Happy New Year

Happy New Year From #ThingsElliottSays. I hope this year politicians don't screw you over too much, socialism gets ground into the dirt and that the real Conservatives win through. Failing this I hope you have a great night.

New Years Immigration

Considering today is the last day before 28 million, not 29 million as UKIP claim, Bulgarian and Romanians are able to come to Britain it is worth commenting on. A news report in the Telegraph said that it is likely 385,000 immigrants will come to Britain it total, but the honest answer is we have no idea how many people are coming. However, it definitely won't be the whole populations of Romanian and Bulgaria despite UKIPs scaremongering. All we know is a lot of people are coming, mass immigration in other words.

UKIP is busy scaring half the population about immigration.

Personally I don't have any problems with people coming over and contributing to Britain. Immigration is a boon to Britain. I take a rather Athenian Metic view of the whole situation. The Athenians allowed foreign peoples (Metics) to come live in their city to trade and make money. They were required to fight for Athens but did not get the vote. This turned out pretty good for Athens as people like Aristotle were able to go to the Acadamey and the army and, most importantly, the navy was bolstered. Although I doubt every Bulgarian and Romanian is going to be required to fight in the British military the idea of immigrants trading goods and labour is overall a good thing.

The Greeks used to know something about economics, before they joined the Euro.

However there is one problem Athens didn't face which we do. A large part of our economy is under the control of 'the public sector', these are the council houses, schools and hospitals etc. . Unfortunately for us we don't live in a free market and so the country cannot react in these areas very well to mass immigration. Unlike Plato who could just set up the Acadamey it is astoundingly hard to set up a school in response to an increase of people. We cannot plan for a huge unknown amount of people coming to Britain. Nor do we have the upfront money to do so.

The likelihood also is that immigrants will come mostly to specific areas like Wisbech in the Fens where there is a lot of agricultural work. In other words Wisbech's schools, council housing and hospital services could come under great strain. Wisbech's population has increased by a 1/3 or 10,000 in a decade and that is over 90% due to immigration. Despite people being quite resilient to the mess Tony Blair dropped us in, we need to be build a large amount more of schools, council houses and increased hospital capacity for the people of Wisbech. This of course comes for a large part out of the Cambridgeshire County Council budget which coincidently has one of the lowest spends per capita of all the counties across the whole country, it might be about to get lower still. Our centrally planned public service economy is/ will be creaking in the areas of mass migration.

To be fair though this is not the fault of immigrants and so people shouldn't be attacking them. They do contribute to the country in taxes, but this money is not up front and thus we have mass planning problems. They are not just here for benefits the vast majority of them want to work. They're only trying to look out for their families so they have better lives by escaping a post Soviet country. And they're certainly not taking our jobs because the more people in work the more economy grows which in turn produces more jobs.

A lot of this is our fault as a nation because we for a long time have has sub standard education which a lack of choice so that people can't compete. Furthermore we have has an NHS run by chimpanzees who seem to be eating half the vast amounts of money spent on health and a benefits system which means you're severely disadvantaged if you work and earn the average or below the average wage. My suggestions is we start to fix these problems before we start letting mass migration take place because we could soon be again in a position where public services are close to grinding to a halt in the areas of most strain. We will still be able to feel a net positive benefit from migration if we allowed 100,000 migrants into the country. Mass migration however would cause too many problems.

Lefties of course want to ignore all these points. Indeed both Red Ed and Nick Clegg seemingly want half the European Continent to turn up in Britain. However, as often escapes their mind, we don't even have the money to throw at these problems in a vain attempt to solve them. The deficit may have been cut by a 1/3rd but we still have one and our mahousive national debt is still going up. We are in real terms only a bit better off than we were in 2010.

In other words Britain wants migration but mass migration is too pie in the sky. With an economy relying too much on the centrally planned public sector unable to respond properly, let alone the massive debt and deficit we have which will be strained even more. I think we need to make sure our public services are able to serve the public and that we're not creating more debt.

