The Postcards are Here!

Exciting times here at You Didn't Win headquarters. This afternoon, while I was tucking into some wholewheat fusili and watching the start of Michael Moore's Capitalism: a Love Story, I heard a loud knocking at my door. I opened it and, after signing one of those electronic things that makes my writing look even more like that of a four-year-old than usual, I was presented with a large box. And do you know what was in that box?

The official You Didn't Win postcards, that's what!

Now that we have postcards, we need to start distributing them. And that's where you come in. If you want some cards to distribute in your area, email us at youdidntwin@hotmail.co.uk or message us on our Twitter feed or Facebook page telling us how many you need and we'll send 'em to you! There's no fixed price, but the observant among you will have noted the appearance of a Paypal button at the side of this blog - we'd love it if people would donate whatever you feel you can to support the campaign - this will cover the cost of this run of postcards (and maybe another if we have time before the end of the week) as well as postage for sending the cards out and any other operating expenses we incur. Any surplus left over will be donated to a charity of our choosing.

Remember, we don't want cards sent to Dave yet - send them on May 5th to arrive for the election anniversary. But if you want official cards to send - get in touch with us now and we'll get them sent out as soon as we can, so that this Friday we can all remind Cameron and his Tory-led government that they didn't win!

Postcards

It's nearly time to start sending postcards to Dave. As per our instructions, we would love it if people were to send cards showing pictures of local landmarks to 10 Downing Street, to show the Tory-led government that people all over the country remember that they didn't win the 2010 election, but we know that some people like the idea of having a special postcard to send too. We are getting some postcards printed up, but for anyone who can't get a physical card, this post will give you downloadable designs for the front and back of your own card to send to our not-entirely-elected PM.

First, download the front:

And then you can download the back, with the address and our message to Mr C, here.

Remember not to send your cards too early - May 5th is when we want them sent, so we can be sure they'll arrive in time for the anniversary of the election no-one won...and ruin Dave's 'victory' party!

Calm Down Dave, you're only a Loser

One of the most annoying things about recent Prime Ministers was that too often it was sometimes possible to find oneself liking them. Gordon Brown got a lot of stick from the foaming-at-the-mouth Tory tendency, but if you were in any sense a halfway decent person you couldn't help but feel sorry for him, trying to pick up the ruins of the British economy after his predecessor, Tony Blair, had scarpered as soon as he saw the going get tough. Blair himself led us into an illegal war in an effort to ingratiate himself with possibly the worst American President since Nixon   of all time, but the slimy little bastard had a weird kind of charm that could sneak up on you unexpectedly and trick you into liking him. John Major is remembered chiefly for liking garden peas and shagging Edwina Currie, but had the disarming advantage of not being Margaret Thatcher, which caused a sense of relief so profound it actually won him an election. You have to look back to Thatcher for a PM so utterly demonic as to be genuinely hated, and even then there was the occasional guilty feeling that those of us on the left should kind of admire her for being the first (and so far only) woman to achieve the British premiership.

David Cameron, however, is rapidly proving himself to be the heir to Thatcher in more than ideology, as almost his every public utterance cements himself more strongly as the first Prime Minister in over a decade you can really hate. Today's news from Prime Ministers' Questions shows that he doesn't even have Thatcher's rudimentary feminist bonafides. As the 'Political Scrapbook' blog puts it:

David Cameron is presumably now regretting telling Angela Eagle “Calm down, dear” during heated exchanges on the NHS. Her shadow treasury team colleague Ed Balls was certainly not impressed, repeatedly calling upon the prime minister to apologise.

The media are treating this petulant outburst from the supposedly-relaxed Call-me-Dave as something out of character - in fact it's anything but. Cameron has form for losing his rag at the despatch box. Mirror Journalist James Lyons reports here on Cameron calling Ed balls 'the most irritating man in British politics' (a statement which suggests an astonishing lack of self-awareness on Dave's part) and also belittling a hard-working backbench Labour MP by telling him he had 'absolutely no idea who you are'.

This is just a taste. Over at The Green Ribbon Tom Griffin has a detailed list of Cameron's strops. Of particular interest in Griffin's list is this piece by Telegraph journalist David Hughes which finds the columnist wondering if Cameron is a bit of a 'Bullingdon bully' way back in November of last year; and this exchange reported on BBC Democracy live in which Ed Milliband turns the tables on Cameron's sneering description of Milli-E as a 'student politician' by pointing out that when the Labour leader was a student he 'was not hanging around with people who were throwing bread rolls and wrecking restaurants.'

