Russell Brand Looks At Tory Election Propaganda

Trews

Earlier this month, Britain was in an election cycle, and Russell Brand looked at the Conservative (Tory) political election propaganda.  The Tories ran a host of political campaign ads, including on Facebook. One in every £17 pounds the Tories spent on the last general election campaign goes towards drumming up support on Facebook.

Brand analysed their policies, past promises and election tactics as well.

In the video, Brand mentions Quantitative Easing (QE), an economic maneuver governments can take in an attempt to improve the economy. What is Quantitative Easing?

Investopedia states that QE is an “unconventional monetary policy in which a central bank purchases government securities or other securities from the market in order to lower interest rates and increase the money supply.”

“Quantitative easing increases the money supply by flooding financial institutions with capital in an effort to promote increased lending and liquidity.”

Tories also ran attack advertisements that featured a famous note from a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury that implied that a Labour government would run the country to ruin by not controlling the budget.  The note reads “Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money.”

(Updated article)

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quantitative-easing.asp#ixzz3bRRskhEV

Did Tories ‘Play Dirty’ With Media Tricks?

Recently, BBC journalists and executives told a Labour Party adviser that the BBC was threatened by Conservative (Tory) Leaders about “what would happen” if they didn’t fall into line over the election coverage.

The BBC gets funding from the government and other sources, something like PBS in the United States.

In related news, the British newspaper The Independent wrote that media owner Rupert Murdoch berated journalists at his papers for not doing enough to “stop the (left-of-center) Labour Party from winning the election.”

Murdoch “warned them that the future of the company depended on stopping Labour from getting elected,” writes The Independent.

Murdoch’s news outlets – including Fox News in the U.S. – tend to lean right-wing or have a conservative outlook.

After Mr. Murdoch paid a visit to his company’s The Sun newspaper, they devoted a two-page spread to the election – with the left-hand page containing a 10-point “pledge” to voters written by David Cameron.

Britain’s The Mirror published an article by Lucy Powell that gives examples of the Tory assault on the British media.

“The first was when John Major gave a speech on ‘The chaos of Labour with SNP pulling the strings,'” writes Powell.

“This marked the fourth day in a row of the BBC leading with that story even though Ed had already ruled out a deal with the SNP,” she writes.

“I could understand the Tory press parroting the Central Office line but I couldn’t understand why the BBC was pushing the story so hard,” she went on.  Was the BBC pushing the story because of implied threats from the government?

The Mirror article claims that scaring voters about the SNP was clearly designed as a “squeeze” message for UKIP and Lib Dem voters to encourage them to vote for the conservative Tories because they didn’t want a Labour government.

The second moment came The Tories took out huge wraparound (front page and back page) adverts in the weekly free papers in each seat.

The attack ads featured a famous note from a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury that implied that a Labour government would run the country to ruin by not controlling the budget.

Ads put out on Facebook, including some allowing users to hand over their email addresses, are costing the Tory party a “whopping £100,000 a month,” according to The Guardian.  That would mean one in every £17 pounds the Tories spent on the last general election campaign goes towards drumming up support on Facebook.

The budget is “a long-term issue dating back to the crash, which the Tories succeeded very early in blaming on Labour’s economic policies, despite the fact they were signed up to them themselves,”  writes Powell in The Mirror.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lucy-powell-how-tried-reassure-5699489

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/09/liam-byrne-apology-letter-there-is-no-money-labour-general-election

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/06/tories-pumping-facebook-advertising-email-ukip

Highlights Of British Parliamentary Elections

According to the British publication The Telegraph, David Cameron – the Leader of the right-of-center Conservative Party (also called the Tories) – won a surprise landslide majority and will be the Prime Minister for another term.

Cameron’s top team remained as he reappointed several cabinet-holders to the positions they held beforehand.

Ed Miliband resigned as the Leader of the (left-of-center) Labour Party after the worst Labour result since 1987.

The Labour Party’s “Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer” Ed Balls lost his seat in a “shock result” to the Conservatives’ Andrea Jenkyns.  This was apparently an important post and a hard blow for Labour.

After huge losses for the centrist Liberal Democratic party, the Leader of that party, Nick Clegg, resigned.