Exclusive: Destiny's CF Announces CF Slate

Destiny's CF

I don't know what it is with the last 24 hours but Victoria Adams, Harry Chitty and Jenny Huynh  (of NUCA fame) have announced exclusively to #ThingsElliottSays they're standing for in the CF Elections on a slate called Destiny's CF. Harry will be standing as CF Chairman (Beyonce), Jenny will be standing as Deputy Political Chairman (Kelly) and Michelle Deputy Membership Chairman.

It seems this has all started because of this.

Can't be dealing with the usual characters who complain that -every- year is crap and irredeemable.
— Harry Chitty (@harry_chitty) December 31, 2013

@harry_chitty @jennywhojenny what a perfect slate to run on for Cf exec!
— Victoria Adams (@Victoria__Adams) December 31, 2013

@Victoria__Adams @harry_chitty the cat is out of the bag #AllHasBeenRevealed
— Jenny (@jennywhojenny) December 31, 2013

@jennywhojenny @harry_chitty @thingsEJsays will be wanting our press release soon
— Victoria Adams (@Victoria__Adams) December 31, 2013

It seems that the CF elections have really got going a year before they take place.

Victoria, Harry and Jenny together at YBF.

Breaking News: Chackers to Stand as CF Chair

Sarah Jane and #TeamShadow have now got competition from Laurence Chacksfield (Chackers) for the race to be CF Chair. Chackers works as a Tory researcher in Parliament and studied at Queen Mary in London. This is what has been spied on Facebook.

Victoria Adams has said "I feel like something astoundly special this evening. We have been given the announcement that a Mr Laurence Patricia Chackfiled is going to be running for Conservative Future Chair. This news is particularly heart warming for me as its so close to home, being a former Queen Mary Conservative Chair and helped showed me the ropes of campus Tory life. I hope we can all join together to support this ultrasound candidate in seeing him elected as the true heir to Conservative Future"

Chackers himself

The reem Stephen Canning of Towie and Made in Chelsea fame has said "The election is some way off and we have a chairman at the moment who has a lot he still wants to achieve before his term is up. If Laurence is standing then best of luck to an incredibly sound CF'er and YBF alumini!"

However #ThingsEllliottSays has been told that this may be one big colossal joke. Sources close to Chackers say he is out drinking with his friends and hasn't "got bored yet of a joke which wasn't even really that funny at conference". I have also spoken to a source close to his girlfriend who says that "he can get carried away when he's drinking" and that they do not think that his girlfriend would be very pleased if he stood. Clearly there are some practical jokers that wanted to make Sarah Jane and Mahyar sweat.

Chackers is at the Pub.

Update

Reports are now coming in from the pub of the scene of Chackers announcing his CF candidacy. These seem to be more of the serious kind rather than a joke. The Source at the Heart of the Campaign has said exclusively to #ThingsElliottSays Chackers is "upset that unis aren't treated the same as branch members, that cf doesn't do enough to bring new people into the party and that the other candidates are useless. He'll only run if Cooper doesn't." The last part is hard to disagree with. 

Cigars and Scotch.

The first campaign meeting for Chackers' campaign is currently taking place and involves cigars and scotch. Mo Metcalf Fisher is also said to be including Chackers in his next CF polls to see what people think of him. People have also taken to Facebook declaring themselves to be a #ChackerBacker.

Stephen Canning is also seeing the funny side of this whole event.

Update 2

#ThingsElliottSays' suspicion was correct. Chackers is not standing for CF Chair and the whole of last night was a massive joke. Apparently Chackers was sleeping for a large part of the joke. The Chackers Backers must be very upset.

Red Ed's New Years Message

Red Ed today has come out with his New Year's Message and has focussed on the cost of living. "We're in the biggest cost of living crisis for a generation" says Ed Miliband. Although I think there is some historical inaccuracies if you count the 1970s and early 1980s mass inflation; people are felling the pinch at this moment. It's a good job then that the Conservatives in government has pushed for three key things to make sure people are better off.

On another note Labour hasn't yet said anything on the economy, which has started to do pretty well of late (you may have noticed). Seems odd for a New Years Message not to include the economy's growth when it is important to improve people's lives. I thus went to find out if Labour had an economic plan to solve living costs and found this.

