be trusted. They lied before the election and now despite obvious cases such as the one above and their own conferences rejection of the bedroom tax they still vote for it.

Whatever is in a 2015 Lib Dem manifesto simply can't be believed.

I am so looking forward to when that fat bastad David Heath hits the campaign trail in 2015

Now I know yesterday's debate didn't concern pubs or real ale but does Jerry Chicken know how his LimpDem MP voted?

Yep, he abstained.

Which didn't surprise me as he's abstained on quite a few issues in the past, as did many other LibDems, haven't read his blog yet but the last issue that he abstained on (can't remember what it was) was explained by the fact that he was broadly in favour of the vote but did not like the way the legislation was worded.

Its disappointing that he doesn't vote the way you as an individual want him to but it is a tactic that his party use quite frequently.

It won't matter.
His manlove bonding with Gregory is unbreakable.

An MP who campaigns for better beer for everyone and is a big RL fan, whats not to like ?

Good enough reasons as any, I'd agree.
Far bigger t0sspots in that party to be concerned with.

[url=http://gregmulholland.org/en/article/2013/744620/greg-mulholland-mp-tables-liberal-democrat-backbench-motion-calling-for-an-urgent-review-and-change-or-scrapping-of-the-flawed-under-occupancy-penalty-policyThis is most strange[/url why go to all that trouble and then abstain, I await his explanation.

I suppose the moral of the story is "seek and ye shall find" or stuff...

The motion that was voted on earlier this week was an Opposition Day motion, winning this vote would not have affected anything other than to show opposition, it wouldn't have forced a re-think of the rules/law - Greg Mulholland took a bit of flak on twitter the other night after his abstaining and this was his response...





The Early Day Motion that he put his name to is on the same subject but not connected to the Opposition Day vote.

Still sounds a bit strange to me but to a politician I'm sure it all makes perfect sense.

He didn't abstain on the Opposition motion, he abstained on the government amendment.

Basically the opposition proposal was:

“That this House regrets the pernicious effect on vulnerable and in many cases disabled people of deductions being made from housing benefit paid to working age tenants in the social housing sector deemed to have an excess number of bedrooms in their homes…”

The government then amended it to:

“Line 1, leave out from ‘House’ to end and add ‘notes the substantial structural deficit which was inherited from the previous Government and the need to get the nation’s finances back into shape; further notes the need to bring expenditure on housing benefit under control; further notes that the reversal of this policy would cost the Exchequer around half a billion pounds a year…”

Amendments are always voted first and as can be seen, the government managed to get a vote on "it's all Labour's fault", rather than the proposed motion.

So basically Mullholland abstained from blaming Labour for the nation's financial state.

What a waste of a fecking day

More like a waste of five years.

It'll soon be over though.

How did he vote on the governments NHS bill? If he voted for it or even simply abstained "wha'ts not to like" ? Plenty!

He may give the pretence of being different to the Tories with the odd abstention but he is just like the rest of of his Lib Dem colleagues, an enabler of Tory drafted legislation and not to be trusted.

The problem is, I don't see anyone in the Labour Party I'd want to pin my vote on to either, seriously, if the general election was anytime before May '14 rather than May '15 I could see a majority Tory win, and thats painful to say.

I am not sure why you think that given they are not polling anything like well enough to gain an overall majority and that is before any UKIP defections get in the way.

As to not wanting to pin your vote on anyone in the Labour party then to simplify the debate you can either vote for one of the parties who will retain the bedroom tax or the one that will scrap it

The bloke who won the selection for Labour here in Chester was not may choice. He did have the backing of a group of Labour activists and I am immediately suspicious of such cleaks as IMO they are factional but I guess that is how politics is whatever party you support.

He will still get my vote despite my reservations. There are plenty of local issues here at the moment ranging from building on the green belt to severe cuts by the council. If our current Tory MP was any help in any of those issues I'd still have to vote against him at the next election as I know he'd be up there voting for things like the stupid amendment mentioned above.

On that subject I must admit I am amazed such a government amendment was proposed to oppose the Labour position. It says to me they had no justifiable argument against it and by playing politics and trying to move the debate away from the issue showed they are as nasty as they have always been.

This is the bit that, to me, is lacking in democratic authenticity.
The central offices of the parties and small local cliques decide who we can vote for.

On the abstention issue, I would have much less of a problem if the LimpDems (for which read "Nick Clegg"icon_wink.gif and the Tories had made it clear when they formed a coalition just what the deal was.
As it stands, the deal seems to benefit only the Tories.
What Clegg should have done in 2010 was to only agree to vote yes on issues that they agree with, to abstain on stated issues they disagree with and vote no on stated issues that are beyond the line.
Clegg didn't do that.
He dishonestly U-turned on the issues where his manifesto differed from that of the Tories (that I consider were the ones for which he got general election votes in 2010).
Add to that the hopelessly ineffectual performances of Clegg and Cable since 2010 and Danny Alexander's Damascene conversion to the Tory cause, and they have right royally fecked it up for 2015.

[url=http://agirlcalledjack.com/2013/11/15/exposed-the-169-mps-who-voted-yes-to-the-bedroom-tax-after-claiming-up-to-25k-in-accommodation-expenses/An interesting read[/url

Just how much should an MP be allowed to claim in overnight expenses and/or London accomodation and why can some manage on less than £5000 and other require in excess of £20,000 ?

That wasn't quite how it went. There was plenty of choice but as it turned out there was what you might call the establishment candidate. I am still not sure which bit of establishment the candidate was a member of so perhaps it would be better to say he was a member of a clique of Labour party activists with a particular set of views.

I had a postal vote and after I had sent mine in I got a mailshot with several people urging me to support the eventual winner. Names who I recognised so I reckon he certainly had far more of an election machine behind him than any of the others.

So it was "one man and his dog candidates" v's someone with some organisation behind him.




I'd agree with most of that and for me the NHS "reforms" are the big red line the Lib Dems should never have crossed. Instead we had Shirley Williams running around trying to suggest it wasn't all that bad and Lansey didn't really mean what he said in an attempt to get the party to back the reforms. She and they seemed far too wrapped up as being a party in government and toeing the collective responsibility line than exerting the kind of influence people rightly expected them to do.

Where it went wrong was the simply divvying up of various policies and departments. What that meant was the Tories got the NHS to do as they wished with and so when the Tories pulled the reforms out of the hat, as it is a Tory department, the Lib Dems support them in ramming through a right wing agenda. In exchange for what I am not sure!

The whole coalition agreement was a rush job without the proper kind of negotiations that countries who are used to coalitions enter into and boy does it show what a mess was made of it from the Lib Dem perspective.

I am sure most people didn't expect the coalition to work as it has done with Tory policies for which there is no mandate being implemented seemingly without challenge.

When they can't even support Labour over the bedroom tax when the Lib Dem conference disowns it then you have to wonder what on earth foes through the heads of the Lib Dem MP's.

Agreed.
All the more jaw-dropping in that the Lib Dems were the party who stood to gain most from a hung parliament and were utterly, utterly unprepared for it.
And, in the process, the prospect of PR ever being adopted (their flagship policy) has become but a tarnished dream.
So, what's the point of the LibDems now?
Lobby fodder, no more than that.