I have no idea whether or not he’s going to be a “yes” man

They are ALL yes men. How often do MPs defy the whip? It’s rare.

So why make that point then?

meless people sleeping on the streets, people going hungry, the disabled and infirm stranded in their homes, persecution of the jobless etc for a few quid more a month in your pocket then fine.

Just lol at this.

I see your on this forum, so you have a smartphone/computer/tablet of some description. How can you use this device, knowing that there are others out there going without? How do you sleep at night?

I also want to see more banking regulation (although neither have a great track record on this)

@wrecker, what more would you like to see, there has been a huge increase in banking regulation and capital requirements since the crash ? The banking levy has gone up 6 times ( I think) and the recent move from 0.15% to 0.20% represents a 30% increase in this tax and quite possibly will result in HSBC relocating it’s HQ.

Personally I would like to see consumer credit rules introduced like we have in other countries, eg compulsory to supply tax return/accounts to get a mortgage (ie no self cert), minimum deposit, sharing of credit card data with legal limits as to how much you can borrow. We already have much higher capital requirements which make banks much safer and we have the EU imposed bonus caps.

@konabunny, I think quite a lot of people vote based on personal economics/taxes, they have an opinion that they cannot afford to vote otherwise.

Its the lack of money coming in from the economic crash/downturn that has meant we cannot afford it. Govt spending did not cause the crash and govt spending was not in any way shape or form casual in the recession.
No govt ever saves for a rainy day tory or labour and labour has run more surpluses than the Tories and GO matched the spending pledges.

JY Major handed Labour a budget surplus, they just turned it into a £90bn pa deficit. The deficit has made recovering from the recession much more difficult and it has made the recession much deeper than it would have been otherwise.

Unless you are a non dom

Non Dom status isn’t tax evasion, its perfectly legal with significant increase in claimants during the last Labour government. The announced Labour crack down will most likely result in significant lost revenue to HMRC from direct and indirect taxes and general spending.

The rest of the EU can better afford their spending commitments as they raise a huge amount of money by having VAT on food. I refer to this point in response to comments about regressive tax regimes (inc general Tory bashing) when in fact we have one which is far more generous to the less well off than do our European cousins.

I see your on this forum, so you have a smartphone/computer/tablet of some description. How can you use this device, knowing that there are others out there going without? How do you sleep at night?

Ah yes the good old argument that unless you’re a penniless hermit you have no right to be concerned about social justice and equality. So you’re advocating a race to the bottom?

They are ALL yes men. How often do MPs defy the whip? It’s rare.

Not in the last parliament it wasn’t. (EDIT: See here) But I completely disagree with your view that an MP should represent the views of his constituency on every issue as if he is merely the deliverer of the result of rolling referenda, you vote for your MP based on his qualities to do the best for your constituency, it is up to him to work out how to do that. If you think someone else could do it better, you vote for them at the next election.

@wrecker, what more would you like to see, there has been a huge increase in banking regulation and capital requirements since the crash ? The banking levy has gone up 6 times ( I think) and the recent move from 0.15% to 0.20% represents a 30% increase in this tax and quite possibly will result in HSBC relocating it’s HQ.

It’s not about what it costs them, it’s about what they’re allowed to do.
I’ll bow to your superior knowledge on this (I’m not a financial type) but the catastrophe which was created by the banks being irresponsible dicks and then having the nerve to take OUR money to get them out of the shit can never be allowed to happen again. I’m not convinced that the checks and balances are currently in place to ensure this.
The facts that nobody has been held to account AND most are still very wealthy individuals grips my shit.

molgrips – Member

…

Do you really think your family will actually suffer under labour? I don’t just mean a few quid a month on tax.

For me, it’s not about the tax, the difference isn’t great.

Where Labour really worry me is on Education.
They’ve a history of really screwing it up for the children (not talking about teachers here) and if you thought Gove was a meddling twonk, you’ve obviously forgotten how much worse it can be under a bureaucratic, authoritarian, left wing version.
That’s where I’m concerned about family potentially suffering under Labour – or even worse – a Labour/Green alliance. The damage to childrens’ education damages their whole future.
And no amount of tweaking of tax systems, benefits, or welfare can really compare significantly.

For balance, I have similar concerns over the Conservatives and the NHS.
IMO, another term could allow them to do irreversible damage to an institution which serves the country better than any other alternative ever could. it’s taken 60 years to build and i worry they could easily destroy it within the next 5.

So all this talk of tax/welfare difference really doesn’t matter to me – they’re not that different.
For me, it’s a choice between childrens education or national health service suffering.

edit – or neither

Major handed Labour a budget surplus

He didn’t, but he did hand over a balanced budget so a surplus occurred a few years later as Brown broadly followed Tory spending plans in Labour’s first term.