This is Ed Milibands Real Christmas Message.

#ThingsElliottSays Top 10 of 2013

Every blog seems to do a sum up near the end of the year of the number of hits and the ten most popular posts. Who am I to break this tradition. This year I received 46,249 views as of 1:30pm on 30th December. Here is the chart of views for this year.

These are the top ten blog pieces from #ThingsElliottSays of 2013*.

1)New Poll. A New Poll to see who was the favourite to win the CF elections.
2)Sewell Hypocrisy. Sarah Jane pretends to be angry over striking lecturers.
3)Sarah Jane Becomes the Despot of Royal Holloway. Sarah Jane refuses to hand over power after losing the RHCF elections.
4)Sarah Jane Sewell to Stand as CF Chairman. Sarah Jane announces at CPC13 her candidacy as CF Chairman.
5)Oli Cooper Opponents' Stoop to New Lows. Opponents of Oliver Cooper during the CF elections resort to bullying.
6)A Conflict of Friendship Over Sarah Jane. Why #ThingsElliottSays refuses to back Sarah Jane any further in CF.
7)CF Halloween Party Attended by a Handful. CF Halloween party flops big time.
8)Labour Campaign for Wrong Ward in By-Election. The Labour Party campaign in the wrong ward for the Haydon-Wick by-election.
9)NUCA Dinner. Record of the NUCA Dinner which went on Guido Fawkes.
10)Antonia Jade Now King of Royal Holloway. Antonia Jade beats Sarah Jane as President of RHCF.

So quite an eventful year with you liking news about Sarah Jane Sewell the most. Over the last few months visitors to #ThingsElliottSays my blog have doubled and I hope this is a continuing trend for the future.

*I started this blog in late January of this year so this covers pretty much the whole of the year.

#ThingsElliottSays' Best Politician of the Year Award

Now that 2013 is almost up it is time for #ThingsElliottSays to name the best politician of 2015. This sounds harder than you would think considering there are loads of politicians that have done a lot of good this year. Eric Pickles for example could have been nominated for his work in giving local councils more powers and stopping the Student Bin Tax. Eric Pickles definitely gets a big thumbs up for his budget salad eating photo or his road trip around America (partially brought about by Daniel Falvey of NUCA fame). Eric has most definitely been the funniest politician of the year.

Eric meets Eric

But the winner this year has to be Robert Halfon, the MP for Harlow, for forcing the Conservative Party to connect with voters.

Rob and his Thatcher slippers.

If you own a car you are saving hundreds of pounds a year because of Robert Halfon and his campaign to freeze and cut fuel duty. The people of Britain have a lot to thank him for and so in turn does the Conservative Party because by helping people on day to day issues we gain trust from the electorate. The Conservatives in Government are there to serve the people who put them in place, which is the ordinary people up and down the country who would like their lives to be a little easier. The cutting of fuel duty directly helps ordinary hard working people up and down the country and that is what some of them will remember when going to the ballot boxes in 2015 and voting Conservative.

Rob should also win a fashion award for wearing this in the Commons chamber.

Taking the language of the Left was also another good point Rob has made. The Conservatives aren't as good as Labour of using emotive and caring language when presenting their case that is on terms with ordinary voters. It is very easy to just real off statistics about how big our economic problems are or how much we have saved from the public purses but it simply doesn't win votes. Our language has to be about caring for future generations and looking after people's jobs. We also need to be more emotive in our language because it makes a personal connection in a way that percentages just don't. We have a moral duty to enact Conservative policies upon this country and yet we never talk about the good and brilliant things we have done in government in such a way. Its very cold fish and puts people off, as well as making look like we don't care in some cases.

Rob has done a lot and has some great ideas like making sure everyone is on a living wage through tax cuts and to rename the Conservative Party the 'Workers Party' to accurately reflect the objective of aspiration. But if Robert Halfon has taught the Conservatives anything  it is to campaign for the things that matter to people's lives and then talk about these things using caring language. It has worked for Rob in Harlow so much so that local trade unions are backing him in 2015. He is a worthy winner of the #ThingsElliottSays' best politician of the year award.

