Clegg vs Farage debate – a one legged bum kicking contest?

[Isitmebut]

Mr Clegg must have had AT LEAST three Weetabix the other day, as he has challenged Mr Farage to an EU debate, which in reality is his opponents one specialist subject.

If the debate covered the spectrum of domestic issues, policies, history of party, history of winning by-elections via protest votes, even a bit of Work Experience running the country – Mr Clegg, if he could get a word in, would IMO be the ring master.

But on the EU, I would compare this mismatching to a lone one-legged man, entering a bum kicking contest, and unfortunately, Mr Farage would have the matching set when it all kicked off.

Personally I believe this country DOES need full disclosure on the all the ins and outs of EU membership, but as we are already ‘in’, the time for that debate is when we GET an EU yes/no referendum - as both Labour and the Lib Dems are ideologically entrenched as ‘(stay) ‘ins’ without a vote - and therefore the only winner will be Ukip getting even more taxpayer expensive MEP’s where they don’t want to be, but cannot do a thing about getting us OUT.

We need more democracy, more debates, more ordinary people.

Scitland may leave the United kingdom. They generally vote socialist and down South, we don't want the socialists. Everybody wants different things. The only fair solution is to have proportioanl representation and coalitions that represent the majority.

The chums never gave us proportional representation because it was a threat to their control. If they had offered it years ago, then maybe the United kingdom would never have been at risk of breaking up.

Claig….do you want people to try and engage with you with serious conversations on here, TO PROMOTE YOUR CAUSE, or are you just here to spout uninformed opinions and mantras?

The Lib Dem policy on tuition fees PRIOR to the General Election, PRIOR to being in government within a coalition, was TYPICAL populist type policies that fringe parties who don’t believe they’ll be in government for one moment, spout for votes – Ukip are far worse, rubbishing their whole 2010 manifesto, so get over it.

The Labour government deciding 50% on our youth should go to university started an enquiry on how we’d pay for it, which if memory serves was to conveniently report after the 2010 election, so who knows what they’d done. Being in a coalition and similar to the Conservatives, meant key individual manifesto policies had to be shelved – so arguably if no fees with a £157 billion annual deficit was ever possible, the Conservatives are just as much to blame on this – lets see if there are ‘no tuition fees’ in any 2015 manifestos.

Re the threats to UK jobs, as I have said, as an INFORMED person, I do not see it myself and need to see credible research on the facts; ‘trust Farage’ is not an option on such an important issue, especially after the rubbishing of a whole UK domestic policy manifesto, that he signed off on, campaigned on and was happy to receive votes on – and by not replacing it since, allowing him to promise everything under the rainbow of political colours the people want to hear, just like the pre coalition ‘no tuition fees’, you so vehemently hold the Lib Dems so accountable for.

'do you want people to try and engage with you with serious conversations on here'

I would like you to start doing that, if you are able

Cleggy is supposed to be a serious politician. He even studied at the chums' college called the "College of Europe" in Brussels, where chums and puppets are taught about the European Project.

He is allegedly not a "fruitcake". He made a big deal about the fact that there would be no tuition fees. He let down millions of voters who thought he might be for real. There were riots in the streets over it when students objected.

Wiping his betrayal of the public away as if it was no big deal is not good enough. That is the type of thing that has led to the loss of faith in the political class that the public is now feeling.

' lets see if there are ‘no tuition fees’ in any 2015 manifestos.'

UKIP have said they will scrap tuition fees. Let's see if it makes their manifesto, the one that will make the chums tremble.

'Re the threats to UK jobs, as I have said, as an INFORMED person, I do not see it myself and need to see credible research on the facts;'

Do you think the chum, Cleggy, is going to give you the facts? Did you see how Farage said that he was "wilfully lying to the British public"? Did you see how he said "read the small print"?

Farage wants all the facts in the open. He said he accepted the debate to air the facts and was shocked at Cleggy's attitude. Let's have a referendum, let's have a campaign, let's hear all the facts. Let's let Cleggy's team come up with their "facts" and let's read their "small print".

I will repeat this post, as after your last three, it does not appear that you have read it e.g. the fundamental bit about being in a coalition and why Farage's promises ain't worth a barrel of monkys.

Claig….do you want people to try and engage with you with serious conversations on here, TO PROMOTE YOUR CAUSE, or are you just here to spout uninformed opinions and mantras?

The Lib Dem policy on tuition fees PRIOR to the General Election, PRIOR to being in government within a coalition, was TYPICAL populist type policies that fringe parties who don’t believe they’ll be in government for one moment, spout for votes – Ukip are far worse, rubbishing their whole 2010 manifesto, so get over it.

The Labour government deciding 50% on our youth should go to university started an enquiry on how we’d pay for it, which if memory serves was to conveniently report after the 2010 election, so who knows what they’d done. Being in a coalition and similar to the Conservatives, meant key individual manifesto policies had to be shelved – so arguably if no fees with a £157 billion annual deficit was ever possible, the Conservatives are just as much to blame on this – lets see if there are ‘no tuition fees’ in any 2015 manifestos.

