The Politics Thread

[Worthy4England]

If the Libdems become the makeweights in a coalition government, they will demand voting reform.

I suspect that if they're in partnership with the Tories then all that they will or indeed could demand would be a referendum on it.

What I would like them to request if they get the chance is fixed-term parliaments. None of this 'well we may go to the country after four unless we've f*cked up then it'll be the full five although if the opposition are in turmoil then we might go for a cheeky three in the hope that we get another five before they've sorted themselves out' nonsense.

As with everything else, fixed term parliaments aren't a panacea. We have seen on plenty of occasions, both parties do "giveaway" budgets, prior to an election they were uncertain about winning, only to take it all back (and more, with interest) in the next budget. That temptation may well increase with fixed term parliaments - especially if the in power government thought that the economic downturn at the unfortunate time they were due at the polls was only a "blip"...

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

Tory 'idealism' in this election amounts to what? That was the elucidation I asked for.

Please, go on... Your leader has long ago ceased using the 'Big Society' slogan... Because he knows the egg is hollow... go ahead... fill it...

Please...

Well actually he keeps talking about the Big Society.

Whatever you think of that, or its likelihood of materialising, it's idealistic.

Now - what idealism is being offered up elsewhere?

[William the White]

Tory 'idealism' in this election amounts to what? That was the elucidation I asked for.

Please, go on... Your leader has long ago ceased using the 'Big Society' slogan... Because he knows the egg is hollow... go ahead... fill it...

Please...

Well actually he keeps talking about the Big Society.

Whatever you think of that, or its likelihood of materialising, it's idealistic.

Now - what idealism is being offered up elsewhere?

OK - direct me to the speeches, because I've missed out on them... There's a reason for that... And it isn't that i've missed the news... The Tories realised it's vacuous early and now offer it sotto voce... If at all... do offer the evidence of the latest headline speeches...

On the Labour side there has been no idealism, other than a reiteration of basic values... For this I give them grudging credit...

The Liberals offer greater vacuity than the norm, other than Cable, who is capable of offering a semi-serious economic vision, which Labour avoids and the Tories don't even try to deal with... The lib dems' idealism is some amorphous, mysterious refusal to be Labour or Tory... They should be a joke, but aren't, and, for once, I'm glad so...

There is no idealism in terms of a vision of a better Britain they are proposing...

Me? I don't have a party...

The idealism I'd like to see is a sustained assault on poverty, the control of finance capital, either directly, through regulation or through the tax system, the democratisation of our voting system, the abolition of the last remnants of the hereditary house of lords, the abolition of the monarchy, public schools and private medicine, major investment in energy renewables, the return of trade union rights - and that, while only a start, would do for a first term in the renewal of Britain.

In the meantime, since I don't have a party to vote for, I'll vote against the Tories...

And I've just heard, literally this minute, that Peter Heathfield has died - the General Secretary of the NUM during the great miners strike... I feel very sad at the passing of a workers leader who spent his life trying to create a better world for his class... RIP...

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

On the Labour side there has been no idealism, other than a reiteration of basic values... For this I give them grudging credit...

The Liberals offer greater vacuity than the norm, other than Cable, who is capable of offering a semi-serious economic vision, which Labour avoids and the Tories don't even try to deal with... The lib dems' idealism is some amorphous, mysterious refusal to be Labour or Tory... They should be a joke, but aren't, and, for once, I'm glad so...

There is no idealism in terms of a vision of a better Britain they are proposing...

Right, well this is the sort of thing that lay behind my fairly innocent question to Gertie.

I'm not about to start trawling through speeches etc, but what kind of timescale are you talking about with reference to the supposed abandonment of the Big Society rhetoric... days, weeks?

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

How about I give you some evidence that the Labour Party think it's worth responding to?

http://www.daily-news.org.uk/video/dyxB ... hBBQ%3D%3D

Video released yesterday.

[InsaneApache]

Not wanting to ask a loaded question and all that but is Gordon Browns' election strategy inept, incompetent, amateur hour on acid, or is he, as I strongly suspect, a tory mole?

Just askin' like.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

if i had £3billion to play with (the cost of the Inheritance Tax changes) then there are any number of choices I would make before spending it on an inheritance tax cut - nurses wages... increasing the basic state pension.... school buildings modernisation....

if i had £550million to play with - then I would not spend it on some social-engineering experiment to favour marriage through the tax system

if I had £1billion to play with I would not prioritize a 2-yr council-tax freeze

there are lots of ways of spending the cash (even of NOT spending it) - but Cameron's spending choices are not even close to what I would call priorities.

