milliband

[JR1960]

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.

Although it pains me say so, I fear you may have a point.

[Kes]

It used to said that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

In our political system we pay a fair amount to my mind and still get power-hungry, theiving, monkeys.

[keg]

Quite right JR & Vince, due to the last govt there can be no dissent or middle ground, you are either for or against.

 

I worked with 3 gay guys and we were all sat around talking one day and i was aksed my opinion re homosexuallity, to which i replied.

 

I don't think it's normal and don't approve, however if i saw one of you getting a kicking i would wade in and help you out without any hesitation.

 

Confusion reigned for a few mins until one said " you must be homophobic". I said "why?". He said " because you don't approve and don't think it's normal".

 

I replied " look up homophobic and then come back to me.."

 

That aside, we do seem to be allowed to disagree with the govt these days.. Even Cameron is starting to show inflexibility.

 

Vince, I go back to the days when the councils etc did what was right for the town/country, not what got them re-elected

[Gimlet]

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

 

Griffin is in fact every bit as left wing as Gordon Brown. Neither left nor right hold a monopoly on bigotry. But it pleases the left to have it believed that any who disagree with their creed should be regarded as Nazi, a perfect example of fascism. Grffin is a lefty to his boot straps. He wants to restore all trade union powers and renationalise everything. He even wants to nationalise the R.N.L.I. If Gordon Brown had done that John Prescott would have been in charge of sea rescue. Though that slowed immigration flow a little.

 

Can I borrow that tin hat?

[Kes]

Nick Griffin is intellectually bankrupt whether or not he is a bigot.

You would have to be a few pence short of a shilling to vote for this man - or did you not see his 'performances' on the TV before the last election.

I do agree though that an amalgam of many of the policies across the 'political spectrum' is what is needed presently. However, we are as likely to get that as we are to get Nick Griffin as prime minister. Anyone with some sensible policies to restore some sanity into the immigration system would help for example and I am no bigot.

 

Again, as has been said before, we need someone with Cohones(man or woman)who will act in the national interest rather than their own.

 

WRT to Margaret, she started with a chip on her shoulder about what the miners had done to a conservative government under someone she also heartily disliked for his attitude to them - Ted Heath.

Breaking the power of the unions, I believe, was essential and she did that but lost her way and her concience.

What she did was very hard on everyone in the country but what would have been the outcome had she not done that?

Maybe she was not our best prime minister but a woman with grit and less self interest than many.

[Vince Green]

Maggie didn't destroy the coal and steel industries, they were dying anyway, partly because of a lack of investment and partly because the unions had resisted modernisation for decades.

 

Arthur Scargill set out to bring down the Conservative Government for personal glory, nothing else, and he lost. Simple as that really

[JR1960]

Maybe she was not our best prime minister but a woman with grit and less self interest than many.

Much as it goes against the grain to say anything positive about Thatcher, i'd have to agree with that. Like her or hate her you have to admit she had more balls than a lot before and any since.

[Laird Lugton]

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.

 

 

Best post on this thread.

[UKPoacher]

The reason that British industry was on its uppers was more to do with the idiotic repatriations policy following WW2 than the unions. We plundered Germany's old machinery and then gave them the money to buy new stuff. Similarly Japan by necessity reinvented itself after the war as an industrial giant. Both countries then out manufactured us.

 

As for the Welfare State promoting stagnation; I have never heard anything as ridiculous in my life. This is Tea Party politics. Cheyney and Wolfowitz territory. In the early part of the 20th century workers were treated as expendable resources causing millions of early deaths and suffering before the National Health Service gave the poor some hope. In years of fullish employment the dole was something you only drew if you were between jobs. It was never intended as a 'for life' option. That came later.

 

When you invent a machine that does the work of twenty people you put twenty people out of work. There are no jobs for our terminally lazy. One other reason for this is that Blair filled the country with immigrants who are prepared to work for less than the minimum wage. Another is the lack of education, and that can be traced right back to Mrs. Thatcher's time as Education Secretary.

[JR1960]

The reason that British industry was on its uppers was more to do with the idiotic repatriations policy following WW2 than the unions. We plundered Germany's old machinery and then gave them the money to buy new stuff. Similarly Japan by necessity reinvented itself after the war as an industrial giant. Both countries then out manufactured us.

