"Britain can only remember seven Tory scandals at any one time"

Go read at The Daily Mash.

The insane Rwanda plan is of course just a distraction from Partygate, which appears to have been affecting Tory polling ratings. The rightwingers are cheering to the rafters; the lefties are up in arms. It will never happen, neither will it be officially shelved, but 'something not happening' is hardly headline news.

This technique was exploited to the full by New Labour. Minister has affair? Driven from the front pages by a corruption scandal/colossal overspend; which was driven from the front pages by 'cash for peerages', which was driven from front pages by grants to Trade Unions that were matched by TU donations to the Labour Party; which driven from front pages by James Purnell photoshop episode (at least that one was funny); not forgetting the Individual Learning Account money that disappeared into the sand... the list is endless, and nobody (least of all me) can remember more than half a dozen of them or the order they happened, they came so thick and fast. New Labour made John Major's lot look like choirboys.

Crappy Labour conference proposals

From the BBC:

Labour has promised to spend an extra £28bn a year on making the UK economy more "green" if it wins power. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said the money would go on offshore wind farms, planting trees and developing batteries.

Waste of money.

In her speech to Labour's annual conference in Brighton, she also pledged to phase out business rates to help the Covid-damaged High Street. And she said giant tech firms would pay more tax in future.

By all means cut taxes on businesses and lighten the admin burden for small businesses, High Street or not. Simplify and reduce VAT and NIC. Scrap the 'making tax digital' nonsense. Get rid of the stupid import formalities. Plus tons of other non-tax related crap.

Phasing out Business Rates will achieve absolutely nothing in that regard, it's a straight bung to land owners.

Sure, there are lots of owner-occupier businesses, they have to pay Rates, but they are still at a huge advantage to tenant businesses who have to pay rent and Rates. If they phase out Rates, then rents will just go up to soak up the difference, making the gap even bigger. If you've an eye to helping all businesses, phasing out Rates is the worst way of doing it.

As to giant tech firms, is she totally innumerate? £28 bn for green crapola and £30 bn Business Rates lost = £58 bn.

What are the UK profits of Facebook? Maximum one tenth of global profits of $29 bn, call it £4 billion. I can't be bothered looking up Microsoft and Google and so on. Even if you managed to tax all their UK profits at 100%, that wouldn't cover a quarter of the extra spending and tax breaks for landowners. In practice, it will barely touch the sides.

Life copies satire

Kj, on Facebook, 5 September:

Hey UK Labour-supporter, let me offer a humble suggestion:

If someone is accusing Jeremy Corbyn and portions of the party of being anti-semitic, you ought to just reply "no I don't believe that's true, the track record shows it etc." and leave it at that.

If you instead run with it and end up hammering the point that these suggestions are nothing but the work of the Israel lobby, and part of an elaborate scheme to discredit any opposition set in motion by a cabal placed in multiple levels of the political system - maaaaybe it's time to take a step back and think about how and why you ended up with that conclusion in this particular matter...

From the BBC, 14 September:

A trade union leader has been recorded suggesting that Israel "created" the anti-Semitism row in the Labour Party.

In a recording published by the Independent, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka suggested the country had created the story to hide what he called its own "atrocities".

Let's talk about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party without addressing anti-Semitism in the Labour Party

There's a glorious amount of hand wringing at The Guardian and the like, but it's all meaningless waffle.

To my mind, anti-Semitic (which is an inaccurate way of saying "anti-Jewish", seeing as semitic means people from a certain part of the Middle East; and most Jewish people aren't, they don't even look as if they are, unlike, say, Greeks) people are in a few quite distinct categories.

1. Straight forward, BNP-style racists. I suppose there is a minority of (white) people in Labour who are just racist. I think society can handle this, we just ignore it, there has always been a 5% or so minority prepared to vote NF or BNP (or hijack UKIP when it was still worth hijacking), they'll never go away, but the UK is still one of the least racist countries. By and large, they have no influence and do not carry out random attacks on Jewish people or synagogues, so forget it.