So we can see that the bad temper displayed in by Cameron today was hardly out of character. And, as Lisa Ansell observes in her takedown of the welfare reform bill, neither is the misogyny which he displayed to Angela Eagle. Cameron's government is closing Sure Start centres, handing anti-sex-trafficking cash to the homophobic and transphobic Salvation Army rather than the well-respected Poppy Project, and undermining the Public Sector Equality Duty and womens' right to choose. It's no wonder Cameron has now resorted to telling women to 'calm down' - given his government's policies, it's nothing short of a miracle that women aren't hurling firebombs in the streets (then again, given his government's economic policy, they probably can't afford the petrol).

Watching the video of Cameron's performance, it's rather a pathetic sight, really - reminiscent of Cameron's fellow Tory (and misogynist) David Starkey losing control of his class on Jamie's Dream School after insulting a fat kid. But is it really any wonder that Cameron grows more and more aggressive and insufferable? After all, as we've documented here, there 's a steadily-increasing drip-drip-drip of voices reminding the electorate - and Cameron himself - that despite all the advantages he had going into the 2010 election, he still couldn't deliver the Tory landslide everybody predicted. For someone as arrogant and entitled as Dave, that has to eat away at him, reminding him again and again of his own inadequacies, his own failures, his own lack of fitness for the job.

So is it really any wonder that these days the only way Dave can feel like a Winner is by pretending to be Michael?

David Does Drugs

No, not an unsubstantiated allegation against our nation's shiny-faced Chief Prefect, but an apt description of the latest bit of propaganda that Team Tory have released to support their ideologically-driven austerity programme - the numbers of Incapacity Benefit claimants who are obese or addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. Unfortunately, there's a hidden agenda as obvious as the airbrushing on Cameron's campaign posters in this announcement, and - just like Dave's policy of clicking his true-blue shoes together and repeating 'there's no place like the private sector' - the attitudes revealed by the release of this information show how out of touch the Tory-led government is with the world the rest of us live in. Below, a You Didn't Win blogger looks in more detail at what this announcement tells us about the kind of people running our country, and how little they understand about the needs of the most vulnerable:

Last week, the Government announced that more than 80,000 Incapacity Benefit claimants were doing so because of reasons of obesity and addiction (to drugs or alcohol). If you've yet to click on that link, be aware that Reuters have chosen to illustrate the article with a photo of an obligatory headless fatteh. Isn't it funny that, with the rise of the Scourge of Humanity that is the Obesity Epidemic (TM), they focus on that instead of substance dependency? I say 'funny', I really mean 'lazy and disappointing'.

Anyway. It should be remembered that there are just under 2 million receiving Incapacity Benefit (IB) so this 81,000 really only makes up just under 5% of the total claimants. Putting this very small sub-section of claimants beside the total IB bill is probably not accidental - 'those horrible fatties and junkies, costing the public purse £7billion' - certainly fits with the Tory narrative of all these people who could be out at work, contributing to society but instead choosing to leech instead. It's like they write their statements to fulfil Daily Mail wet dreams...

At this point, I'd like to point you to an excellent piece by Vicky Allen in yesterday's Sunday Herald. It's behind a registration wall - free to sign up, and if you uncheck the right boxes, you won't get a heap of spam from them - but I understand that not everyone wants to do that, and probably not just for one article, though I really would recommend this piece highly. As it is, I may quote Ms. Allen a little, as she makes pretty much the same points as I want to, in places. (It's tempting to copy/paste the whole thing and leave it at that, but that's a bit unfair.)

The way the Government has been talking about these people, their conditions exist in a vacuum. The idea that there's probably an underlying cause for both incapacitating obesity and substance dependency seems to have eluded them. If someone has had a severe injury that impedes their mobility, they probably can't take exercise. If someone experienced abuse as a child, they may well self-medicate with drugs and/or alcohol. Not that these are the only causes for such conditions, but they are worthy examples. Some people also self-medicate with food. In this culture where certain foods are actively marketed as treats and rewards, it's not so outlandish as it may seem at first blush - there are also countless women who consciously or subconsiously gain weight as a response to sexual assault, in an attempt to make them less attractive and therefore less attackable. (I'm restraining myself from wandering into a desconstruction of the 'rape as a compliment' myth as it's wildly off topic.)

Some years ago, I read Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg. One thing that has stayed with me for a very long time is the point that the author made about addiction. If you were wealthy and use drugs, you can afford to maintain your habit without too much risk. Paying for your next hit isn't too much trouble, and the drugs you buy as much less likely to be contaminated. Think about it; how often do the police release warnings about unsafe drugs? Not that often, to be fair, but it's usually to say that either a handful of addicts have died after taking heroin cut with something that's lethal, or that they've taken heroin much purer than they usually use (it's not been cut with talc or whatever) and have overdosed. Needle exchanges exist because one of the biggest risks to health was the use of non-sterile needles. The opiate heroin in and of itself, assuming all other factors are as safe as they can be, isn't that hazardous to health. Not that I'm suggesting that we should all go out and start using!

