Doom and Gloom

Why is everything negative at the moment in the news. I really want to do a positive news story today but I've struggled to find them. Spring Forum yesterday, although I wasn't there and am relying on tweets and news articles, was a bit dull and David Cameron was just using the buzz words of 'Churchill', 'Thatcher' and 'aspiration'. In Cyprus everyone has their money 'stolen' and even the White Cliffs of Dover are falling down (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17389616).

But I will try come up with something positive. Here it goes.

Well done to everyone's charitable hearts this week as Comic Relief has raised £75,107,851. This will actually help solve lots of problems in Africa and the UK. Giving to charity is the best way around it rather than welfare as it involves face to face contact and genuine improvement of lives rather than government hurling some money at a person. Please keep giving to the cause because it will do so much (http://www.comicrelief.com/). Big thanks go to the Labour MP for Slough, Fiona Mac Taggart, who has donated £14,268 to the charity after this 'naive' tweet:

Please keep on giving  at http://www.comicrelief.com/.

#thebigpicture

I am online, and I am hosting the Big Picture on URN. Please listen in this is going to be a good one. We are discussing the very controversial abortion referendum called by the SU. Also we shall talk about HS2 and adult social care provisions announced by the Government.

I am putting this up a few minutes before we start, at 6pm. Please listen in.

You can send it texts to our show on the URN homepage and are able to listen to us on there too. Here is the link http://urn1350.net/. For the first time we are also going to be on twitter, so you can tweet in @URN1350 #thingselliottsays (n.b. the double T).

Please listen.

Good Morning Cyprus

Cypriots today received the best wakeup call ever today. The Eurozone has put a one off levy on all savings of 6.75% for any one with less than €100,000 and for anything exceeding that 9.9%. What a great day for the people of Cyprus.

Cyprus is broke, the country has a debt of €15,000,000,000, 74% of GDP. Cyprus has received a loan from the ECB as a bail out and a team of finance ministers with the President, who was elected recently 'to deal with the countries debt', are carrying out a levy on all savings on Tuesday to help pay off the debt. The Euro Team and Cypriot Government have judged that the banking crisis is over so it is safe for this to happen.

If we disregard the whole taxation and surprise thing about this levy, which is bad enough (I hope you have been filled with disgust from the start), there is one big problem. Firstly Cypriot banks are really not that safe this month the two largest on the island posted a €4.5 Billion loss, almost 25% of GDP in the country. Banking has never been in a worse shape, the officials have great timing.

Now it is even worse as everyone is withdrawing money. People are fighting through queues to avoid this 'robbery'. There would have been a run on the Banks if it were not for many of them closing their doors to stop the money from leaving. People can now only use ATMs and those few banks that remain open. And do you think people will use Cypriot banks again? Unlikely. Anyone with €100,000 will definitely be looking for a foreign bank in the future. Who's to say this won't happen again? So now Cyprus has a capital crisis. It's all going down over there.

And guess who these Banks have lent to massively, our good old friends the Greeks. So it's going to go wrong for them even more now. What is more Greece, and any other indebted country, should watch out. This great policy may come to your shores too.

And now for the icing on the cake. Cyprus is about to raise its corporation tax, clearly the best way to get businesses to grow. Who runs this country, the Labour Party? Oh no wait it's the Eurozone and they're just as bad. This is just a prime example of what's wrong with European economics. But I'm not surprised, half of all left wing politicians are ex-Euro Communists.

Weekly Poll Lowdown

As the returning officer I declare that a Labour Majority is elected to the constituency of the United Kingdom in 2015. The results are as follows.

Con Majority	1 (5%)
Con/Lib Dem Coalition	1 (5%)
Con Minority	6 (30%)
Another General Election	0 (0%)
Lab Minority	3 (15%)
Lab/Lib Dem Coalition	1 (5%)
Lab Majority	8 (40%)

The more time that passes the more I personally become of the opinion that we will do badly in the General Election in 2015. Last year in March if you asked me I would have said that we would win 2015 if we put in the effort. Now I doubt we can actually win a even the most seats in Parliament. Personally I'm still far from thinking that Labour will get anything resembling a majority. Ashcroft's poll of an 84 majority is probably a bit pessimistic considering its not yet 2015 so a large chunk of that is probably mid-term blues. A majority of 4 is on the liberal side of likely results at the moment.

This blog is almost exclusively read by Tories and as 60% of you are on the pessimistic side with only 5% saying the Tories can win a majority the situation at the moment does look bleak.

