milliband

[Salopian]

A very, very good debate.

The general concensus being that Labour have got us into a right mess, Labour are currently without leadership, Tory's may not be the way forward?

Last week Britain showed it's true face, a dishevelled wreck being raped by hooligans. But may I ask, why were the majority of looters Black? Are these vermin British or Immigrants? Do they have no sense of social values, do they not realise that despite their frustration at being unemployed and possibly poor( although I doubt that judging by their designer clothing)the damage they did has to be repaired at a cost to the taxpayer.

No, it is time Britain got off it's socialist **** and started working again. There is no such thing as the free lunch. We need industry here in Britain NOT retailing, staffed by minimum wage grabbing immigrants. Stop Immigration and this welfare state. Get Britain back working. When I mentioned this to my Union Convenor, a spineless workshy communist his reply was 'Oh, so you would like to go back to the Victorian times of hard labour would you?'

At least then we had an Empire.

[crosshair]

The last person to enter the Houses of Parliament with honest intentions was Guy Fawkes.

[Gimlet]

Britain has never come to terms with its past. What Margeret Thatcher did in the 80s only scratched the surface and needed doing sixty years earlier. We live in a landscape designed in the past, in the days of empire, when Britain truly was the workshop of the world. By the end of the great depression we had lost that role but our economy was never restructured. Once-profitable private industries from another era became state owned and were deployed to provide mass employment and social stability through subsidy. The distasterous intervention of the second world war cost us 25 years of lost developement, at least, and the same creaking museum piece of an industrial model continued, funded by a depleting pool of tax payers until things came to a head in the 1970 when the country was bankrupted.

Margeret Thatcher was the only politician of the 20th century with enough courage and strength of character to try and break the cycle. She did not succeed. The left is still drawn inexorably to an old centralised and subsidised past like a ship to the rocks. The right responds by applying a dose of antidotal deregulation to defribrilate a stalled economy afterwards. And now we're here all over again.

We will never be the workshop of the world. The only future for a county as urbanised and over populated as Britain is a low tax economy based on enterprise and innovation. Three things immediately spring to mind that stand in the way:

 

The welfare state: this is another relic of the past, a Dickensian bureaucracy which institutionalises poverty and social stagnation instead of encouraging escape. It is the Left's answer to a question that was never asked. Ours is a Ponzi employment scheme that does not 'protect the vulnerable', it creates them. Welfarism has driven Western Europe to the brink of bankruptsy, it has even brought America low and it has ruined Britain twice. And still we wil not let it go.

 

State education: This is an international disgrace. We cannot hope to compete in a world dominated by China India and Brazil, which it is about to be, when their youngsters are so much better educated than ours. Britain has slipped 10 places down the international league tables in every academic subject in the last 10 years. Rather than sneering at the private model, state education should copy it. Encourage excellence, competition and selection. Rip politics out of the classroom and replace it with discipline.

 

Political weakness:

Our parliament has been emasculated. Much of its power lost to the EU and its members more interested in courting the approval of pollsters and the media than leading by conviction, it is dominated by charlatans and opportunists. Sovereignty should be restored, the size of parliament halved and the political power pyramid upended so it is broadest at its lowest level, the parish, and smallest at the top.

 

All this we leave in the lily white, baby soft untested hands of Cameron, Clegg and Milliband. God help us.

Edited August 20, 2011 by Gimlet

[UKPoacher]

To answer a direct question: I think Milliband is an insignificant caretaker manager for the Labout Party put in like a night watchman batsman as a sacrifice to save the real leader-in-waiting's backside - i.e. Balls.

 

Now cast your minds back to Hague's time in charge of the Conservatives. Similar circumstances?

 

As for Maggie; she would not subsidise NCB or car industry, but pumped millions into the Royal Ballet and National Opera. She sold off the utilities at a fraction of their worth. And, let's not forget that as nationalised industries she was effectively the MD. If they were inefficient then she could and should have changed the management, not scrapped them.

[ack-ack]

The last person to enter the Houses of Parliament with honest intentions was Guy Fawkes.

[cockercas]

I'm a bit young to join in now. Maggie was before my time and people seem to have very conflicting views about her. And as for Britain getting into this mess do sent it have something to do with labour party borrowing £3 out of every £4. And wankey Europe dictating how we should run this (once great) country

[JR1960]

All this we leave in the lily white, baby soft untested hands of Cameron, Clegg and Milliband. God help us.

