Topic: General Election 2019

[baldy]

Mail Online: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7767951/Tories-scent-victory-just-four-days-go.html


 

[baldy]

BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49798197

[Bob DeBilda]

I thought we were Brexiting to get rid of all these Polls 

[Michael]

Thinking of voting tactically?
 https://www.tactical.vote/all?fbclid=IwAR0wxUNa2qotHWNlMOE-1oY0HBDQ4RmJTYRffr-oEqp0GW20_l6BjkpynmM

[DORIAN]

i do not dislike Andrew Murrison in any way whatsoever, when we fighting for the Bypass he came here for afternoon tea and was a true gent, but i have to ask myself, as our local Mp, what has he achieved for our town, and i would say precious little, although he has been most successful in his role for foreign affairs.
so if i voted tactically who would i let in, and that is my issue, i have never not voted Tory and maybe i will vote for Andrew, but this is not only about BREXIT, its about the whole bigger picture. THE NHS is being used as tool  but when you think we are all living...or existing longer the government cannot use our incomes to prop up the never ending pot of health care.
maybe those who are in a comfortable wage bracket should be given a tax break if they align to a Private Health Care.
as for Corbyn talking of abolishing public schools, utter bollocks... my parents worked hard to give me a good education
lib Dems, ?
we shall see

[baldy]

WTF  -  it was the LibDems who first campaigned against the Westbury Bypass and caused it to become a national anti-new roads campaign due to all the others who jumped on the anti-eastern bypass bandwagon.

TBH - It's a safe Tory seat here anyway and it's a strong Leave area. Also, there's no clear anti-Brexit candidate for tactical anti-Brexit voters ... so there will be no change of MP here.

The interesting thing will be to see how well the Labour and LibDem candidates do, not least because in recent times the LibDem vote has been declining in favour of the Labour candidate so that Labour, instead of coming third have been coming in second.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_West_Wiltshire_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

[DORIAN]

they were not the primary reason for the failure and you know that

[baldy]

Yes, but I did not say that.

[Michael]

I have to ask myself, as our local Mp, what has he achieved for our town, and i would say precious little, although he has been most successful in his role for foreign affairs.

Dr Murrison MP for Westbury and the succeeding SW Wilts Constituency since 2001 has done very little for our communities in all that time, he's had no need to, he's had a guaranteed seat and has taken this seat for granted.
Andrew Murrison's campaign in this election has been about Brexit, but it's not all about Brexit, it is about affordable housing for rent and purchase, it's about a diminishing health services, homelessness and rough sleepers, and incidentally among these rough sleepers nationally there are 6000, yes that's six thousand, ex military personnel who have served this country.
Our constituency is one of poor and expensive public transport, inadequate provision for the young, and food banks, which in many cases are having to be used by people on low wages in full time employment.
Westbury has been ignored and overlooked by a Conservative Unitary Council, and remains at the back of the queue when it comes to any form of financial help from that source.
So think of all this when you cast your vote, because under the Tories there is more of the same to come, particularly in the devolution of services being forced on the town's council with very little extra funding, continuing the austerity policies that have brought us to where we are now, and think of this when council taxes rise to cover the loss of revenue no longer supplied by national government.
It really is time for a change.

[baldy]

Michael

I'm curious to know what you think Dr Murrison MP could have done for the local constituency that you think he has not done in his time as our local MP.

I've followed him from when he was first elected to the Westbury Constituency (when I was a member of the local Conservative Association, indeed I was Secretary of the Westbury branch until 2005) and noticed that he was constantly busy in the constituency attending events (maybe not ones you would go to), popping up in the local papers commenting on this or that but more particularly I've tracked what he actually does in parliament, which is quite easy since he started to use Twitter a few years ago to broadcast his main actions.

I recall that he has lobbied Wiltshire Council on all sorts of topics, though as he has no vote in the council or any real influence (like any MP) he can't make anything happen unless the council agrees. When Tony Blair took us to war in Iraq, he voted against the war saying that there was no proper evidence of WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) and fell out with many local Tories who thought he took the wrong position. Actually, I've noticed that he has turned out to be right on that and many other issues over the years. More recently, apart from military and foreign affairs (he is/was a Defence and Foreign Office Minister), he has made all sorts of statements in parliament on NHS and related health issues including the idea of a royal commission to sort care services etc on the basis that it needs cross party working to get any progress at all ...

I'm not sure what any MP can do in their constituency apart from lobby on issues and hope the higher authorities or people in the cabinet agree. He's certainly done his bit. It's hardly his fault if the Labour party failed to do much for Westbury under Blair and Gordon (is a moron) Brown (the one who sold half our gold reserves at the bottom of the market for a stupidly low price) or indeed under the Conservatives given that they had to clear up the economic mess left by Labour for most of the last decade.

In recent times, I've noticed that he took up a Leave / BREXIT position early on. I'm not sure what else the majority of local electors (MOST by far are Tory voters and are Leavers) would expect him to realistically do.

NB. Dr Murrison is a former Royal Navy surgeon, so his expertise on medical and military matters is pretty well beyond doubt and is useful in parliament.

Just as an aside, I noticed that he was doubtful about buying the new F35s because he thinks all military fighter and bomber aircraft will be pilotless drones quite soon.  I've since noticed that all sorts of commentators are now saying the same just as we are buying the bulk of the new F35s ...

