[Archived] Election

[broadsword]

Apparently there's a strong positive correlation between recessions and chancellors with comedy eyebrows.

I'll be keeping a close eye on Osbourne's brows.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Having watched, listened abd read what the coalition aim to do I have to believe they will go the full 5yr term or at least the 3 budget scenario that has been reported.

I doubt any party will ever come of worse than Labour did with the current deficit we have and the high taxes we pay.

Brown and his cronies have almost ruined us financially, have handed lots of power to Brussels whilst they have not sstood up to the pc brigade who have been allowed to wreak havoc in the courts. Immigration is out of control whilst the benefits system is abused more than one of Fred West's children.

I dont expect this coalition to work miraqcles overnight, what I expect is common sense politics, tough decision making, the deficit to be shortened, the Armed Forces backed with the correct equipment, the justice system to be taken back from medling judges and poor case management, a total overhaul of the HRA and immigration to be taken more seriously.

Its time for proper leadership and a positive change of the beaurocratic system.

I wouldnt even mind if some of Labours so called bright sparks from the think tank were also involved in the tough decision making because many hands make can make light work. Just as long as Darling, Brown and Straw are nowhere near and trhe likes of Ainsworth and Balls are shot !

Mmmm, right, Ok then. I can think of other parties more worthy of your vote. You wouldn't have a brown shirt handy would you ?

[Mattyblue]

Mmmm, right, Ok then. I can think of other parties more worthy of your vote. You wouldn't have a brown shirt handy would you ?

What a sterotypically left wing repsonse that was. Tell me what he said that is remotely fascist?

[berkshireblue]

"One-nation conservatism" is fine in theory but does not work in practice because sooner or later the nasty face of the party reappears in the form of the Thatcherite loony right. You only had to watch some of the post-election interviews with party activists to see their discomfort at working with the Lib Dems to know that 1 ) this coalition will fall apart 2 ) the ugly face of Toryism will reassert itself. The core of the Tory party is one of the most virally rightwing parties in western capitalism, along with the US Republicans. The last Tory prime minister to espouse one-nation conservatism was Edward Heath. Enough said.

Jim I know nothing about your age, background nor experience of life but you spout the most left wing ###### I have ever heard, two choices; emigrate or kill yourself ... or if it is all so terrible buy a Burnley season ticket

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

What a sterotypically left wing repsonse that was. Tell me what he said that is remotely fascist?

Read the last saentence.

[yoda]

Cheers chaps, just providing an economic solution which accepted, is, and would be, extremely difficult to implement but for the greed of man.

How else can the country bring down the horrendous levels of borrowings whilst maintaining that there are many pound notes left in everybodys pocket ?

Just control the % borrowing on house purchases to say max 70% mortgage instead of the last 10 years of allowing 100, 110 and plus % morgages and also link it to earnings, it used to be X 3

[thenodrog]

Just control the % borrowing on house purchases to say max 70% mortgage instead of the last 10 years of allowing 100, 110 and plus % morgages and also link it to earnings, it used to be X 3

Or x 2.5 and .5 of the missuses earnings. Happy days Yoda ..... thats when people went to pubs when it wasn't their birthday and went to the bar with £notes and not that infernally slow plastic.

btw Unless its settling a 'tab' pub landlords should add a charge to anybody paying with plastic in order to deter em.

[den]

I see the business leaders have been rewarded by the Tories for backing their plans not to raise NI. The employers wont contribute any more, but the rest of us will.

[broadsword]

It's the bankers who should pay!

[broadsword]

Yeah, any gain should be offset against the national debt I guess.

The problem is, how long will it take for the banks' share prices to reach an acceptable level at which the shares can then be sold. I don't think we can wait until that happens in order to reduce the deficit and maintain confidence in our currency.

What an absolute nightmare it is. Lord knows how long we'll be paying for it.

PS: Does anyone else feel a bit weird that the New Labour era is over? I had no time for Gordon Brown really, but not to see him in Downing Street any more after 13 years feels odd.

[broadsword]

It's good for democracy that a govt doesn't stay in power for too long.

It just feels like the end of an era.

[Paul]

I see the business leaders have been rewarded by the Tories for backing their plans not to raise NI. The employers wont contribute any more, but the rest of us will.

Don't worry den they create wealth for us all so it will be OK. In fact I'm sure the wealth they create will help you and me pay the additional 2.5% VAT we will all suffer in a few months time. Took the Con / Lib Dem pact 24 hours to get that one simmering along. And of course our income tax bill is going to come down. What on earth is that all about? The government introduces a £10,000 tax free allowance and will probably hit the lower paid with 20% VAT, a tax which low income earners harder than most.