With Rob Halfon at the YBF Conference.

End of the USSR

There is another reason to celebrate Boxing Day and it is that 23 years ago today the USSR finally collapsed. The most brutal and oppressive country of all time finally ceased to be on the 26th December 1990. Last night, if you were living 23 years ago, you would have seen Gorbachev announce his office was now defunct and the Soviet Flag flying on top of the Kremlin for the last time. Its just a shame Putin seems to be taking Russia backwards, which is terrible.

I would end this article here but apparently celebrating the end of tyranny is something some people wish to argue about. Looks like some members of the CF national executive might not be so Conservative after all.

At least the CF Cold War had one day of truce.

Merry Xmas

Merry Xmas from #ThingsElliottSays. Hope you have a great day and are full of festive goodwill.

This is one of the presents I got today.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

Dave gets down on the Christmas scene and starts a new career in reading children's stories. I'm looking forward to him reading other epics and poems. Sadly someone was there before him.

#FingerGate

You'd think Farage wasn't into that sort of stuff with him sacking Olly Neville when he backed gay marriage. Maybe he is trying to hide a secret which Olly Neville was about to oust before he was sacked? My question to Olly is this, when did you tell Anna Soubry?

National CF Competition: Search for the Soundest University

You may have seen or heard rumour recently that Birmingham and other CF have done a political compass test of all their members to see where they lie. Well there is now a national CF competition across all branches to see who is the soundest. #ThingsElliottSays is carrying out this competition in NUCA (who realistically we already know is the best CF branch). #ThingsEllliottSays is thus asking NUCA members to fill out the political compass test and then send me the results over Facebook or to elliottarjohnson@hotmail.com. Once that is done I will then plot all the members positions on the graph and we shall see who is the soundest group of CFers. NUCA peeps have till the 4th Jan to send me their results.

These are the Birmingham CF results:

And this is #ThingsElliottSays' result.

Tide Has Turned?

Yesterday was the Elm and Christchurch by-election and so that I do not keep you in suspense for too long the people of the ward elected Michele Tanfield, the Conservative Candidate, to look after their interests on Fenland District Council.

Here are the results in full:

Candidate	Votes	%
Trevor Brookman (Lib Dem)	27	3.9
Alan Burbridge (UKIP)	234	34.1
Dean Reeves (Labour)	51	7.4
Michele Tanfield (Conservative)	301	43.9
Phil Webb (Ind)	73	10.6
Total	686
Turnout	17.90%

Why is this significant you may ask? Well Elm and Christchurch was the best part of the Waldersley Ward which they won from the Conservatives by a fair margin in the 2013 County Elections. Indeed back in May in the villages of Elm and Friday Bridge UKIP got 50%+ of the vote. UKIP in this area could have and did easily argue they were the party in charge of the Wisbech area and that they just had to wait for a by-election or the 2015 district elections to take virtually all the seats. They did have between 40-60% of all the votes in all the electoral wards in May so this was not a ridiculous argument.

At the Count.

How times have changed now in Elm and Christchurch as UKIP have lost just under 1/2 of their vote and the Conservatives getting a 10% swing from UKIP since the County Elections. UKIP are really worried by this result because they should have won. This was quite evident from their faces last night at the count and their chatter about what to do about a very bad result. Their 'revolution' in politics seems to be faltering.

There are of course problems with comparing the 2013 County Council elections with this recent by-election. For starters Walderesley, the county ward for Elm and Christchurch, contains villages on the other side of Wisbech like Wisbech St Mary and Parson's Drove. However the electorate in that area overwhelmingly voted for the local, and well liked, Lib Dem candidate Gavin Booth so much so he beat the Conservative candidate, Will Sutton. Also the turnout during the May elections was higher at 28%; it is possible that the people who didn't turnout at this by-election were overwhelmingly UKIP supporters who just couldn't be bothered to vote. I view this somewhat unlikely however because usually the electorate splits out across the area in the same way. Furthermore, if the above scenario is true it would mean UKIP arn't doing a very good job in the County Council because clearly their voters won't vote for them again because they have done a shoddy job.