Indeed. I wouldn't employ any of them as baby-sitters.

Edited August 20, 2011 by JR1960

[JR1960]

.

Edited August 20, 2011 by JR1960

[ROBLATCH]

we are all talking politics, but in all honesty not one to say who can run the country.

lets be realistic our country is too far gone for anyone to hold onto.

regardless of what is said there have been too many contracts sighned previously to back out now for any politician to make better.

at the end of the day we are existing not living with any government.

Edited August 21, 2011 by ROBLATCH

[keg]

Crosshairs.. bang on. Gimlet, you put it much better than i did.

 

Compared to the few millions in Opera & Ballet ( which i don't remember her doing but could be wrong- I have been know to be :-), the billions squandered by coal, cars & steel were huge!.

 

She did try and change the top bods

 

Michael Ewdardes at BL

 

Hugh MCGregor with the NCB

 

And still that wonderfully balanced and fair man Comrade A Scargill would not play ball neither would the unions at BL.

 

Full employment is a utopian dream, it didn't even work in Russia and they went t*ts up.

 

A lively debate indeed and i respect all opinions on here even if i don't agree with em!.

 

 

Politics, religion, the poll tax and fox hunting... If ever at a party or chewing the cud with a crowd, drop one of the above in and stand back!.

[ack-ack]

.

 

Quite

[groach1234]

What do I think of ed millband? very little he makes my skin crawl when ever hes on tv and i put it down to (although it sounds terribly judgmental) the fact he looks just plain odd and has a strange voice and david would have been a far better choice for labour but ed is perfect of the tories.

 

As for the other debates that have been going on well hague he's a fine man but doubt he'll ever stand for PM again. Thatcher, although before my time as far as I can tell took the hard decisions that weren't going to be popular but simply had to be made because as has been said the inefficiencies with in british industry meant it was uncompetitive on a international stage. This set blair and brown up for the wonder years that they still managed to squander and got us in the state we are in today. Cameron should be doing now what Maggie did then if he had the balls but sadly i dont think he does however he has got a few years left to sort it out I suppose.

 

Now for the problems within society such as the unemployed unmotivated youth I feel (although a bit of a through back to the victorian era) that once you have been on benefits for a certain amount of time without finding a job or reject job opportunities offered to you, in true work house style compulsory labour should be employed be it picking up rubbish or splitting rocks. I know this sounds archaic but it might just make people look a little harder for work and not turn down the opportunities that arise.

 

Just my tupance,

 

George

[UKPoacher]

Crosshairs.. bang on. Gimlet, you put it much better than i did.

 

Compared to the few millions in Opera & Ballet ( which i don't remember her doing but could be wrong- I have been know to be :-), the billions squandered by coal, cars & steel were huge!.

 

She did try and change the top bods

 

Michael Ewdardes at BL

 

Hugh MCGregor with the NCB

 

And still that wonderfully balanced and fair man Comrade A Scargill would not play ball neither would the unions at BL.

 

Full employment is a utopian dream, it didn't even work in Russia and they went t*ts up.

 

A lively debate indeed and i respect all opinions on here even if i don't agree with em!.

 

 

Politics, religion, the poll tax and fox hunting... If ever at a party or chewing the cud with a crowd, drop one of the above in and stand back!.

 

Full employment is different from full unemployment in significant ways. When Maggie shut the pits in Barnsley it was not just the miners who lost their jobs. Newsagents, corner shops, car repair businesses, cinemas, milkmen and even those who took sea anglers out in Whitby and Bridlington 90 miles away lost their income too. After the pits shut the community, and I use that word advisedly, collapsed to the point where we have no community except in the tiny brains of politicians and senior police officers. I am sure that the same applied in the Midlands, North-East and Wales where she decimated British industries for the benefit of foreign business interests.

 

I thin it is better to prop up workers rather than dish out dole for a numberof reasons.

 

As for the Ballet and Opera, Maggie famously said that any industry that could not support itself should be left to wither. Yet, she and others pump millions of £££'s into these 'Arts' that are meaningless to the vast majority of us.

