Gove advises people in Hull to vote Lib Dem
Further evidence of electoral cosiness between the Conservatives - or at least some Conservatives - and the Liberal Democrats came in Michael Gove's speech in this afternoon's Commons debate on Educational Maintenance Allowances (EMAs).
It arose when Gove first said that "In Liberal Democrat-controlled Hull, any student in receipt of education maintenance allowance also receives a travel grant to cope with the full cost".
Whereupon David Blunkett interrupted to say "They won't now."
Gove replied, according to the following Hansard extract:
"I suspect they won't if a Labour council takes power, but if people are wise enough to vote Liberal Democrat at the next local election in Hull - [Hon. Members: "Oh."] - or for the Conservatives in any seat where we are well placed to defeat Labour, they will have a council that is fulfilling its statutory duty. It is no surprise that there are Liberal Democrat and Conservative councils that ensure that all students receive the support they deserve. It is striking that that is in addition to EMA."
Comment number 1.
At 20th Jan 2011, JunkkMale wrote:Best of all, recycling is also good for the planet.
/blogs/nickrobinson/2011/01/vote_lib_dem_sa.html
/blogs/nickrobinson/2011/01/vote_lib_dem_sa.html
I guess we're all doing our bit.
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Comment number 2.
At 20th Jan 2011, worcesterjim wrote:A tactical masterstroke...and no mistake....it could swing the balance of power across the world if Tweedldee swapped places with Tweedledum!
We live in interesting times!
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Comment number 3.
At 21st Jan 2011, Leuctrid wrote:Whatever happened to Osama bin Laden?
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Comment number 4.
At 21st Jan 2011, Smeagol wrote:Is this the best Michael can come up with to give us food for thought over the week-end? What part of coalition does he not understand? What does he expect if not this?
Here's my week-end offering. Before the EU enlargement I knew what was going to happen. So did the Germans and others in the EU and they took action to protect their workforce, particularly their young workers starting out in need of training and apprenticeships. Not so in the UK, and as a result 7 figure migration from Eastern Europe into this country took place almost overnight, relative to any historic precedent.
I work in a part of England where the inundation is at it's most conspicuous. All the jobs have been taken, there is nothing for our young workers to do. I mean why have employers training people when they have an endless supply of pre-trained highly motivated Eastern-Europeans champing at the bit to get to the front of the queue.
This is the real cause of the risk of a lost generation. It has almost nothing to do with university tuition fees but everything to do with the shocking incompetence of the New Labour government who claimed only a tiny fraction of those who actually came would come.
I am ashamed to live in a country that has allowed such people to come into government and betray us. Because they felt the Labour votes from the grateful newcomers were more important than encouraging employers to hire our young people they did nothing to control the influx.
Another betrayal for which, as usual, there will never be an apology.
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Comment number 5.
At 21st Jan 2011, worcesterjim wrote:4 TMR I feel your pain...but in Michael Crick`s defence he`s working for a broadcaster that for some reason has a huge investment in promoting mass immigration and our biggest industry of all ...the immigration,asylum and human rights industry...just imagine the direct and earnings and growth figures relating to that!
Still ..if Mindy`s Housemate is right we should soon be the most prosperous nation on Earth....it`s just a matter of growing your population and the money rolls in!
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Comment number 6.
At 22nd Jan 2011, Smeagol wrote:Just as the TUC destroy jobs because we lose our competitive edge to university graduates overseas who will happily work a 15 hour day for a bowl of rice and a cup of tea (OK so I'm exaggerating to make the point) so New Labour abandoned the interests of the British people i.e. our economy, by pursuing a deliberate policy of making everyone in the UK dependent, to some degree or another, on the state. Where people saw through it others would be brought in, grateful immigrants to dilute the resistance.
The objective, jobs for for life for the party and union faithful in a perpetual Labour/Trade Union one party state.
If there is 'poverty'(their words not mine, I would look to Africa or India etc. for true poverty) in the UK then it is Labour's fault. If there is high youth unemployment then it is Labour's fault. If there is a 4.8 trillion pound national debt it will take several blameless generations of future UK victims living in an overpopulated Malthusian nightmare, then it is Labour's fault.
'Unfair!' the lefty's knee jerks. Lady Thatcher said it all once, when she asked what good would the Good Samaritan have been if he was a bankrupt. Indeed!
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Comment number 7.
At 22nd Jan 2011, worcesterjim wrote:TMR...Daily Mail again?