2. The weird "Jewish people are lizards who run the world" fuckwittery and Holocaust denial (David Icke and David Irving), this is an even tinier minority or conspiracy theory nutters, who are pretty harmless.

3. The trendy "Israel is evil and we must stand up for our Palestinian brethren" lefties, who are not really anti-Semitic at all. It's just a phase that people go through, like having a Che Guevara poster. I think that most of these trendy lefties are bright enough to realise that 'the country Israel' and 'Jewish people' are entirely separate and independent, and most Jewish people are heartily indifferent about Israel, in the same way as English people have no strong opinion either way on Australia.

Clearly, by Western standards, the Israeli government has been and continues to pretty nasty in many respects, but by Middle East standards it's a shining beacon of liberty and democracy, so again, not an issue.

4. UPDATE: There is a category which also overlaps with 1, 2 and 3, which is what Lola addresses in the comments. Banks are pretty evil and for some reason, people stereotype bankers as predominantly Jewish and vice versa, which is a) bollocks and b) banks are just piggy backing on Home-Owner-Ism and rent seeking generally, the far greater evil. Some lefties are even dafter and equate banking (largely bad) with capitalism (largely good) which is a bloody shame, from a capitalist's point of view.

5. Then of course, the ones we can't mention. From what little info we have, most of the really rabid anti-Semites in Labour/Momentum are in this category. Can you guess what it is yet? I did mention it once on Twitter and was roundly derided as a racist, so I don't know why I bother. And as long as you're not allowed to mention it, you can't fix it. We know for a fact that unlike the BNP-style racists, these people do actually carry out attacks against Jewish people, synagogues, shops etc (thankfully in the UK a lot less than in France or Sweden).

Big scary numbers!

From City AM:

Water companies have hit out at Labour after the shadow chancellor John McDonnell described the industry as a "national scandal". Labour attacked the water industry today, saying the private sector was handing out "scandalous" amounts in dividends, which have totalled £13.5bn since 2010...

Divide £13.5 bn by eight years and by 27 million households and (say) 3 million businesses, that's an average of about £50 a year, one-third of the cost of the TV licence. I can't get too upset about that.

But compared to my annual water bill (rates not meter) of about £500, that seems quite a chunky dividend. Most competitive businesses pay about £1 or £2 in dividends for every £100 of turnover, not £10. If Labour were really worried about this, instead of making token gestures, they could simply cap prices at a few per cent below current levels, dividend halved, perceived problem solved.

And in the blue corner:

Michael Roberts, chief executive of industry organisation Water UK, has condemned McDonnell's attack on the sector, saying that private companies have invested heavily in water networks and have brought down costs for consumers.

Roberts said: "It's wrong for Labour to suggest that our water system is broken. Water companies secure capital provided by lenders and shareholders, who need water companies to make a return in order to finance significant improvements to the industry. He said that the water sector was "starved of cash" under public ownership, and that private firms have invested in reducing leakages, and have improved water quality.

Change the record, mate. Water companies were privatised nearly thirty years ago, you've had plenty of time to sort it out. Dividends are paid after deducting interest costs, so that's double counting. Further, borrowing money ("to fund investment") while continuing to pay big dividends is Carillion territory. Re-invest your current profits first, if there's nothing left to pay dividends, then so be it.
--------------------------------
Also from City AM:

Renters in the UK paid out £51.6bn to landlords last year, the highest rent bill on record.

The UK's rental bill rose by £1.8bn in 2017, according to research published today by Countrywide. The estate agency group said the rise was driven by an increase in the number of renters, and rising rents; the average cost of a new let rose 2.4 per cent year-on-year to £958.

Two-thirds of that is location rent and that IS a "national scandal", not so much that tenants are paying it, but the fact that private landlords are collecting it.

