How will you vote next week?

[Guest MattP]

Just now, RobHawk said:

Pretty sure we had are largest spell of growth under a Labour government - so maybe a change in tactics is exactly what we need. 

Yeah but that was under Blair who is a Tory remember.

[Thracian]

2 hours ago, baker11 said:

For me having worked my whole career in both the education sector and housing charities seeing the brutal Tory cuts of the past 7 years alone would do it. That coupled with Legal Aid and Social care being decimated really riles me.

 

I also guess having staunch Labour voting parents and seeing our local MP vote agaisnt issues such as - 

• against the removal of hereditary peers in the House of Lords
• against the ban on fox hunting
• against repealing Section 28
• against the introduction of the minimum wage
• against increased maternity leave
• against equal rights for homosexuls

Thanks for the answer. It wasn't a question which was meant to elicit reasons to criticise, just one that was meant to glean information so I won't reply or seek to criticise in any way.       

[Thracian]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

Yeah but that was under Blair who is a Tory remember.

Haha, but who still caused so many of our problems, and more in other countries through his "Grin and Blair It bullshit" and calculated deceit of the voters, the latter with regards to his sanctioning of immigration overload with no mandate from the public that I ever saw.  

[Rincewind]

Blair caused a lot of Labour members  to leave the party but we all know that and the reason why.

 

As for my voting intentions. I have only the choice of 4 and know nothing about three of them. So it was a choice between the remaing one or none of the above

[Leicester69]

1 hour ago, RobHawk said:

Pretty sure we had are largest spell of growth under a Labour government - so maybe a change in tactics is exactly what we need. 

Yes fair comment, but that didn't turn out too well really did it....Growth is absolutely fine if it is based on an economy that generates sufficient money and finance to fund it...if you fund it on debt it is not sustainable.

 

Remember Gordon Brown (decent Chancellor, terrible PM) preaching prudence, prudence, prudence whilst he was Chanellor...as soon as he was PM it was spend, spend, spend to satisfy the voters to try and win an election, just what Corbyn is doing all over again...the Treasury had no money left when the last Labour Government were voted out, so the change in tactics you mention were definitely needed then.

 

Again, I'm no diehard Tory...but generally the Economy is safer in their hands IMO, hence my vote goes to them.

[ozleicester]

It leaves me speechless that anyone votes Tory unless you are literally a millionaire

[Rincewind]

Who do I have faith in?  Having faith is believing something unreal to be real and a belief in miracles.

After seven years of incompetence and lies maybe its time for others to show how good they are at incompetence and lies.

 

Wibble wibble strong and stable
So the battle cry goes
The leader sits on a nailed downed horse
With pencils shoved up her nose.
She knows not where she's going
Knows not where she's been
But strong and stable are her favorite words
And how she wants to be seen.

[Alf Bentley]

13 minutes ago, Leicester69 said:

Remember Gordon Brown (decent Chancellor, terrible PM) preaching prudence, prudence, prudence whilst he was Chanellor...as soon as he was PM it was spend, spend, spend to satisfy the voters to try and win an election, just what Corbyn is doing all over again...the Treasury had no money left when the last Labour Government were voted out, so the change in tactics you mention were definitely needed then.

 

This is factually incorrect. During Blair's first term, Labour ran a surplus most years. During his second term, when Brown was still Chancellor, they spent more on public services and tax credits, but still ran a deficit smaller than Major's Tories had done in the 90s. The deficit only ballooned from 2008....when there was a massive global financial crash! This affected every developed economy similarly, with minor variations.

 

Since 2010, the Tories (with/without Lib Dems) have been in power for 7 years. They have made it a priority to eliminate the deficit - and have broken various promises to do so.

 

Despite causing enormous social misery by repeatedly slashing public spending, in every one of those 7 Tory years the deficit has been higher than in every one of the 11 Labour years before the global crash - indeed such a high deficit has not been sustained for so long at any time since the period following WW2!!

 

Here are the deficit figures for 1980-2011 (the deficit figure now is about £52bn, so still higher than at any time from 1997 to 2007, inclusive):

 https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/oct/18/deficit-debt-government-borrowing-data#zoomed-picture

 

If we compare the economy to a horse, the Tories have spent 7 years starving and thrashing that horse to make it run more efficiently. The horse is now exhausted, collapsed, skin and bone.....and the Tory response as it lies there?

"What that horse needs is less food and an even bigger thrashing in order to make it run more efficiently!" 

[LiberalFox]

48 minutes ago, Leicester69 said:

Yes fair comment, but that didn't turn out too well really did it....Growth is absolutely fine if it is based on an economy that generates sufficient money and finance to fund it...if you fund it on debt it is not sustainable.

 

Remember Gordon Brown (decent Chancellor, terrible PM) preaching prudence, prudence, prudence whilst he was Chanellor...as soon as he was PM it was spend, spend, spend to satisfy the voters to try and win an election, just what Corbyn is doing all over again...the Treasury had no money left when the last Labour Government were voted out, so the change in tactics you mention were definitely needed then.

 

Again, I'm no diehard Tory...but generally the Economy is safer in their hands IMO, hence my vote goes to them.

