This is a football forum so lets just agree to disagree History has always taught us that Labour always leaves office with the Country bankrupt and its the Tories who have to come in and clear up the mess. Labour had created a client state that has led to mass state dependancy on welfare and paying for schools and hospitals with PFI deals that weren't even shown on the books. This has saddled the country and furture generations with eye watering debts. When Labour took office in 1997 you will find that all the difficult decisions like trades union reform and business reform had all been made back in 1980s and Labour reaped the rewards. Unemployment was coming down, interest rates and inflation were under control and growth was ticking along at over 2% a year. Anyhoo enough of this!
Thanks for some reasonable political debate JWM as opposed to pathetic name calling. I am always find it amusing that some people feel that they should vote tory because they own a 4 bed house or drive an Audi as opposed to making a decision based on policy and past track record. I run my own IT company with a £2 million turnover so I have more justification than most to vote tory but I dont like the Tory scrapheap that they create every time they are in power and their clear lack of loyalty to anyone.
What this country needs is to get the benefit cheats off their obese backsides and stop draining away the hard earn taxes of us. Nothing piss me off more when i hear somebody is claiming benefits because they are depressed, no self confidence or has a hang nail! Its this PC society that is draining our hard earned taxes away from the NHS, Schools and such like. Unfortunately until we find away to stop europe from telling us what to do we are in **** street! As for which goverment is to blame, well they are all as bad as each other! they would shaft you quicker than Holty to a pie shop (thats the football reference in this post). I used to be Labour but didn't vote for them because of the one eyed scottish idiot, Cameron is just the same and Cleggy from last of the summer wine would do more good than Nick.
Labour lost the election because of Gordon Brown. He couldnt present his case and win people over. He was stubborn and should have stepped aside for either of the Milibands preferably David who has more universal appeal. People voted to get Brown out as opposed to the long term. It strengthened the Lib Dem vote and led to no outright winner. Unfortunately Clegg has given up their core beliefs and surrendered totally to the very slick PR friendly Cameron. Good to discuss other subjects apart from football.
Hold the back pages, TREACLE AND ME AGREE ON SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!!!! The lib dem vote was a vote against Brown, no question. and how the hell did that freak get in to replace him instead of his brother David. Talk about labour shooting themselves in the foot again!
I grew up on one of the roughest council estates in Ipswich (The Whitton) with a single parent mum who survived on benefits so I guess that would have made me a Labour client! Thankfully I managed to get to University and got a good degree and escaped the cycle of dependency and poverty. Thanks in some part to Maggie, my mum was able to purchase her own council house under right to buy like millions of others and now enjoys the benefits of home ownership. I am not saying that the Tories haven't made mistakes but the culture of independence from the state, taking responsibility for your actions and self reliance are all philosophies that I totally agree with. Any how a great debate, something a bit different from the usual brainless crap that we sometimes read on here! Well done Treacle, I respect you even more now. Sorry just one last thing I have never been a supporter of David Cameron as he is not a real conviction Tory like Maggie was. I wish David Davies had won the Tory leadership contest
as long as you get the last word in typical binner... Just to comment on the right to buy thing, yes the right to buy that devastated our social housing stock because unknown to the masses and very cleverly done her government got 75% of ALL house sale proceeds meaning the local authorities did not get enough back from each sale to build more. It's odd how no one ever mentions this fact that it in fact wasn't a plan to get the poorer owning homes but a very nice way of getting some extra funds into her treasury. I still buy into the fact that she wanted more home ownership as it is a very easy way to control people I won't go into the details on here as you say it's a football forum but I have my reasons behind the thinking. If the right to buy had been backed by 100% of proceeds back to the landlord as long as it was used exclusively for maintain stock levels then it would have been much btter. I think you can solve a lot of the housing problems in this country quite easily, look at France and Germany where it's quite common to be able to get a really good long term contract to privately rent you just cannot get that here (or if you can I have never seen it) best you can do is a 12 month assured shorthold tenancy and even then most of those are only 6 months so in theory you could be booted out every 6 months (I know it doesn't often happen that way but that's the rub there's no security there) sort out proper landlord registration and qualifications. Change planning rules so that 2nd home ownership in areas such as North Norfolk where there is a chronic problem requires a change of planning application create a new band if necessary and then set it up so planning applications for a change can be turned down in areas with a massive problem of 2nd homers and lastly change council tax so that if you own a home that is not being used ie 2nd home only used a few times a year your council tax is triple the highest band as often you're then not contributing to the local economy as the house is empty and you're not there you certainly shouldn't be rewarded with a discount. As I said before I don't believe Labour are any better than the Tories so don't get me wrong I have no particular leanings to any one party I prefer to think of myself as an independent thinker in that regard. So I don't necessarily have any axe to grind or argue with you over. Agree with you about Ed but the other Milliband quite frankly just creeps me out he has some kind of evil look I don't know what it is just ewwwwww but Ed is a right drip lol. Oh i've written far more than I intended and went off on one, I apologise profusely but it's great to have the debate without it descending into swearing etc, nice one!
Nice one Rich When you have finished reading Das Capital perhaps you can lend it to me so that I can wipe my Tory arse on it!