However, if one was a member of an elite group, such as, say the Bullingdon Club, where I wouldn't be surprised if cocaine, for example, was occasionally in circulation, one probably would have direct experience of casual drug use. And if one had been a member of the Bullingdon Club and was now on the front bench, one would probably assume that that meant that one now knows what one is talking about. Never mind that, if one knew that old Johnny had gotten a bit keen on the Charlie, Johnny (or his family) could easily afford the very best in private drug treatment.

So the Government's response to any criticism of unfairly focusing on this very small group has been of the 'we want to help them to help themselves' variety. Supporting them out of their addiction and into work. To quote Chris Grayling "help them back into work, even if that work is different to what they did previously." (Today, BBC Radio 4, 21st April) Reading the subtext; they Government just want them off the benefits, no matter what kind of employment they find themselves in, no matter how inappropriate. And we're back to the culture of forcing people in to jobs they don't want to do (or can't really do) because it's the only job available. Given that ex-users can be vulnerable to relapse in times of stress, is that even going to work in the long term? (How illuminating to read that addiction is specifically not covered by the Equality Act 2010) Would the £580million not be better spent supporting people through dealing with the underlying causes that led to them using and trying to make it much less likely that people will relapse, instead of merely preparing them for employment?

Look at the Bad Thing

 I've always thought one of the best lines in the better-than-expected adaptation of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta occurs in the scene where a news  report on the TV channel which serves as the propaganda arm of the dystopian England where the story is set refers to V's speech on television encouraging people to rise up against their oppressors as 'a message of hate'.

It's a good choice of language because it captures the way contemporary media propaganda reduces complex issues down to simple emotional, goodies and baddies pap. This You Didn't Win blogger used to work in a bookshop, and we had a similarly goo-goo-doll politics book on our shelves about radical Islam, called Because They Hate, which argued that Islamic terrorism doesn't occur because of, say, the situation in Gaza, the stifiling of more traditional dissent in Wahabist countries, poverty or anything like that - it occurs because Muslims are nasty, nasty men.

This retreat to the language of the nursery is always a good way of identifying when the meeja are trying to sell you a line. It shows that the authorities are unable to convince using rational argument or by pointing out the genuinely deleterious effects a thing will have, and so they are reduced to pointing at the bad thing, then waving their arms and saying 'oooooh, spooky spooky bad thing, spooky spooky bad thing' over and over until hopefully people start to be scared of it.

The March 26th March for the Alternative was a good example of the 'spooky spooky bad thing' school of reporting. Half a million people came together to object, peacefully, to the Britain-breaking agenda which Cameron and the Tories are implementing, despite having no mandate, but because people protesting peacefully and with dignity is not very telegenic and doesn't support the status quo, the media chose to focus again and again on a few examples of violence from a group of 'anarchists'. And, with their close-ups, overhead shots and dramatic camera angles they could make it look really scary.

I walked down Oxford Street just after the banks and rich stores had had their windows smashed. It looked no worse than what I've seen at North East bus stops on a Saturday morning. It didn't look threatening or terrifying; it looked pathetic really, in the way that vandalism often does. And I was in Oxford Circus when the placard fire that looked like such an inferno in the overhead shots shown on TV happened, and again, at ground level, up close, it, too, seemed underwhelming. It looked like an act not so much of violence but despair.

But to the media, the violence had to be hyped up, and so papers and reports were full of pictures of scary masked anarchists and sensational stories about 'lightbulbs filled with ammonia' and 'fireworks filled with coins' being hurled at the police. Spooky. Spooky. Look at the bad bad thing.

So when I read reports like those emerging from Stokes Croft today, telling us with a straight face that police turned up mob-handed to arrest 'a number of people they said were "a real threat to the local community"' and also accuse those people of 'harbouring petrol bombs', and then a crowd of 300 people turned up to protect these ne'er-do-wells, I wonder.

Hundreds of people do not try to impede the police when they're after people who threaten their community. That kind of thing only happens when the crowd in an area sees those targeted as members of their community, and thus regards the police as a threat.

Behind this scary riot story it seems there's another story entirely - a story about a bohemian but highly-cohesive community trying to resist the opening of a Tesco Express store foisted on them by Terry Leahy's retail behemoth and the local council. This is a story about the 'Big Society', surely? This is a story about Cameron's sacred promise to let locals be more involved in planning decisions than councils, right?

Well, no. Because for Cameron's Tories locals should only be empowered when they're the right kind of locals. And the Big Society, evidently, is always going to lose out to Big Business where Citizen Dave is concerned. But is that any wonder, when access to Dave's inner circle, the Leader's Group, costs £50,000? Do you know many Community Associations with that kind of spare cash? Of course not. But people in the corporate world do.