For balance, I have similar concerns over the Conservatives and the NHS.

Labour has been saying that the Tories will destroy the NHS since 1948, despite being in power for 40 of the intervening years, they have proved completely incompetent at this task.

JY Major handed Labour a budget surplus, they just turned it into a £90bn pa deficit

100 % accurate again I assume 😆

UK pays approx £48 billion a year in national debt interest payments

Without that debt, there would be no need for austerity…

This is probably about as close to the truth as all the toadying spin dreamed up by vast teams of PR agents and bullshit mongers that is being bandied around at the moment in the hope of suckering some mugs…

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW8JisK9gkk[/video]

mefty – Member
Labour has been saying that the Tories will destroy the NHS since 1948, despite being in power for 40 of the intervening years, they have proved completely incompetent at this task.

Ok mefty.
You keep telling yourself that it’s all about the extra penny in the pound in your pocket .

I see your on this forum, so you have a smartphone/computer/tablet of some description. How can you use this device, knowing that there are others out there going without? How do you sleep at night?

This really is a stupid point to make one can have access to the internet and also care about the poor and those in need. You can object to the excesses of the capitalist model without wanting to return to a cave dwelling feudal barter system. Its only minor use is it is an easy way to identify those who struggle to construct coherent arguments to justify their own selfishness

Ok mefty.
You keep telling yourself that it’s all about the extra penny in the pound in your pocket .

A lazy stereotype, well done.

Did Darling just give up in the end? That rubber stamp must have taken a beating!

He didn’t, but he did hand over a balanced budget so a surplus occurred a few years later as Brown broadly followed Tory spending plans in Labour’s first term.

Is the much better answer

Given the accusations made towards the Tories, I am surprised they are not all in jail! Off the scale….

Where Labour really worry me is on Education.
They’ve a history of really screwing it up for the children

Really? Genuinely interested in when this happened?

Very funny newspaper endorsement from the younger generation for Labour – some cracking turns of phrase

The Tab

I love the end paragraph:

Vote for Labour if you want a foot in the door. Vote Conservative if you want the door gently closed in your face by a white-gloved porter.

It really doesn’t matter who I vote for, the winner will be a Tory.

http://www.voterpower.org.uk/hertfordshire-north-east

They’ve a history of really screwing it up for the children (not talking about teachers here)

Okay – is there some sort of objective data that can substantiate or disprove this?

If this were the case, would you not expect education in Scotland to be significantly worse than in England considering Labour has been in power significantly more often than the Tories since WW2 there?

If this were the case, would you not expect education in Scotland to be significantly worse than in England considering Labour has been in power significantly more often than the Tories since WW2 there?

Eh? They haven’t had devolved education for that long…

From the last page but this deserves a bit of challenge

If you are that poorly off the Tories won’t help. If you are doing ok, then you would still do OK under labour, but the really poor people might also do better.

This or a variant of this is often quoted as a trueism on here but it’s not, it’s a just political view point.

The oposing view point is that growth is good for all and the best way to make the size of the welfare budget bigger is not to take a larger proportion of the overall pot but to make the pot bigger in the first place.

Just as a vote for the Tory’s can be derided as a vote for greed and individualism a vote for Labour can be derided as a vote for jealousy and a lack of collective ambition.

“Why should I care if some people get really rich if me and my peers are a bit better off as well”

I know it’s more nuanced than that but its also not as simple as “you vote tory, therefore you are a selfish arsehole”

The elephant in the room for both parties is productivity. Neither seem to be addressing that issue and that is really why we don’t feel that well off, Labour or Tory, if they don’t address the productivity issue then they are just fidling round the edges about how to dish out a pot that is growing slower than the amount that pot needs to fix.

Unless you are rich, own multiple properties or own a decent sized business, you are a moron for voting Tory and do not understand how the world works.

Oh and if you get your ‘News’ and information from mainstream newspapers you are also a moron.

HTH.

Unless you are rich, own multiple properties or own a decent sized business, you are a moron for voting Tory and do not understand how the world works.

Brilliant on all levels

The oposing view point is that growth is good for all and the best way to make the size of the welfare budget bigger is not to take a larger proportion of the overall pot but to make the pot bigger in the first place

Quite so but that is not an opposing viewpoint. Labour do not want to tax to the point that growth is stifled, despite many tories insisting that. Labour do want growth, but the difference is the manner of that growth. The Tory way is to reduce regulation to allow people to do as they see fit, but the problem is that whilst that can increase GDP nicely it ignores the fact that money begets money, privilege begets privilege and poverty begets poverty. That is the real problem I have with small government. If you let people sort it out for themselves then that results in less social mobility, or if you like less equal opportunity. And it’s not malicious either. Hypothetically, if state schools are worse than private ones, the rich cannot be expected to send their kids to state schools and the poor cannot afford to pay – it’s a logical conclusion of that situation – thus the poor kids are disadvantaged. The state then needs to spend more money on state schools to fix this issue, and it can only do that through tax of one sort or another.

