Hung Parliament - Good, Bad or Immaterial?

[Loz]

Desperate stuff from the Mail - it doesn't actually accuse him of doing anything against the rules. Not quite as much a piece of non-news as the 'payments for researcher' stupidity, but pretty close.

I love especially how they converted figures from 2001 and 2005 to today's exchange rate to make it look even more awfully terribly outrageous.

[silverfox]

True Loz, but does Clegg really pass the 'sniff test'?

[Loz]

Well, he bought a house to live in and bore the associated risk. True, he received expenses to pay the mortgage whilst he was an MEP, but had house prices dropped, would you have approved taxpayers reimbursing him for the loss? You can't have it both ways.

This is an entirely different matter to the flipping and other entirely dodgy practices. Yep, he made a profit. But as far as I can see, there was no 'fiddling'.

However, if Clegg indeed has "insisted that parliamentarians should pay back capital gains they make from state subsidies" then he's probably made a rod for his own back.

[*Bob*]

If The Mail go back far enough they'll no doubt find somebody happy to accuse Clegg of cheating at marbles.

Cheating with regards to 'the spirit of the game', if not 'the actual rules', of course.

[Brendan]

We are speaking about the same paper which ran an article basically saying that he is foreign and therefore unfit to govern the country.

[Brendan]

Apart from the fact that it?s a xenophobic smear campaign its based on complete bull shit. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1266826/The-United-Nations-Nick-Clegg.html

[Loz]

Brendan Wrote:

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> Apart from the fact that it?s a xenophobic smear

> campaign its based on complete bull shit.

> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1

> 266826/The-United-Nations-Nick-Clegg.html

"Mrs Clegg also described her husband as a ?true internationalist? - despite his repeated references during the leaders? TV debate last week to the concerns of his constituents in Sheffield."

Really, sometimes satire just can't touch the Daily Mail. That has to be the funniest sentence I've read in a while!

[*Bob*]

I believe the headline in question from The Mail was "CLEGG IN NAZI SLUR ON BRITAIN"

You might as well quote stuff from Viz.

[Marmora Man]

Brendan Wrote:

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> Oh @#$%& off! Compared to Labour and the

> especially the Tories they look practically

> saintly.

It may just be perception or my fading memory but I belive in overall terms Labour MPs were rather more greedy than Tories, tho' I'd admit the Tories generated better headlines with duck houses, moats and houses that looked like Balmoral.

The crIminal charges score is 3 x Labour MPs and 1 x Tory peer

[expat]

>>Brendan Wrote:

>>-------------------------------------------------------

>> Oh @#$%& off! Compared to Labour and the

>> especially the Tories they look practically

>> saintly.

>Marmora Man wrote

>It may just be perception or my fading memory but I belive in overall terms Labour MPs were rather more greedy than >Tories, tho' I'd admit the Tories generated better headlines with duck houses, moats and houses that looked like Balmoral.

The point I was trying to make was that using the expense scandal to vote lib-dem looks a fallacy.

There is I think 345 Labour MPs, 193 Conservative and 63 Lib-Dems so you would expect more Labour MPs to be caught up

in the expense nonsense.

>The crIminal charges score is 3 x Labour MPs and 1 x Tory peer

Innocent til proven guilty right?

[Brendan]

I also wasn?t particularly defending the Lib Dems on this. In fact they advised their MPs that there was (I think the term was) considerable scope when applying for expenses.

Just pointing out that their transgressions weren't nearly as, shall we say, cheeky.

[silverfox]

To get back on topic.

Given Mervyn King's comments that this is not the election to win due to the scale of austerity we are about to undergo, and the secret report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) revealing that the banks fear a double dip recession due to regulatory controls to be imposed on them, perhaps a Hung Parliament would be the best thing for the country in the sense that all parties would be part of the process in bringing in what will be very unpopular measures.

[Brendan]

I think that would also go someway towards restoring public faith in politicians. If they showed a genuine will to work together for the good of the country putting their filthy, party power struggles aside.