General Election - 8 June 2017

[franjipane]

Screaming lefties? Simple people? Real classy.

Nice try C8RKH and a good rant, but i explicitly said i'm not a fan of Blair/Brown and i'm not a fan of Corbyn either.  I wrote that i'm just less of a fan of May.

Well done for working your way up to earning in that high income bracket where you might be affected by Labour's proposed tax increase, it probably wouldn't be that much per year though.  Personally i'd be happy to pay a little bit extra for better services for those in need, who've had so many cuts made in services that affect them, but i'd also like the government were to impose the correct amount of tax on corporations and stop so much money from going offshore.  Otherwise it all seems a bit pointless if the government is going to allow that stuff to continue.  

Has anything really improved since Cameron won in 2010?  Or have we just gone a bit backwards.

Totally agree neither party are looking particularly good, but with the current manifestos it looks like Labour are going to be the lesser of 2 evils.

 

[pete]

have to agree that of all the manifestos the Labour one looks the better  but it just won`t work ,  there just won`t be enough people or firms to pay for it

[franjipane]

Pretty much every news source with a brain agrees that it's mostly unknown if it will all actually work.  The lowering of the 45p tax threshold for example has an estimated amount of extra income attached, but many people will simply change the way their income is portrayed to get around that.  Even if some of it doesn't work the manifesto makes much more sense in my opinion.

[Barrykearley]

If labour get in I'm gonna scale back my work to the bare minimum - don't see the point in grafting like a slave to pay more - when I see shitbags sat doing nowt getting £2k a month whilst whinging about the harshness of the benefit cap.

funny thing is though - even I like the labour manifesto - but it's like entrusting a wounded zebra with a pack of hyenas 

[theelanman]

I dont trust either of them to be honest.......

but Ive been out of work more when Labour have been in and had the hardest times of my life when Labour have been in.....

the Labour figures dont add up......its pure speculation......theyre spending billions that they dont have.........

 

I think if Labour get in I may as well sell up and buy somewhere in the warm and take the wife and kids and just sod off..........mmmmm.....retire.......

[Barrykearley]

But the austerity hasn't worked......

im not on about giving public sector workers pay rises and gold plated pensions again.......

we need to be building council houses, decent roads and other such infrastructure - let's get borrowing to create employment and growth in this area

[franjipane]

Completely agree about building affordable housing, there's been loads of houses and flats built round here recently but they're almost all really expensive!

Roads are terrible too.

[theelanman]

council estates.........mmmmm........usually badly planned by the council

they also need to reuse the inner city or brown field sites near to cities........

I live in a very small town........I would probably estimate that 90% of the working folk do not work or could not work within the town.....just not possible.........

yet they have in the past shipped a couple of thousand (about 10% of the towns population) from manchester into the new council houses they built for them.........that not the problem....

the problem is that there is no work for them.......and never will be due to the size of the town.......and in order to get work theyd need to commute.........

commuting costs money....they havent got the money.....so what happens......nothing.......they dont work and now due to their location probably never will.......

if your going to give them a house give them one that gives them the opportunity to do something

[theelanman]

I think the other thing is that alot of these public sector ventures have been so abused and mismanaged in the past that trying to get them back in line has passed beyond difficult.......

the tales of insider corruption.....people selling 60w light bulbs at £25 each....and the public sector buying them.......making up jobs and giving them to your mates at £50k a year......

the list and allegations are endless.........

people who respected the way these were run and should be run I think have gone.........

the old saying.........we're all equal only some are more equal than others......... 

[C8RKH]

@franjipane - no more classy than the "nasty party" that the Tories are always smeared with by the left. Or the way they seize on and name policies like "the rape clause" or the "dementia tax", "the milk snatcher", "the lunch snatcher" etc etc.  The constant slogan about the "Tories always only look after their rich mates" is just a tiresome and largeless baseless throwaway that harks back to the politics of 100 years ago.  I was just trying to point out that things have moved on and a privately educated Oxbridge graduate was as likely to be on a labour front bench as a tory one. A message many Labour simply do not want to accept no matter how true it might be.