 

As for the Welfare State promoting stagnation; I have never heard anything as ridiculous in my life. This is Tea Party politics. Cheyney and Wolfowitz territory. In the early part of the 20th century workers were treated as expendable resources causing millions of early deaths and suffering before the National Health Service gave the poor some hope. In years of fullish employment the dole was something you only drew if you were between jobs. It was never intended as a 'for life' option. That came later.

 

When you invent a machine that does the work of twenty people you put twenty people out of work. There are no jobs for our terminally lazy. One other reason for this is that Blair filled the country with immigrants who are prepared to work for less than the minimum wage. Another is the lack of education, and that can be traced right back to Mrs. Thatcher's time as Education Secretary.

Now that's the best post on this thread!

[keg]

I know this thread has gone way off subject but it is creating some interesting and lively views!.

 

Agree with the Laird, Gimlet's summary is bang on.

 

Clive, i have to disagree with your comments, i think you are adapting the situations to your dislike of Mrs T( which of course you are entitled to do.

 

 

Mrs T may have scrapped free school milk, but generally, the decline in educational standards can be traced back to the Labour hatred of the grammar school system and their closure of them. Even now they have the same hatred, despite Balls, Harman & Blair being privately educated. Diane Abbott then hypocritically tried to blame her choice of school for her son on race rather than just being honest.

 

Industry was knocked back by the war but look at our innovations- the jet engine, the computer to name but 2. The biggest issue was labour relations and attitude for which we can blame management and workers. Many of both Japan's and Germany's best companies are privately run, rather than being pulle ddown by nationalisation.

 

I worked for Sony for 15 yrs and we were always encouraged to try new ideas, work harder, pull together. We were also well rewarded for this, whereas British industry was nationalised, subsidised with no incentive to work harder or try harder.People got paid whatever happened.

 

Whilst Germany & Japan were being flexible, we were stuck with strikes over such trivial issues as who fitted lightbulbs and loo seats in our shipbuilding industry, two different men..... twice the cost and we wonder why we lost our shipbuilding, despite once being the biggest.

 

even if we got rid of all the imigrants, there is a significant section of the unemployed that do not want to and will not work unless we dramtaically change the benefits system, but it's such a vote loser, no party will ever make that decision, plus so many interest groups have a vested interest in the unemployed, hence the welfare state supporting stagnation.

 

Lastly, we need to get back to basics, family life, hard work and dare i say it, a religious base, whatever religion floats your boat ( tin hat now on and strap tightened )

[UKPoacher]

In her time as Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher closed more Grammer Schools than did Shirley Williams. We are adopting the American approach; only educate those who can pay for it. Educated people cause problems for governments.

 

As for going back to religious beliefs; Why should people allow themselves to be controlled by a Church Authority as well as a Government? Does the present Archbishop of Cantebury or Pope come across as role models? At least you can vote a Government out.

[JR1960]

even if we got rid of all the imigrants, there is a significant section of the unemployed that do not want to and will not work.

 

Lastly, we need to get back to basics, family life, hard work and dare i say it, a religious base, whatever religion floats your boat

 

Yes, and there always has been and always will be, even before any benefits system. However the problem with your comment, and all the other pull up the ladder types, is that you like to label ALL the unemployed with the same tag. I have known, do know and indeed have been, unemployed and the VAST majority are hard working people who simply cannot find a job, usually because there aren't any. If you think its so easy and such a barrel of laughs why not give up your job and try it. I'm guessing from your comments that you would find it relatively easy to find another job, so you'd be nice and secure even then, and you could still wag a finger of distaste at a sub-class of people you know nothing about. Mind you with my qualifications and experience i thought i would walk into another job when I was made redundant and it took me 2 years. So maybe you shouldn't be quite so smug.

 

As for religions, i have been interested in most of them for many years, admittedly more from a historical perspective, but i'm afraid i came to the conclusion long ago that with a few exceptional individuals (and a few eastern religions) they are all self serving, grasping organisations, far more interested in power than any true religious meaning and quite happy to use any means available, including war, to get it. Most of their followers either use their religious 'beliefs' at worst as an excuse for violence or at best as a means to make themselves feel like better people than those around them, allowing them to point a moral finger at others, whilst ignoring their own shortcomings. I must admit I like the history, traditions and ceremonies associated with them but that aside they are mostly anachronistic and should be confined to the dustbins of history.