I suppose this comes down to the fundamentally different ways in which we view the state.

For me, to speak of the state having X amount 'to play with' is to look at the world through the wrong end of the telescope.

Governments don't have their own money and it is no argument for the maintenance of unfair and illogical taxes to say that there are good ways of spending that money if it keeps being taken from its rightful owners.

[Hoboh]

Tory 'idealism' in this election amounts to what? That was the elucidation I asked for.

Please, go on... Your leader has long ago ceased using the 'Big Society' slogan... Because he knows the egg is hollow... go ahead... fill it...

Please...

Well actually he keeps talking about the Big Society.

Whatever you think of that, or its likelihood of materialising, it's idealistic.

Now - what idealism is being offered up elsewhere?

OK - direct me to the speeches, because I've missed out on them... There's a reason for that... And it isn't that i've missed the news... The Tories realised it's vacuous early and now offer it sotto voce... If at all... do offer the evidence of the latest headline speeches...

On the Labour side there has been no idealism, other than a reiteration of basic values... For this I give them grudging credit...

The Liberals offer greater vacuity than the norm, other than Cable, who is capable of offering a semi-serious economic vision, which Labour avoids and the Tories don't even try to deal with... The lib dems' idealism is some amorphous, mysterious refusal to be Labour or Tory... They should be a joke, but aren't, and, for once, I'm glad so...

There is no idealism in terms of a vision of a better Britain they are proposing...

Me? I don't have a party...

The idealism I'd like to see is a sustained assault on poverty, the control of finance capital, either directly, through regulation or through the tax system, the democratisation of our voting system, the abolition of the last remnants of the hereditary house of lords, the abolition of the monarchy, public schools and private medicine, major investment in energy renewables, the return of trade union rights - and that, while only a start, would do for a first term in the renewal of Britain.

In the meantime, since I don't have a party to vote for, I'll vote against the Tories... .

And I've just heard, literally this minute, that Peter Heathfield has died - the General Secretary of the NUM during the great miners strike... I feel very sad at the passing of a workers leader who spent his life trying to create a better world for his class... RIP...

Oh dear, "Great Miners" strike? The same people who put me on short time once due to their selfish pursuit of money? They got what they deserved by letting political Morons run the NUM,
No Queen!!!! you mean President Brown?
Never had you down for a Commie William

[hisroyalgingerness]

Then how come Labour haven't learned to not feck up economic growth?

That would be the longest uninterrupted period of economic growth in the UK on record (45 consecutive quarters) I guess you're on about?

BBC reckons that makes it the longest period of sustained growth in 200 years - although I'm not sure how they've worked it back that far.

Sure it's been rather spectacularly punctured with the global economic crisis starting in Q1 2008 - I guess your viewpoint will be coloured by how much you believe the Government was responsible for a global crash or just one of many governments affected by it.

I guess it's the question of how come the growth had come hand in hand with record levels of national debt?

[thebish]

if i had £3billion to play with (the cost of the Inheritance Tax changes) then there are any number of choices I would make before spending it on an inheritance tax cut - nurses wages... increasing the basic state pension.... school buildings modernisation....

if i had £550million to play with - then I would not spend it on some social-engineering experiment to favour marriage through the tax system

if I had £1billion to play with I would not prioritize a 2-yr council-tax freeze

there are lots of ways of spending the cash (even of NOT spending it) - but Cameron's spending choices are not even close to what I would call priorities.

I suppose this comes down to the fundamentally different ways in which we view the state.

For me, to speak of the state having X amount 'to play with' is to look at the world through the wrong end of the telescope.

Governments don't have their own money and it is no argument for the maintenance of unfair and illogical taxes to say that there are good ways of spending that money if it keeps being taken from its rightful owners.

no - really it does not come down to how we view the state. I use the phrase "to play with" to mean - "with which to make a choice". I have never seen any evidence at all that the state is ever any smaller under the tories - they simply have different ways of spending the money. What you choose to change FIRST reveals your priorities.

you asked me about choices - the Tories have made choices about spending money when all parties talk about massive financial restraint and austerity cuts. The choices we make in such circumstances reveal our priorities.


By the way - over the last few pages I have asked you several questions - none of which you have offered an answer to..

1. many pages back you asked me what it would take for me to vote Tory - I answered at length and asked you what would it take for you to vote Labour.

2. you seem very keen on Dave's "Big Society" - and I asked you to spell out what (in concrete terms) that actually means...

3. you trumpeted Dave's National Civic Service for teenagers (or something similarn - the title escapes me) - I asked you what that was about...

