Ding, Ding, Ding

Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls. Welcome to the fight of this week. In the blue corner is Tim 'Killer' Montgomerie and in the red corner Louise 'Butterfly' Mensch.

 Round 1

 Round 2

#ThingsElliottSays will keep you updated if there is a third round. But in my opinion Montgomerie quite clearly won.

Power of Suggestion

Boris: When can I move into No.10? 

Dave: P*#$ O*#

Google images being suggestive of the fight for Number 10 between David Cameron and Boris. I wonder if this is deliberate?

Chill Time

Well it's time to relax after a bad day. We just need to get sorted locally as a party. Everything is recoverable and as Cllr Simon King said "we'll be back." National problems on immigration and the economy caused this and we just need to think how we can get it sorted. The electorate had a message to give and they are right we do need these things to be sorted out.

And now for some Jazz.

Massacre

2009 results (stripes are mixed ward)

2013 Results (my awful stripping is mixed ward)

Today the Tory Party in North East Cambridgeshire and Fenland got massacred. My Town and the surrounding villages are now represented by UKIP councillors, who didn't turn up for the count. Fenland and North East Cambs just has a majority of Conservative councillors.

The seats we lost were some of the safest in the entire county, with the exception of Wisbech North. The best councillors sadly went too. Steve Tierney, my now ex-councillor, was amazing. He was opposed to wind turbines, wanted out of Europe and actually did a lot. If UKIP do half as much as him i'll die of shock.

Even those we kept are either still here because there was no UKIP or by luck, there was about 20 votes in most elections. So no more safe seats across the county. 

There are a lot of reasons for this. Fenland is right wing and has lots of immigrants. But as I think this has something to do with the economy too. The Conservatives have yet to show a proper handling with very few tax cuts. There are some other local issues but the main thrust behind UKIP today was because of this. Immigration, Gay Marriage and EU, to a lesser extent. But these only mattered because our economic handling so far hasn't be that good. I hope it improves soon.

#ThatcherDebate

Yesterday I attended, with other members of NUCA, a debate organised by the Debating Society of Tthis House Regrets Thatcherism'. I don't like suspense and so i'll tell you we won by a about 10-20 votes, a victory for Thatcher against the socialist oppressors.

This is what happened, I'll tell it partially through Twitter and what I remember, unlike at Port and Policy this is possible. One of the proposition members was James Manning, ex NUCA member, who was corrupted by socialism or rather joined a party that promotes elitism and the post war consensus that he probably believed in anyway. Jenny said some agreeable words on the topic.

James kicked off the debate, or rather he tried to. He spoke so fast we didn't know what he was saying.

This was true of all but one of the debaters though, who I do congratulate for giving some good passion.

The debaters were not the greatest (bar the one), more practice in public speaking. I know that I'm not perfect but the lack of facts let them down the most in my opinion.

I am also critical of Rob though.

#Shame to the love child of Chris Martin and Tim Montgomerie. However did you notice the new #socialistoppressor. This has come about because I asked a question to the proposition about why they supported socialist elitism and they gave me some ramble on welfare. Seemingly everyone is now using it though.

There was a lot of nonsense from the proposition of course. Someone claimed that the Miners' Strike was balloted and democratic. Others wanted working class people to be forced to live in their mining villages in a new age serfdom. All of course from members of the SWP or from the asylum. There wasn't a really good argument against Thatcher, in the sense of one that was using correct facts and could be spun in a misconstrued way against the great lady, which was a shame.

But what was the most shameful was the proposition essentially inferring the Falkland Islands should have been left to the Argentina and not liberated. Well I'd just like to point out that Argentina at the time had inflation of 130% and a military dictator that killed 30,000 people at least. So 1982 Argentina was a great country unless you wanted to eat or have any freedom. In all fairness the proposition may have different views, but I and the Falkland Islanders after the debate would like to know your stance, just leave a comment at the bottom.

We won. Thatcher won another popular mandate. It's getting to a point where I cannot recall how many times she has had sweeping majorities in votes across the country. But weirdly there were many abstentions.

My Thanks goes to the debating society for organising this, however I would like to be constructively critical of the way it was laid out.

Firstly, why did we have to be totally silent? Ok, it's not Port and Policy but even in Question Time people can clap at comments and react with disgust. I ask why it is not acceptable to react with disgust at proposition essentially saying we should not have retaken the Falkland Islands?

Also, the debaters seemingly knew little about Thatcherism. The propositions absurd tacit claims that Thatcher abolished state education and all welfare spending seems to based on ignorance rather than that of trying to create an argument that she was an evil elitist*. It was up to the floor to present the facts of Thatcher, both the proposition and opposition knew very few, which is a shame.

There was a good opportunity for a good debate but in my opinion it was missed. I invite you to Port and Policy to see what a real debate is like. I still enjoyed myself though. 

*An argument which although is totally false is used by those who oppose Thatcher.

Waste and Cuts

Today the figures for the cost of PM Direct, where Dave speaks to members of the public, was announced at £50,000. This does seem a tad too much for a glorified Town Hall meeting but I think we need should have a scale of the amount of cuts that are needed and pick the fights on what really needs to go.

Dave Direct.

The budget deficit stands this year at £108 billion and the national debt is £1.18 trillion. So let's cut PM Direct and have no public questions at all. That would save us the £50,000 and bring our deficit down to £107,999,950,000. This is obviously a truly massive saving.

It's clear we've got to do better than that. PM direct is similar to that of local government, listening to people directly and so on. So let's abolish it we'd save £27.1 billion. that's a fair size of money but barely a quarter of the budget deficit.

Let's try and get rid of that deficit. I'd then abolish the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh assemblies. They are a bit like local government and together make a saving of £48.2 billion. The deficit would stand at £32.7 billion.

Councils also are closely affiliated with the police. So let's get rid of them and any justice system we have in this country. We'd then save £31 billion. Almost got rid of the budget deficit then.

So let's cut international aid, that's £12.7 billion, most Tories want this to have a cut if not to go completely. That will get rid of our deficit. Hurrah, although I wouldn't in a real life scenario want an end to government departments, I would like the government to make net cuts.

But let's see how far we get the debt down by cutting. Dave said that he wanted some of the international aid budget to be spent on military expenditure so let's get rid of all forms of the MOD and military expenditure. A whopping £40 billion will be saved. But that doesn't make much of a difference to the debt either. Let's get rid of education too, that's almost £100 billion. The state at this point is now just a glorified wheelchair.

Our national debt will then stand at £1,040,000,000,000. Still loads. So let's get right to the bone. What about cutting all welfare and the NHS, tough times and all that. This comes to the massive total of  £357 billion. £683 billion pounds is left.

The State has very little to do now, so what's the point of it. Let's abolish it completely. If we can get round the logistical problem of privatising tax collectors and the like. We can save a total of £720 billion. There is now no spending, only income to pay the debt.

If we did that we'd still have to pay £468 billion. That's how big our problem is. If we abolished all spending for 1 year we'd still not pay off our debt.

If we abolish the state we would still be left with a huge amount of debt.

Obviously I'm not here to tell you we should abolish the state. That's just silly. But we need to be looking around for big areas where we can cut. £50,000 is nothing. I am a great believer in look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. But clearly this will not work in the mess we are in. We need to really get a hold of the economic problems. 

Ed Balls

Happy Ed Balls Day. Today Marks 2 years since Ed Balls tweeted his own name. He is very full of himself.

I'm not going to criticise Ed Ball's economic polices today. This is partially because he hasn't really got anything but mostly because even with those few he has it would take several years. So let's recount some of the funnier things on Ed Balls day. 

But by far the best thing I have seen is this.