[Vince Green]

The welfare system sucks people in, it turns them from the people they were into people who don't want or see the need to work. Fifteen or more years ago my cousin got made redundant in the Midlands. A family man with no formal qualifications but years of engineering behind him. He started looking for a job but there weren't any, not in engineering anyway, time went by and he stopped looking. He got used to the lifestye and how to work the system.

 

Today is is "on the sick" because of very dubious sciatica. I get sciatica, most people do, his doesn't seem any worse than mine. However once he was signed off it was a meal ticket for life. He lives rent free, has a new mobility car every three years and his wife (also now on the sick with arthritis) is his carer and gets carers allowance. You can bet he votes Labour, thinks they are wonderful.

 

This is how the system is wrong, I don't mean to disrespect my cousin but it turned a good man into what he has become today. But he has a roof over his head, a new car outside, food on the table. They still go away for holidays, why should he bother?

 

This is not welfare, it is madness total madness. There are millions like him. The social workers just bring him more forms to fill in to claim more benefits, nobody would refuse that.

[kdubya]

The welfare system sucks people in, it turns them from the people they were into people who don't want or see the need to work. Fifteen or more years ago my cousin got made redundant in the Midlands. A family man with no formal qualifications but years of engineering behind him. He started looking for a job but there weren't any, not in engineering anyway, time went by and he stopped looking. He got used to the lifestye and how to work the system.

 

Today is is "on the sick" because of very dubious sciatica. I get sciatica, most people do, his doesn't seem any worse than mine. However once he was signed off it was a meal ticket for life. He lives rent free, has a new mobility car every three years and his wife (also now on the sick with arthritis) is his carer and gets carers allowance. You can bet he votes Labour, thinks they are wonderful.

 

This is how the system is wrong, I don't mean to disrespect my cousin but it turned a good man into what he has become today. But he has a roof over his head, a new car outside, food on the table. They still go away for holidays, why should he bother?

 

This is not welfare, it is madness total madness. There are millions like him. The social workers just bring him more forms to fill in to claim more benefits, nobody would refuse that.

 

you could qualify for sickness benefit, just claim terminal bitterness, just remember it was your beloved thatcher that actively encouraged those she put out of work to claim sickness benefit rather than inflate the unemployed figures, she it seems had the mentality that she would rather pay all in the way of benefit, than something in the way of subsidy and keep people in work, you know paying their own stamp and contributing to the system via paye,

but of course that cuts against the grain of the "touch the forelock brigade" who still exist in this country, usually in the form of the some self-employed look at me merchants, who then fiddle the system far more than those solely on benefit, thanks to the £1.50 an hour they pay themselves and claim more back through "work needs" than your average MP with a duck pond

[Vince Green]

you could qualify for sickness benefit, just claim terminal bitterness, just remember it was your beloved thatcher that actively encouraged those she put out of work to claim sickness benefit rather than inflate the unemployed figures, she it seems had the mentality that she would rather pay all in the way of benefit, than something in the way of subsidy and keep people in work, you know paying their own stamp and contributing to the system via paye,

but of course that cuts against the grain of the "touch the forelock brigade" who still exist in this country, usually in the form of the some self-employed look at me merchants, who then fiddle the system far more than those solely on benefit, thanks to the £1.50 an hour they pay themselves and claim more back through "work needs" than your average MP with a duck pond

Where in my post did I mention Thatcher? Terminal bitterness? me? I don't think so. Terminal cynic maybe. And don't think I am a right wing southerner. I may live in London now but I was born in Gateshead. I know all about people with a chip on their shoulder. I bet theres not a pub or club in the whole of the NE where Maggie's name isn't mentioned at least once in the course of an evening - every evening.

 

Even now after all these years everythings all her fault. Talk about living in the past. Labour feeds on these people and they are the very people they should be helping and supporting. The very people who created the Labour party in the first place. Do you think Tony Blair or Gordon Brown gave a **** for miners or the unemployed ? Do you think Ed Milliband does now?

Edited August 25, 2011 by Vince Green

[keg]

JR,where in my post do i label all unemployed with the same tag? I used the word significant. This is based on my own experiences here in Leeds.

 

I can only base my comments on my own life experiences, and having left school to work on a farm, YTS scheme etc where i was used as cheap labour but you either sit there and moan or get on with it.

 

I don't wag a finger of distaste at anyone, I follow the rule of " never comment on a man until you walk in his shoes".

 

But there always has and always will be a percentage who do not want to work, just as there will be a small number who want to work but can't find it.