And another thing…

As was the case last Thursday, I expect apathy to be the true victor.

Prediction: you’ll probably do better than in the local elections.

(Obligatory: it wouldn’t be tricky, would it?)

I’m all set.
Let the fun and games begin.

=-=-=-=

Anyone want a guess at turnout? My money’s on 35%

Record low turnout across Europe. Hardly surprising really…

How would you say you are feeling right now, Tom? Scared? Worried? Excited? Hopeful?

A mixture of emotions, I suspect.

Drunk.

Tom is “tired and emotional”

*Hic!*

Hemlock, anyone?

Is Richard my only reader right now?

Just when you thought it was safe to blog……. Sky are saying that it will be a good night for centre-right parties. Looks like New Labour will do OK then

just been texted by a mate who is there saying there are “clashes” between the anti-Nazi league and BNP at Manc town hall. nasty apparentley.

at the Liverpool Count in a 22k Sample Labour got nearly 40%! suspect that will not be reflected nationwide!

Another reader, Ok here’s a prediction. UKIP doesn’t do well in Scotland because of the SNP I guess?

Tory 24
UKIP 21
Lab 18
Lib 18
BNP 7
Green 6
Others 6

Seats
Tory 23
Lab 13
UKIP 12
Lib 10
BNP 4
Green 3
SNP 2
PC 2
SF 1
SDLP 1
DUP 1

BBC has reported that there is a possibility that Labour has been beaten into sixth place in Cornwall, behind Cornish Nationalists.

Mark Mardell
– "Officials here at the parliament say there may be no British results until 0100 UK time, which seems a little odd."

I’m listening on Radio 4 to Jim Naughtie, with Peter Hain, Theresa May, Lord Pearson for UKIP, and Julia Galsworthy (?) for Lib Dems.

Chunky drop for Lab (-9%) and a mild gain for Con (+1%) in the North East region. /No big surprises yet.

BNP probably going to gain an MEP in the Yorkshire region. That’s pretty interesting, eh?

Iain Dale on Play Radio has more results and less drivel.

btw Leicester result looks suspicious.

Why are the results taking so long? They’ve had the ballot papers for 3 days now.

Drink DOES seem to be the answer Tom, go with that feeling, it’ll take away the pain!

“Why are the results taking so long? They’ve had the ballot papers for 3 days now.”

They have to wait until all the polls, Europe-wide have closed, and some of them hold their votes on Sunday.

They have to wait until all the polls, Europe-wide have closed, and some of them hold their votes on Sunday.

They must’ve all closed by now. What was to stop them counting the votes, and releasing the results when the polls had closed?

Fuck.

I’m sorry Tom, I know you don’t allow swearing, but I’ve just seen the result from Yorkshire and Humberside and I can’t express myself in any other way.

75% is a myth? You think it’s higher then?

It’s certainly not lower. Nearly every piece of new legislation that passes has its roots in Brussels, from one of those 27 commissioners that no-one has voted for. As we saw on question time, bins collected every two weeks – EU land fill act, HIPS – EU desire for ecological survey of dwellings, car seats for 12 year olds – EU again.

Germany believe it’s 84%. Why would ours be any lower?

In the UK it’s less than 10 per cent. It’s something similar in Germany. The figure of 84 per cent was mentioned by a single German politician who offered no substantiating evidence to support the claim. But the claim was ridiculous enough for the hard-of-thinking tendency to swallow it hook, line and sinker.

Still 10% too high imho.

75% is a myth? You think it’s higher then?

UKIP’s Lord Pearson came out with the 75%-of-all-legislation-comes-from-the-EU line, and to my surprise Peter Hain agreed with him!

From memory, Tom has said it’s only 48%. But I don’t know how he measures quantities of legislation. By the bill? By the word count?

Re the BNP result, I’m not very surprised, when people aren’t being represented by the main parties in so many ways (I speak as a smoker), that they should go elsewhere. I did. Although I didn’t vote BNP.

On Radio 4, the new BNP MEP was described as a ‘holocaust denier’. I happen to think that there was a very real and terrible holocaust, but I really do not see – never have seen – why nobody can be permitted to think otherwise. It is what I hate about so much of modern politics, that it has become increasingly impermissible to even think anything unorthodox. For example, if you are sceptical about global warming (which I am) you are called a ‘climate change denier’, which is intended to make you no different from a holocaust denier. It’s absurd. It’s totalitarian. And it won’t work.

