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Ah well, we'll never know if people don't bother voting for it.
True. Ah well.
Only if you vote for turkeys.
Nope.
tankslapper - MemberUnless politicians are truly chosen by the people and not stand for their own self gratification, embezzlement, narcissistic tendencies then sure I'll be voting!
Go on, vote for the candidate most objectionable to the local establishment then. Send an arrow of truth, and sicken their liver with your quiver! 😆
No problem mate - it's just finding the right candidate!
Living here on England's Left Bank (Powys-Wales) I'm thinking of setting up a new organisation, the PLO - Powys Liberation Organisation 😆
Is that different from the OPL? (Organisation for the Liberation of Powys)
I've been dropping a coin in certain pubs around here for a while now.
I live in a constituency that has been Conservative, Labour and is now Liberal Democrat in the time I have lived here.
I vowed never to vote Tory after the debacle of the Poll Tax, the Miners Strike and Maggie's demolition of British Industry and Major's inept management of the recession of the early 90s (remember 3 million plus unemployed, negative equity and double digit interest rates) - and we think things are bad now! At least Brown and Darling have taken some decisive steps to get the country out of a crisis largely perpetuated by Tory bankers.
Cameron's Conservatives are worse than the last lot as they all seem to have been to Eton and Oxbridge and therefore have f*ck all experience of life as most of us live it - even previous Tory governments had people who had unprivileged backgrounds (John Major for one). And Cameron makes Blair look like a complete amateur when it comes to being a smarmy b*stard!
So I will be voting Labour (again).
PR? Say goodbye to "your" MP, and hello to party lists controlled by the central party HQ. Any kind of direct accountability gone...
If you really insist on it, a PR elected second house would perhaps be the best of both worlds.
Or you could go for the Additional Member system as adopted in Scotland
Even those who think they are voting for everyone to have a nicer life do so because it will improve theirs as well.
Not necessarily. I don't earn a huge amount of money by most people's standards (certainly on here) but I could quite happily pay more tax if it meant they reduced tax on people who earn less than me. The fact that the lowest earners pay the highest proportion of their income in taxes is a disgrace imo.
How can anyone even considering voting for a government fronted by that clammy-handshaked, gawping fish Brown?
At least Cameron has a full set of eyes. But then, I suppose things don't look half as bad when you've only got the one.
Yes the clamminess of his handshake is one of the key issues facing the country isn't it. 🙄
FWIW I personally don't think Brown is doing too bad a job, but the whole New Labour experiment has basically failed. Thatcherism-lite is still Thatcherism.
Did anyone see Mandelslime on ch4 news tonight? When the ch4 journalist confronted him about calling Rebekah Brooks a ****?
Rebekah Wade/Brooks [i]is[/i] a c unt though.
Vote Green, the only people that give a shit if the planet survives into the future. Defence, economy, none of that matters if there are no resources left, colossal pollution and sea level rises forcing mass migrations, along with food shortages and no transport.
Defence, economy, none of that matters if there are no resources left,
See? That's the kind of wooly thinking that makes the Greens completely unelectable - when resources start to run low Defence will be more important than ever.
Mogrim, it's not like we're going to have much in the way of resources to protect... Britain will not really be one of the winners of climate change and peak oil, unless we radically change our direction right now.
it's not like we're going to have much in the way of resources to protect
I think Mogrim might have been thinking more along the lines of the need to [i]attack[/i], rather than the need to [i]defend[/i]
A fair point imo.
More war?
Wont we need labour for that? 😉
*I actually quite like Gordon Brown*
Don't ask me to explain it, I know it's irrational. Like many others i have been dealt a pretty bad hand by this recession, i blame the tory bankers parceling bad debt and the thought of a tory government 'shutting up shop' horrifies me.
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Yet no-one has included how random our voting patterns are - as they are linked to the economic cycle (which politicians have little influence over).
At the downturn of the last economic cycle we voted in Labour (Blair had schmoozed the right people e.g. Murdoch and the City)
... we then had many years on the upswing (aka a boom). So Labour were good.