The main problem is of course the economy and it's not necessarily growth either because as I've said before the debt this year is going to go up and the deficit is predicted to go up to. We may be in coalition but we need to push hard to reverse these facts otherwise this country is going to be a mess. If Labour get in in 2015 we won't get another realistic chance to solve this problem till 2020 by which time we'll be seemingly months from disaster. We can only take so much debt.

It seems our party has a problem and it's that we are divided on whether to go for economic success or left wing consensus. For the moment the leadership not fully going for economic liberalisation but if we don't change that not only will party members be furious but the electorate won't vote for us. This is not like Thatcher in the early 80s either, she cut inflation after a few years but became unpopular due to high unemployment. She actually achieved her objectives, not even the Government thinks they're going to bring get rid of the deficit by 2015.

Please vote in the next poll.

Tony Robinson Stops HS2

I like Archaeology, it's a hobby of mine. So I was interested to see that in London a Black Death pit was found. What's even better is this was found when constructing the HS2 rail link.

Archaeology is mostly tax payer funded, although it is getting more common for sponsorship from companies. Quarrying and oil companies use environmental data as it helps them decide whether to set up shop there. Also it is compulsory to have an archaeological survey for something the size of HS2 when being built, especially when it is in London. London itself is one massive museum and underground are some many fantastic and important discoveries to be made.

My suggestion is this. Why not explore London's history to the maximum. It is a great city, as Boris always says, and you can never know too much about its past. So let's find out more. We should force for an extremely detailed survey to be done of the HS2 route. Let's get to know the area really well along the HS2 route and force a very long survey that would hold it up for ages. Or better still make HS2 take a route of historical areas so we get to know even more, and waste the time of the builders. Maybe government will stop it then, or by the time it finishes a more sensible government will scrap it. Archaeological investigations across the HS2 route will also save money because, whatever the bill for the digs will be, it is certainly cheaper than building an irrelevant railway.

Let's get Tony Robinson and Time Team on the scene to stop HS2. 

#CFcantelect

If you have a ballot for the CF elections, lucky you. I have not and seemingly most others have not got one too. Although I find it odd that I can get emails about the CF conference but not a voting email. Soon to be gone Chairman Ben Howlett has told us why this may occur.

So let's start of  by saying what you can do if you haven't got a ballot paper. You can go onto this website and submit details to try speed along the process of your 'batch' being sent out https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEJNSDVJWWxkS0xyYUdpVURZSlZ0ekE6MQ. Also try contacting your local association they may not be using Merlin and so you may be able to prompt them to send in your information. If that doesn't work, I would email Alan Mabbutt at alan.mabbutt@conservatives.com .

But let's think of the future now. Seriously this situation has to change. Quite frankly I'm surprised this way of voting has lasted this long. I think online is probably the best solution to the problem using emails but can't at least CCHQ ask all the associations to send in the details of all association members of voting age to them? If they are unable to, can't they send out ballot papers earlier and have a longer period of elections? There probably is a backlog of people complaining? Merlin, the very old wizard of CCHQ, has a lot of problems to fix.

Everyone who hasn't got a voting email please kick up a fuss.

Update

Hi Elliott,

Simple reason you did not get a ballot, there was no email on your MERLIN record.  You should get Debbie to correct that.

I will arrange for a ballot email to be sent by next Tuesday.

Alan Mabbutt

Nominating Officer

Conservative Party

Hooray a solution!

SU Elections - who to vote for?

I'd like to talk about the SU elections. I'm not backing anyone on my blog. Except for this chap, Vote for Joe Sheedy for Equalities and Welfare.

See for  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joe-Sheedy-for-Welfare-Helping-You-Find-Your-Voice/163439090476224?fref=tsdetails

But I am going to say what I think anyone elected to the SU can do. Firstly The SU representatives have to concentrate on value for money. The SU does offer some really key services for students like Nightline, but any new service the SU wants to offer or old ones should be efficient. My advice to any SU officer is to look at what services are provided in detail and see whether there are any areas savings can be made. This isn't cutting, if anything a properly efficient service would mean that the SU does more for Students and can do more with the saved money, which is obviously right.

I'd also say to any SU officers not to get political. I am very interested in politics, but my representatives sit in the House of Commons and in Nottingham City Council. We don't need SU officers wasting time on meaningless political policies. I would ask for those already in place to be repealed because some of these are very stupid and do effect students in minor ways. For example why can't we have Coca Cola on Campus? Apparently it's because they are a evil business due to extreme corporatism so instead now we have Pepsi, an equally big company.

So there we are vote for a value for money and a non-political SU.