How do we compete with the "one bowl of rice a day" people?
Your rich capitalist chums have the answer!
They take your pension pot and invest it in Scrooge,Grabgrind and Madoffs new investment opportunity in the slums of Asia and import thousands of illiterate unskilled Asians and their extended families to balance it out! Job`s a good `un!!
When TMR and Co`s workers are "too idle" to compete with asian slave labour and their "competitive" wage rates you will "have to" close down here in England and move to Romania where our Roma friends have vacated some land and there`s a golden opportunity to get EU funding to open TMR (Romania)and ride the EU "competitive level playing field" slush fund for ever......but only if you leave British workers and Britain behind you!(See Peter Mandelson and George Soros for details)
You stick with old Uncle Jim`s new Flywheel and Flywheel Investment Corp...... and I will make you a rich entrepreneur in months...and you can leave the lazy feckless shameless chavvy English layabouts behind you for ever.....ungrateful greedy bolshevik "trade uninonists"!!!
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Comment number 8.
At 22nd Jan 2011, Smeagol wrote:"TMR...Daily Mail again?"
In this neo-tribal era people like worcesterjim get confused by people like me who they, as a result, desperately try to squeeze into one of the stereotypical boxes the nanny state prescribes for putting us in. If I had a fiver for every time the best my on-line detractors could come up with was to accuse me of being a Daily Mail reader (a paper, like all the others, I have never opened let alone bought) as if newspapers somehow define the politics of the suckers that subscribe to them.
I am a scientist and my opinions are formed by what I see and hear around me every day in the cauldron of history where I work, in a country I've lived in for over half a century. That's where I come from.
For me it's not a happy place but only naive fools could ever be happy in the country where even now, having forced our national airline into a merger that has robbed 1400 people of their jobs, the Unite union is getting ready to disrupt the lives of more travellers naive enough to buy a BA ticket in order to put even more of their members on the dole!
Just remember, British lefty politics- you couldn't make it up!
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Comment number 9.
At 22nd Jan 2011, worcesterjim wrote:8 Well check this out for a bit of scientific rationalism.
Just pop back to my last post and actually pick holes in my reasoning...rather than sling insults at me based on what a psychiatrist might call your own "projection".
How is my post an inaccurate picture of what goes on in "business" today?
No..you could`t make British lefty politics up....it`s too obviously dreamed up by people with a dislike of ordinary British people who are just masquerading as friends of the poor and underpriveleged to make themselves rich...like the Blairs have!
As for you being an empiricist...well you must be inhabiting a very different space from mine TMR....but don`t let me delay you from making your first rational point on this thread!
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Comment number 10.
At 22nd Jan 2011, Smeagol wrote:I think we actually agree about more than we disagree. If you live in Worcester then yes we do live in a different space. If you lived where I worked there are so many people who don't speak English you live in expectation of being replaced by someone who can actually speak the same language as the majority of the customers. Mine is a constituency where the sitting MP is a Brownite self-serving careerist and the city council is more left wing than the former Soviet union!
Let's not fall out with each other over what newspaper we accuse each other of reading. The coalition exists to keep the pseudo-left from ever returning to power in a country they all but ruined. They know it and they will do all they can to destroy it. Let's not make it so easy for them!
Have a good week-end. I intend to!
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Comment number 11.
At 22nd Jan 2011, worcesterjim wrote:10 if that`s the best you can do by way of an answer to my question TMR perhaps you are right....let`s not waste any more time on mutual incomprehenion.
Have a good weekend!
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Comment number 12.
At 24th Jan 2011, wickedlymale wrote:We have a coalition govt. Supposedly we wanted one. Why do the politicians outside the circle show such surprise, resistance and disdain? Well, actually, its because they want power again, despite trashing the strongest economy in Europe they are still convinced they can spend our money more effectively that we can ourselves. Someone should point out that the right thing to do is keep your head down and your mouth shut when you have done the damage they have done. I didn't want a coalition because we will be paying for a referendum and can't root out the Public Sector nonsense spending properly, but we have one and I want to see if it works. Good luck to them and to the ´óÏó´«Ã½, stop acting like the Labour party publicity department.
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Comment number 13.
At 15th May 2011, Smeagol wrote:Every government there has ever been has been a coalition. Unlike a Labour coalition of Brownites and Blairites, or a Conservative coalition of Pro-EU and Anti- EU factions, the present government is a coalition of of two parties rather than two factions. In practice there is no discernable difference.
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