[Shizzy]

Well, Labour under Corbyn has managed to perform worse in this election than Michael Foot managed to do. Will they learn from this, it sounds unlikely listening to John McDonnel.

[baldy]

General Election result confirmed for South West Wiltshire constituency
 


The General Election result for the South West Wiltshire constituency have been confirmed.
 
The result is as follows:
 
  Andrew Murrison – Conservative Party: 33,038

• Ellen Nicholson – Liberal Democrats: 8,015
• Julie Philips – Green Party: 2,434
• Emily Pomroy-Smith – Labour Party: 11,408

           
The turnout was 55,141, which equates to 71%

[baldy]

Well, Labour under Corbyn has managed to perform worse in this election than Michael Foot managed to do. Will they learn from this, it sounds unlikely listening to John McDonnel.

They are incapable of leading anything or anyone out of a paper bag EXCEPT when they occasionally choose an exceptionally bright and capable leader who straddles the centre ground of UK politics eg. Tony Blair.

I think the strongest reason why the Labour Party is set up to keep failing is the ridiculous mostly-non MP committee structure it has at the top which cripples the ability of the parliamentary Labour Party (ie. its MPs) to choose their own leader and then which cripples the ability of the leader to actually set policy and lead.

No serious organisation can lead by a committee made up of people who are not actually the executives holding power (in this case the MPs). It is well known in business (ie. Its axiomatic) that effective leadership or planning or design does not come from committee decisions. What is needeed is a strong and bright and trusted leader who is chosen by the the senior executives   who are actually responsible for running things and, in the case of a political body, allowing the broad membership to chose from a shortlist of 2 or perhaps a very few sanctioned by the executives (ie. the MPs) who know the person on a day to day basis ..

It is simply bizarre and stupid for Labour to let its membership override its MPs on the choice of party leader, which is how Corbyn became leader and why most of the Labour MPs refused to serve in his cabinet and why Corbyn largely ended up appointing poor quality dregs to his front bench ...

It's a totally incompetent and laughably bizarre and stupid way to do things .... and it will continue to cripple the Labour Party with useless leaders most of the time ....

It's also the reason why the Conservatives expect to keep winning most of the time.  In recent decades, the only time Labour stood any chance of actually winning a GE was when it had a truly strong and intelligent leader who led on the centre ground.

Laughably, the Labour Party is now in the grip of utter numbskull loony lefties who are all tied up with Corbynism / Marxism which is based on all sorts of nonsense including being pro-Palistinian (ie. Islamic) and so anti-semitic.

The Labour Party is a disgusting organisation largely filled with disgraceful terrorist sympathisers, anti-semites, really quite nasty thugs plus quite a lot of rather decent people who are too stupid to see the problems with the party or to organise themselves into a New Labour party again       ...

It's quite possible for the Tories to be in power for the next 10-15 years now if they rule sensibly and grow the economy and spread the wealth around better than occurred under Labour ...

[baldy]

[Maxi]

So congratulations if you wanted Boris Johnson as pm.
Please don’t celebrate too much though as you have work to do. You see us remoaners have spent three and a half years now telling you brexit was wrong but we’ve finally and completely lost. There’s pretty much nothing we can do now to stop it.
So, it’s over to you leavers. You need to get yourselves into gear to make it work. We need to see some of these benefits you’ve been able to see yet unable to properly articulate since 2016.
I hope you don’t mind but I’ve taken the liberty of writing a to do list for you.

1. Get brexit done please. When we say done we mean as promised so we’ll be looking for trade deals with the EU, Japan, Australia and Canada etc. In fact there’s about 40 deals covering 70 countries that need to be done please. Also with the US that doesn’t involve the nhs or chlorine. We want what you promised us. That was that we’d be no worse off than when we were an EU member. You need to crack on as this was promised by the end of Jan. You have seven weeks.

2. The nhs. We want the cash that was promised please. £350 million per week is about 72000 nurses so please get recruiting. This is important.

3. Scotland. Ok so these guys were promised they would remain in the EU if they remained in the UK. They’re pretty pissed. In fact they’ve voted almost exclusively for the SNP so they might want to leave. Equally you said the UK wouldn’t split so you’ll need to both grant Scotland its independence and keep it as part of the United Kingdom. Good luck squaring this circle. NB. This is urgent.

4. Northern Ireland. Oooookay then. You’ve really buggered this one up. There’s a chance they could look to reunify with the republic now because they didn’t want to brexit. Regardless you’ve caused instability there where we and they can least afford it. NB. This is also urgent.

5. The economy. Johnson keeps talking about unleashing the potential of the country. We need to see this soon if possible. We don’t want to see the downturn that “project fear” predicted. We don’t want to be poorer. We don’t want to lose out.

6. You’ll also need to “bring the country back together”. This might be tricky as a lot of people seem to be really really angry with each other.

That’s as far as I’ve got. Should keep you busy. So go and get all british about things. Roll up your sleeves, pull your socks up, dig deep and deliver what you promised.

And remember if you fail to deliver any of this it’s on you, brexit and Tory voters. You wanted this so badly and now you have it. We honestly hope we’re wrong and that you can make a success of this but if you can’t then we will forever tell you that we told you so.”