Off Topic Political Debate

Not if that expense was used to promote a local candidate - same that any leaflets produced to promote a local candidate have to be expensed as part of the local budget. So if Sturgeon specifically uses a helicopter to fly to a constituency to support a local candidate, then that is considered as an expense that should be reported from the local budget and not the national one. As I mentioned above, this scenario is being used to bash the Tories as well, so what is good for the Goose...

 

It's like arguing with the flat earth society here. If individual politicians do not win local constituencies then there is no national politics. All party leaders spend their time before elections travelling from one constituency to another - this is what campaigning is all about. Rather than nitpicking over individual cases we should be comparing what the parties actually spent as a whole on the last election campaign:
Conservatives - 15.6 Million
Labour - 12.1 Million
Lib Dems - 3.5 Million
SNP - 1.5 Million
Greens - 1.1 Million
Ukip - 2.9 Million

From the Conservative figure over 6 million came from 'private' sponsors. It is not surprising that a party with such financial backing should come under more scrutiny - maybe we should be looking more at controlling this source of income. By contrast, the Greens' get more or less all of their money from membership fees. Democratic ?

 

Sorry Cologne, I know that you wanted to change the subject, but these are the rules that are in place regarding how and where money can be spent by political parties. I am just stating that the rules apply to all parties and whoever transgresses the rules should be called to account. The discussion was that the Tories are being called to account and so should the SNP.
I wont bother in future and I will let you rattle on about why people don't join political parties

 

You seem to be totally forgetting that there is a different political system in Scotland.

• The Electoral Commission's rules cover 'Candidate expenses' and 'Party expenses' - here as in England;
• For electoral purpose, Scotland is divided into 73 Constituencies and 8 Regions - each Constituency is situated in one of those Regions;
• There are 129 MSPs in Holyrood, of whom 73 are Constituency MSPs, all of whom have been named on ballot papers;
• The other 56 are Regional MSPs, 7 per Region - known here as 'List' MSPs, none of whom are named on a ballot paper - but are on a list submitted to the EC by each participating party;
• When voting, electors are given two ballot papers, one for the Candidates and the other for the Party;

The way the voting system works generally means that success by a Party in gaining Constituency seats leads to fewer Lists seats, as the number of List votes gained is divided by the number of Constituency seats gained +1 before the winners are calculated. And the SNP won 59 of those 73 seats. As that level of success was anticipated, Nicola Sturgeon's election focus was on visiting every Region in an attempt to get as many electors to vote SNP in the List ballot. Even though they received 430,000 + more votes than the Tories, they ended up getting only 1/6th of the number of seats 'won' by the Tories.

From all of that, it's fairly obvious to even the most impartial of observers that the cost of her travels belong to the category 'Party expenses'.

 

Tart it up as much as you like BB and add as much irrelevant detail as you like - they're all the same. How much did Salmond spend flying to the US to butter Trump up? All a bit embarrassing now?
As the saying goes "you cannot polish a turd"

 

Irrelevant? Now I know you're joking...

 

I am not trying to change the subject W_Y. 'Local' money is that which is intended for the campaign at the costituency level, and 'national' money that which is intended for the national campaign - the problem is that these are intertwined so that without winning constituencies you cannot get into national government. As BB. has stated, under a PR. system you also have direct mandates and a reserve list based on the actual percentage of votes a party gets - in this case voters vote twice - once for the candidate and once for the party. As long as that is so then a party leader can turn up anywhere, at any time, canvassing for 'party' votes (because these votes would be counted nationally). In any case do you really believe that Nicola Sturgeon could spend an entire election campaign twiddling her thumbs in Edinburgh ? Wherever she goes she is in someones constituency - and, as BB has said, there are other rules in Scotland. Are you trying to tell me that David Cameron does not visit winnable constituencies - or that he charges the costs of these (sometimes surprise) visits up to the constituencies themselves ?

It appears that with a combination of PR. and direct mandate that the Scottish system is similar to the German one. In our case if a person from the central Green Party visits a constituency before an election then the costs are separated - the costs of rental of halls etc. would come under 'local' expenses whereas transport to and from the constituency would not. I would imagine this to be the same in Scotland.