As I said in my post, both sides as bad as each other. Just watch question time or other semi serious political programmes - the first ones to get all shouty are ALWAYS the lefties.  They are happy to have their say and generally they are left to finish. Then, as soon as the "right" start talking they butt in, they shout them down, they use "slogans" to try to flippant and they talk all over them.  Just watch and see who it is - usually female, usually left Labour, the first to kick off.

Your post was very much left is right and right is wrong.  The Labour party did not do anything special for the NHS when they were in for 12 years. They ruined pensions for millions. They created a society were people believe they are entitled.  All of this was not good and I was merely pointing on, maybe in too direct a way, the irony in that all the things you were saying were actually "done" by the Labour party - pensions, tuition fees, etc etc.

It's funny. If I had a pound for every Labour supporter who said I did not like or support Brown or Blair. Well, who the hell did then, because they were the leaders of the party after all, so someone must have supported them and lauded them. In denial in victory, in denial in defeat?

I then went to point out the one thing the Tories have done that has actually positively impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the UK - both in the past and well into the future. Millions will have benefitted from "right to buy" and yet many of these are the people who shamefully name call and lambast a woman who is no longer able to defend herself. Yes, classy indeed.

The point of my post was to say, again maybe crassly, that both sides are as bad as each other. The real issue I have these days is that the left is too sanctimonious. Too preachy. Too righteous.  The foundations for this are built on quicksand. Their socialist legacy was built in the 40's and 50's. They've done nothing really to shout about since then. They are living on past glories whilst for the past 20 years and more they have served up spam fritters.

Ae the Tories perfect? No. Absolutely not.  But what is drawing me to them more and more is that they are aspirational. They do at their core that work should pay and that people should pay their fare share.  We all hear about the rich getting richer, the billions they are making. But then the people who really get targeted are the people who earn over £80k on PAYE!  Hardly rich. And almost impossible not to pay what you owe as it is deducted at source by the employer. So not self employed and able to manipulate the books etc.

Labour has a good manifesto. It has some good ideas. But as a party, it is literally driving me away into the hands of the Tories.  May is now handling things shockingly. She and her party have hugely screwed up. But I am now too far away from my Labour beginnings to be able to quickly and easily go back. I suffered a lot under Blair and Brown. It's hard for me to forget that right now.

Everyone laughs at Boris. Everyone takes the piss. Yet he is a passionate support of the UK. He believes in Great Britain. I believe he would step into the ring with anyone and box for Britain.  Heaven help us if Labour get in and Diane Abbott becomes foreign secretary. Her statements about the UK, her past deeds, evidence and show to me, in my humblest of opinions, that she has a healthy disdain for everything I hold dear about being British. Do you believe she will stand up, get in the ring, and fight for Britain? Really fight?

So we have Labour on the left, destroying and apologising for what makes and has made us a great nation and wanting to bleed those that work hard and are successful dry to give others an easier life . We have the Tories on the right, aspirational about wealth creation and wanting to reward hard work and graft and make work pay.  You can guess where i lean to. Funny thing is, my parents generation, my grandparents generation, they had it hard and harder. But they were driven to work. To work hard and harder. To  better their lot, to make a better life for the next generation. That was the core of Labour. You're not entitled (only the rich were entitled), the rest of us, we worked hard, we got an education if and when we could, we grafted, we succeeded. We were proud.  I look around the UK now and all i see is entitlement. It really does sadden me. In a generation this country has fallen so far.  Who will pick it up again. Who will re-instill the passion. The desire. The hunger to succeed?

None of this is personal @franjipane. i just responded to your post in what I though was an "in kind" manner. We're all entitled to our views and beliefs. That's part of what makes us a great nation and place to live and I passionately love this country, warts and all. Disagreement and hard debate is healthy. Needs to be encouraged. Hope I have not put you off in any way.