The boom couldn't last and the longer it went on the worse the bust was going to be.
It went bust and Labour were bad. We will vote the Tories in.
Who will ride the crest of the boom, until it busts...
Meanwhile the Murdoch and the City boys are laughing all the way to their country mansions at how the great unwashed keep blaming politicians.
DaRC_L - nail on head.
yup darcl is right
i really do wish brown had the balls to try and actually reform the banks and the city after the last screw up and the oft promised lords reform
he cant move away from the same thatcherite business model especialy with mandlespin running so much sadly neither clegg nor dave seem to offer us anything different
i wonder if this will have any effect on peoples voting patterns?
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/when-boris-met-dave
Something equally shitty?
So are you saying that you believe that the challenges facing whoever governs our country are too hard for anyone to overcome? Or are you saying that you believe that the only people who stand for election are irreparably corrupt and only in it for their own benefit?
If it's the first then I'd suggest that you become a nihilist because you're never going to accept anything other than it'll all go to hell in a hand cart and you may as well stop caring or you'll worry yourself to an early grave. 😉 If it's the latter then what do you think has put off anyone less venal from standing for parliament? Could it be the reflexively cynical nature the electorate has developed?
I remember the sheer misery of the recession in the early 90's well and it seemed to go on for a heck of a long time. Interest rates were insane I seem to recall and the Tories just sat there and seemingly did nothing.
Fast forward to the current recession and while Labour's lack of regulation had something to do with it, I reckon they did a solid job of stabilising the situation. I dislike Brown on a personal level, but he took action and it worked - at least for the time being.
Looking at local Government the Lib Dems are quite a big force. Their manifesto is radical compared to the Tories or Labour, but it is all common sense stuff which I whole heartedly agree with for the most part.
Right now my top option is Lib Dem with Labour coming in second. The Tories are probably right down there with UKIP for me, I can't see Cameron and his chums leading the country in the right direction at all.
I think Jimmer Himself needs to have a word with Himself. Gormless Brown presided over the nation's coffers throughout the biggest boom in almost 100 years, and did absolutely nothing to prepare the country for recession.
I'm not an accountant, let alone the Chancellor of the Exchequer or Prime Minister, but I could see it coming from 2 years away and made provision/adjustments to my finances to cope. Why didn't he?
He was so arrogant and had such unswerving faith in his own ability that he thought he didn't need to save for a rainy day because it would never rain again!
The man is a complete fool, and the sooner we see a Pickfords wagon turning into Downing Street, the better.
to be honest when the most popular programe on tv is the x-factor
what hope have we got of voting in anyone decent?
Jordan for President....
and did absolutely nothing to prepare the country for recession.
& other PMs/chancellors in the past have?
If they did, what went wrong in the early 80s & 90s?
No - none of them do
I'm not an accountant, let alone the Chancellor of the Exchequer or Prime Minister, but I could see it coming from 2 years away and made provision/adjustments to my finances to cope.
Ah, that's probably because unlike thicko Gordon Brown (who didn't get accepted go to Edinburgh University until he was 16 years old) you are highly intelligent. Maybe [i]even[/i] as highly intelligent as AdamG.
You saw it coming from 2 years away you say ? So about 3 1/2 years ago you realised that some of the US banks/lenders would go tits up ? Shame you've only been a forum user for 2 weeks, otherwise you could have warned us all 😐
Still, never mind .... you can make up for it by telling us all when precisely the next boom will be.
Like that, we can all 'make provision/adjustments to our finances'.
Although I suspect that your crystal ball gazing abilities are in reality, somewhat limited. And that the only certainties we can be sure of, is that bust follows boom follows bust follows boom. Because the truth is, that the system is ****ed.
And that the only certainties we can be sure of, is that bust follows boom follows bust follows boom.
No, Gordon said there wouldn't be any more boom and bust.....