[Mattyblue]

Not really. After the 2005 election I couldn't see the same government retaining the population's support.

I don't know what this new government will bring but as a Labour supporter I feel a bit deflated at the moment. But at the same time it's probably best for the party and the country to back away for a while.

The majority of people on here would say they've been an awful government but I honestly think they've changed Britain and British people for the better. I think people are a lot more hopeful and ambitious in life because of them.

Ho hum.

I would say a lot of people are anything abut more hopeful and ambitious after 13 years.

Labour have betrayed the working class by locking families and youngsters into benefits, sink estates are still hopeless places, a third of pupils can't read when leaving Primary school and youth unemployment is at record levels.

Wasted years.

[BuckyRover]

Don't worry den they create wealth for us all so it will be OK. In fact I'm sure the wealth they create will help you and me pay the additional 2.5% VAT we will all suffer in a few months time. Took the Con / Lib Dem pact 24 hours to get that one simmering along. And of course our income tax bill is going to come down. What on earth is that all about? The government introduces a £10,000 tax free allowance and will probably hit the lower paid with 20% VAT, a tax which low income earners harder than most.

Do you not remember when it was decreased to 15% after the bank bailout? I remember the criticism that it was such a small decrease that people didn't even notice it. So I don't see how increasing it by 2.5% will make a massive difference, especially as the increase in the tax threshold will MORE than cover any VAT losses for poor people.

Don't forget it wad Labour that initially removed the 10p tax band, hitting the poorest hardest.

Unbelievable

[jim mk2]

Do you not remember when it was decreased to 15% after the bank bailout? I remember the criticism that it was such a small decrease that people didn't even notice it. So I don't see how increasing it by 2.5% will make a massive difference, especially as the increase in the tax threshold will MORE than cover any VAT losses for poor people.

Don't forget it wad Labour that initially removed the 10p tax band, hitting the poorest hardest.

Unbelievable

All these figures are freely available on the internet.

This tax cut "targeted on those on low incomes" or "particularly to help the low paid" is a Lib-Con spin and totally bogus. First, raising tax thresholds doesn't help the poorest because they don't have earn enough to pay income tax. Though the tax cut would cost £17bn, three million of the poorest households would not get a penny of help. That includes most pensioners.

Second, the vast majority of this £17bn does not go on cutting tax for the low paid, but cutting taxes for richer households. Some 70% of the benefit goes to the top half of society. And only £1bn of the £17bn cost just 6% of the total actually goes on the aim of "lifting those on low incomes out of tax".

This policy will be the biggest increase in income inequality since Lawson's 1988 tax-cutting budget

The Tory redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich has started.

Now that's unbelievable.

[den]

Don't worry den they create wealth for us all so it will be OK. In fact I'm sure the wealth they create will help you and me pay the additional 2.5% VAT we will all suffer in a few months time.

You've got the VAT rise wrong Paul. Cameron denied he had any plans to raise VAT on the televised debates.

[BuckyRover]

Labour also refused to rule it out. (In other words it was going up whoever got into power; everybody knew that)

[den]

Labour also refused to rule it out. (In other words it was going up whoever got into power; everybody knew that)

VAT hits the poor hardest. The Tories upped it from 8% to 15% in 1979, while at the same time cutting the higher rate of Income Tax from 83% to 60%. They upped it again to 17.5% in 1991. Taxes have to go up now, no doubt. It's a matter of what's fair.

Anyway, time to drop out of this topic and I genuinely hope that this coalition works well for the country. I hope that things are done fairly. However, I still can't for the life of me see what the heck the Lib Dems are going to get out of all this. It could finish them.

Oh and one last point. Hopefully the Conservatives will keep their promise of funding some of the Cancer drugs, particularly for the rarer cancers, that are desperately needed.

The Macmillan cancer support echoing my sentiments, almost to the word.

[cletus]

Samantha Cameron has given husband David permission to have "anal sex" for the rest of her pregnancy.....on the strict understanding that Clegg always wears a condom.

[JAL]

Not really. After the 2005 election I couldn't see the same government retaining the population's support.

I don't know what this new government will bring but as a Labour supporter I feel a bit deflated at the moment. But at the same time it's probably best for the party and the country to back away for a while.

The majority of people on here would say they've been an awful government but I honestly think they've changed Britain and British people for the better. I think people are a lot more hopeful and ambitious in life because of them.