The Liberal Democrats were hit particularly hard, and the party has been reduced from 57 seats in Parliament in 2010 down to just eight now.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the smaller right-wing nationalist party UKIP (U.K. Independence Party) also reportedly will resign.  The party only got one MP into Parliament.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) was a winner, taking 56 out of 59 Scottish seats possible.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, proposed that England make a “federal offer” of more autonomy to Scotland.

FTSE (a London stock exchange indicator similar to the Dow Jones or S&P 500) rose by £50 billion pounds as markets cheered the result of the elections.

So the take-away from the suspenseful election seems to be that the big winners were the Tories (Conservatives) and SNP.

(Updated article)

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32633388

British Election Tomorrow, May 7th

CNN

Parliamentary elections in the U.K. will be held tomorrow, May 7th.

Below are the names of the different parties and leaders. The most likely candidate for Prime Minister would be David Cameron of the Conservative Party or Ed Miliband of Labour.

The Telegraph has The Conservatives and Labour polling neck-and-neck at 35%.

Leader, Party
David Cameron – Conservative Party (Tories)
Ed Miliband – Labour Party
Nick Clegg – Liberal Democrats
Peter Robinson – Democratic Unionist Party
Nicola Sturgeon – Scottish National Party
Leanne Wood – Plaid Cymru
Margaret Ritchie – Social Democratic and Labour Party
Natalie Bennett – Green Party of England and Wales
Nigel Farage – U.K. Independence Party (UKIP)
David Ford – Alliance Party of Northern Ireland

There may be a “hung Parliament,” where no party has an absolute majority. In that case, a bigger party such as Labour or The Conservatives will have to join together with a smaller party (and form a “coalition”) in order to govern.

CNN takes a look at some of the highlights of this year’s election.

Two ‘Second-Tier’ Republicans Enter Race For President

Dr. Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon and conservative pundit, has confirmed that he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

Carson, who has never run for public office, is expected to be the only high-profile African-American to enter the GOP’s presidential primary as he tries to use his success as an author and speaker into a competitive campaign against established politicians.

“I’m willing to be part of the equation and therefore, I’m announcing my candidacy for president of the United States of America,” he said in an interview Sunday night on Ohio’s WKRC television station.

He plans to make a more formal announcement during a speech from his native Detroit on Monday.

Carly Fiorina made her 2016 presidential plans official Monday morning, announcing her candidacy on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

She will also be running as a Republican candidate.

Actually, she first declared her candidacy via Twitter just minutes before making her television appearance, tweeting a link to the newly minted Carlyforpresident.com.

Fiorina was the CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, according to MSNBC, and would run as a Republican candidate.  Fiorina ran for the U.S. Senate in California in 2010, losing to the incumbent, Democrat Barbara Boxer.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-fiorina-carson-presidential-campaign-20150501-story.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/here-s-where-carly-fiorina-gets-her-campaign-money-141956879.html

British Labour Leader Cries At Gay Film

In a effort to show his human side to the electorate ahead of next month’s election for British Parliament, Labour Party Leader Ed Miliband has revealed he recently shed a tear.

The Labour Leader’s sob was over Pride, a film about the gay community helping striking miners, which saw him shedding a tear on his wife’s shoulder.

When asked if he had ever cried over a film, “Red Ed” said: “Have you seen Pride? It’s about the lesbian and gay communities in London and they go and help the miners in Wales.

“Justine and I watched it recently. I blubbed.”

In the same Absolute Radio interview, Miliband also said being called a geek was “a compliment”.

British Election 2015: Is The SNP A ‘Dark Horse’ That Could Change The Election?

Sources state that the Scottish National Party (SNP) could change the outcome of the election in the U.K., depending on whether a coalition is formed between the SNP and one of the larger parties, like The Labour Party or The Conservative Party.

Piers Morgan, writing for The Daily Mail:

“…(N)either of the two main parties has a hope in hell of winning an overall majority at the general election.”

So one of the bigger parties will need to form a “coalition” with a smaller party to form a working majority to rule the country.  The SNP is supposedly the most powerful small party.

The problem is that the SNP wants independence for Scotland.  So a party that forms a coalition with the SNP will be working with a party that wants to break away from the U.K.

“So they will have to take a begging bowl to one of the smaller parties to do a deal that allows them to form a ‘coalition’ government. The biggest ‘smaller’ party will almost certainly be the SNP, who should end up with 40-50 seats in Parliament, having pretty much wiped out the socialist Labour party in that country, which used to be considered its heartland,” writes Piers Morgan.