It would thus seem that UKIP have lost a great deal of support then. This is probably due to the fact in the 6 months since May they have done nothing except avoid council meetings or attack children in care, obviously this is poor representation of the community. The fact that they don't seem to care about the locals in their wards could also be another factor. UKIP have done barely any campaigning and have thus not seen or listened to the people of Elm and Christchurch. This is the complete opposite of the Conservative approach to local government as they always put in a lot of effort to see and listen to people's views. Indeed Michelle did this even when she was chased by the Elm village goose yesterday whilst trying to speak to some residents. It was a very funny sight.

The goose that chased after Michelle.

UKIP in this by-election were clearly a coalition of opposition voters instead of just disaffected Conservatives, as at least 64% of their vote is not from previous Conservative voters*. UKIP thus get 20% of the vote in each election from Lib Dems, Labour and other anti-establishment voters in the Wisbech area. Coincidently the mid twenties is where the Lib Dems, the previous local opposition party, used to score in the by-elections they stood in.

During the break between the end of polls and the count I went for a KFC, I hope Oliver Cooper is very proud.

It would seem the pendulum of election results which was previously against the Conservatives in the Wisbech area is beginning to swing back. Indeed many previous UKIP activists have now joined the Conservatives and helped Michelle win her victory, which UKIP looked very pleased about during the count. UKIP are thus now the main opposition in Fenland but they need a national revolutionary air to actually win seats, something that I doubt they will experience ever again except in the next Euro elections. However this no excuse for Conservatives to rest on their laurels, the fight will always be hard with a party which gets 35% of the vote when they just put their name on the ballot paper. Let's take the fight to UKIP.

The Conservatives with Michelle in the middle after the count.

*In reality the 64% figure is likely to be higher because many of the people who vote UKIP only started voting in the 2013 County Council elections according to electoral role statistics.

Nottingham Uni is Sound(ish)

Out of all of the country's universities Nottingham is probably the most Tory, or rather the least blindly left-wing. The walls of Nottingham SU are a far cry from those of Manchester which has socialist and communist propaganda cover the building like wall paper. In comparison to Manchester #ThingsElliottSays has been sent by one of his sources two pictures that show how socialist propaganda and graffiti is 'respected' at UoN.

Rightly the Leftie who wrote this is described as an 'idiot' in the top left.

Seems like the revolution is going well when the comment rated 9/10 believes abolishing the Private Sector is a 's#*t' idea .

It seems that the students at Nottingham University are not keen on this sort of Leftie claptrap. This has been show in the past when they refused to allow striking miners to do collections on campus in the 1980s and last year rejected a motion to force all students on campus to have one view on abortion.

The only question left to answer is this. Was it Duncan or Archie who wrote this graffiti?

Elm and Christchurch By-election

Today I have been out in Elm, Friday Bridge and Christchurch encouraging the good folk of these wonderful villages to vote for Michelle Tanfield, the Conservative candidate in the Elm and Christchurch by-election. This by-election has been caused by the sad death of Mac Cotterall, a great local hero in all respects who party members and residents respected well.

Out and about in the ward. 

Michelle is a very hard-working candidate who owns her own business and gets things done in politics. Most importantly Michelle is a loving mother who wants the best for her family in Fenland. Because of these things Michelle is "very aware of the challenges facing families in this current climate" and she "truly understands the pressure businesses are through right now."

Michelle and Cllr Steve Tierney out campaigning today.

Michelle has pledged to:

1. Help people stand tall and be proud of the community that is created.
2. Make sure families are supported and there is always somewhere for children to play.
3. Protect the local villages unique and delightful features and push for repair of those that need renovation.
4. Inspire people to build businesses that give so much to the local community
5. To support the Conservatives pledge for an in/out referendum on the EU. Despite this not being a local issue she recognises that people need to their say.

Michelle working hard for you.

If you would like more information about Michelle do not hesitate to call her on 07908707129. She will be a very good councillor if you elect her to take your case to Fenland District Council. So for a hard working Conservative councillor vote Michelle Tanfield on the 19th December.