Heard you might be losing your seat, Tom!

Based on the votes counted thus far, the beeb are projecting the Labour vote at just 16%, the worst result for the party in a national election since 1918.

Labour have lost the popular vote in Wales for the first time in nearly 90 years, are coming fifth and sixth in some regions and are likely to poll a close third to the Liberal Democrats overall.

Possibly time to have a hard think about whether Gordon is the right person to lead you to victory in 2010?

Wales Labour has taken a hammering and this is a safe seat we are told.

But the Tories have come top I knew it would be bad but this bad nope, Plaid which is tied up with Labour came third, but I have to admit unemployment and poverty is the two biggest areas around me. A report from the council stated my small area has unemployment of 43%, my MP said it’s 4% we are not stupid spin like this does not work anymore.

Great news for us on the right. The people have spoken. I now hope you keep Brown as it will be much worse to come for you if he stays. No Labour seat is now ’safe’.
As for the BNP. well you have only yourselves to blame for doing nothing about the concerns of the English.

@Tom Harris In the UK it’s less than 10 per cent.

That figure is not entirely accurate either, Tom, as it’s based solely on the number Statutory Instruments passed that refer to the EU. This ignores other things like EU regulations which are directly applicable

The excellent Nosemonkey’s EUtopia blog has done one of the better analysis of the ‘percentage of EU laws’ question, and his conclusion; no-one actually knows for sure what the true figure is.

http://www.jcm.org.uk/blog/?p=2230

Most of the papers seem to have led with “labour meltdown” in some form or another.

Not a good day to be the person who delivers gordon his ‘news sandwich’…

A labour share -overall – greatre than 16^ is excellent for them.

My target of 15% has not yet been hit. But Gordon is getting on with the job of lowering it and I am sure he will succeed.

As long as Labour MPs # do not panic and throw Gordon out then 15% should be achievable…

# but seeing as they are only driven by thoughts of cash, then Gordon is safe. Labour must be the only Party to elect .. sorry annoint- a new Leader – find he is useless – and stick with him…

And then they complain about the rise of the BNP – and it is all their own fault.

i As for the BNP. well you have only yourselves to blame for doing nothing about the concerns of the English

The BNP polled something like 6%; the greens polled 9%. Given that, you might as well deduce Labour are failing because they’ve done nothing about peoples environmental concerns.

All that’s really clear from last nights results is that people aren’t really happy with the Westminster parties, and there’s some serious gaps and failings which have led to people voting vastly differently in different local regions. Bad for Labour, certainly, but also worrying in a bigger way. How can a national FPTP possibly work when the two main parties both seem to be turning voters off, and the “fringe” or smaller parties are mostly very locally focussed, and with radically different policies and ideas?

Well its Monday morning and I turn to the BBC for a full picture. “63 out of 69 seats declared”. And a little asterisk that “Results exclude Northern Ireland”. And the 6 not declared – oh they’re somewhere unimportant called Scotland.

So the BBC analysis excludes 9 out of 72 seats in inconvenient,odd little places. I can understand why you called it a night.

@Frank Davis
‘On Radio 4, the new BNP MEP was described as a ‘holocaust denier’. I happen to think that there was a very real and terrible holocaust, but I really do not see – never have seen – why nobody can be permitted to think otherwise. It is what I hate about so much of modern politics, that it has become increasingly impermissible to even think anything unorthodox.’

I prefer to use the term ‘contrarian’ for people who are sceptical about the mainstream research on climate change.

With Griffin’s history, he should look objectionable in any light, but next to John Humphries (-phreys?), he actually seems reasonable (!). I might be one of the few people who think Tony Benn lost a large part of the plot years ago, turning in meandering performances on ‘Question Time’ and ‘Any Questions?’. Humphries similarly lost the ability to conduct an interview without sounding like a shock jock a couple of years back. Who will bollock this troublesome beast?

With all the support for parties like UKIP and the BNP with their clear anti EU messages, when will our elite recognise that we want a vote on the Lisbon treaty and one on our role within the EU. The longer the vote is denied the more people go to the extremes.

Richard Howitt, Labour MEP for Eastern England, has kept his seat. Good. (He got my vote.) He didn’t do too badly, given the drubbing Labour got nationally.