The Labour Party’s leader, Ed Miliband, has accused David Cameron (Conservative) of “demeaning his office” and putting the UK’s future at risk as a fight over the SNP’s future role intensifies, according to the BBC.

Miliband said Mr. Cameron, who has warned of the dangers of a Labour-SNP coalition, should be “taking on the nationalists” not “talking them up,” states the BBC.  He suggested other Conservatives were “ashamed” of their election strategy.

However, Labour has said the Conservatives were “talking up” the threat of the SNP for their own political interests.

But former Prime Minister Sir John Major said the SNP could “blackmail” a future Labour government.

The Conservatives have continued their warnings about the SNP’s likely influence on a minority Labour government in the event of a hung Parliament, with the former Conservative leader claiming it would be a “recipe for mayhem”.

The SNP has said it does not want to form a coalition with the Conservatives, but is interested in one with Labour.

Conservative David Cameron has stated that a Conservative government would honor Scottish devolution (granting Scotland more autonomy), but he wants to “ensure the rest of the UK will not ‘lose out.'”

Below is a BBC interview with the head of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon.

BBC News

(Updated post)

More:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3047165/PIERS-MORGAN-Meet-dangerous-wee-woman-world-ve-never-heard-of.html#ixzz3Xyk6AHIL

Russell Brand Looks At British Election Debate

Russell Brand

The national British election will take place on Thursday May 7th, as decreed by the Fixed Term Parliament Act, which was enacted on September 15th, 2011.

Recently, there was a televised debate that failed to give any party a decisive boost, according to The Week.

The “slugging match” that came afterward was over Trident nuclear submarines and the tax arrangements of people living in the U.K. who have a foreign residence, or “non-doms.”  The debate appeared to have put the Labor Party on top of the heap.

Then came the “Challengers Debate,” which included the five main opposition leaders, but neither incumbent David Cameron of the Conservative Party nor Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, was there. Most pundits suggested that either Ed Miliband of the Labor Party or Nicola Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party (SNP) came out on top.

With three weeks to go, the British election still looks as unpredictable and unusual as ever.

Conservative and Labor are the two main rivals, and they remain neck and neck in the polls. The race between them has not looked so tight since 1992, states The Week.

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats continue to trail Ukip, the Greens are still a factor, and the SNP’s position appears if anything to be growing stronger.

In this video, Russell Brand discusses the Challengers Debate.

More:

http://www.theweek.co.uk/election-2015#ixzz3XuBfwOVq

CNN: Ted Cruz To Join Obamacare

TYT Network

Presidential candidate Ted Cruz was reportedly on his wife’s health insurance in the past.  However, his wife will take a leave of absence from her job to help Cruz on the campaign trail. Where will they get their health insurance?

Irony of ironies…Ted Cruz is known for opposing the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) health insurance law.

John Kasich Makes New Hampshire Appearance

Capitol Square

John Kasich is the Governor of Ohio, who has been in office since 2011. He is a member of the Republican Party, and he previously served as an Ohio member of the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 2001.

Recently, Kasich made his first political appearance in New Hampshire in more than a decade.

The New Hampshire primary, of course, is the first primary election held in the United States and the second step following the Iowa Caucuses in choosing the Democratic and Republican nominees for the presidency, states 2016newhampshireprimary.com.

Kasich said that real leaders shouldn’t worry about polls, states the-review.com.

“If you don’t like it, I guess that’s your problem and not mine, because I’m going to do it,” the 62-year-old former congressman told New Hampshire voters and political dignitaries gathered at St. Anselm College on Tuesday.

The comment was regarding programs that set aside state contracts for minority entrepreneurs.

Kasich’s blunt style showed his two-day swing through New Hampshire, reportedly designed to assess his political strength as he considers a 2016 Republican presidential bid.

While he is largely unknown in N.H., his unique approach to politics could be attractive to New Hampshire voters, who value candidates with an independent streak.

Will Kasich run for President?

“I’m taking no options off the table in terms of my future,” Kasich, 62, declared earlier in South Carolina.

Above is a a video of an interview of John Kasich from February 27, 2011, on unions and collective bargaining.

(Updated article)