 

This really isn't true. 

 

Alf beat me to it.

[RobHawk]

7 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

This is factually incorrect. During Blair's first term, Labour ran a surplus most years. During his second term, when Brown was still Chancellor, they spent more on public services and tax credits, but still ran a deficit smaller than Major's Tories had done in the 90s. The deficit only ballooned from 2008....when there was a massive global financial crash! This affected every developed economy similarly, with minor variations.

 

Since 2010, the Tories (with/without Lib Dems) have been in power for 7 years. They have made it a priority to eliminate the deficit - and have broken various promises to do so.

 

Despite causing enormous social misery by repeatedly slashing public spending, in every one of those 7 Tory years the deficit has been higher than in every one of the 11 Labour years before the global crash - indeed such a high deficit has not been sustained for so long at any time since the period following WW2!!

 

Here are the deficit figures for 1980-2011 (the deficit figure now is about £52bn, so still higher than at any time from 1997 to 2007, inclusive):

 https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/oct/18/deficit-debt-government-borrowing-data#zoomed-picture

 

If we compare the economy to a horse, the Tories have spent 7 years starving and thrashing that horse to make it run more efficiently. The horse is now exhausted, collapsed, skin and bone.....and the Tory response as it lies there?

"What that horse needs is less food and an even bigger thrashing in order to make it run more efficiently!" 

Thanks Alf - My thoughts entirely but written so much better - saved me the bother anyway. 

 

I will just add re: the financial crash, that in hindsight we should not have deregulated the banks as we did. However, the Tory's supported deregulation of the banks and actually wanted further deregulation before the crash.

 

So had the Tories been in power in the run up to 2008, the crash could have been even worse. All speculation granted - but i don't understand this notion that the tory's are strong on the economy - wheres the evidence of that in the last 50 years? 

[Rincewind]

Tell a lie often enough and it wiill eventually be believed.

[LiberalFox]

15 minutes ago, RobHawk said:

Thanks Alf - My thoughts entirely but written so much better - saved me the bother anyway. 

 

I will just add re: the financial crash, that in hindsight we should not have deregulated the banks as we did. However, the Tory's supported deregulation of the banks and actually wanted further deregulation before the crash.

 

So had the Tories been in power in the run up to 2008, the crash could have been even worse. All speculation granted - but i don't understand this notion that the tory's are strong on the economy - wheres the evidence of that in the last 50 years? 

 

Thatcher. All the other Tories have been crap.

[SouthStandUpperTier]

 
Thatcher. All the other Tories have been crap.

Blair was good economically, and he's a Tory.

[ramboacdc]

17 hours ago, Strokes said:

I've already spoilt my ballot paper.

please tell me what you put. 

[Alf Bentley]

31 minutes ago, RobHawk said:

I will just add re: the financial crash, that in hindsight we should not have deregulated the banks as we did. However, the Tory's supported deregulation of the banks and actually wanted further deregulation before the crash.

 

So had the Tories been in power in the run up to 2008, the crash could have been even worse. All speculation granted - but i don't understand this notion that the tory's are strong on the economy - wheres the evidence of that in the last 50 years? 

 

Yep. It's ironic that some of the things for which Blair/Brown deserve criticism are things that the Tories supported or wanted more of, from deregulation of banks to the Iraq invasion (some Tories didn't even want to bother with a UN resolution). Labour were the Govt, though, so have to take the main blame for those actions......but accusations of massive over-spending are unfair. If they'd not piled money into the economy in 2008-09, banks would have gone bust and Christ knows what the consequences would have been for the economy, and for the people and firms who were customers of those banks.

 

I do wonder just how much impact it would have had if the UK hadn't deregulated its banking system so much. The problem started in the US - and ended up affecting other European countries whether or not they had deregulated.

We might have avoided some of the impact - so some blame is due - but much of the crash would have happened anyway due to the USA, I think (Clinton and Bush to blame on a political level, I think)

[Alf Bentley]

17 minutes ago, LiberalFox said:

 

Thatcher. All the other Tories have been crap.

 

She certainly presided over rapid economic reform, some of it eliminating outdated, inefficient institutions and practices. But an awful lot of babies got thrown out with the bathwater.

Old industrial areas were often abandoned and workers with "outdated" skills thrown on the scrapheap with nothing to replace what they had lost. That caused serious social problems in particular areas that still persist today in later generations.

 

There's even an argument that, while the unions might have been too powerful before Thatcher, they are now not powerful enough for our economic good (in the private sector, at least).

Declining real pay and lack of job security don't do much to encourage spending to boost the economy. That might be about to become an even bigger problem than it was 2008-2015, after a year or two of slight improvement in real pay.

Household debt is high, real pay falling - and lots of businesses surviving by having low pay offset their low productivity....not a model for success if times get tough. Stronger unions (within reason) can actually improve business efficiency/competitiveness.

[Dr The Singh]

If honesty is anything to go by

You ,then the UKIP leader wins by a mile, then that idiot from the Green Party

[RobHawk]

1 minute ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

She certainly presided over rapid economic reform, some of it eliminating outdated, inefficient institutions and practices. But an awful lot of babies got thrown out with the bathwater.