Given the way the media have been gunning for Labour, and the party itself shooting itself in the foot (particularly the Evil Chipmunk Hazel Blears – great timing, Haze), the results aren’t that surprising. A low turnout and feeling that the government needed to be punished about expenses (rather irrational especially since the Tories were at least equally culpable) influenced this result.

I hope the government can now stop all the in-fighting, communicate how it is dealing with the global recession (actually a lot better than most other countries) and the remarkable improvements they’ve made regarding things like the NHS (which we all seem to take for granted).

Another ministerial resignation, I see.
It must be a week-day.

-=-=-

I presume Jane Kennedy will be voting “aye” in the big ‘Shall we ditch Gordon before he ruins us?’ debate tonight…

Does not matter you cannot vote out Brown as far as I know unless you have enough votes and somebody to stand as the new prime minister. We are told now Brown will call an election next year in the Autumn, he I would think expects the recession to be over and he can then work his magic, like going boom.

Agree completely with Nicky’s comment and especially the reference to the media gunning for Labour, and I’d add to that the despicable and personal attacks aimed at the PM in particular.
Still, it’s the protest euro’s, and according to Sir Robert Worcester this morning, the results are worth diddly squat as usual.
Saw Cameron this morning too. Could have sworn he’s sporting a Portillo quiff.

Tom

Serious suggestion….

Could you stand up at the PLP meeting tonight, and suggest that a secret ballot of Labour MPs is convened for this week ? Topic- Brown – yes or no.

Otherwise you are just prolonging the inevitable, and the slaughter when it comes [and it is coming] will be even worse.

Norwich South by election next……

@ Richard. Some are saying it isn’t about Brown its about Labour across the board and especially the involvement of so many Labour people in the expenses disclosures.

He said, she said.

= Jane Kennedy says that she could have kept her job if she’d “pledged loyalty” to Gordon.

= Number 10 are spinning that she was invited in to meet with Gordon so that he could inform her that she’d been sacked.

Hmm, since when does the PM inform people that they’ve been removed face-to-face? Surely that sort of thing is usually done over the phone…

Across the board, it’s the Labour party that got a bloody nose yesterday, reducing them to 16% of the vote. Yet Labour won the last general election. What happened between 2005 and 2009 to bring them so low?

It can’t have been the Iraq war, because that was in 2003. The principal political casualty of that war was Tony Blair rather than the Labour party, because it was his war rather than theirs.

Could it have been the ascent of Gordon Brown to replace Blair as PM? He was a widely respected Chancellor. His handling of the banking crash has been pretty well respected too. His communication skills, however, don’t come anywhere near those of his predecessor. And in an increasingly divided nation, he’s also Scottish. But was this really enough to turn the electorate against him?

Or is it that the UK electorate has become more deeply anti-EU, and Brown and the Labour party work against this tide of opinion?

Perhaps it’s all these things. But perhaps there’s something else too. Something that’s never discussed.

I’m biased, of course, but in my eyes the unmentionable elephant in the room is the smoking ban that came into effect on 1 July 2007.

Most people dismiss this as an utterly trivial and unimportant public health measure. But that’s because 75% of people aren’t smokers, and so the ban has had no effect upon them. They may even have welcomed it.

But for a smoker like me, the ban had an utterly shattering impact. Smokers became unwelcome in their pubs, and unwelcome in their own country. They became a persecuted and demonised minority.

And there was nobody to speak up for them. They had no champions in parliament. They had no champions anywhere. Their opinions were entirely discounted. They became non-people. Overnight on 1 July 2007.

How do such despised and ignored people respond? I’ll tell you. They are filled with inexpressible rage. I know this because I feel that rage every single day. Either rage, or else resignation or despair.

But while they have become non-people, whose opinions are entirely disregarded, those who stripped them of their rights neglected to strip them of the right to vote. They can still do this.

And yesterday they did. And they voted against the party that made them non-people: the Labour Party. And they didn’t vote for the other main parties, because there is no succour for them there either. They voted for UKIP – the only party to come out against the smoking ban.

I’m not going to claim that it was only angry smokers who punished the Labour party yesterday. But I am going to claim that they were at very least a significant element. Smokers hate the Labour party. And they hate Brown because he’s the Labour PM. And they hate the EU because that’s where so many of these mean-spirited pieces of legislation originate.