I don’t consider myself or a lot of people I know morons.

statements like that from Kudos are moronic.

Unless you are rich, own multiple properties or own a decent sized business, you are a moron for voting Tory and do not understand how MY VIEW OF the world works.

FTFY

How anyone can claim to know how ‘the world works’ is hilarious!

The elephant in the room for both parties is productivity.

Indeed. The result of a total lack of business investment, while companies pay out all profits to shareholders (instead of investing it back , a la Germany), and still unreformed banks seek to lend out all that money they got as bailouts and QA as mortgages (fuelling a housing boom) and easy credit (to buy shiny things), instead of providing investment funds to SME’s.

Any of this sounding eerily familiar? Ringing any worrying bells?

Unfortunately, and somewhat unbelievably, none of the main parties are even discussing this. Which I think we can assume means they intend to do absolutely nothing at all about it.

Remember all that ‘rebalancing the economy’ guff from Osborne? So much for that!

So Mol given that large government and the issues that you mention currently co-exist – your solution seems somewhat misplaced. Plus strip out government interference and you find most of the educational establishment happy – in some cases, truly world class!

The oposing view point is that growth is good for all and the best way to make the size of the welfare budget bigger is not to take a larger proportion of the overall pot but to make the pot bigger in the first place.

The elephant in the room for both parties is productivity. Neither seem to be addressing that issue and that is really why we don’t feel that well off, Labour or Tory, if they don’t address the productivity issue then they are just fiddling round the edges

Worse than that – basic wage economics – increase wages without increasing productivity and you end up with fewer people in work but earning more – in normal parlance that is called increasing inequality. So odd which part of the political intelligentsia are proposing that Band-Aid.

They’ve a history of really screwing it up for the children (not talking about teachers here)

also interested in the evidence of this and why if gove was so good he is not still doing the job …

Plus strip out government interference and you find most of the educational establishment happy

Those running it may be happy but that does not mean the service they provide is good. How many times have the govt had to intervene in free schools?
Some have even had to be closed down as they were that poorly run.

Its just not true to claim that simply removing govt “inteference [ most would call it oversight or regulation ] remarkably makes all education better*. Even the briefest glimpse at the stats will confirm this, even to you.

* I am not sure why you said happy – was it because it was bit more nebulous and imprecise?

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/13/government-shuts-free-school-discovery-west-sussex

This really is a stupid point to make one can have access to the internet and also care about the poor and those in need. You can object to the excesses of the capitalist model without wanting to return to a cave dwelling feudal barter system. Its only minor use is it is an easy way to identify those who struggle to construct coherent arguments to justify their own selfishness.

Why would I need to argue my own selfishness? I said in my first post that Ive no interest in supporting people I don’t know and will never meet.
I want what will benefit me and people I know and care about, hence I’ll vote for the party that provides it.
If you hate capitalism and wish to borrow more money to pay for benefits and create more public sector jobs, then you carry on, that’s why you have a vote.

So Mol given that large government and the issues that you mention currently co-exist – your solution seems somewhat misplaced

Ah you mis-understand. I was speaking about general principles. In practice, either flavour of government can **** it up!

Government interfering with education is unwelcome, but government money is not. Our government is always somewhat left wing anyway, like most developed countries – they pay for our education, health, pension and so on, and this is good.

This raises another point. Gove is an absolute ****, and his ego-maniacal buggering about with education is what’s damaging. That would be the same regardless of party affiliation, probably, so that’s not an ideological point. The cutting of budgets though, that is.

I said in my first post that Ive no interest in supporting people I don’t know and will never meet.

So you wouldn’t care if there were beggars on the street and slums all around? You’d just avoid them and carry on with life? If that’s really true then you are selfish, and selfishness is bad.

@wrecker, the big changes to regulation have tried to ensure “it will never happen again”. Certainly many 100’000s have lost their jobs and substantial amounts of money from owning shares in bankrupt banks (you tend to get paid in shares) but of course they are not destitute. It’s quite difficult as someone like Fred Goodwin (RBS) made some idiotic decisions but he didn’t do anything illegal (so isn’t going to jail). The fines which have been made on banks are huge, many many billions (admitedly mostly in the US as they are more aggressive on litigation there). I am all for the UK having a more balanced economy but every other country is trying to do the same thing too, eg move into high tech manufacturing etc

@JY, hum I seem to have blanked out from 1990 to ’97 😳 . Scary how the deficit was spiraling out of control though up to 2010