4. I asked you how in specific and noticeable ways the state would be any smaller under David Cameron (especially given that his "hands off" approach to running schools includes spelling out what reading-scheme is best and his hands-off approach to running local health services includes specifying that budgets will always prioritize the availabilty of all cancer drugs at all times to all-comers.)

[BWFC_Insane]

Bish, the Tory idea of "big society" is ....you can do whatever you like as long as you have the WONGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

[Zulus Thousand of em]

Bish, the Tory idea of "big society" is ....you can do whatever you like as long as you have the WONGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Damn, yet another policy area where they are indistinguishable from Labour or the Lib Dems. How is a man supposed to choose?

[BWFC_Insane]

Bish, the Tory idea of "big society" is ....you can do whatever you like as long as you have the WONGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Damn, yet another policy area where they are indistinguishable from Labour or the Lib Dems. How is a man supposed to choose?

To be fair I'm not entirely sure I'd label the Lib Dems with that!

[thebish]

Bish, the Tory idea of "big society" is ....you can do whatever you like as long as you have the WONGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

the Tory idea of a "Big Society" is the state doing less - which sounds laudable until you realise that they don't really mean it. and in the areas where they do mean it - it means they want to pull out of the state providing a social safety net for the poorest - and rely on charities, churches and wealthy benefactors to fill the void.

in america - thousands would die of starvation every year were it not for charities, churches and wealthy benefactors providing soup kitchens, budget furniture shops, thrift stores and basic health care facilities because there is no safety net.

the real idealogue tories would extend this further into healthcare - where the state backs off and we all act responsibly by having health insurance.

yet - in other areas the state becomes much bigger - using the tax system to promote a particular type of family lifestyle (marriage) for instance....

[Zulus Thousand of em]

yet - in other areas the state becomes much bigger - using the tax system to promote a particular type of family lifestyle (marriage) for instance....

Don't knock it Bish. It's that, allied to the inevitability of death, that pays your mortgage!

[thebish]

yet - in other areas the state becomes much bigger - using the tax system to promote a particular type of family lifestyle (marriage) for instance....

Don't knock it Bish. It's that, allied to the inevitability of death, that pays your mortgage!

good point - well made!

(I make a lot more through funerals though - so a party that promotes more death would get my vote!)

[Zulus Thousand of em]

yet - in other areas the state becomes much bigger - using the tax system to promote a particular type of family lifestyle (marriage) for instance....

Don't knock it Bish. It's that, allied to the inevitability of death, that pays your mortgage!

good point - well made!

(I make a lot more through funerals though - so a party that promotes more death would get my vote!)

LOL!

[William the White]

Oh dear, "Great Miners" strike? The same people who put me on short time once due to their selfish pursuit of money? They got what they deserved by letting political Morons run the NUM,
No Queen!!!! you mean President Brown?
Never had you down for a Commie William

The miners strike was not about money - it was resistance to closures of pits that were not 'economic'. It was an attempt to defend mining communities.

The strike was badly led from the start by Scargill, who fell into Thatcher's trap. Peter Heathfield was not a 'political moron' - he was a trade unionist of genuine principle. Scargill was politically driven and itching for a fight. In this he was a mirror image of Thatcher, who had prepared the territory very well, with massive coal stocks and the provocation launched in spring. Scargill led the miners out on strike without a strike ballot, and this hung like an albatross round his neck, gave the excuse for the majority of notts miners to scab, and later, with government support to found the UDM as a rival 'union'. It did them little good - the Tories closed down most of the notts coalfield within a decade.

I'm not a 'Commie'. This movement effectively disappeared more than ten years ago. I was a member of the Young Communist League when i was fifteen. I left after a few months because i thought they were too moderate.

[CAPSLOCK]

William, couple of questions if you would

In what way was it great?

Would you keep open uneconomic pits 'just' to provide work? (yes/no will suffice )

[Zulus Thousand of em]

I remember Yorkshire miners shaking collection buckets in Bolton town centre in 1984. I remember wondering where they were when the cotton industry disappeared, putting half of my aunts and uncles out of work. Or, for that matter, where they were during the earlier demise of the Lancashire coalfield. Judging by my recent work on our family tree that demise accounted for the other half of the Family Zulu's employment prospects!

I reckon both the Lancashire cotton industry and the UK coal industry were, and are, uneconomic - and money talks. Why should mining communities be defended anyway? They are either economically viable or they're not. The same applies to shipbuilding, steelmaking, papermaking (my specialist subject!) and a host of other industries in the UK sadly.

It's not about left-wing or right-wing politics, however much some people on both sides of the political debate would like it to be so.