Either way, we're not talking about £50 a year from every household, but £6,000 a year being channelled from every "asset poor" househol to a small minority of "asset rich" households.

And what does Labour have to say about this? They dared mention LVT briefly in their manifesto but beat a hasty retreat once the Homeys co-ordinated their strategy and started mis-describing it as The Garden Tax.

Outbreak of common sense...

... in The Labour Party.

From The Guardian:

Labour will aim to help tens of millions of people who are struggling on lower incomes by cutting the rate of VAT if it wins the general election, the shadow chancellor John McDonnell has told the Observer...

... in a high-stakes move, he went further, saying his priority would be to deliver a “fair tax system” under which income tax rises for the highest earners would be followed by VAT reductions for all, when economic growth allows. Such a reduction, he said, would deliver the greatest proportionate benefits to those on low and middle incomes.

“The concept of fairness is at the heart of everything we do,” the shadow chancellor said. “When it comes to tax it will always be a fair tax policy. And if I can reduce the burden of taxation on middle and low earners I will do it as we grow the economy. I will do it.”

Asked what he had in mind, he added: “I think VAT is a real problem for many people. When we come out of Europe there is more flexibility on VAT, particularly in terms of the lower levels.”

There are statistics comparing the amount of VAT nominally paid by households with a) total income and b) total spending, taken together they show that VAT is a fairly flat tax. From Labour's point of view is A Bad Thing because they like "progressive" taxes. For some reason, lefties think that flat taxes are regressive; they are not, they are flat. Regressive taxes are regressive.

The point about VAT is not that low income people pay too much, but that it significantly reduces economic activity and hence causes business failure and unemployment - VAT is the reason that so many people are on low incomes in the first place.

Shammy Leather: Dictionary Definition

A Shammy Leather: A soft, non-abrasive section of mountain goat; if you rub the Labour Party with it for long enough, it will come up all nice and shiny.

Short list

Actresses/former actresses who became Labour MPs

The Brick has Landed ...

This popped up on my facebook feed via a labour voter, and I'd have thought they'd be more sympathetic.  

So I clicked for some more comments, and realised that Labour really is well and truly screwed up beyond all recognition:

Fun Online Polls: UKIP MEPs & future Prime Ministers

The results to last week's poll were as follows:

Now that their mission is accomplished, will UKIP MEPs resign en masse and renounce their Euro-pensions?

Yes of course, they are all honourable people - 11%
Er…well… - 89%

I'm with the majority on this one, there were some quite angry comments at the poll though.
---------------------------------
Politicians are taking themselves far too seriously again; they imagine that the Brexit vote means were are in some sort of "crisis" and therefore they have to rearrange some deck chairs and we'll all love them again.

Fact is, most people don't care either way and in practice, there won't be much difference between Bremaining and Brexiting. Is Switzerland really that different to Austria? A bit? Yes. A lot? No. is Switzerland 'better' or 'worse' than Austria - that depends on what you like.

Nontheless, both the major UK parties have decided to play musical chairs at the top and we are going to have to put up with whoever they choose.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll:

"Please indicate the ones you would definitely NOT like to see as Prime Minister."

Deselect the ones you really can't stand here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Sports car attire & Labour's "anti-semitism problem"

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

What is the correct mode of attire when driving an open-topped car on British roads (assuming not done satirically)?

Leather jacket/aviator jacket - 26 votes
Driving gloves - 23 votes
Sunglasses - 22 votes
Goggles - 20 votes
Jaunty silk scarf - 18 votes
Leather helmet/headscarf (m/f) - 12 votes
Leather steering wheel cover - 12 votes
Other, please specify - 11 votes

I forgot to add "peaked cap" to the list. Going by the comments, that would have got a lot of votes. I also bought myself a super-grippy steering wheel cover from Halfords (with the ghastly silver stripe turned away from me).

Which is all very reassuring, because I do the first three items on the list (Mrs W even bought herself a matching biker-style black leather jacket to complete the look), I'm wavering on the peaked cap.

