kefkat
Vital Football Legend
Cutting through the mainstream spin, a friend of mine sent me this link, I thought was interesting and some of you would like to read.
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A different look at the 2014 local election results
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Some of the mainstream media reactions to the local election results have been quite extraordinary. The same narratives have been repeated in the pages of countless newspapers and on nearly every television station. I'm just going to run through a few of these narratives and expose them for the counter-factual gibberish they are.
Labour did really badly
Labour did not do badly, they made net gains of over 330 council seats to bag more than half of all of the council seats up for election. They made a net gain of five councils, and Labour party gains also resulted in the Tories losing several councils to No Overall Control.
The media has painted these results as a disaster for Labour, but they gained almost three times as many new seats as the UKIP "earthquake" and they took complete control of Amber Valley, Bradford, Cambridge, Crawley, Croydon, Harrow and Merton.
As regular readers know, I'm not a fan of New Labour, but you don't have to be a fan of theirs to see the astonishing levels of media bias necessary to paint the party that made by far the biggest gains as the losers.
UKIP caused an earthquake
UKIP did not cause an earthquake. In reality they won far fewer seats than even the politically toxic Liberal Democrats managed. They did manage to pick up over 160 new council seats, but they were scattered far and wide across the country, meaning that they gained control of precisely zero councils. The only way any of the UKIP councilors will get any taste of political power is if they form coalitions with the Tories in some of the Tory dominated No Overall Control councils. And even then, they'll be the minor player in any coalition, meaning experienced Tory councilors are likely to use these new UKIP councilors as convenient human shit deflectors just as the Westminster Tories have used the hapless Liberal Democrats for the last four years.
The really clear indicator that this was no UKIP earthquake was the fact that their share of the vote actually declined dramatically from the local council elections last year (from 22% down to 17%), and this decline happened despite the council elections coinciding with the Euro elections, which should have brought out lots of extra UKIP voters.
Cont: http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/local-election-results-2014-aav.html
.............................................................................................
A different look at the 2014 local election results
............................................................................
Some of the mainstream media reactions to the local election results have been quite extraordinary. The same narratives have been repeated in the pages of countless newspapers and on nearly every television station. I'm just going to run through a few of these narratives and expose them for the counter-factual gibberish they are.
Labour did really badly
Labour did not do badly, they made net gains of over 330 council seats to bag more than half of all of the council seats up for election. They made a net gain of five councils, and Labour party gains also resulted in the Tories losing several councils to No Overall Control.
The media has painted these results as a disaster for Labour, but they gained almost three times as many new seats as the UKIP "earthquake" and they took complete control of Amber Valley, Bradford, Cambridge, Crawley, Croydon, Harrow and Merton.
As regular readers know, I'm not a fan of New Labour, but you don't have to be a fan of theirs to see the astonishing levels of media bias necessary to paint the party that made by far the biggest gains as the losers.
UKIP caused an earthquake
UKIP did not cause an earthquake. In reality they won far fewer seats than even the politically toxic Liberal Democrats managed. They did manage to pick up over 160 new council seats, but they were scattered far and wide across the country, meaning that they gained control of precisely zero councils. The only way any of the UKIP councilors will get any taste of political power is if they form coalitions with the Tories in some of the Tory dominated No Overall Control councils. And even then, they'll be the minor player in any coalition, meaning experienced Tory councilors are likely to use these new UKIP councilors as convenient human shit deflectors just as the Westminster Tories have used the hapless Liberal Democrats for the last four years.
The really clear indicator that this was no UKIP earthquake was the fact that their share of the vote actually declined dramatically from the local council elections last year (from 22% down to 17%), and this decline happened despite the council elections coinciding with the Euro elections, which should have brought out lots of extra UKIP voters.
Cont: http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/local-election-results-2014-aav.html