Old industrial areas were often abandoned and workers with "outdated" skills thrown on the scrapheap with nothing to replace what they had lost. That caused serious social problems in particular areas that still persist today in later generations.

 

There's even an argument that, while the unions might have been too powerful before Thatcher, they are now not powerful enough for our economic good (in the private sector, at least).

Declining real pay and lack of job security don't do much to encourage spending to boost the economy. That might be about to become an even bigger problem than it was 2008-2015, after a year or two of slight improvement in real pay.

Household debt is high, real pay falling - and lots of businesses surviving by having low pay offset their low productivity....not a model for success if times get tough. Stronger unions (within reason) can actually improve business efficiency/competitiveness.

You've done it again - Saved me responding! 

[Voll Blau]

1 hour ago, Dr The Singh said:

If honesty is anything to go by

You ,then the UKIP leader wins by a mile, then that idiot from the Green Party

You mean the same bloke who made up that he was a Hillsborough survivor and played for Tranmere? Yeah, beacon of honesty.

[Matt]

54 minutes ago, Rincewind said:

Tell a lie often enough and it wiill eventually be believed.

 

[Dr The Singh]

11 minutes ago, Voll Blau said:

You mean the same bloke who made up that he was a Hillsborough survivor and played for Tranmere? Yeah, beacon of honesty.

Yes, he is still a few miles more honest then the rest.  Sad state of affairs..

[Captain...]

5 hours ago, The Guvnor said:

Must admit like some of Jezzers ideas but...... I can't help reminding  myself that nearly all to a man and woman in his party thought a few months ago that he was unfit to lead the LP never mind the Country, he is too far to the left for me so Tory vote despite their absolute balls up of a campaign.

I like to think/hope that the manifesto, which I like on the whole, is one created by Corbyn compromising with the Blairites for the good of the party. It is still further left than most recent Labour manifestos, but when you think about what Corbyn could have put forwards, scrapping Trident, abolishing the Monarchy, even bigger tax hikes, natuinalising the banks. Then it shows he has compromised and focussed on the good of the party to create a manifesto which is actually quite appealing rather than trying to force his own views on the party.

 

It is a real shame that the Labour party were not behind him from the start, without the constant in-fighting he might have put up a better opposition and started this campaign from a position of strength, rather than being well behind.

[Darkon84]

31 minutes ago, Matt said:

 

 

You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but if you fool the right ones, then the rest will fall behind.

[Thracian]

1 hour ago, Leicester69 said:

Yes fair comment, but that didn't turn out too well really did it....Growth is absolutely fine if it is based on an economy that generates sufficient money and finance to fund it...if you fund it on debt it is not sustainable.

 

Remember Gordon Brown (decent Chancellor, terrible PM) preaching prudence, prudence, prudence whilst he was Chanellor...as soon as he was PM it was spend, spend, spend to satisfy the voters to try and win an election, just what Corbyn is doing all over again...the Treasury had no money left when the last Labour Government were voted out, so the change in tactics you mention were definitely needed then.

 

Again, I'm no diehard Tory...but generally the Economy is safer in their hands IMO, hence my vote goes to them.

Yes, and we've seen the consequences of hit-the-rich and the business entrepreneurs policies before with the brain drain under Harold Wilson. The go-getters left in droves taking their talents with them.

We've also seen the consequences of trades unions impacting on the economic production and reliability of businesses and contributing to their ruination and closure as uneconomical. Cars, shipyards, mines, steel production.....so much of it ended in tears and the workers out of jobs.

No-one is going to take on the risk and headaches of employing people without rewards and state-sponsored Marxism so loved by Corbyn just destroys incentive and innovation, flexibility and so much more before long while inevitably breeding corruption as well.

This is just a random critique but the problems have been well demonstrated in my time and they really were terminal at times. In Corbyn's hands it's hard to imagine the mess he'd make judging by just a few of the blunders he's made pre-election.

I'm surprised he's even seriously forwarded as a leadership candidate at any level never mind as a potential Prime Minister of our country and that would be my view even if i were a Labour supporter and is, indeed, the demonstrated view of a whole lot of historical Labour voters.          

http://intersectproject.org/faith-and-economics/problems-marxist-socialism/

[Guest Kopfkino]

2 hours ago, Leicester69 said:

Yes fair comment, but that didn't turn out too well really did it....Growth is absolutely fine if it is based on an economy that generates sufficient money and finance to fund it...if you fund it on debt it is not sustainable.

 

Remember Gordon Brown (decent Chancellor, terrible PM) preaching prudence, prudence, prudence whilst he was Chanellor...as soon as he was PM it was spend, spend, spend to satisfy the voters to try and win an election, just what Corbyn is doing all over again...the Treasury had no money left when the last Labour Government were voted out, so the change in tactics you mention were definitely needed then.

 

Again, I'm no diehard Tory...but generally the Economy is safer in their hands IMO, hence my vote goes to them.

 

Don't be quite so kind to the bloke, he ran a £42bn deficit when growth was at 3% in 2005.