You saw it coming from 2 years away you say ? So about 3 1/2 years ago you realised that some of the US banks/lenders would go tits up ? Shame you've only been a forum user for 2 weeks, otherwise you could have warned us all
Not quite, no. But I had enough foresight to see that steep rise in house prices, aided by over-valuing in the housing market couldn't continue. And that any correction would result in huge numbers of homeowners in negative equity which would cause massive problems for financial institutions, ergo, the economy as a whole.
But not being an economist, I couldn't predict how it would go tits up, or even whether or not it would. But I certainly sensed trouble on the horizon and battened down the hatches.
As for the next boom, the peak is between 9 and 14 years away. Buy now if you want to reap the rewards.
No, Gordon said there wouldn't be any more boom and bust.....
Never mind what Gordon said. The wally thought he had found the mythical and elusive holy grail of Capitalism. He had obviously completely deluded himself. Because you don't need a degree in economics to know that bust follows boom follows bust follows boom. Of course it helps if you haven't got too much faith in Capitalism - something which is seriously lacking in Brown.
No, but what fascinates me is how the guy with the funny username, was able to precisely predict when the bust was about to happen. I mean the guy according to himself is not "an accountant, let alone the Chancellor of the Exchequer or Prime Minister".
And yet, he was able to precisely predict that American financial institutions would go tits up. Why, even the US Treasury wasn't able to predict that. He must be very clever indeed. Or full of sh1t.
i dont think gordon really believed hed eliminated boom and bust he was just spouting hollow political soundbites which is the job of a politician isnt it?
No I'm convinced he did kimbers. The guy isn't Blair, he's fairly honest about his beliefs, and unlike Blair, he has some convictions. There is no way that he would have said something if he had thought that it would come back and haunt him as 'No return to boom and bust' has. The guy isn't stupid, deluded maybe, but definitely not stupid.
No, but what fascinates me is how the guy with the funny username, was able to precisely predict when the bust was about to happen. I mean the guy according to himself is not "an accountant, let alone the Chancellor of the Exchequer or Prime Minister".And yet, he was able to precisely predict that American financial institutions would go tits up. Why, even the US Treasury wasn't able to predict that. He must be very clever indeed. Or full of sh1t.
It wasn't too hard to think 2 or 3 or 4 years ago that the economy seemed to be based almost entirely on borrowing money to buy useless crap made abroad and that house prices couldn't go on increasing for ever, and moreover that it was probably a bad thing if they did.
All binges end with a hangover, everyone apart from Gordon knew this. He probably knew it as well but was just desperate to get to be PM before the music stopped.
No, but what fascinates me is how the guy with the funny username, was able to precisely predict when the bust was about to happen. I mean the guy according to himself is not "an accountant, let alone the Chancellor of the Exchequer or Prime Minister".
Ernie you really must stop deliberately misinterpreting people's statements to fit in with your belief system. The guy never said he precisely predicted the recession just that he thought the high valuations in the property market were unsustainably high and made him think that there could be a house price collapse and subsequent collateral damage. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Thank you Uponthedowns, you saved me typing pretty much the same thing.
I clearly stated that I couldn't possibly have predicted exactly how or when the collapse would come, just that I could feel it coming. In much the same way that I feel the next peak will be in around a decade or so. Just a hunch based on irrefutable historical trends.
Ernie, stop being a forking our soul.
Ernie you really must stop deliberately misinterpreting people's statements to fit in with your belief system. The guy never said he precisely predicted the recession
Nope, he very [i]definitely[/i] said that he had predicted the recession coming. Quote :
[i]"....and did absolutely nothing to prepare the country for recession.
I'm not an accountant, let alone the Chancellor of the Exchequer or Prime Minister, but I could see it coming from 2 years away and made provision/adjustments to my finances to cope.[/i]"
I did not 'misinterpret' what he said.....what he said is crystal clear.
I don't mean to be rude Ernest, but you're quite the idiot, aren't you.