[mark g]

people critical of lady thatcher would do well to remember the alternatives presented by labour, you could either vote for a well dressed well spoken lady who would flog you a cheap house or vote for a bloke in a donkey jacket with wild hair,a wonky eye and an evangelical preacher like ranting style who would like you to live in concrete blocks like the ruskies did at the time, later it was a welshman who proved to be unable to remain upright on a beach. there was no competetion

david davies would have been the man to lead the conservatives now, but we have what we have and i would rather have mickey mouse in charge than gordon brown

[keg]

Clive taking point 1, 2 uncles and 3 cousins all were affected, losing their jobs, but all 3 ended up in a better place. We simply could not afford to carry on subsidising, simple as that. I stil find it aamazing how both Labour & Tory will still subsidise the white elephant that is wind power.

 

Point 2. I can see both sides of that argument, but am still convinced that proping up people is not the best way forward as they become institutionalised.

 

Point 3. I have only searched briefly, but i can't find any real evidence supporting your point about the arts but happy to be proved wrong and will apologise if need be.

 

Tim

 

And apologies to all for going off subject again... just don't start me on Mandleson who i believe is even worse than Milipede..

[ack-ack]

 

david davies would have been the man to lead the conservatives now,

 

He was my choice during the leadership race but I'm not so sure he could have kept his end up during all this. Probably a bit too nice. I reckon DC's got the balls to see this through. Cleg and Millimetre have got more than a touch of the Machiavellian and I don't like them a jot.

[UKPoacher]

Keg,

By closing the pits, steel works and car industries Thatcher effectively sacked not just the colliers, steel workers and car workers, but all those in private industry who supplied them as well as the small businesses dependent on their wages. There might have been 100,000 miners but the actual number thrown out of work would be over double that. Instead of subsidising workers she subsidised dole wallahs then changed the counting methods by throwing millions on the sick so they did not show up in her unemployment figures. We now all know about the extra costs involved and the difficulties in getting people who have been historically declared unfit for work back to work.

 

Some individuals might have been able to recover and be better off, but the country itself will never recover from her policies.

 

Don't forget either that by the time she really started shutting all the country's major industries she had already smashed the unions.

 

Check out the Arts Council web site for an idea how much government money goes into ballet and the like.

[keg]

Mark G, completely agree. Interestingly the welsh windbag and his family are now milking it in the EU along with others of all parties.

 

Clive, i understand what you are saying with the wider picture, but at some point you have to draw a line if we as a country can't afford it.

 

I can only see a reference to £575 million in FY2009/10 which will have been in place from New Labour days, then 1.03 million between 08-11 which again the bulk of is under new Labour.

 

At £330 million a year it's small beer compared to the subsidies that went into the nationalised industries. Lets not forget that some of teh finest musicians and bands came out of the mines and mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

 

More building workers lost there jobs than miners in recent recessions but nobody stood up for them..

 

 

I don't think David Davies is the right man, but as several posters have said, William Hague may yet rise again.

 

Still not convinced on a number of Ministers from all sides........

[ack-ack]

 

david davies would have been the man to lead the conservatives now,

 

....or did you mean the bloke out of the Kinks?

[BLACK-GUN]

what we need is nick griffin to run this country. :yp: tin hat on.

[UKPoacher]

Mark G, completely agree. Interestingly the welsh windbag and his family are now milking it in the EU along with others of all parties.

 

Clive, i understand what you are saying with the wider picture, but at some point you have to draw a line if we as a country can't afford it.

 

I can only see a reference to £575 million in FY2009/10 which will have been in place from New Labour days, then 1.03 million between 08-11 which again the bulk of is under new Labour.

 

At £330 million a year it's small beer compared to the subsidies that went into the nationalised industries. Lets not forget that some of teh finest musicians and bands came out of the mines and mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

 

More building workers lost there jobs than miners in recent recessions but nobody stood up for them..

 

 

I don't think David Davies is the right man, but as several posters have said, William Hague may yet rise again.

 

Still not convinced on a number of Ministers from all sides........

 

Yes, but the £330 million 'small beer' as you put it, spent on subsidising Arts does not provide much back to the country in employment or revenue. And remember that the subsidies on industries when they were operating can be deducted from the costs of millions of unemployed & sickness benefits, many of which are 'for life,' as well as the taxes and NHI paid by those workers when employed in industry.

 

As said before Milliband is just a caretaker awaiting the political situation to change in Labour's favour when Balls will take over. Hague is only just recovering from his turn at the helm of a sinking party, and he also has his 'baseball cap / hotel room sharing' exploits to live down.