Dig deeper into this story, and it reveals the hypocrisy and dishonesty of our Tory overlords, prepared to send armed police in droves to attack people standing up for the very same thing the Tories claim to believe in. But we can't have that, can we? So don't dig. Don't question. Don't think about why 300 people might turn out to protect some 'petrol bombers' from the police, or why we live in a country where riot squads are being sent in to deal with people who protest against Tesco.

Instead, look at the shouty crowds! The flaming cars! Look, look, a police car being attacked! They had saws! They had shields! They were ripping up cobbles I tell you! Look! Look! At the spooky spooky bad thing! And be frightened!

I'm not frightened. Not of protesters. Not of people trying to defend their community from politicised policing. But I am frightened that our police are being used to quell dissent. I am frightened that police were champing at the bit to kettle peaceful protesters during the March for the Alternative. And I'm frightened that a media which should be challenging these actions is enabling them and repeating the police line unquestioningly.

The actions taken by police in Stokes Croft today, and their uncritical reporting by the media, help to feed the arrogance of the Tories who didn't win the 2010 election, but now seek to use their brief time in power to push through as much of their repugnant ideology as they can. That arrogance needs to be challenged. And that's why, this May 6th, the Tories' arrogance must be challenged by reminding them that they didn't win.

Retail to the rescue...or not?

As well as crowing about 'winning' the election, David Cameron occassionally likes to imitate the real grown-up politicians he's seen by announcing what he calls 'policies'. Unfortunately these policies are less carefully thought-out and workable point-by-point solutions to the problems he identifies in politics so much as shallow wish-fulfilment. Perhaps the definitive Cameron policy is his vision of 'the Big Society', which essentially boils down to a heartfelt sight that gosh, chaps, wouldn't it be spiffing if people were just a little bit nicer to one another? and pretends that this is an effective basis for running a welfare state in 21st century Britain. Another of Cameron's flagship brainfarts ideas is that we can gut the public sector needed to stop society tumbling into a Hobbesian nightmare of all-against-all and this will not be a problem because the private sector will rush into the void, create jobs for all the newly-unemployed and run everything super-efficiently - because, as anyone who's spent three hours on the phone to their mobile company to ask why their brand new Blackberry only works if they lean out of a window in their knickers can tell you, the private sector is an absolute paradigm of efficiency.

The following piece by one of our You Didn't Win bloggers looks in more detail at the flaws in Cameron's 'Tesco will save us all' utopia:

The recently released consumer spending figures serve to confirm what most of us already know.

In retail terms, spending is down - the biggest drop of like-for-like (LFL) since records began 16 years ago. Various excuses have been trundled out; the weather, that Easter's much later this year. But anyone who's worked in retail management will likely know that comparing figures isn't as simple as 'on March 1st last year, we made X money; on March 1st this year we made Y.' More often than not, March 1st falls on a different day from one year to the next (actually; every year it's different). A Friday's takings will differ to a Saturday's and a Sunday's. Mondays are often quiet, though most returns come back that day.

(If I may digress, I'm concerned by the creep of retail opening hours. I'm old enough to remember when most shops were shut by 5.30pm. Supermarkets used to close about 7pm. Now, I have heard someone complain that where I currently work opens too late in the morning [8.30am] and that our closing time of 6.30pm is too early. The big supermarkets and chains do have a lot to answer for - a few years ago Debenhams too the decision to open on New Year's Day. As I understand it, the staff were offered triple time and no-one had to work it if they didn't want to. What would happen if the entire staff of one store refused? Would the store stay closed? Probably not. Working elsewhere in a shopping mall that hosted a Debenhams, it was a worrying precedent. There will likely come a point at which people expect retail outlets of all sorts to stay open to their convenience without considering the human cost, never mind the costs to small, independent businesses. At least extending opening hours will create jobs, assuming people can afford to work part-time night shifts for Tesco and Asda Wal-Mart.)

But if people aren't spending money, how many jobs will really be created, even in the big food retailers?

Running a retail business, there are two main costs that you can exert influence over; money spent on buying in stock to sell and payroll. Given that you'll lose customers if you don't have the item they're looking for, it would be foolhardy to cut stock levels too much. So that leaves the staff. There are few full-time (35 hours/week and above) positions in retail - usually management and upwards. A part-time employee may only have a 4 hour contract, even if they regularly work a 20 hour week. A reduction in hours as punishment for some transgression is not unheard of - not the most thoughtful response to a situation, but it happens. If you're already on the knife edge, one shift of 4 hours less can be the difference between being able to manage for another month and getting behind on the rent, or not being able to buy food. Even if you have a lovely, even-tempered boss who would never do such a thing as punishment, the possibility of a reduction of hours during quiet periods (such as between Christmas and Easter) is ever-present. It all depends on the nebulous phrase "the needs of the business". So retail staff are often students, or people who need the flexibility to do something else. It doesn't require much qualification, just the ability to be endlessly patient with rude, unthinking people who are entirely self-absorbed and seem to think that if you're working in a shop, you might not actually qualify as a human being, with the benefits and privileges that brings. For example, the woman who approached the counter on her phone (to her Dad, as it turned out) and continued her conversation without acknowledging my existence. She did, however, apologise to her Dad for interrupting the conversation when I asked her if she needed a bag and to tell her how much she was to pay.

