LibDems hold Eastleigh, Tories in Third Place after UKIP

[lilelvis2000]

The usual Cons. voters have sent a message on the direction they want the Cons. to go in. Don't think anyone should read too much into the result in terms of the next election. Though UKIP and the media will milk it for all its worth.

[KentPhilip]

Where are you? if you are outside the UK that is the page you see. Here on blighty we see the by-election result as the top story. duh.

what next? Al-Jazeera doesn't have the story on the their front page!

Oh dear, I've realised what it is. Although I am in the UK, my current client's internet connection goes via France. Hence the "worldwide" BBC pages.



Those BBC beggars are still left-wing though...

[Mich the Tester]

Oh dear, I've realised what it is. Although I am in the UK, my current client's internet connection goes via France. Hence the "worldwide" BBC pages.

[VectraMan]

Wot, like Richard Branson and Bill Gates (except a short stint at Harvard) and an awful lot of IT entrepreneurs?

Don't know about Branson, but Bill Gates did well enough in school to get a place at Harvard, which is not something they hand out to just anybody, and then decided he had better things to do with his life. That's not quite the same as being too dim to get a place at university and so choosing a career in politics instead.

I don't think anyone is concerned about Farrage being PM. They need 325 seats to have a majority in the house of commons, and so far they have zero. This was their best ever chance of getting one and they failed.

[formant]

So where are all the educated voters? Besides, really well educated people appreciate that there are several ways to gain the knowledge and skills to operate well in a leadership position. Sorry, but a degree doesn't give you credibility on its own and some degrees don't give it at all. Preferably international experience in business, the arts, technology, sports, charity work and so on CAN give a lot of credibility, depending on the position being sought. And what makes you think that people without university education can only be 'street smart'?

Never said it's the only way to gain credibility, but in politics it's part of the package. But being the 'only recent party leader to have had a "proper" job' (by DA's standards) doesn't cut it either. The 'street smart' thing was tongue-in-cheek, referring to DA's 'proper job' statement.

Look around globally - GWB got years of ridicule for being a mediocre student - depite his Yale degree (and his business background didn't help him there). Someone without any post-18 education isn't going to look to great against Physics PhD's like Merkel and JDs like Obama.

In the 'real world' you can get pretty far without a degree. Politics isn't the "real world".

Also, for a large portion of voting public, education is a key issue. Someone from a private school background who's never been to university isn't going to come across well on issues of state schooling, further and higher education. Parents in particular care about that sort of thing.

[NickFitz]

I'm talking about the home page not the story page.
Here are the main stories on the current BBC News home page:

• SA 'arrest abuse' police suspended
• China executes four Mekong killers
• Hugo Chavez 'battling for his life'

No sign of the Eastleigh byelection until the fifth smaller story:

• UKIP edges Tories in UK by-election

Which makes it sound more like a sex act than real news..

You fail at the Internetz:

It's been the lead story since the result was announced, and the Raving Loony party UKIP have been in it from the start. Look, they even get a special mention on the rolling headlines bit at the top.

[formant]

Not saying you want them as PM, but both could play very useful roles in government, and certainly have credibility in their fields.

That's a bit different though. I have no idea how well Farage did as a city trader, but if he was running to advise only within the realms of his expertise, I doubt I'd have much of an issue with that. He'd prefer to run the whole country though.

[DodgyAgent]

It's a credibility thing. Educated voters want educated leaders. 'Street smart' doesn't cut it.

Do they really give a toss?

[Mich the Tester]

Look around globally - GWB got years of ridicule for being a mediocre student - depite his Yale degree (and his business background didn't help him there). Someone without any post-18 education isn't going to look to great against Physics PhD's like Merkel and JDs like Obama.

In the 'real world' you can get pretty far without a degree. Politics isn't the "real world".

GWB wasn't ridiculed for his education, he was ridiculed for being a total inbred moron and doing things only a total inbred moron would do. Frankly it's difficult to take Yale seriously if they produced a graduate of such monumental stupidity.

As for Angela Merkel, I'm sure she'd be delighted if she could use a time machine to discuss physics with Michael Faraday.

No, politics isn't the 'real world'; that's half the problem. In the real world, if an individual or a business spends more money than in has year in year out then it goes bust and people end up living under bridges. In the real world, if some silly politician goes around insulting other people, the business loses customers. A business that hires people with no track record of producing the goods or indeed a track record of screwing things up, goes bust.

[Mich the Tester]

Do they really give a toss?

Well I don't, because I don't see the Prime Minister as someone who 'runs the country'; the PM runs a team of people known as the cabinet, and has to select people who are competent in each specialism. It's not a job of running things, it's a job of getting the right people together to run things, and once the PM goes off to chat with Mrs Merkel or Mr Obama, the idea is that the competent specialists from each side have already done the nitty gritty discussions, leaving the 'leaders' to be nice to each other and occasionally enter a tough decision with the specialists at their side. Not saying the job's easy, but I think there are a lot of people in business who can do that. Incidentally, I don't think Nigel Farage would do the job very well.