Top comment: newageingman

Given the current weather, I am wearing long johns, thermal jumper, thick insulated padded coat, topped off with petrol station supplied £4.99 Insulate gloves and hat set. All in addition to standard clothing requirements for us non naturists.

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This week's Fun Online Poll:

"Is Labour's "anti-semitism problem" just the politically correct term for "too many radical Muslims"?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Harman vows to weed out all cheats"

From the BBC:

Harriet Harman has said 3,000 alleged "cheats" have so far been excluded from migrating to the UK, with more expected.

The acting Labour leader said: "It is not funny or clever for people from other countries to try to cheat their way into our system," and only people who supported the "aims and values" of the United Kingdom would be allowed to enter.

She was speaking after a meeting with the four leadership contenders. She said the verification process was "robust" and would go on until the "very last minute"...

Under new rules introduced by her party in 1997, residents of other countries could sign up to become British citizens with a minimum of vetting procedures. More than 160,000 people a year took up permanent residence in the UK.

The party said this brought the total size of the population to 64,000,000.

Fun Online Polls: Jeremy Corbyn & The Global Financial Crisis

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

You will/would you vote for as leader of the Labour Party?

Jeremy Corbyn - he'll make Labour unelectable = 41 votes
Jeremy Corbyn - I might not agree with him, but at least he has principles = 28 votes
Jeremy Corbyn - I agree with the majority of his policies = 3 votes
One of the three faceless soft-centre Tory-lite candidates = 2 votes
None of the above = 16 votes
Other, please specify = 1 vote

I think he's got this one sewn up.

Thanks to everybody who took part.
-----------------
Something which has been bugging me for years is the Tory notion, subscribed to by the three out of four Labour leadership contenders who aren't Jeremy Corbyn, that the UK has been mired in recession for the last seven years because Labour was running up deficits in the preceding years.

That is the Economic Myth from Hell, if you ask me. Of course Blair-Brown are guilty as charged when it comes to their part in stoking the UK land price bubble and then transferring bank liabilities to the taxpayer, but the Tories have merrily continued this strategy and in any event, the Tories are running far larger deficits than Labour did.

Just as sickening is the Tory notion (again, subscribed to by the other three Labout leadership contenders) that this should be blamed on people now under 25 over-claiming benefits instead of working. Apparently, we can fix the deficit by taking away their benefits; this will magically get them all into jobs; and this in turn will magically put the economy on the road to recovery. That's like blaming a war on dead soldiers and civilians.

But what do you think?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Hiroshima, Nagasaki & Jeremy Corbyn

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

If you had been the US President in August 1945, what would you have done?

Ended the war and allowed Japan to get away with it - 10%
Allowed the war to drag on for another few months or years - 1%
Dropped The Bomb on Hiroshima then given them a couple of weeks to surrender - 52%
Dropped The Bomb on Hiroshima and another one on Nagasaki out of spite - 36%

So a clear winner here, and I was with the majority on this. A good turnout of 77 voters, thank you everybody who took part.

My view is, as the US President, you have to think about
a) what's best for the American people as a whole (and sod the Japanese) and
b) what will get you elected President in a three years' time. Harry Truman was of course not elected President the first time, he took over when FDR died.
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This week's Fun Online Poll.

"Who will/would you vote for as new leader of the Labour Party?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar, multiple selections allowed if you're in two minds.

I'm in several minds about this (although luckily I am not registered vote so I'm not losing sleep over this).

On the one hand, he is likeable, has principles and I agree with some of his policies while the other three are just faceless mishmash self-promoting machine politicians. I don't agree with any of their policies for the simple reason they don't actually have any.

But Corbyn's policies miss the point and he will make life more difficult for the Young People's Party by offering superficially attractive solutions to our core voters which will not actually address the underlying issues.

Jowell on the Mansion Tax

From Politics

Labour's mansion tax policy created "toxic" levels of anxiety about the prospect of a Labour government, the party's leading London mayoral candidate said last night.