There's little going for a retail career - the pay is usually the legal minimum ('we'd pay you less, but we can't!'), the weekend generally doesn't exist in the 'heyhey, Friday night!' sense, and some people make assumptions about you, allowing them to be fantastically rude because you're not doing a Proper Job. It may come as a surprise, but I fully support Charlie Brooker's suggestion that retail staff be encouraged to give as good as they get.

All this said, retail makes up the largest employer in the private sector, the private sector that is key to the current government's plans. The main idea is that, as public sector jobs are cut, the private sector will take up the slack and employ the newly unemployed. Some of them probably will. Though it probably will be quite a pay cut for those new employees - as I mentioned, retail usually attracts the minimum wage or just above - and there generally isn't so much in the way of pension schemes, probably because staff turnover can be so high as to make it unworkable. People in the public sector now, if they are just managing to make ends meet, will quite possibly go under if they are forced into a part-time retail job. And forced they will be, if they don't want the Job Centre to cut off their benefits.

But the minimum wage is to increase in October. That should make it all better, right? (I need to check back on this, but wasn't one of the Tory manifesto points abolishing the age discrimination in minimum wage levels?)

For how many small businesses will this be the final straw? If someone has already cut their staffing levels to the barest minimum required to keep their shop open, will they have any realistic alternative to either letting go of staff or closing altogether? How many will reconsider their opening hours (say, closing Monday all day and reducing the hours to 10am - 5pm), leading to a downward spiral of everyone going to Tesco and complaining that all the small shops have closed? Just today, a kindly visitor to my place of employment asked if I knew that Safeway (really, that's what he said - maybe he meant Morrison's.) were selling the same item about 60p cheaper. Where I work is a stand-alone independent shop. We cannot sell that item 60p cheaper because it probably costs us that to buy it in and while we're not after massive profit, my employers like to be able to pay the electricity bill and their staff wages; also the tax bill. Sainsbury's (or whoever he meant, assuming he didn't step through a time warp and really mean Safeway's and the price they charged for something 5 years ago) can afford to charge less for their stock because of economies of scale. Another important economic concept to keep in mind is the race to the bottom. If everyone takes this attitude, we'll all be shopping in Asda, because they and the other big supermarkets will be all that remain. At least we'll all be able to get a staff discount.

And one last thought on the endless growth that capitalism is predicated on; once any given company has that holy grail of 100% of market share, what would happen?

Suggested Text

Today here at You Didn't Win, we've been busy checking out printers and designing stuff for our campaign. In the next few days you'll see our design for a pre-printed You Didn't Win card you can send if you don't want to send one of your own. Don't get us wrong - we'd love as many people as possible to send unique cards bearing our message to Cameron - but we also want to make it as easy as we can for people to join in. So if people want a pre-designed card that they just need to pick up and sign, or download online, we'll provide that.

In a similar sense, we'd love people to write their own unique messages to our new Tory overlords on your cards, but if people are struggling, we're happy to provide a suggested message. So here, from the postcard design we've been working on, is the text of our message to Mr C:

Dear David,

                   One year ago today, the results of the 2010 UK General Election were announced. Those results showed that no party had won a parliamentary majority strong enough to form a government on their own.

Nobody won the 2010 election. That includes you.

However, recent misguided statements from your Chancellor suggest you and he have forgotten this fact. You think you did win, and that justifies your policies. This is worrying.

So we, the people of Britain, would like to take the opportunity to remind you that YOU DIDN’T WIN. You failed to carry enough of the electorate to give you a mandate for your extremist, ideologically-driven policies. We request that you acknowledge this, show some humility, and start governing on behalf of the majority of voters in this country who did not vote for the policies contained in your manifesto.

                                                Yours sincerely,

                                                                               YOU DIDN'T WIN!

A question of mandates

From the bastion of factual accuracy that is Wikipedia; the definition of 'mandate':

"...a mandate is the authority granted by a constituency to act as its representative."

To explain with more words and perhaps a few choice metaphors; a political party states their planned policies during the election campaign, let's say to ban the wearing of Uggs out of doors, and to promote a three day weekend. Enough of the electorate are fed up with the sight of Uggs (they're missing the 'ly', surely?) and even more are fed up of the seemingly endless grind of a 40 hour week (who really has time to enjoy life in two days, 48 weeks of the year?) and, crucially, there's enough in both groups to secure this party a clear majority in Parliament. They duly come to power. First thing they do, is attempt to ban the wearing of Crocs.