Re the threats to UK jobs, as I have said, as an INFORMED person, I do not see it myself and need to see credible research on the facts; ‘trust Farage’ is not an option on such an important issue, especially after the rubbishing of a whole UK domestic policy manifesto, that he signed off on, campaigned on and was happy to receive votes on – and by not replacing it since, allowing him to promise everything under the rainbow of political colours the people want to hear, just like the pre coalition ‘no tuition fees’, you so vehemently hold the Lib Dems so accountable for.

I already answered your post. There is no need to repost the same drivel again.

Claig…re ‘ordinary people’, most thought allowing banks to collapse rather than support their business and retail clients was a good idea.

Most thought after the crash that with a £157 billion budget deficit, Investment Banks that had been contributing £60 billion directly, around £100 billion in total ANNUALLY, should take those tax receipts that have help fund the UK for 35-years elsewhere – believing it may insulate the UK from the contagion of a global banking crisis.

Most believe we shouldn’t have ‘austerity’ and that having only cut £50 billion from our annual budget deficit down to £100 billion, we have HAD severe austerity – and enough is enough, the deficit will look after itself and foreign investors buyer Gilts to fund us, would continue to do so without charging us penal interest rates..

Most might want Proportional Representation, but doesn’t that mean more coalitions and watered down manifestos, what is the point of voting when you’ll always get a ‘melting pot’ of policies? Which country has the more stable political system, the U.S. or Italy; the latter proving we were very lucky two very different parties were able to agree on so much.

Conclusion; Democracy is about the people understanding the issues as best they can and voting for who they think has the better and workable policies, not the biggest gob.

'Claig…re ‘ordinary people’, most thought allowing banks to collapse rather than support their business and retail clients was a good idea. '

And they were right. Our government, funded by our taxpayer money, would have had to protect our personal savings, and teh billionaires and derivative speculators would have lost their shirts and not been bailed out by our taxpayer money. But our chums and puppets do not serve us.

'Most believe we shouldn’t have ‘austerity’ and that having only cut £50 billion from our annual budget deficit down to £100 billion, we have HAD severe austerity – and enough is enough, the deficit will look after itself and foreign investors buyer Gilts to fund us, would continue to do so without charging us penal interest rates.. '

No, most people believe that the chums' austerity should not have fallen on disbaled people and teh poorest people in teh country who can't afford £14 for a spare room, and should instead have fallen on global corporations who are allowed to get away with paying hardly any tax by the chums, or on cleaners who pay more in tax than some of the banking moguls who are mates of the chums.

'Most might want Proportional Representation, but doesn’t that mean more coalitions and watered down manifestos, what is the point of voting when you’ll always get a ‘melting pot’ of policies? '

The point is that it represents the will of the people and not the will of the chums.

' Democracy is about the people understanding the issues as best they can and voting for who they think has the better and workable policies, not the biggest gob.'

Precisely, and that is why the people voted overwhelmingly for Farage and not for Cleggy last night.

Claig...for the THIRD time, let me try it another way, if Clegg's Lib Dems DID NOT have a majority in parliament in 2010 to implement their manifesto - and this policy did not make the cut in the initial Coalition Agreement- how can you justify repeating again again, the following?

"He is allegedly not a "fruitcake". He made a big deal about the fact that there would be no tuition fees. He let down millions of voters who thought he might be for real. There were riots in the streets over it when students objected."

Because there are such things as principles - although admittedly Cleggy may not have them.

If Cleggy, the chum, had stuck to his principles and said that he refused to back down on tuition fees (and not doing so has now destroyed the credibility of his party with voters), then Cameron and the Eton chumocracy would have had no choice but to scrap that policy, since they wanted to form a government to deal with the deficit.

Cleggy caved in because he didn't have integrity and didn't believe in honouring his promises.

He is finished and if UKIP stand a good candidate against him in his constituency, he won't even be able to hold his seat. He will have to go to Europe, where the chums will greet him with open arms after the public boot him out.

Claig…so to summarize your points to my points, ‘the people’ according to Claig believe;

We didn’t/don’t need high street banks, to protect bank shareholders (including pension funds) at all, or even need a banking system at all - and all business and retail customer money could have been 100% protected by the near bankrupt government and then that money paid out in Groats, then stuffed down our boxers/briefs for security.

We don’t need Investment Banks, core businesses of raising money for governments and companies/jobs to the tune of $ trillions every year and ensure liquidity for pension funds etc, or their tax receipts

We do not have a housing problem that even if we build 200,000 homes a year, there will NOT be enough bedrooms for over a decade for those waiting, so those without homes, or are currently over crowed, have to lump it.