Former culture secretary Tessa Jowell claimed the proposed tax was "disastrous" for Labour's election hopes.

She claimed the tax which would have hit properties worth more than £2 million, was effectively a "three bedroom terraced house tax" in many parts of London.

Yeah, but...

Labour has increased its control of London to take 45 of the capital's 73 Parliamentary seats, despite heavy losses elsewhere in the UK.

Ed Miliband's party won target seats such as Brent Central and Enfield North while cementing narrow successes from the 2010 election in places such as Hampstead and Kilburn, Britain's most marginal constituency.

The party's gains left it with seven more seats than it polled in London five years ago, while the Tories lost one.

So, actually, in the place where the Mansion Tax was going to bite hardest, Labour support actually grew.

Jowell: fuckwit.

Burnham on the Mansion Tax

From the Telegraph

Andy Burnham, the frontrunner for the Labour leadership, has described Ed Miliband’s flagship mansion tax policy as “spiteful” and disclosed that his mother telephoned him to warn it was a vote-loser.

Describing the policy as “spiteful” and anti-aspirational, he said he knew it would lose votes when his mother Eileen phoned and told him it represented a return to the 1970s.

“It felt spiteful and went against the grain," he said. “We need to get back to communicating simple policies that will make a real difference to people.

“Labour looks like an elitist Westminster think-tank talking in language that people don’t understand. We lost our mooring.”

Jesus H Christ on a Bike. It was Labour's best policy, you idiot. In terms of public support, I refer to YouGov:

The poll reveals that 65% of people in Britain support introducing a mansion tax, while 22% are opposed and 13% are undecided. A plurality (49%) of Tory voters support the plan, while 41% are opposed and 10% aren’t sure. Labour and Lib Dem voters are strongly in support of the mansion tax, at 79% and 74% respectively.

So, even rather a lot of Tory voters, probably the less well-off end that are marginal voters support it. And most free-market economists of the Milton Friedman school support the broader tax, land value tax because the alternative is taxes on the productive economy. That's why land value tax is aspirational. We want people to not be taxed on their work, because that's what makes the world better. Taxing land values, created by the state, doesn't destroy productive wealth.

How many people in this country honestly have an aspiration for a £2m home? I'd love to own one of the big places on Rightmove in the beautiful Kennet Valley. If I made my millions, that's what I'd do. And you know, there are literally 3 over £2m. There's a load of lovely places costing £1.5m that I doubt I'll ever own. But let's say that the 9 bed place near Pewsey was my aspiration, does anyone think that I'd feel crushed at knowing that I'd have to pay £3K/annum to own a £2.3m home? I'd have had to have earnt £4m before taxes just to do so. another £3K/annum is like losing some spare change down the sofa at that level.

Under his leadership, Mr Burnham said, renters would be offered help to buy their home.

With what? We're going to take even more money out of the productive economy to hand to BTL landlords so that productive people can own a house? How is that a good thing, you dickhead?

New Labour Funding Plan

As the unions are getting itchy about funding, this is the new plan:-

1. Allow anyone to vote for the Labour leader for £3.
2. Hundreds of thousands of Conservatives pay to put the worst candidate in the job
3. Election is lost
4. New leadership election
5. Repeat

UKIP and The Election

From the Daily Echo

Ukip is well placed to replace Labour as the natural party of the north, its only MP has said.

Douglas Carswell told the BBC Sunday Politics programme the party's success in winning more than 100 second place finishes at the general election showed where its future was.

OK, everyone's been talking about this point. Paul Nuttall's 2020 strategy is based on winning lots of 2nd places, to be the rival party for the next election. In many seats, there's some wisdom to this strategy. Under FPTP, people group around the top 2 parties in a constituency. If you're running say, the Labour party and you can get above the Lib Dems in a seat, next time, you'll be the non-Conservative party that people will vote for. You'll be the rival that can win the seat. Amongst all the crap in party election flyers, this is one thing that's emphasized: "we're the only party that can stop the Tories" with a chart showing them above the Lib Dems.