Ho hum.

Under new labour I lost my final salary pension scheme and now have to pay into the corrupt, thieving, lying @#/?s, the City, where at this moment in time they pay out annually around 6k providing you've got a pot of around 100k.

Going off the City's track record and the human behaviour of those involved, that 6k could quite easily shrink for your 100k in.

[Wiggy]

All these figures are freely available on the internet.

This tax cut "targeted on those on low incomes" or "particularly to help the low paid" is a Lib-Con spin and totally bogus. First, raising tax thresholds doesn't help the poorest because they don't have earn enough to pay income tax. Though the tax cut would cost £17bn, three million of the poorest households would not get a penny of help. That includes most pensioners.

Second, the vast majority of this £17bn does not go on cutting tax for the low paid, but cutting taxes for richer households. Some 70% of the benefit goes to the top half of society. And only £1bn of the £17bn cost – just 6% of the total – actually goes on the aim of "lifting those on low incomes out of tax".

This policy will be the biggest increase in income inequality since Lawson's 1988 tax-cutting budget

The Tory redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich has started.

Now that's unbelievable.

What's unbelievable is that you are so misinformed that you could write that! (Freely available on the internet FFS!). All day long on radio 4 ( the Home Service) commentators have stated that the vast majority of basic and no higher rate tax payers would benefit. Maybe you should get some therapy on the NHS before the coalition stop it for everyone but ex public school boys.

[Mattyblue]

Under new labour I lost my final salary pension scheme and now have to pay into the corrupt, thieving, lying @#/?s, the City, where at this moment in time they pay out annually around 6k providing you've got a pot of around 100k.

Going off the City's track record and the human behaviour of those involved, that 6k could quite easily shrink for your 100k in.

The raiding of the private pension schemes of millions was an absolute scandal, the vast majority of those suffering are not 'rich' people but hard workers that have contributed to society and paid large amounts of tax their whole lives.

Where's Labour's fabled 'fairness' there jimmk2?

[JAL]

The raiding of the private pension schemes of millions was an absolute scandal, the vast majority of those suffering are not 'rich' people but hard workers that have contributed to society and paid large amounts of tax their whole lives.

Where's Labour's fabled 'fairness' there jimmk2?

New labour showed complete and utter contempt for the working man in this country over the past 13 years.

[Rover Down Under]

I hate debating politics but wanted to vent this for a while, so here goes…

I've been fortunate enough to have missed all but 6 months of Labour having left England shortly before that irksome grinning buffoon and his expensive bull$hit machine came to power. I actually thought they might be alright but soon realised it was a wave of rhetoric and false euphoria created by shortsighted fools with very large chips on their shoulders.

Sadly I now live in a Country that was stupid enough to vote Labour back a few years ago (which everyone is regretting now). I am no die-hard Tory - I vote for whoever has the best chance of keeping the leftist muppets out, which I guess makes me Tory by default. Why do I despise them so? Well:

1. They are a Fascist party. It is ironic how the left always likes to label the right as the Fascists when it is actually THEY who are the Fascists. Labour (here and in the UK) want to tell me how I can and can't live and what I can and can't say. For fear of offence celebrating Xmas is now practically illegal, daily life consists of jumping through hoops to avoid pathetic council fines and I fear the next social-engineering experiment that will be hoisted on society by our Leftie Overlords - case in point Labour want 50% of our ‘yoof’ to go to University - did they ever bother asking anyone? What if 40 of that 50% don't actually want to go and spend 3 years getting into debt for a worthless piece of paper and maybe go and learn a skill and start their life off debt-free? Why is there a skills crisis? Cos of stupid social-engineering policies like this because envious lefties think everyone who is capable of going to Uni is an upper class toff and this MUST be balanced out by sending two E’s and an F at A-Level kids to “University” (ie. former Polytechnic) to get a degree in social theory or surfing. This policy has created nothing but resentment, debt and shattered illusions amongst millions of British youth.

2. They and their supporters are incredibly myopic and riddled with Alzheimers - Jim Mk2...say no more...actually I will. There was a world that existed before 1979 Jim, it wasn't very nice, I was young but I remember the smell. You also like to blame the GFC on the banks, did it not occur to you that the buck stops much further back with just one man? This man being a typical lefty social-engineer, cast from the same mould as Blair. Yes, Mr William Jefferson Clinton, architect of the GFC - the man who FORCED banks to loan money to people who could not afford homes. Just to try and make himself look good (another Blairesque trait) he cost us all, the poor still didn't get their homes, the banks packaged up crap (they were FORCED to) and sold it off pretending it was gold. We all suffered. In fact it was probably the biggest transfer of wealth to the upper classes ever known to man! So much for the left favouring the working class eh Jim?

