MSN
Nick Clegg's first 'Town Hall' event of the week was held at MSN headquarters in London. With David Cameron on holiday, the acting prime minister appeared at ease in front of the media as he answered questions sent in by the MSN users and a live audience. "This is the trendiest stool I've ever been asked to sit on," he joked. "I may wander."
His celebrated electoral appearances gave Clegg every reason to be confident in answering an array of questions. But he played down the "acting prime minister" monicker. "Far too much is being made of this. Of course, when the prime minister is on holiday his deputy must step in. But he's in charge."
A positive outlook
Toughness has been at the heart of the coalition message as cuts have been rolled out. "We will be making many difficult decisions over the coming months," he forecasts. "The thing about these cuts is that you can't duck them. It would be nice to somehow turn our back on the black hole in our public finances but that's not an option."
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But a sombre, knuckle-down message was clearly not Clegg's intention. Energetic and jovial at times, he was full of positivity, keen to emphasise "the spirit of partnership at the heart of this coalition", discussing the public's attitude to politics and visualising "a fairer socially mobile society". Facing questions about young people's employment difficulties he painted an optimistic picture: "You should be propelled forward by your aspirations."
"Insipid mush"
He is aware that the public perception of the coalition is vague. "People envisaged the new coalition as a kind of insipid mush where people argue about things that won't make a difference. It hasn't been like that. If anything, we've been too fast, too radical and too reforming."
MSN
He wants us to understand that change - one of every campaign's favourite words - has really happened, reminding us of the reduction of the number of MPs in parliament and damning the "lamentable abuse of expenses" that occurred last year. "It's over. You are now in charge," he claims.
He takes the opportunity to throw some political weight when the tragic floods in Pakistan are raised. "Close to a quarter of the aid to Pakistan has come from the UK. The response from the international community has been lamentable, it's been absolutely pitiful." The strength of terms used by the deputy leader appears designed to disguise the difficulty of defining their first 100 days.
"Removing barriers"
Perhaps Clegg's favourite morale-boosting weapon is to talk about his own experiences and political passions. "I didn't come into policy to announce cuts," he says when confronted with funding issues in hospitals. "One of the reasons I got into politics is because it angers me that children are condemned by the circumstances of their birth," he tells us when eulogizing about social mobility. His ability to turn storyteller marked him out in the debates and Clegg the acting leader exhibits the same talent.
MSN
These events seem to be a response to the coalition's need for a positive message in lieu of any good news relating to the mountainous challenges they face.
Holding this, the first of a series of town-hall events, in a digital environment that involved taking questions from Twitter and Windows Live Messenger allowed them to offer up a vision of a futuristic digital Britain with Clegg front and centre. "I would like to be able to look you in the eye and tell you that we've sorted out this financial mess," he tells us. Such a claim is a long way off. In the meantime, we'll be hearing many more public relations exercises such as this.
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Nick, i see you were born in Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire...."Chalfonts" is one of many variations of ****ney rhyming slang for piles, this is derived from Chalfont St Giles but, as is typical with ****ney rhyming slang, the part of the phrase which rhymes with the derivative is omitted.....Thats just about right as you are one annoying @rse hole!!
The bloke is a cunts plain an simple a **** faced back stabbing cunts **** with more **** then **** itself.I personally hate the smarmy **** cos he's a **** end of a big fat ****.
P.S. MSN are abunch of cunts aswell
hmm hmmm hmm
I am very disappointed that the new government is keeping in place Labour's scheme for dealing with people on sickness benefits.
Forget Mr Cameron's claim of helping the vulnerable. Whether he is aware of it or not, my own story and others I have read show that all people on sickness benefits, whether fraudulent or genuine, are treated the same.
Based on my experiences: as a benefit recipient under this Labour scheme you have to attend a medical examination by a company called ATOS, an IT firm. You will almost certainly fail it, genuine or not, and have to appeal. When you read the medical report of the examination you will realise that the ATOS assessor has answered questions they never asked you, disregarded all your evidence and support from doctors and specialists, and, in my case certainly, included information about you which is blatantly incorrect. This dishonest report is submitted to the appeal board, which is in my opinion equivalent to perjury, submitting false or misleading evidence to a court of law. The website below has other disabled people also telling how their medical report was very different to what was said at the medical examination, showing mine is not an isolated case:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/messageboards/F2322273?thread=6490037&skip=0
The amount of appeals heard between January and March 2010 was 46,500, which is more than quadruple the amount heard between April and June 2009 which was 10,100. About 40% of appeals are won officially but apparently many are resolved in other ways, so those who lose are probably of a lower percentage than it seems.
According to the article below, the contract between the DWP and ATOS is worth £500 million.
http://www.securedloansbroker.co.uk/loans-news/draconian-incapacity-benefit-tests-are-failing-the-sick-melissa-viney
Then if you add to that the ten thousand plus appeals that are being heard every month, many involving genuinely disabled people who shouldn't have had to appeal in the first place (as the 40% or higher win rate shows).
Then add the new (multi million?) contracts for the credit card firms that are now being recruited to check on people on sickness benefits.
And yet I'm sure, unless anyone can prove me wrong, that hardly any of these claimants will be in work at the end of all this, simply because they are genuinely ill, not counting the fraudsters of course who hopefully gave up their claims. In fact I am certain that those genuinely disabled people who wanted to try some part-time work as a first step to full employment will now be too afraid to because of this experience.
My suggestion: hold benefit medicals at local hospitals with a specialist in whatever area of disability a claimant has, unlike the ATOS medical where you do not see a specialist in your area of disability. These specialists are not fools and have the expertise and if necessary the equipment at hand to test claimants, and this would reduce fraud. And then only if there is no medical evidence the person can appeal to try prove their case, which would save a great deal of money. It would also be more compassionate to the genuinely disabled and, I'm certain, save the taxpayer a large amount of money. Then some of this money could be put into hospitals, schools or the police, or even chasing tax evaders:
annual cost to the country from benefit fraud £1.1 billion
annual cost to the country from tax evasion £95 billion
As for helping long term disabled people back into work many charities already doing this would love to help, I'm sure, at very little cost. But trust and honesty is essential for many disabled people, bullying and cheating is counter-productive.
Forget the manifesto promises, those documents are only ever used by political parties to get elected. The point is, you can't change or make laws unless you are in government. Hopefully the Liberals can and have restrained some of the Tory's more natural tendencies to support the rich and buggle the poor. Luckily 'Dear Dave' does appear to be more of an idealist than many of his 'sloan ranger' colleagues, which undoubtedly helps.
You are never going to totally solve the current financial crisis or immigration or the N.H.S. without radically changing our political landscape (in other words mass nationalisation and cultural revolution) and I'm not sure we are ready for that.