So, using the Guardian's map, I'm going to pick 20 constituencies at random that have UKIP in 2nd. 10 Labour, 10 Conservative:-

Rother Valley: 7,300 Labour majority over UKIP.
Liverpool Walton: 28,000 Labour majority over UKIP
Doncaster North: 11000 Labour majority over UKIP
Oldham West and Royton: 14,800 Labour majority over UKIP
Rotherham: 8400 Labour majority over UKIP
Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford: 14,500 Labour majority over UKIP
Houghton and Sunderland South: 12,900 Labour majority over UKIP
Blyth Valley: 9,200 Labour majority over UKIP
Heywood and Middleton: 5,200 Labour majority over UKIP
Liverpool West Derby: 27,300 Labour majority over UKIP
Dorset North: 21,100 Con majority over UKIP
Surrey South West: 28,500 Con majority over UKIP
Worcestershire Mid: 20,500 Con majority over UKIP
Hereford and Herefordshire South: 16,800 Con majority over UKIP
Rochester and Strood: 7,100 Con majority over UKIP
Surrey Heath: 24,800 Con majority over UKIP
Wiltshire South West: 18,000 Con majority over UKIP
Christchurch: 18,200 Con majority over UKIP
Rutland and Melton 21700 Con majority over UKIP
Cambridgeshire North East 16800 Con majority over UKIP

Of the seats randomly picked, there's really 3 that have any hope of swinging anytime soon. Swinging by more than 7,000 would require a Lib Dem level meltdown or New Labour level victory in that seat. Which might happen, but doesn't look likely any time soon.

As far as I can tell, all they really have is Farage in South Thanet, who is a couple of thousand behind.

Almost as if the whole thing had been scripted.

14 November 2014:

This is the time of year that NHS bosses - and their political masters for that matter - start to look at the weather forecasts.

A bad winter can make a huge difference to the health service. A cold snap increases the number of falls and amount of respiratory illness, while the vomiting bug norovirus can take hold on hospital wards.

And this year, the stakes could not be higher. With little more than six months to a general election, all eyes are on how the health service copes, particularly in England.

15 November 2014:

The alert was issued to people across north east Essex after Colchester General Hospital declared a "major incident".

It came after a surprise inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) on Wednesday where the health regulator raised "safeguarding concerns". It also found that staff were struggling to cope with "unprecedented demand".

17 November 2014:

A number of other hospitals in England are likely to be facing severe problems of staff shortages and patient-demand of the scale that prompted the declaration of a major incident at Colchester hospital last week, one of the country’s most senior doctors has warned.

20 November 2014:

Hospitals have reached record levels of crowding, according to official figures which have sparked fears that the NHS is standing on the brink of a winter crisis.

Experts said hospitals were “full to bursting,” with latest quarterly statistics showing hospitals operating at the highest capacity levels recorded for the time of year. NHS leaders said that many hospitals had become so busy that it would take little more than “a gust of wind” to bring some to collapse.

21 November 2014:

Accident and emergency departments in England saw 92.9% of patients within four hours last week - the lowest percentage since April 2013, NHS data shows.

The government sets a quarterly target for hospitals to see 95% of emergency cases within four hours. A&E waits have been below that level since the end of September.

22 November 2014:

The NHS is heading into an A&E crisis even before winter has begun, patient leaders said after figures showed that thousands more people waited more than four hours to be seen last week.

Emergency units are overflowing and thousands of patients are enduring long waits on trolleys because hospitals are too full to admit them, official data showed yesterday.

24 November 2014:

NHS workers, including nurses, midwives and ambulance staff, have staged a four-hour strike in England as part of a pay dispute.