3. They LIE, LIE, LIE. Just to get into power usually. They spend millions on spin doctors and BS merchants to ensure they stay onside with the people who are either too intellectually inept or too busy to figure things out for themselves and see past the bull. Yes politicians lie, but Labour have made careers out of it.

4. Labour politics is the politics of ENVY. They ENVY the rich. The right does not ENVY the working class, they favour the middle and upper class before the working class. And so they should. I do not hate my boss. He is rich but he also gave me, and many others like me, my job. I aspire to be like him. If someone comes along, takes his money and gives it to some workshy layabout to do nowt he will not be motivated to make money and give more people jobs. He might even take my job away. It makes sense that the middle and upper class should be allowed to thrive because they create the jobs and the wealth, they keep the wheels turning to a far greater degree than the working class do. If we slogged every rich man 100% tax and shared it out do you think we would be any better off? We might get a slightly nicer TV each and wait 5 mins less to see a Doctor but the numbers of rich are so small and their wealth so tiny in comparison to the middle and working class that it would make very little difference if they suddenly handed all their money over, infact it would cause more harm than good (as the earlier posts with the 10 beer drinkers analogy points out.) This is why EVERY Labour Government brings the economy to its knees and leaves a legacy of huge debt (cleared up by the Tories and then they get kicked out and the whole charade begins again!)

5. Through their social engineering they desire everyone to be equal. This ideal of equality for all has translated to "no one can lose", a policy which has decimated our once world-leading education system, produced an entire generation of jumped-up, ungrateful, rude upstarts with a ridiculously high sense of entitlement and promoted a culture of "why bother - the Government will look after me."

The biggest joke is that their “everyone is equal” ideal applies to everyone EXCEPT THEMSELVES!

Oh and Hitler was a social engineer you know…

6. Forcing equality is unnatural - it cannot be done, we are humans, it goes against the laws of nature. Marx failed to see this, thus Communism failed. The system can, however, be monitored so that no one group gains an unassailable advantage over the others - something I believe the Tories are better at doing than Labour, but they don't (and possibly can't) get it exactly right.

7. WASTE! Labour Governments spend billions unnecessarily on futile projects to try and boost their public image. Case in point here in Aus - hundreds of millions have gone to big building companies (again Labour filling the pockets of the rich!) who overcharged for school building programs. $1m for an empty pre-fab library that should have cost a quarter of that - with books. Same again with an idiotic roof insulation scheme dreamt up by the lead singer of Midnight Oil, Peter “How can we sleep while our beds are burning” Garrett, 4 people dead as a result of thousands of house fires the scheme has caused. The Tories say they want to cut spending and Labour try to scare people into thinking they will lose services, cancer drugs etc. Actually under the Tories you would probably get more and better ones since they won't be spending 1 billion to employ 1000 middle managers and management consultants to approve and manage the changing of a lightbulb on the desk of the 1000 people employed to sharpen the pencils for the 10 people employed to approve these drugs.

8. I prefer the colour blue :-)

9. My IQ is more than 80 so I cannot vote Labour. I have coined a saying though based on that “socialist at 20” saying – “Everyone must vote Labour once in their life to realise their mistake.”

10. I would like to come home and be happy to be back rather than wanting to weep with despair at how quickly the country I grew up in has been destroyed (which is what I did last time I was home).

Bottom line is that Labour squeeze the rich to give handouts to the poor, this affects the hard working people in the middle who suffer from lower wages (from bosses who are being squeezed), fewer jobs (again from bosses who are being squeezed) and higher taxes – usually stealth – to fund Labour supporters to sit around doing nowt and talking rubbish. Labour turn the safety net into a fishing net, destroy jobs through their idiotic social engineering policies, drive away talent and import no-hopers, hit the hardest working areas of society and drive debt into stratospheric levels.

Karl Popper once said that;

“the piecemeal engineer will adopt the method of searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and most urgent evil of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good”

This is the core difference between the left and right.

I am utterly delighted that Labour are gone and should the next 5 years work well they might be gone for good. Next election - third place for them, if they’re lucky.

Good riddance and good luck to the coalition.

[SouthAussieRover]

Well feck off back to England then because the Tories are back in power.