This was too long for a Facebook status

[davidn]

Christ almighty, but my Facebook page has become a political vomitzone over the last few days. Listen, everyone:

To some of those on the left, Nick Clegg has done exactly what he said he was going to do from the start to form some semblance of a stable government. So I'm not really convinced that anyone's been "betrayed" or that it's fair to describe this as a Clegg-Cameron slashfest, and the sooner the photos of the Lib Dem leader with horns and a beard crudely scribbled over the top stop coming, the better. Especially if they're also of him in bed with David Cameron.

To some of those on the right, how is it possible that you have no concept of what self-satisfied gits you've metamorphosed into since I saw you last? Go back over your posts over the last week and read over what you're saying to actual people affected by all this, when you try to say you're above arguments with which you disagree with a smug flourish. It's my hope that you'll soon have a revelation of "Wow, I really am a bit of a twat".

Then everyone can go back to making updates about Treasure Island and Farmville that I don't care about, because even that is a fair distance better than all this.

I await the oncoming piley-on with some trepidation.

Comments

[pim2005.livejournal.com]

Where's the like button on LJ when I need it? *likes*

[davidn]

That'll do for me :) I wasn't sure what reaction this would get, but surprisingly my Facebook friends list remains un-diminished.

[marcobiagi.livejournal.com]

Were I to have voted Lib Dem I would have done so with eyes open to the possibility of a Con-Lib coalition, reckoning that it would be better to strengthen Nick Clegg's hand in any negotiations to minimise the Con and maximise the Lib. However, I suspect a great many of the Lib Dem voters - despite being very wide-eyed - didn't see things like that. They're going to have a very hard time explaining themselves to their electorate - in Scotland in particular.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Marco (Have we ever met each other, by the way? I've been meaning to ask for a while.)

The plans to introduce a right to recall MPs seems very interesting with this in mind: I could see Danny Alexander being recalled as soon as is possible.

[marcobiagi.livejournal.com]

Not properly.

One of the early recall proposals was that MPs could only be recalled when found to be in breach of standards, like for example the expenses scandal. I don't see why you should need the further obstacle of gathering 7,000 signatures when an MP has already been found to be in breach of standards. They should just go. I look forward to seeing what is actually introduced, and perhaps going up to Inverness for the first recall election.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Ah. I'm one of Stewart Smith's best friends, and was at school with Kirsty West. Talking to statto, which I do too much, does make your name come up a bit.

[marcobiagi.livejournal.com]

Using the PhD-maths-student-at-Imperial and friends-with-Stewart-Smith facts I just found you on Facebook. I think we met briefly while I was doing something union-election related (that's also a useful catchall for why St Andrews faces look familiar to me).

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

I voted Lib Dem previously, but didn't this time, largely because Nick Clegg is to the right of the party, and seems to think the rest of us should join him. [Er, were I in the party.]

Having never liked Nick Clegg, I'm still upset and angry at him, as he appears to have made a lot of concessions that are too great, in my mind, often for very little.

We seem set to keep the right to 28 days detention without charge, which is absolutely wrong. Agreeing to the Conservative [unspecified] cap on number of immigrants from outside the EU is ridiculous. Universities have severe issues hiring staff from outside the EU at this stage. It is just not true that we need to be more isolationist here.

It's absolutely reasonable to feel betrayed by the Liberal so-called Democrat party. That said, I am attempting to focus on the positives there seem to be on the legislation. And stop being upset at Theresa May and IDS.

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

Do you work in higher education? Me too, and I used to do a lot of the work permit applications for people in incredibly specialised jobs to come and work over here. It's hard to believe that anyone would think we have a "problem" with (legal) immigration, because if it's this difficult to get someone with a science PhD into the country, what the hell kind of loops do you need to jump through for someone less qualified?

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm a PhD student at Imperial.

There's a Kiwi Postdoc at Kings College Cambridge who, to pay, they've sent to San Fransisco, so he can be paid to do research there, after failing to get his permit three times. It's rather ridiculous...

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

I once saw a bizarrely circular case where a PhD student who was coming to do an internship was refused an academic visitor's visa because the university were paying him a subsistence allowance, and we were told that he needed a work permit, but on applying for the work permit we were told that he didn't qualify because he wouldn't be earning a market rate salary, so we should for an academic visitor's visa instead. He got here in the end, but only because we persuaded the Home Office to write a letter to the embassy who turned down the first visa application - which should actually have been approved because it's legal to pay living/travel expenses for an academic visitor - but we never managed to get a refund on the ~£400 that we paid in application fees. Academic visas are a complete pain in the arse, because most immigration officials don't know they exist, and I've had to read them pages from their own rule book before now.

Despite this, one of my colleagues sincerely believes that anyone can come into the country whenever they like, and that the government will hand them the keys to a council house and a benefits cheque on day one.

[billyhicks.livejournal.com]

Absolutely right, and apologies for the content of my recent posts :p My last post was one of those that I write very late at night, soon after news is announced, and then regret it the next morning.

Normally I resist instant reactions and give myself time for my thoughts to settle, and will be doing that again in the future!

[davidn]

Yours was absolutely nowhere near as bad as the stuff I'm seeing on Facebook! So don't worry :) I imagine that the people over there it was directed to will know, but I haven't had my friends list reduced because of it yet.

There's a lot to like in the new manifesto, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8677933.stm - and make no mistake, some dodgy stuff as well, but... with two parties having to cooperate, perhaps we'll see the better stuff materializing. I hope so.