 

[franjipane]

Corbyn and May should really have a debate, we'd learn a lot about them both but it'll never happen. May is too scared.

I totally agree about Diane Abbott, she'd be terrible but i'm not with you about Boris at all, i'm glad him and his other Eton chums are mostly out of the picture.

[C8RKH]

I actually disagree re the TV debate. Not sure if May is scared or not. Worried yes, for sure. But then after his Womans Hour performance not sure how confident Corbyn would be either to honest. He would come across well as he is generally unflappable in those situations and looks quite calm.

I watched the TV debate with the "other" leaders the other week. It's all a bit childish to be honest. None of them actually answered the questions posed, instead they either tried to throw mud at each other or belittle each other. To be honest, at the end of it, I felt non the wiser.

TV debates are as much theatre as they are anything else. We saw that with Trump and Clinton too.

I actually prefer to watch a well crafted and structured interview. With good, strong questioning, and an insistence of sticking to the point and getting the politician to actually focus on, and answer, the bloody question in hand.

So, for me, no TV debate.  But then, I am weird I guess.

 

[march]

Unfortunately I am coming to the opinion no party is fit to run the country and take us through Brexit and am actively considering not voting. We, the country, had a golden chance to put forward a strong negotiating stance heading into the Brexit negotiations and I think it has gone (or certainly is disappearing over the horizon) and the fault of that can be put squarely at the door of Mrs May and the Conservatives.

I have never been a real fan of the Conservatives (I don't think I have ever felt any of the parties has truly represented my views) but I believed they were our best bet for the coming few years, I still think they are but only because all the other political parties are so detached from reality and what is going to be needed in the coming years.

What we need is strong steady leadership - we just don't seem to be getting it.

This is really disheartening, but that's life I suppose.

[C8RKH]

I agree wholeheartedly. it seems May has done the ultimate snatch of defeat from the jaws of victory!  I have no idea what the Tories where thinking they should have just stuck to their guns and focus on Brexit. Dare I say it, but probably a dash of complacency and a dose of arrogance have conspired to bring them down. Still think they will get in, but not with the strong and stable mandate we need for a good Brexit deal.

Fed up with Clegg, Farron, Sturgeon, Wood et al going on about a hrad brexit and losing subsidies and this and that. I mean, the negotiations haven't even started and they are complaining about a deal that has even had the blank paper put on the table, let alone and words added to it.  They should be called out on this, negativity at its highest.  Meanwhile, interesting read last night on the state of the German economy.  Costs rising. unemployment rising. number of skilled jobs with vacancies rising - apparently the German infrastructure is in disrepair and education is a mess and not turning out enough highly skilled kids.  Sound like anywhere else? They export more to the Uk and the US than the rest of Europe, India, Japan and China combined and right now Merkel, aided by her not keeping Junckers and the rest under control, is doing her best to alienate the UK whilst she personally alienates the US.  An economically weakened Germany is not good for us, or Europe.

Time to cash in my pensions, savings, sell the house and cars and buy a little Island somewhere me thinks....

[Chillidoggy]

The Labour manifesto is a Ponzi scheme. If I thought it was all affordable, then despite my misgivings, they would get my vote. But I strongly suspect that the UK would be much worse off after a 5-year Labour term than it would with a conservative one.

Both party manifestos have things in them I agree with, and disagree with. One thing I am absolutely dead set against is any renationalising of the railway network. I don't see why I should pay more tax so some other bastard can go to work cheaper than before. No one subsidises my car for me. I used to strongly disagree with the privatisation of the utilities, arguing that they are essential services, and should remain public. Subsequently I have changed that opinion and now believe it was the right thing to do, as they've had more investment than when they were public.

