Glegg gone. Bloodbath

Don't you mean Gloodgath?

Farage gone as well

Ed gone too.

Absolutely loving the schadenfreude.

Also who are all these Johnny come lately's voting for a Conservative majority? Hindsight's a wonderful thing!

So that's it then - Cotswolds is a Conservative hold giving Cameron at least 326 seats and government in its own right.

14 ½ hours later, 30 million votes have been counted and 642 constituencies declared, plus a handful of recounts. Is it perhaps time we asked more of the AEC?


S

Just explain how it was the Labour government who caused the GFC? The Economist certainly doesn't mention it below in its list of causes. It does mention central bankers and regulators but the Tory way is to leave them and market forces to do the job unfettered so they wouldn't have regulated more tightly.

"With half a decade’s hindsight, it is clear the crisis had multiple causes. The most obvious is the financiers themselves—especially the irrationally exuberant Anglo-Saxon sort, who claimed to have found a way to banish risk when in fact they had simply lost track of it. Central bankers and other regulators also bear blame, for it was they who tolerated this folly. The macroeconomic backdrop was important, too. The “Great Moderation”—years of low inflation and stable growth—fostered complacency and risk-taking. A “savings glut” in Asia pushed down global interest rates. Some research also implicates European banks, which borrowed greedily in American money markets before the crisis and used the funds to buy dodgy securities. All these factors came together to foster a surge of debt in what seemed to have become a less risky world."

It's one of my chief bugbears. The Black-Scholes equation explicitly said 'independent events' and the prize muppets in the city wilfully ignored that.

In it's own right, that was culpable stupidity that should have seen them doing time.

It's bad enough that economics is fraudulent rules of thumb passed off as 'laws'. But to take real maths and misapply is to create trillions in damage should put you behind bars till the day you die. Not paying yourself bonuses.

With the poison dwarf above and Merkel below, Cameron just inherited a shit sandwich.

Now lets see Blair's Government ran up debt of GBP150 billion in 10years, 2nd May 19997 till 27th June 2007.

Compared to Cameron's Government who ran up debts of GBP 865 billion in 5 years, 6th May 2010 till 07th May 2015.

Which equates to Cameron running up debt 11.5 times faster than Blair

Galloway is gone, and it's a beautiful day.

Yes, white collar people frame the laws so white collar crime is not punished to the extent that blue collar crime is. Steal from your local store and you'll do more time than if you steal millions from your clients with reckless, stupid risk taking.

Ah George, not the SW part of Scotland where we live. Our seat was one of 40 which the SNP took from Labour. The nationalist fervour not only swept across Scotland but frightened Labour voters in England and Wales ('if the SNP get all those seats in Scotland and go into a coalition with Labour then we'll be held to ransom').

The 2 biggest factors in the election result were Scottish nationalism and the way Ed Milliband was perceived by most.

The other thing which all the analysts have been saying today in the UK is that the opinion polls got it stunningly wrong this time. They and the main parties did not expect the loss of Labour and gain of Conservative seats. The decimation of the Lib Dems and the rise of the SNP were both expected; the demise of UKIP was unexpected and a lot of their supposed supporters changed to blue after indicating to pollsters they'd vote for Nige.

It's going to be very interesting now to see how the 56 SNP members are going to operate in Westminster. Try to be disruptive; try to act as one powerful block to help push legislation through or what?

My guess is that Sturgeon will now press for another referendum even though Salmond the previous leader said not in another generation after the No vote. The SNP will take 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland as an endorsement to push hard.

I think the Bugle, recorded yesterday, sums it up nicely.

https://soundcloud.com/the-bugle/bug...ining-election

On Tony's watch mate. If it was on Dave's watch you'd be crying foul. But as always, conservative governments are there to clean up the mess and as Bally is trying to sell it. "Oh look at the debt rise". Yeah well we all know where that legacy came from. How someone could even leave a penny of debt during Tony's prosperous time as PM is extraordinary.