True enough Warky, Suffolk's very Conservative, generally speaking. What will all the farms and relative affluence compared to the more urban areas. My district is South Suffolk and I don't think it's ever been Labour, even in the 1997 Election. The Lib Dems were the closest competitors in 2010 (the party I voted for) and I don't think they'll get anywhere near the same amount of votes this time around. So it'll be either Labour or UKIP in second place. After UKIP's impressive performance in the Local and European elections, and the perception that UKIP will eat into the Tory vote, I'll opt for Labour and see what happens.
Fair play to you Nuggets, we live in a democracy after all. You may be surprised to learn that even an old no nonsense Tory like me believes that the electoral system desperately needs to be reformed. FPTP is now totally defunct and I think that is now time to go for a more proportional form of voting. It can not be right that out of 655 Constituencies only 100 will decide the outcome of the election!
Thanks Warky, and indeed we should be grateful for living in a democracy. Some people take it for granted, others completely ignore their right to vote. Fair enough in Local and European Elections, if politics isn't your thing, but I feel everybody should make the effort to vote in this General Election.
I agree that people should make the effort to vote but some people don't feel anyone is worth their vote.
That's fair enough Weighty, but I think they should still turn up and spoil their ballot paper. That way the turnout figure won't be affected.
I also think that there should be a box on the Ballot Paper with None of the Above! At least this will register your feelings about the political process!
I'm in a quagmire ( I do love a good malaprop) I live in Coastal.and last time I voted LD as a tactical anti Tory vote. This time it's back to Labour even though they have no chance.
Scrapping zero hours contracts sounds a good idea, but the reason we have them is because of a massive glut in demand caused by a failed economy and high taxes (both caused by Labour). In addition, forcing up the cost of labour (Labour's minimum wage) and decreasing flexibility will increase unemployment. Equally having a massive supply of workers through, say mass immigration (Labour again) would hugely disrupt the market and leave many people excluded. What we really have is Labour policy destroying the economy, putting and keeping people unemployed and now Milioaf, trying to 'fix it' will only make it worse by further crippling the ability to hire people. It is a stupidity that only the more gormless of fools would consider. The solution to employment is massive elasticity, not more regulation. Lower taxes on business would be a first step, say getting rid of a tax on hiring. But the demented Marxist communist cannot conceive that he is the problem. Big government: f*ing everything up all the time for everyone.
All flexibility in employment does is to speed the race to the bottom for the 50% or so of the population who have either no work or limited skills to sell. I was interested to see that 38% of newly qualified teachers quit within a year. And this is from a career traditionally considered safe and with good pay and conditions. As Frankie Boyle observed on the Tory letter signed by 100 top bosses. "I would have been more impressed if it had been a hundred nurses"
Zero hour contracts only benefits students who prefer the flexible working hours. As somebody who has worked on a zero hour contract, during my time at a local cinema, I can say with some conviction and experience that it is not a sustainable way of living. In the case of the cinema, we were often understaffed because the company tried to get away with putting on the minimum amount of staff possible. Cameron and Miliband both admitted they couldn't live in zero hour contracts, if it isn't good enough for them, it shouldn't be good enough for the rest of us, and for the millions of people reliant on such insecure contracts. The sensible resolution would be a minimum of 17-19 hours a week contact, which would allow people to rent and have some amount of cash left to get by (and that's on the current minimum wage). As for Labour, this anti-business perception is inaccurate. Would they clamp down on tax loopholes, which allows many of the wealthiest companies in the country to pay the minimum amount of tax? Yes, and I seriously struggle to see the logic of arguing against this by ordinary working or middle class people. They've said they would reduce the taxes on smaller and medium-sized businesses and reward companies who play by the rules and pay the taxes due. Considering it has been us working people who largely bailed out the banks in the global recession and that we've been disproportionately paid to 'save the economy'. All in it together? What a joke. It's all good talking about GDP and the like, but when you have thousands on people reliant on food banks and a decreasing standard of living, then it means absolutely nothing to me.
Although I agree with the general thrust of that 17-19 hours on minimum wage only amounts to about £125 a week. You would need to be a couple with no kids and a very basic lifestyle to survive on that.
What about the Casual Labour people who work on building sites, employed in the catering events industry, or work in seasonal industries? Is Labour now saying that employers who work from one contract to the next and can only employ people when contracts come up have to employ these people regardless of whether there is work or not? Just to show also the rank hypocracy here on show from Milliband, there are currently 68 MPs in the Labour party including his own campaign manager, who are employing staff on ZHC. There are over 60 Labour Controlled Councils including the one in his own constituency of Doncaster who employ 100s of staff on ZHC! The guy is a complete fool and not fit to be PM.
Seasonal work, event industry, and construction jobs are, primarily, careers, so the wages they're going to be on will be higher than the minimum wage you'll get from retail and service sectors. Also, I'm presuming, these zero hour contracts will not be tied to a certain amount of years or months. The main crux of zero hour contracts is the failure of job security and that the company is under no obligation to pay you. I'll use an example, but one of my co-workers at the cinema fell out with one of the managers. He went from, on average, 28 hours, down to 12/14 and was forced to leave. There were several managers working there but they show favouritism and are given carte blance to do that under the zero hour contract. It resulted in some people being better off on Jobseekers. Absolutely disgusting behaviour I thought. Hypocrisy such as the vast amount of Tory MPs who have shares in private healthcare companies?
The same can be said of the previous Labour administration with Patricia Hewitt and Alan Milburn in particular! Fair play though at least you've got some real fire in your belly (albeit misguided)!
Unfortunately our political class mostly consists of hypocrites, liars, turncoats, and people that never worked an honest day of work in their life and would probably sell their own mother for a shred of influence or power. I include career politician, stockbroker, and privately-educated Nigel "Man of the People" Farage among them too. Don't mean to generalise of course, there are a few good eggs in Westminster who generally look out for the constituents. We just need more people like that.