Nevertheless, we can be absolutely certain that, when the angry debate takes place tonight among Labour MPs in parliament, the one thing that will not be mentioned will be the smoking ban. And it won’t be mentioned because smokers are non-people whose opinions don’t matter, even if they do comprise 25% of the population (33% throughout Europe).

But years from now, with the clarity that comes with 20-20 hindsight, historians will wonder why the UK Labour party destroyed itself by making pariahs of many of its own working class voters: the smokers.

@Joe K

I put Holocaust deniers in the same category as I do Creationists, Flat earthers etc. They are perfectly entitled to have their own beliefs but they lose all credibility since they ignore the mountains of evidence that is present.

@ Jo.

Yes, they’re all bloody useless. Let’s have a general election.

It’s my right to smoke and kill you and as many others as I can, thats my right, god where do they come from

@ Unixman -

I put warmists into the same camp.

Minimal evidence + blind faith = a belief system, not science.

Ach God luv ye, Nicky and Ani.

It’s not whether the Labour cup is half-full or half-empty… for them the Labour cup always runneth over with the sweetest nectar.

@ sammy –
True believers, Nicky and Ani. It’s quite impressive watching them desperately trying to defend the indefensible…

Robert: god where do they come from

England. I’m white, Anglo-saxon, and English. And I smoke. I smoke just like English people have been smoking for 400 years. People like Clement Attlee and Tony Benn and countless others. People who were perfectly well respected until little bigots like you appeared.

Frank: when you fill out your census form, under “religion” do you write “smoker”?

Your white anglo Saxon I doubt that mate most of the Normans took the Anglo saxons and then you lot came around, Mixed race.

@ Tom.
Better than “Jedi”.

Nothing – nothing is better than Jedi!

I stand humbly corrected. It’s not a real religion though…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_census_phenomenon

Personally I think we should take a very long, hard look at the 14 people who listed their religion as “sith”, assuming that they aren’t simply sikh illiterates…

Tom: Frank: when you fill out your census form, under “religion” do you write “smoker”?

What a good idea.

For me, my daily afternoon visit to the pub, for a quiet pint and cigarette, actually was very much like going to church. It was part of a daily ritual. It was a period of quiet reflection. What else do people do in churches?

Tom Harris
Monday 8 June 2009 at 3:17 pm
Frank: when you fill out your census form, under “religion” do you write “smoker”?
**********************************

Nah – he writes ’smelly’.

Feels like only two days ago I posted it… but when I as a non-smoker would complain about smok-ng in pubs I would get, ‘ Ooh, no-one forces you to go to a pub, if you don’t like the smoke, don’t go’.

So same applies, Frank, no-one forces *you* to go to a pub, so if you don’t like the no-smoke, don’t go’.

And for God’s sake, stop banging on about it, it’s been a couple of years now. Let it go, draw a line under it, move on.

Let it go, draw a line under it, move on.

In a word: No.

Not until people are given a choice whether they want to smoke or not smoke.

Not until the smokers of this country get either their own separate pubs or their own separate smoking rooms. Just like (to continue the religious theme) Catholics and Protestants have their own separate churches, rather than all being obliged to attend one church – even if it took several hundred years of religious wars before this simple and tolerant expedient was adopted.

Frank Davis
In a word: No.
***************************************

I bet you pursed your lips and stamped your foot when you said that, didn’t you.

You watch yourself, young man, or I’ll send you to bed without your WII.

@Richard

What IS a real religion then? Is there a ‘Praying Standards Authority’ which sets the key criteria and if you don’t meet those you can only get a diploma or something?

@ Jim Baxter
“What IS a real religion then?”

Given that there is no God and that all religions are based on fairie stories and fantasy, arguing over what constitutes a ‘real religion’ is rather like having an argument over whose imaginary friend is the least imaginary.

@Richard

Make up your mind. You started it. Above you disparage ‘Jedi’ as ‘not a real religion’. It’s real to me. As is ’smoker’. I’m going to put that down on the next census form now that Tom has put the idea in my head.

@ Jim Baxter.

“I’m going to put that down on the next census form now that Tom has put the idea in my head.”

Fine by me, let me know your trial date (for making a false entry on the census) and I’ll be happy to come along and throw rotten cabbages and jeer from the public gallery.

@Richard

My religion is what I say it is. How can that be a false declaration?

Rotten cabbages are great in curries. Keep em comin’.