BT was NOT propped up by the tax payer it was a net contributor to the exchequer to the tune of many tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds each year. Those of us that were adults will temember the sale well and dhould remember the profits BT produced. The Toties sold our company (mine and yours) for a short term gain and in reality stole all the profits that eould have saved government borrowing so much. IT WAS OUR PROPERTY. The railways were hopelessly underfunded and political cowardice - becsuse they wouldn’t find the money - were too cowardly to put up fares so they ‘sold’them out. I use the word sold advisedly because they gave grants and tax breaks to those foreign goverments. And because business isn’t afraid they jacked up the prices. Showing the government were too gutless to do it. But of course what happened was business wanted quick snd big profits despite government subsidies they and the track companies invested jack sh:t in health snd safety & maintainance resulting in two or three horrendous rail crashes and loss of life in the South East of England. Not over-unionised but safety under-funded. I am well into retirement snd lived through these events, so I am catsgorically saying this is not HOGWASH and it’s not FAKE NEWS.
So what is your answer or remedy ? Are we to wash our hands and just say come get on with shafting us for 4 or 5 more years.
I think if you read my posts you will see I wrote at length about this very subject. I’d repeat it but most would not be smused at re-hashing the same thing. KTF
I take it you're describing Johnson there? As soon as they got into electoral difficulty the Tories went running to the DUP, a bunch of fundamentalist nutters with links to Loyalist paramilitaries and incredibly the only group on the island of Ireland who voted against the Good Friday Agreement and who were quite happy for the killing to go on & on.
You know Johnson doesn't even believe in Brexit, don't you? Was never part of the Eurosceptic Tories. Said ****-all about the EU till the referendum. Shat himself when Leave won (he expected it to lose) and ran away leaving Theresa May to be leader unopposed. Why the **** you have any faith in this ****er is beyond me. He's not interested in the country, he's not even interested in the Tory Party, he's interested only in himself.
Sorry that I couldn't make out the point you were trying to make out. There isnt too much difference really, all of them members of their parties all not supporting their parties leader, if anything it highlights the sorry state of affairs this whole thing is
Still beautiful mate. The Finns have had to get through a few numpties to get to this point in terms of fresh political leadership. The UK will need to do the same after the abominations on offer at this election.
Which is ironic because Jeremy Corbyn has always championed us leaving the EU and now he wants to remain. I would be voting Conservative no matter who they had in charge. I could never bring myself to vote for those nutters on the Labour front bench.
I see you've picked up on my age, so you must have read my post about Labour taking away free university education. I lived through privatisation too. In fact, I remember it well. The idea behind the railways was that they'd go back to the pre-nationalisation system when the railways were entirely self sufficient. They also hoped to emulate a system that had been introduced in Sweden that had been very successful. The idea was that it would be of less cost to the taxpayer and increase investment in the railways. As for BT, maybe that was unnecessary. But you do know that it was in 1997, under a Labour government, that the "Special Share" which allowed the government to block the takeover of the company and appointment two board members, was relinquished, don't you? So with privatisation (which they both contributed to) and university tuition fees, both parties have done things that, at face value, haven't been in the interests of the general populace. So your argument that the Tories privatise things to financially benefit their mates doesn't follow. I mean, did Tony Blair bring in tuition fees to earn a few more quid for his mates that ran universities? There has to be a different reason for these unpalatable things being done. Such as they are financially necessary or will benefit the populace in the longer term. So now we've seen that both parties do these unpalatable things, how can anyone cling to the false narrative that Conservatives = evil and Labour = good? The truth is, both are trying to achieve broadly the same thing and all we can do is vote for the one that will be the least harmful for the next 5 years.
You're picking up on a handful of people not happy with the leader. I doubt you'd hear a peep from those people if Brexit wasn't happening. There's just under 500,000 members in the Labour party and many of those want to see the back of Jeremy Corbyn.
As I have said it appeared on my twitter feed and I have started looking further into it. It's also quite damming that the handful of people are ex cabinet ministers. I dont recall ever seeing such high profile party members at this stage of an election actively going against the existing leader, although I'm happy to be shown my assumption to be wrong. Finally as I posted this morning, it only really serves to highlight the mess the whole political situation is and that doesn't help any of us in the short or long term
I've no arguments about either leader being much good. Politically, this country is in a mess. As I've said, Brexit is a huge deal and that is the only reason that former MP's are speaking out.
Brexit has frozen the country and no matter who wins on Thursday I worry that it will continue to dominate all next year to the detriment of dealing with the other just as important issues that need addressing
We will get it for a year. They'll pretend to be negotiating with the EU for a deal and then we'll leave with no-deal in December 2020, if Boris gets voted in.
As people seem to be able to discuss this as adults, I have a hypothetical question. Say on Friday we wake up to a hung parliament or a tiny majority for either of the main parties, are we then still stuck with nothing being able to get passed in the house of commons and the **** show we saw last year continues? If so, how do you get out of what could be a never ending circle?
That's the concerning thing, isn't it? From my point of view, I think the only hope is that one party changes its leader to someone strong enough to lead them back to the centre ground and take a stance that the majority of the country can get behind. We then have to hope for another general election to get that person/party in because it will be the party that loses that changes leader (unless the Lib Dems can pull something out of the bag somehow). It could be a long wait for normality to resume.