I voted for Blair the first time around, I thought he was a breath of fresh air, and have no regrets about doing it, either. But his latter performances , and that of Brown were dire. Which then led the country to its knees. I hope that won't happen again, however I fear that Corbyn and Co. are going to be treading the same path, all the while throwing money at people they don't have to win votes. Money we can ill afford.

[basalte]

There`s plenty I disagree with in Ian`s post-railways for instance - funny thing when a plane journey costs less than a train and a four-figure season ticket eats into your very standard of living  -oh, and the German Government benefits from your train service (in the same way that Geely will benefit from Lotus but I digress). Public ownership will specifically and determinedly stop that insanity. But the posts do tend to show the very human tendency to live with and even embrace insanity. But I digress again.     

-but I agree with Ian that this is the crux of it for millions of voters  :

"Money we can ill afford".

I assume that by "we"  Ian  is not referring to those 1000 UK families who own £648 billion in private wealth between them. 

And no I don`t envy them if only because in the face of such colossal wealth you can only spend so much/stuff your face/get an obvious hair transplant before you die. (Just give me an XK120 to play with please).  

As above you may scoff / mock Labours figures...Corporation Tax at 26 % !  How dare they stifle initiative ! That`s nearly as much as under Margaret Thatcher !

But at least Labour bleedin` well HAVE some figures !

Let`s see the Tories explain why we cannot afford it. The ball is well and truly in their Court.

They called the election, that attracts a certain degree of responsibility does it not ? A certain degree of evidence and proof that you offer Strong and Stable leadership ? Surely that is a reasonable request ?

Perhaps a debate head to head with a weak dull vain hard-left muddled fantasist dreamer who works on his allotment ? What a loser !

 That beyond you,  Theresa ? What are you afraid of ?  What a golden opportunity  to show him up for the clueless twat he is !  Oh sorry Theresa, you are starting to supply ample evidence that you would come off the worse.

Dear oh dear oh dear. A case of believing your own propaganda. Also some evidence of sheer arrogance and condescension. But let`s not get personal. (Definitely not).

You have a certain responsibility to lay out your plans for public finances, for Brexit

- even (gasp) a limit on where old people get help with fuel bills ? 

Instead : SILENCE .  

Specific pledges on immigration numbers ? That`s what you are strong on Theresa isn`t it ? (err...no actually looking at her record as Home Secretary)

SILENCE.

Oh wait I can hear something from you Mrs May  : "CORBYN LOVES THE IRA" (oh, is that why he signed a parliamentary motion in 1994 condemning IRA violence ?)

HE BLAMES UK FOREIGN POLICY AS A MAJOR FACTOR IN TERRORISM (oh, you mean like the head of MI5 Elizabeth Manningham Buller,  Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Kenneth Clarke all do?) 

HE WILL BE NAKED AND ALONE IN EU NEGOTIATIONS (oh you mean not like you Mrs May with your colleagues threatening a war over Gibraltar, your claiming the EU interferes with the UK election and sending Boris "Mr. Tactful" Johnson in ! Former British Ambassador Craig Murray : "Why would anyone believe that a woman who is not capable to debate with her opponents would be a good negotiator ?") 

 

 

 

 

[Chillidoggy]

Dan, you should go down a storm at Speaker's Corner!

If you can afford a train ticket to get there, of course.

[basalte]

To quote the late great Arthur Askey "Ay thengyow " Ian !

Edited May 31, 2017 by basalte
typo

[Barrykearley]

3 hours ago, franjipane said:

Corbyn and May should really have a debate, we'd learn a lot about them both but it'll never happen. May is too scared.

I totally agree about Diane Abbott, she'd be terrible but i'm not with you about Boris at all, i'm glad him and his other Eton chums are mostly out of the picture.

Well - they do every single week that parliament sits...

I frankly don't wish to listen to sound bite bullshit bingo - I'd like proper policies that make proper sense.

I find May reflective and a very good leader - I'm sure many will disagree. However - I'm starting to think she is actively trying to throw the election.....