This was not in their election campaign; they don't have a mandate for that.

The Conservative party did not get a clear majority of the electorate to vote for their policies, therefore they do not have a mandate for them. You could interpret 'mandate' as the will of the people. While it would be ridiculous to suggest that this government put every new policy they wish to implement to referendum (as they are doing with AV), it would be ill-considered of them to get carried away making all the ideological cuts they've been itching to make since 1997 and think they can get away with it. The deficit is getting to be like the proverbial dog that ate the homework, and to mix metaphors, we all remember what happened to the boy who cried 'wolf'.

The Conservative manifesto from the election campaign is a long-winded affair (as all the main parties' are; the Tories' clocks in at 131 pages which is the longest by 20 pages. Admittedly there's a lot of padding because TL;DR isn't an accepted part of politics as yet, so breaking it up with photos makes it easier.) but thanks to the Metro (yes; The Metro) here's some of the headline policies they were standing for last year:

:: Safeguard Britain's credit rating with a credible plan to eliminate the bulk of the structural deficit over a Parliament set out in an emergency Budget within 50 days of taking office.
:: Create the conditions for higher exports, business investment and savings, while cutting youth unemployment.
:: Reform the regulation and structure of the banking system.
:: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the UK's share of global markets for low carbon technologies.

:: Cut a net £6 billion of waste in departmental spending in 2010-11.
:: Freeze public sector pay for one year in 2011.
:: Cut ministers' pay by 5%, followed by a five-year freeze.
:: Reduce the number of MPs by 10% and cap public sector pensions above £50,000.
:: Reverse Labour's planned National Insurance hike for anyone earning under £35,000 next year.
:: Create a single Work Programme for everyone who is unemployed.
:: Boost small businesses with automatic rate relief.
:: Cut the headline rate of corporation tax to 25p and the small companies' rate to 20p.
:: Set an annual limit on the number of non-EU economic migrants admitted into the UK.
:: Block plans for second runways at Stansted and Gatwick, while starting work on new high speed rail network.
:: Freeze council tax for two years and scrap plans for a revaluation.
:: Re-link the basic state pension to earnings and protect the winter fuel payment.
:: Give every patient the power to choose any healthcare provider which meets NHS standards within NHS prices.
:: Stop the "forced" closure of accident and emergency wards, and commission a 24/7 urgent care service in every area of England.
:: Raise standards in schools by enhancing the status of teachers and allowing state schools the freedom to offer same high quality international exams that private schools offer.
:: Give parents the power to save local schools threatened by closure.

You might also recall the billboard campaign that introduced a bizarrely smooth and shiny David Cameron to the general public. Such was the impact of the campaign, it spawned www.mydavidcameron.com.

The vital point to remember when looking at their manifesto is that not enough people voted for them, for their proposals, to secure them a victory. It took a coalition with the Liberal Democrats to get Dave into No. 10. He could've tried to form a minority government, but perhaps even he knew that he'd never get anything past a Commons' vote. Which makes me wonder what a Tory majority government would have been like.

And then I wake up screaming.

I saw Jeremy Hardy's show in Glasgow recently; he was talking at length about the incumbent government amongst other things. He spoke about how there was so much hatred of the Lib Dems, not so much for the Tories. Probably because those who voted Lib Dem (including, possibly, my own mother) never dreamt they'd enable the Tories to get in, and all those voters feel cheated an disappointed. We expect this sort of thing from the Tories, especially those of us who can remember Margaret Thatcher. What's strange and terrifying is that that also happens to be the era in which Dave and Gideon chose to become Tories. As someone tweeted a long time ago, they looked around the political landscape of the mid-80's, saw the Conservatives under Thatcher and thought 'Yes. These are my people.'

Jeremy also suggested that a sort of inbetween generation; those a bit young to really be politically aware in the 80's, a bit too old to be undergraduates mostly, might not be too upset by the actions of the Conservative-led government. I enjoyed Jeremy's show, I feel that I share many opinions with him, but on this one I disagree. I'm 32 and feel it's vitally important that we the Electorate remind Dave and 'George' that they didn't win.

Everybody Knows

In our last post, we looked at the surprising breadth of support for our central proposition - that David Cameron did not win the 2010 election. Left-wing blogger Lisa Ansell and Telegraph columnist Benedict Brogan both wrote separate pieces explaining, respectively, that no-one had won the election, and that Cameron's problems today stem from his failure to win.

Today, reading through my Kindle edition of the New Statesman, I came across not one but two examples of commentators once again reflecting our opinion - again, from across the political spectrum. In an exclusive interview with Nick Clegg, the Marty Janetty to Cameron's Shawn Michaels, guest editor Jemima Khan (who happens to be the sister of Tory MP Zac Goldsmith, so can hardly be thought of as a red-blooded socialist partisan) opines that

'the British public voted - no one party won'

although she also charitably observes that Cameron has won at least one thing - a game of tennis against Clegg.