[JR1960]

people critical of lady thatcher would do well to remember the alternatives presented by labour, you could either vote for a well dressed well spoken lady who would flog you a cheap house or vote for a bloke in a donkey jacket with wild hair,a wonky eye and an evangelical preacher like ranting style who would like you to live in concrete blocks like the ruskies did at the time, later it was a welshman who proved to be unable to remain upright on a beach. there was no competetion

david davies would have been the man to lead the conservatives now, but we have what we have and i would rather have mickey mouse in charge than gordon brown

Dear Lady Thatcher, at least she is blessed with Alzheimer's so she doesn't have to remember the 100,000's of people's lives that she ruined. What's your excuse?

 

Yes, some people did very well during her time in power, me included. But I'm afraid her policies were truly appalling.

 

As for Mickey Mouse being in charge you seem to have got your wish.

[keg]

Yes, the baseball cap/room sharing is an interesting one - not sure on that one- doesn't seem to add up....

 

JR, i had up and down periods under Mrs T, as i have had under new Communism, sorry Labour.

 

Between 83- 87 i was made redundant 3 times and again in 2009. In all cases i was back in work with 2 months. Not the best roles but kept the money coming in.

 

I think the policies were right at the time, we simly had no options and no money left. Under the previous Labour crowd up to 1979, 60% of our GDP was being paid in subsidies.

 

It's very easy to be critical in hindsight, be it politicians or war heroes like Bomber Harris but lets be clear:-

 

We could not afford to carry on as we were either in 1979 when Mrs T came in or now

 

Black Gun, some of Griffiths policies are good, as are some of Labours, as are some of the tories. What it needs is somone with some balls to say actually, if we take that that and that, it's a pretty good system.

 

We know there are some real windbags in all parties, it's the sheer hypocrisy of new labour cronies like Harman, Blair and Mandleson that amuse me.

 

A word of warning about the BNP and Griffiths, The Germans liked the economic ideas of the Nazi party, turned a blind a eye to the more unsavoury stuff, thought that they could get rid if him if he got too powerful and look what happened with his mass murdering.

 

We need to be careful with Mr Griffiths.....

 

Stalin murdered more than Hitler, many more, but that was ok because he was on our side.........

Edited August 23, 2011 by keg

[JR1960]

Yes, the baseball cap/room sharing is an interesting one - not sure on that one- doesn't seem to add up....

 

JR, i had up and down periods under Mrs T, as i have had under new Communism, sorry Labour.

 

Between 83- 87 i was made redundant 3 times and again in 2009. In all cases i was back in work with 2 months. Not the best roles but kept the money coming in.

 

I think the policies were right at the time, we simly had no options and no money left. Under the previous Labour crowd up to 1979, 60% of our GDP was being paid in subsidies.

 

It's very easy to be critical in hindsight, be it politicians or war heroes like Bomber Harris but lets be clear:-

 

We could not afford to carry on as we were either in 1979 when Mrs T came in or now

 

Black Gun, some of Griffiths policies are good, as are some of Labours, as are some of the tories. What it needs is somone with some balls to say actually, if we take that that and that, it's a pretty good system.

 

We know there are some real windbags in all parties, it's the sheer hypocrisy of new labour cronies like Harman, Blair and Mandleson that amuse me.

 

A word of warning about the BNP and Griffiths, The Germans liked the economic ideas of the Nazi party, turned a blind a eye to the more unsavoury stuff, thought that they could get rid if him if he got too powerful and look what happened with his mass murdering.

 

We need to be careful with Mr Griffiths.....

 

Stalin murdered more than Hitler, many more, but that was ok because he was on our side.........

Yes, I think I said something similar to all these points earlier in this string. I don't side with Labour, our whole system has allowed itself to become stagnated, and no-one will have the character to stand up and be counted with any decent policies. If they do they will be immediately regarded as racist, bigotted, old fashioned etc etc etc and destroyed politically. We are in a political vacuum where real debate is stifled. Other than another war i don't see a way out of it.

 

Sadly it does worry me with all the ills of the world that our children will inherit an unstable planet, with a growing population, exhausting resources and perhaps the effects of global warming, if it turns out to be real, where the breakdown of civilisation as we know it and war are just around the corner. I'm sure a lot of people will mock, but that's the way it feels to me.

[Vince Green]

The REAL problem is that a career in politics attracts the wrong sort. Anybody with their backgrounds AND any sort of ability would go into the City, its only the rejects that look for a soft berth in Parliament. The word dump bin comes to mind.