The Politics Thread

[thebish]

OK - so how does this one work?

Every prisoner will work a 40-hour week and be paid the minimum wage - these will be proper jobs manufacturing and other... (s we are told) - proper jobs - not punitive chain-gang rock breaking...

so...

is that 100,000 guaranteed jobs for convicted criminals that could have been taken by hard-working non-ciminal unemployed people?

[Lord Kangana]

With every one of them being individually supervised, by 100,000 guards on £15 p/h?

You have to wonder what the ratio of pints to fag packets was on that one.

[thebish]

I think Ken Clarke so despises Dave that he's just taking the piss....

[Bruce Rioja]

Why is anybody getting paid to bring another person into this overpopulated world?

Exactly, and we're right back to - if you want kids why should anyone else pick up their tab?

No doubt you'll be offering to pay back the amounts your parents recieved for you (index linked of course)

I'm sure my parents contributions more than covered that.

I'm sure mine more than cover the fact I currently get child benefit.

Exactly as it should be, too.

[thebish]

Ian dunkin doughnut is addressing the tories...

he started with his "contract with workers"

then part two was his "contract with the poor" - and there was such a massive obvious "now I'm switching to my caring voice" moment that I nearly vomit..


(also - he spoke to man on a glasgow council estate once - and this makes it a personal journey for him)

[BWFC_Insane]

Ian dunkin doughnut is addressing the tories...

he started with his "contract with workers"

then part two was his "contract with the poor" - and there was such a massive obvious "now I'm switching to my caring voice" moment that I nearly vomit..


(also - he spoke to man on a glasgow council estate once - and this makes it a personal journey for him)

Was it as bad as "I met a black man once and even he hates all them foreign folk"????

[thebish]

Ian dunkin doughnut is addressing the tories...

he started with his "contract with workers"

then part two was his "contract with the poor" - and there was such a massive obvious "now I'm switching to my caring voice" moment that I nearly vomit..


(also - he spoke to man on a glasgow council estate once - and this makes it a personal journey for him)

Was it as bad as "I met a black man once and even he hates all them foreign folk"????

to be fair to IDS - I DO suspect that he has had some kind of Damascus Road experience over poverty - except he is trapped in the Tory Party and must cast his words very carefully in that company - and knows that 99% of his findings will never get past the Cameron/Clegg portcullis...

[Worthy4England]

Exactly, and we're right back to - if you want kids why should anyone else pick up their tab?

No doubt you'll be offering to pay back the amounts your parents recieved for you (index linked of course)

I'm sure my parents contributions more than covered that.

I'm sure mine more than cover the fact I currently get child benefit.

Exactly as it should be, too.

So are you saying I should get child benefit or not then? is the bit about whether your contibutions "cover" the benefit just a bit of smoke and mirrors?

[William the White]

Labour "lied for years".

Oh really. That must have passed me by.

Seems to me the only ones lying are the Tories and Lib Dems, repeatedly doing precisely what they said they would NOT in their manifesto's and pledges.

I think Labour lied to us as it sought to find an excuse for war in Iraq. It went beyond dissembling as it repeatedly manipulated the evidence in order to sell an illegal war to the British people.

Hundreds of thousands have died in Iraq since. A few dozen of them our citizens.

Ed Miliband has only now made an attempt at self criticism - years after the event.

It is, admittedly, unusual for hoboh's meanderings to approach accuracy with a bargepole but on this one he's correct. Probably by accident.

[InsaneApache]

To be fair to IDS, when he lost the leadership of the party he went out and took a look at sink estates in the north and Scotland. I can't remember which program it was on but I'll never forget the look on his face when he went into one of the estates. He just kept saying over and over again, "How do people live like this?"

One more thing about socialism and the left. They don't have a monopoly on caring. They like to think they do but they don't. For the socially liberal right it's another way of trying to alleviate poverty from a different angle. Without bankrupting the country in the process.

[William the White]

To be fair to IDS, when he lost the leadership of the party he went out and took a look at sink estates in the north and Scotland. I can't remember which program it was on but I'll never forget the look on his face when he went into one of the estates. He just kept saying over and over again, "How do people live like this?"

One more thing about socialism and the left. They don't have a monopoly on caring. They like to think they do but they don't. For the socially liberal right it's another way of trying to alleviate poverty from a different angle. Without bankrupting the country in the process.

And what does this 'other way' consist of? And what is the 'different angle'?

[InsaneApache]

Like I said, not bankrupting the country. Every generation has to suss out Labours folly it seems.

[Worthy4England]

To be fair to IDS, when he lost the leadership of the party he went out and took a look at sink estates in the north and Scotland. I can't remember which program it was on but I'll never forget the look on his face when he went into one of the estates. He just kept saying over and over again, "How do people live like this?"

One more thing about socialism and the left. They don't have a monopoly on caring. They like to think they do but they don't. For the socially liberal right it's another way of trying to alleviate poverty from a different angle. Without bankrupting the country in the process.

I remember the program myself, without recalling what it was called.

I remember wondering if he'd go back and tell his other caring buddies in the Tory party what he'd seen - they obviously had no concept of it in the 1980's/

[Lord Kangana]

We've followed two economic models since the second world war.

Neo-Keynsian (largely built around state capitalism) from 1945-79

Neo Liberalism/monetarism from 1979 to now.

We can dance round the edges as much as we like, but if people wish to believe the fairy story that any other party would have done things much differently over the past 13 years, they're on crack.

This does not exonerate Brown (or that Shark Blair) from presiding over this mess, more pointing out that this mess was inevitable because of the system we have.

[thebish]

To be fair to IDS, when he lost the leadership of the party he went out and took a look at sink estates in the north and Scotland. I can't remember which program it was on but I'll never forget the look on his face when he went into one of the estates. He just kept saying over and over again, "How do people live like this?"

didn't I just say this?

[William the White]

Like I said, not bankrupting the country. Every generation has to suss out Labours folly it seems.

Yes, but what actually happens in this 'other way' to show the caring heart that throbs within each and every Tory? What do they do while they're not bankrupting the country?

[thebish]

Like I said, not bankrupting the country. Every generation has to suss out Labours folly it seems.

whilst I accept this is the new received wisdom - that by it's policies Labour "bankrupted the country" - it's still pretty much bollox.

[Worthy4England]

Always bearing in mind that our system doesn't operate in isolation of wider economic systems...

[William the White]

Like I said, not bankrupting the country. Every generation has to suss out Labours folly it seems.

whilst I accept this is the new received wisdom - that by it's policies Labour "bankrupted the country" - it's still pretty much bollox.

apostrophe police on to you!!!

[thebish]

ar'se