In the very same issue, however, Hugh Grant turns the tables on News of the World executive Paul McMullan by secretly taping a conversation with him on a great many subjects, including the degree to which Cameron may well be beholden to News International:

'basically, Cameron is very much in debt to Rebekah Wade for helping him not quite win the election'

(emphasis ours, obviously).

A high-flying socialite and a gutter-dwelling hack; the (guest) editor of Britain's best-selling left-wing weekly and a former exec at the News of the Screws. You couldn't get much further apart than Jemima Khan and Paul McMullan, but on one thing they agree: David Cameron may be the PM now - but he didn't win the 2010 election.

Jemima Khan knows. Paul McMullan knows. Lisa Ansell and Benedict Brogan know. Even Nick Clegg seems to know (though he's probably too afraid of getting a chinese burn from Eric Pickles to say so openly). The only people who seem not to know are Cameron and Osborne, gloating about the 'political capital [that] comes from winning an election'. Clearly, the Bullingdon boys need a reminder. And, this May 6th, when they open their post, we'll make sure they are reminded!

It's not just us

It's not a new idea, that 2010 was the election no-one won. Hot on the heels of the election, left-wing blogger Lisa Ansell was saying much the same thing.

Fair enough, you might say - typical lefty sour grapes. But surprisingly, Tories agree with us too. Check out Benedict Brogan, in his column from this Wednesday's Telegraph: 'David Cameron isn't a winner - and that's where his problems begin'. Choice cuts:

'We will shortly mark the first anniversary of the formation of the Coalition, when David Cameron will be able to reflect on his failure to win the last election and all the troubles that stem from that inescapable fact.'

'Mr Cameron...was ahead of his bleary party in realising what an absence of victory might mean.'

'In the coming weeks, plenty of us will contemplate Mr Cameron’s achievements over the past extraordinary year. They are considerable. But we should start by acknowledging that all is not well, and that his problems are an unavoidable consequence of his failure to win.'

It would seem that while a rainbow coalition didn't emerge from last year's vote, the recognition that David Cameron didn't win it really does extend across the political spectrum!

But hang on - didn't they win?

Today has been a good day for our campaign. A retweet from the fantastic comedian Josie Long led to an explosion in other people retweeting us and following. Most of the comments from people about the project have been positive, and it's clear that our plan to admonish the Tories for crowing about 'winning' an election when they couldn't form a sufficient parliamentary majority to form a government on their own has really struck a chord with the public.

Not everyone feels the same way, however. Some have questioned the basis of what we're doing on the oldest grounds in politics: that we're being unrealistic. That objecting to the sight of a trust-fund millionaire claiming that a budget of swingeing cuts is justified on the basis that his party 'won' the election is immature. That we should  just put up with it, in fact, because this is the system and that's just how it works.

Except that that isn't how our electoral system works. The First Past the Post (FPTP) system of elections in Britain - whatever you may think of it in the light of the coming AV referendum - is designed to produce clear winners. In fact, this is one of the main justifications of FPTP in the eyes of those who endorse it as a system. FPTP is designed to lead to parties emerging with a clear majority in the Commons, even if they don't poll a majority of the national vote. Unfair? Perhaps. But decisive. FPTP leads to strong government because, most of the time, it produces a convincing victor.

Except when it doesn't.

FPTP is meant to be coalition-proof. So when it does produce a coalition, it's a sign that something's wrong. A sign that the public has lost confidence in those who claim to govern it. Undoubtedly, the public lost confidence in Labour at the last election. But the failure of the Tories to secure enough seats to form a majority government indicates that large sections of the population have no confidence in their abilities or agenda either.

The good showing the Liberal Democrats made on the back of Nick Clegg's surprisingly strong performance in the televised debates was, in its way, an illustration of how little faith the electorate placed, at that point, in the two main parties. Clegg seemed like something new: the banality of New Labour at its most moribund, of David Cameron's reheated Thatcherism and truisms about the deficit, threw Clegg, with his fresh style, touch of honesty and offer of something new, into sharp relief. The collapse in support for the Lib Dems in the aftermath of Clegg's shock decision to form a coalition with the Tories is a relection of how this sense of possibility has been so desperately squandered.

The sad truth of the 2010 General Election is that it was the election no-one won.

David Cameron's Tories, with the support of the Murdoch press, the clamour of sockpuppet pressure groups like the Taxpayer's Alliance, and the deference of a cowed BBC, were predicted to sweep into power on the back of a landslide akin to that enjoyed by Tony Blair in 1997. Instead, they only managed to gain a 48-seat majority - far short of the numbers they would need to govern on their own.