 

There's an interesting rumour doing the rounds on social media - that Cameron is about to face a vote of no confidence.

Add that to the one that has been circulating since Monday about a 'huge' announcement being imminent re Election Fraud & I'd say it's squeaky bum time for Old Dish Face.

 

Is France the new sick man of Europe?

The reaction from the unions to some fairly small labour reforms has been brutal and effective with fuel depots and power stations being targeted. This was maybe their last chance at much needed reform of the labour market to increase flexibility and reduce unemployment. The government cannot afford to lose this one but look as if they will cave in as usual.

 

It's a total nightmare trying to implement any change in France - even those that would make life easier for people. Last year I was working on a project to upgrade the software that our company uses to schedule service engineers. Now this software is very sophisticated and also widely used in a lot of different industries and this upgrade was needed to keep us within support of the vendor and it also delivered some new fancy features that the business owners wanted. One was the ability to dynamically "book out" an engineer whilst he/she is at lunch - in France this has to be done as part of the engineers contract and the agreement with the unions - even though the engineer may wish to work through lunch and possibly start home earlier (which is what the UK engineers do). When we deployed it, the Service Managers in France nearly had a communal heart attack as the system dynamically booked the engineers out and starting auto-scheduling the rest of the day - in turns out that there was a separate agreement with the 2 different unions that was kept secret, but the system started showing this all over their screens. We had to turn off the dynamic update feature for France and let them do it manually! It's a nightmare trying to work there.

 

Yes looks like up here there is no regional split, will be interesting to see if the Scottish Nazi Party come in at under the 1.5 million cap....

 

An interesting development...

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/police-given-more-time-to-96705/

I particularly like this line from the judge...

“The consequences of a conviction would be of a local and national significance with the potential for election results being declared void.”

 

A pan European survey by the Pew Research Centre released today found that 61% of French voters have an "unfavourable" view of the EU, compared to 48% in the UK.

Is the whole thing falling apart?

 

Wouldn't you like it if that were so. The answer is no, it is not falling apart. The majority of people in the UK. don't like the Tories (or politicians in general) but they are still there. The average European knows nothing about the EU. government whatsoever - can scarely name one of the politicians who represent their respective countries in Brussels. Countries have newspapers - direct mediums of communication with the electorate on the national level. The EU. does not have this and, as a result, can be blamed for more or less anything, or any law which is currently unpopular, and the people are no wiser.

 

Another survey that you do not like the result of dismissed then. Your answer did not explain the point that why would the French be more EU sceptic then UK citizens surveyed - or are you saying French newspapers are even more EU sceptic than UK ones? Bearing in mind that the UK ones are all* in the pocket of the Tories and their big business friends**
* Apart from The Guardian
** As reported on this thread

 

The French have changed their views over the last four years of this dreadful government. That suggests that having voted Hollande in they are now searching around to blame anyone for their own mistake. The French press often question what the EU is doing and are looking for reform, but as we have seen when the administration here finally tries to get to grips with the employment laws they go about it in the worst possible manner, creating unrest. If you think that the EU is generally unpopular with the French population, then looking at other polls published here you will find that by a large majority they would not want to leave it. They just cannot wait until next year when they can get rid of Hollande.

 

IN 2004 69% of French voters backed the EU, now 61% have an unfavourable view, quite a change around I would say. The dissatisfaction will only lead to a hardening of EU scepticism. They thought they could harness the might of the Germans but not realise they failed miserably.

 

There is a big difference between knowing that things have to change and wishing to leave though. Over 60% of the population do not want to leave according to the latest polls, although there are large regional variations. The same polls showed that the far right with it's racist views is also falling back in popularity, with the very middle of the road parties making substantial gains.

 

A survey in April predicted the first round support for the presidential election next year. It gave Hollande 15%, Sarkozy 20% and Le Pen 31%. There must be an awful lot of racists in France by your assumption. I cannot see why her support would have changed much since then?

 

A survey published by Le Monde last week gave Hollande at 14%, Sarkozy at 21% and Le Pen as the clear winner at 28%, not much of a middle of the road revival.