They were protesting about the decision not to implement a 1% rise for all staff recommended by a pay review body. Members of nine unions walked out at 07:00 GMT in England and at 08:00 GMT in Northern Ireland.

25 November 2014:

The Health Secretary has spoken numerous times to urge the public to avoid A&E departments in all but the most urgent cases and turn to pharmacies, doctors’ surgeries and walk-in centres instead.

But speaking during today’s health questions in the House of Commons, he appeared to go against his own advice. Mr Hunt said: “I took my own children to an A&E department at the weekend precisely because I did not want to wait until later on to take them to see a GP.”

26 November 2014:

Senior consultants in the NHS have told ITV News that the accident and emergency service is heading for a winter crisis.

Four doctors say around 50 hospitals are already struggling - and as the winter weather worsens, they predict the crisis will worsen too unless urgent action is taken.

27 November 2014:

Ambulances could be turned away from a hospital to try ease the strain on a casualty department which is struggling to cope.

The Accident and Emergency department at Northwick Park Hospital in north London has been under pressure following the closure of two other A&E units.

And that's just the second half of November, the ante was upped considerably throughout December, when the scripted predicted A&E crises actually happened - despite the fact that the winter weather was pretty mild and there were no terrible flu outbreaks or natural disasters or anything.

Campaign Posters

Ah, so season of goodwill over, and we've got 5 months of electioneering coming now.

On the Conservative one, Fraser Nelson points out that:-

New year, new porkies from Conservative HQ. It has opened 2015 with a poster that involves a deception (above): ‘the defict halved’. It’s a relatively small deception: the deficit has been reduced by a third (see graph below) just as David Cameron was saying only a few weeks ago. But this poster makes a more important, and more depressing point: the Tory leadership is prepared to use dishonesty as a weapon in this election campaign.

Here’s how I suspect it all unravelled. George Osborne invented the porkie: that you can say ‘the deficit has been halved’ if, when challenged, you later claim that you’re referring not the deficit, but to a ratio: a deficit/GDP ratio. This is a valid metric, but it’s not “the deficit”.

On the Labour one, err Fraser Nelson points out that:-

So Labour’s poster is misleading. It uses share of GDP in language that makes the reader believe it’s talking about real money. But given that Osborne has just used precisely the same trick to pretend that he has halved the deficit, he is in no position to complain.

My own view of the posters is that both are full of the sort of distortions that politicians like to make.

I don't really think that the Conservatives are in much of a position to make bold claims about unemployment and businesses. There's very little that they've done in policy terms that seems to me has been either about getting people into work, or creating business. I suspect a lot of the recovery is just what would have happened, anyway.

One thing that you often see in companies is that things get stretched out a bit longer when there's economic uncertainty. A white van man might hang onto his van a couple of years longer, maybe. But you can only stretch things so far, things pick up slightly, the future starts to look rosier, and you buy the new van.

As for Labour's poster, well, waiting times were clearly being manipulated under Labour's era (such as having ambulances holding people outside A&E so that they didn't count as waiting in A&E), something the Conservatives put a stop to. And regarding privatisation, this was a process that was started under Ken Clarke as an internal market, dropped by Labour early on and later re-introduced and the extended by Labour to provide personal choice outside the NHS. The competition under the Tories is furthering what Labour already were doing.

All of this is from both parties is about trying to create clear water between them, the Indian Bicycle Marketing that Mark refers to. The "Tories cutting spending" talk favours both parties. It favours Tories who want their small government voters to vote for them and it favours Labour who want their big government voters to vote for them. The reality is that spending has increased over the past 4 years.

Both parties need this lie because both want their "core" vote to turn out. The people who want small government to vote Conservative because "otherwise, evil Labour will get in" and the people who want big government to vote Labour because "otherwise, the evil Tories will get in". If these core voters ever figured out how it really makes little difference either way, they'd vote with their instinct (for perhaps UKIP or the Greens). Neither party is ever going to call the other one out on this, because then it shatters the illusion for them too.