The welfare/benefit system in the UK despite having grown more than virtually every other country for over a decade, was a lean, mean, no fraud, well run machine with unlimited funded that didn’t need reform years ago - and whoever did it would have teething problems, even Mr Farage who in 2010 wanted the Public Sector cut by 1 million plus, down to 1997 employment number levels.

That Proportional Representation, where 2,3, or 4 political parties may form a coalition, where dodgy advisors in smoky back rooms horse trade policies to run the country, that actually delivers the will of the people, who voted for one political party’s manifesto.

That in the polls, not any elections last night, that Farage without any domestic UK policies, somehow has different answers to the UK’s problems, that policies of the mainstream parties are not offering.

If that’s the view of ‘the people’ on how to run a country, then thank fluck the boys from Eaton are in charge. lol

If Clegg lost ‘all principles’ by not being able to get a Lib Dem policy through a coalition agreement, what does that make Farage, fraudulently gaining every single vote in a UK General Election, on UK domestic issues, who has since rubbished HIS OWN MANIFESTO, IN IT’S ENTIRETY, without the pressures of a coalition agreement???

Farage did not renege on ONE domestic UK policy, it was every policy, and we have to trust him on future UK domestic issues???

Ukip is a one-policy-pony-party on Europe, which they cannot deliver, so the UK has this ridiculous situation where we spend £hundreds of thousands of tax payers money putting each one of the Ukip MEP’s into Europe, who don’t want to be there – who beat Clegg in a debate, who does not benefit in the pocket directly from the UK being in the EU.

If that is democracy, then democracy is a horses ar$e.

"We didn’t/don’t need high street banks, to protect bank shareholders (including pension funds) at all, or even need a banking system at all - and all business and retail customer money could have been 100% protected by the near bankrupt government and then that money paid out in Groats, then stuffed down our boxers/briefs for security."

No, we need high street banks and very few people in the country have more than £100,000 in savings, most have not much at all. All of that could easily have been covered by the government which uses our taxpayer money to provide deposit insurace anyway. But we do not need all of the investment banks which gamble money in casino capitalism and some of those banks should have been allowed to fail and any criminals in banks who had acted recklessly should have been jailed, their assets should have been stripped and they should have been made to work in jail to pay back what they had lost. Big shareholders would have taken a hit, but ordinary people's savings would have been protected. Then instead of propping up insolvent banks with billions of the public's money, just a fraction of that money should have been used to build homes and stimulate the economy, providing work for thousands of people.

'Proportional Representation, where 2,3, or 4 political parties may form a coalition, where dodgy advisors in smoky back rooms horse trade policies to run the country'

No, with PR, the dodgy chums would not be voted in in the first place.

'If that’s the view of ‘the people’ on how to run a country, then thank fluck the boys from Eaton are in charge. lol'

That is the view of the people, and the chums from Eton won't be in charge for long, according to the polls.

'If that is democracy, then democracy is a horses ar$e.'

Are you a chum?

Banks involved in rigging LIBOR markets or any other markets should have had their licences revoked and should have been shut down, and the banks should have been nationalised, and criminals should have been jailed as a warning to others that rigging and defrauding the public would no longer be allowed.

People are quite fond of Greens locally

Not in Brighton. I haven't met anyone who can't wait to see the back of them.

Really Pixel? I thought they were all greenies down there.
What went wrong?

Claig….your not big on facts, so let me just point out a few and I suggest we then get back to the point of the thread – rather than you show how little ‘the people’ actually know about some important ‘stuff’.

The lack of lending in the UK everyone was screaming about from 2008, that was holding back the economy, was due to the contraction of lenders in the UK market from September 2007 onwards i.e. failure of Northern Rock, bank/building society mergers and foreign banks leaving our shore – a catastrophic failure of one major bank in 2008, through financial contagion could have took them all down, who would finance the recovery then.

The banks were never insolvent in the usual terms, even Northern Rock, there were huge liquidity problems due to the failure of the interbank market and illiquidity of the non government bond market charging penal rates – so banks could not roll over/cover maturing debt, so could not function. And lets not forget that it was the American banks and over lending to the poor via the Sub Prime crisis, that triggered the crisis and closed the interbank market on the fears of international financial contagion, from the non American banks, from their exposure to those American Bank's mortgages, via their expose to American Banks.

The level of deposit insurance back in 2007 was nowhere neat the £85k (whatever) that came in around 2010, and in a complete crash of the final system where government cannot borrow via the Gilts market, would have meant NOTHING was £££ protected when running a £157 billion shortfall in our annual budget, the public sector would not have been paid, we’d have been like Greece with the poor rummaging through bins.

Re the Eaton boys not being in charge for much longer, probably, so we go back to 2010 Labour; at least we’ll have a better idea of what to expect and it has to look better than a no policy Ukip

Claig I don't want to sidetrack the thread but if you are interested you might want to have a look at the local paper (The Argus) to see what people think.
Today we have binmen threatening to strike again.

Try this for some interesting comments.

And basically they just aren't very good at being 'green' here and they did the same thing elsewhere last year.