[Chillidoggy]

One thing I did find puerile was the media attack on Corbyn yesterday when he had obviously no idea how much his childcare policy was going to cost. To be fair, he and the odious Diane Abbott have proved they make a good double act in that respect, but at 67 years old, surely it was just a senior moment on his part.

But just as I was starting to have a modicum of sympathy with the bloke, someone else (I think the shadow chancellor), started yawping on and on and on about how it was about the policies, not about some forgetful old fart, and the interviewer couldn't get a word in edgeways. This to me proved even more irritating in his defence of Corbyn than the original crime, it was like an episode of Real Housewives where they never stop bitching.

People forget stuff all the time, I forget to...........errr..........hmmmm........nope, it's gone.

 

[basalte]

Talking of senior moments ;

Theresa May ; " I think (Corbyn) ought to be paying a little more attention to thinking about Brexit negotiations" (instead of being on TV in a debate tonight). .....

(and earlier ) "don`t let Corbyn sneak into Number 10 by the back door".

Oh Theresa. Do you remember ? DO. YOU. REMEMBER DEAR ? Yes, that snap election you called . Yes. That one. A SNAP ELECTION .

That sort of explains why Mr. Corbyn is on television and why he might "sneak in by the back door".

Oh sorry....I realise you`ve forgotten about the three times you said you were definitely NOT calling a snap election . Yes. That`s right dear. You went on telly like that nice Mr. Corbyn.

You couldn`t make it up.

 

 

[C8RKH]

Which is why I hate TV head to head open debates with all the leaders. It's all name calling, grandstanding, posturing and you never really get the question answered or the truth. Just because someone can out slagoff someone else does not make them a good or viable leader of a country.

It's all just a circus these days.

[C8RKH]

I think she'd have the biggest!  

[Gashead1105]

I think May is running an appalling campaign. The other parties are successfully campaigning on domestic issues and she's going on and on about Brexit and it's just getting boring. All the U-turns make her look weak and untrustworthy, what makes it worse, some of the initial premises( eg re social care) are actually things that need to be discussed and debated. In my view there does need to be a new social compact about how old age is funded, but starting the discussion in the middle of an election campaign is misguided at best or deceitful at worst. Every time she opens her mouth she screws up. 

Set against her, you have Mr Corbyn (who, IMO is basically a communist), a hypocrite, terrorist sympathiser, racist and anti semite who can't be trusted to spend a fiver competently. I find him, his cronies and his supporters abhorrent, loath everything he personally stands for and cannot believe that any normal person would support such views. Shame on them. And yet, in amongst all of that some of his policies make a degree of sense. If they are properly costed. 

The rest of them are a bunch of champagne socialists or hard right racists. I despair of how it has come to this and I agree with @C8RKHthat none of this shower of shit (how politics has become a 'career choice' I just don't know) represent my views. I think a new, centrist progressive party is long overdue. Personally I believe in low tax and low state spending and intervention but even so a degree of it is obviously required. In my simple world, I think a flat 20% tax rate makes a lot of sense. On everything. Tear the current rules up and start again. 20% corporation tax, 20% personal income tax, 20% capital gains, scrap all the loopholes and make it much more simple. If a £1 is earned in this country it should be taxed in this country. One of my colleagues has the current tax code on her desk. It is literally 2 feet high and comprises over a dozen books. Ridiculous. The bottomless black hole of NHS funding needs to be addressed, it takes far too many resources from other places (such as education) where it could be better used. Introduce fines for any missed doctors appointments. I agree that free at point of use heathcare provision for all remains a laudable achievement of Britain, but if someone has private medical cover (and there should be an obligation on employers to provide it) and goes through the NHS for something, there should be an obligation on the insurance provider to reimburse the NHS' costs. 

I know that most of the above is not thought through (and I'm pretty hungover at the moment!) but something has to be done. 

[C8RKH]

I agree with a lot of that. Bloody good effort with a hangover @Gashead1105.