You started by saying: [i]"You saw it coming from 2 years away you say ? So about 3 1/2 years ago you realised that some of the US banks/lenders would go tits up ?"[/i]
At no point in my preceding post did I mention US financial institutions, in fact, to clarify, I politely told you that [i]"...not being an economist, I couldn't predict how it would go tits up, or even whether or not it would. But I certainly sensed trouble on the horizon and battened down the hatches."[/i]
Then you said: [i]"And yet, he was able to precisely predict that American financial institutions would go tits up. Why, even the US Treasury wasn't able to predict that. He must be very clever indeed. Or full of sh1t."[/i]
Rather rude to accuse me of being full of sh1t, don't you think. Rude, or perhaps just jealous that you don't have the financial acumen to foresee troubled times and cut your cloth accordingly.
Or maybe you're simply not in a position to exploit circumstances in the way that I have and that makes you feel a little inadequate. Don't worry about it mate, just keep reading my posts - you might learn something. 😉
At no point in my preceding post did I mention US financial institutions
No I did that. Because every government, every finance minister, every economist, [i]whatever[/i], the world over, knows that the recession kicked in when the US financial institutions went tits up. You claim to have successfully predicted when the recession would occur. So you undoubtedly foresaw the problems concerning US lenders. And since you claim not to be an economist, you are either very clever indeed or, full of sh1t.
Rather rude to accuse me of being full of sh1t, don't you think.
I also accused you of possibly being 'very clever indeed'. But don't give me all this bollox about how polite you are, and how rude I am. You started off the beginning of this thread by telling me that you detested me. Something which I am unlikely to forget.
Aah, so you're poor. That explains it. The difference between you and I, Ernest, is that I can remain polite to those who I detest. Your resorting to personal insults betrays your true character, and quite probably, the reason for your financial situation.
I can remain polite
What, you don't consider telling someone that you detest them to be 'impolite' ?
And where's 'personal insults' which you claim I have resorted to ?
BTW...unless you've been living in one of my wardrobes or something, there is absolutely no way that you could possibly know anything about, or any of the reasons for, my current financial situation. It didn't stop you from telling me that you detested me though, did it ?
Nope, he very definitely said that he had predicted the recession coming
Of course he did but you claim that he "precisely predicted" it- which he didn't. You may not like the guy (I agree his comment about detesting poor people is objectionable) but why not stick to criticising what he actually said instead of what you'd like him to have said.
Just delete the word 'precisely' out of my posts then and leave the rest as it is, if it makes you feel better uponthedowns.
It doesn't change the fact that he claims to have successfully predicted the recession, something which all the top economists in the US Treasury, World Bank, IMF, etc etc weren't able to do. Not bad for someone who claims not to be an economist, eh ?
So, whaddya reckon .....very intelligent indeed, maybe [i]even[/i] as clever as AdamG, or full of sh1t.... what is it ?
btw, if his prediction wasn't 'precise', how much do you reckon he was out by.....weeks, months, years ??
EDIT : ref : [i]"You may not like the guy"[/i] ... I find it very hard to dislike someone who I do not personally know. So no, I don't 'dislike him'.
if his prediction wasn't 'precise', how much do you reckon he was out by.....weeks, months, years ??
Time will be my judge Ernest. I decided not to reinvest at what has now turned out to be the "top of the market" 2-3 years ago. I had a hunch, and it turned out to be right, in spite of advice by more than one "expert" at the time.
I invested 10 months ago and have more than doubled my outlay. Yes, a bit lucky, but I tend to find that the more research I do and the more I follow my hunches, the luckier I get. As I said, keep reading - you might learn something.
As I said, keep reading - you might learn something.
Well I will certainly read your posts intently. You sound as intelligent as AdamG .......so yeah, thanks 8)
btw, did you know AdamG ? Only you haven't asked me who he was ...... I thought you might be intrigued at my repeated references to him - no ?
Very little about you intrigues me Ernest, but being fairly new to this forum, there's an awful lot of "STW vernacular" that goes right over my head.
FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT
Hardly, Backhander. I'd be more inclined to liken it to swatting flies. 😉