Labour, despite having averted total economic meltdown in the banking crisis, and having introduced some of the most progressive legislation since the postwar Atlee government in the course of their longest ever reign, were hamstrung by their very association with the crash, by their authoritarian attitude to civil liberties in the pursuance of the 'war on terror', by the catastrophic misjudgement of the Iraq war, and by the tabloid-fanned public perception of Gordon Brown. They did better than almost anyone predicted - but they, too, did not win.

And the Lib Dems came within a hair's breadth of being able to wield the real balance of power by offering 'supply and confidence' support to a minority Tory government - but threw it away to join one of the most ill-judged coalitions in political history, and have haemorrhaged support at the hands of an electorate hungry to punish what it sees as a betrayal. They lost too.

And so did we. As a result of the election no-one won, the British public now face an unprecedented barriage of cuts - cuts which even the Tories now admit go beyond the wildest dreams of Thatcher. Millions will lose out while bankers celebrate with even greater bonuses. The concept of a good education and meaningful adult employment is now further outside the realms of possibility for working class youth than at any time since before the Second World War. The Lib Dems, who seemed to offer so much hope to a demoralised electorate, are now seen as the most reviled members of a universally-pilloried political class. Now more than ever, Parliament seems like a rich man's plaything. After a few windows were smashed during last month's anti-cuts protests, media commentators and establishment figures fell over each other to clutch their pearls and ask how there could be such an orgy of violence. This writer looks around and wonders how there was so little.

For the Tories to claim that they 'won' the election is a slap in the face to the already demoralised people of this country, a populace who know - as the speed with which our campaign has caught on proves - that talk of victory in the context of such an inconclusive ballot is shallow triumphalism. If the Tories truly want to calm tensions and act for the good of the nation, then they need to show some humility and acknowledge how deeply they and their policies have divided and demoralised the country. And they could begin to do that by acknowledging what we already know - that neither they, nor anyone else, 'won' the 2010 election.

And if they refuse - then we're here to remind them.

Facebook Group and Further Instructions

As well as our Twitter feed, the You Didn't Win campaign also now has a Facebook page. And we also have some more detailed instructions on how and where to send your postcards:

Get a postcard (one showing the tourist attractions of your locality would be ideal; it's important that it's clear to see that it's not just two of us filling in 30,000 postcards in a basement!)

Write "YOU DIDN'T WIN" on the back of the postcard, where the message goes. You can address it to Dave or 'George' or both, if you fancy.

Address it to Downing Street - 10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA

Take a photo of your card & post it to twitter, on Facebook, tag it on Flickr, etc. You *MUST* tag it 'youdidntwin' though, or we'll never find it.

Place your stamped, addressed postcard in a convenient mail box ON MAY 5th. Please wait until then & use a 1st class stamp! Hopefully all the cards will get through the mail system so will all arrive on May 6th, the anniversary of the election that no-one won.

Remember not to post your card too early...we want 10 Downing Street to be flooded with cards from all over the country, so that David and George can clearly see how many of us remember that they DIDN'T win!

You Didn't Win, Dave

It's nearly a year since the general election in which - following a hung parliament - David Cameron's conservatives formed a coalition with Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats to assume power. Since that time this Tory-led government has used its position to pursue a cuts agenda which threatens the NHS, the economy, and some of the most vulnerable groups in society.

Despite the damage which most economists and commentators think their cuts will do, the Tories are unrepentant. Interviewed on radio on the day of his recent budget, Tory chancellor George Osborne justified his decisions by saying 'political capital comes from winning an election'.

Fair enough, George. Although there's just one teeny little problem: you didn't win.

The Tories did not gain a sufficient majority to form a government on their own. That's why they had to form a coalition. Making a deal with the party that came third in order to bolster your meagre numbers is not 'winning' an election.

Since the Tory-led government took power, we've been subjected to a barrage of lies. We've been told that we have to cut, cut, cut because our debt burden is too high - even though our debt has been higher than today for 200 of the past 250 years. We've been told that NHS reforms are 'desperately needed' to repair a broken system - even though satisfaction with the NHS is at a record high. We've been told that Osborne's budget is 'a budget for growth' - even though every economic announcement from Cameron's government leads to growth forecasts being revised ever further downwards.

All these lies are bad enough. But we will not stomach the lie that the reason the Tories can get away with what they're doing is that they 'won' an election which ended in compromise and shady backroom deals. That's why were asking people to join us in sending a message to David Cameron and the government he leads.

We want readers to send a postcard to David Cameron at 10 Downing Street, to arrive in time for May 6th, the anniversary of the election Cameron failed to win. And we want those postcards to be marked with a simple, clear message for David Cameron and the government he leads:

You.

Didn't.

Win.

Watch this blog for further updates from the 'You Didn't Win' campaign. And follow our twitter account for information as it happens. We didn't vote for Cameron. He didn't win. This May, let's remind him of that fact.