Poll: Which party will get your vote in the General Election?

[Dolph]

Wow, I'm astonished you have such a low opinion of my intelligence. Do you really think my post was based just on the content of that article, written, like you said, by the former Mayor of London?

I first got a wiff of what, I believe to be, the truth after following a link in the article to this:

http://www.londoncitizens.org.uk/livingwage/index.html

From which I can quote:



Another link took me to an article demonstrating Conservative members of the London Assembly voting against key parts of the legislation. Also, given the fact that Labour introduced the National minimum wage (in the face of fierce Tory opposition, saying it would bankrupt the country), I didn't think it too far fetched for such a policy to be introduced by a Labour Mayor, whilst being opposed by the Conservative opposition.

But as per usual, I invite you to prove me wrong.

Oh yeah.. Damn! I forgot everyone that isn't voting Tory is Gordon Brown...

You are wrong, you've allowed Labour to take credit for a grass roots campaign that they wouldn't even allow london's public services to support. It took a Tory mayor for that to happen...

You also conveniently forget that Labour's policy of fiscal drag means that the minimum wage policy didn't actually help the low earners... It simply meant more tax paid (and badly spent) and greater low level inflation.

 

[Naffa]

You are wrong, you've allowed Labour to take credit for a grass roots campaign that they wouldn't even allow london's public services to support. It took a Tory mayor for that to happen...

You also conveniently forget that Labour's policy of fiscal drag means that the minimum wage policy didn't actually help the low earners... It simply meant more tax paid (and badly spent) and greater low level inflation.

I'd expect more of your reasoning than that, Dolph. You've quite clearly misunderstood my intentions when posting the article. I didn't post it as a pro-Labour piece, I posted it as an anti-Tory piece and hoped it would be viewed as such. I haven't conveniently forgotten anything, I just haven't bothered myself with anything irrelevant to my point.

EDIT: And if I do have to concede defeat on whether Ken was actually being accurate, as I hope Hatter will be able to clear up, then my post will become irrelevant as it was very much a party political post.

 

[Hatter The Mad]

I don't see why it was an anti-Tory piece. Boris has introduced the LWW in nearly all of London's public departments. Cameron was selectively quoted - the discussion is about rolling out a LWW type scheme in other places.

So, in this context, Cameron is right in saying it is a Conservative policy, and Boris introduced *it* - 'it' being the actual introduction of it, not the identification of what the LWW should be.

 

[jumpy]

election blues & hobson's choice

Seems to me that the practical concerns of voting in the UK are flawed.
Both my parents have the following idea regarding how you cast your vote.

You vote for the next strongest contender against the party you do not wish to get in to power.
So, if I don't want another 5 years of labour gravy-training, I should vote tory to ensure that (as the next most likely party) labour do not get another term in office. This completely ignores the question of who I may actually want to cast my vote for.
It's voting by default. To be fair, with the two party system we have now (forget lib-dem) it does seem to be a logical means of voting, but I cannot shake the feeling that something is going wrong somewhere along the line with this method, regardless of how pragmatic it may be.

My personal feeling about this and most other elections since I was old enough to vote is that whoever wins, we lose. One way or another. And the reality is that no matter who is elected everything is going to cost more for the individual/ordinary families. Having struggled with the lack of decent employment and financial pressure being a factor in the breakup of many relationships regarding the recession (which I for one do not believe is 'over') it's all just going to be more of the same, spouted off by people who don't live in the real world of bills and economy food spending and constantly worrying if there's enough money left at the end of the month to pay for everything that the law says you must.

Any fool who tells you minimum wage is enough to live on needs to be kicked out of their ******* ivory tower and given a rude introduction to life without parliamentary expenses and business perks and second homes.

minimum wage = £5.80ph (re-calculate that figure to £4.83 ph if you're under 22 years old or £3.57 ph if you're under 18)
x 40 hrs per week x 4 weeks = £928.00
- 20% income tax/NI (as a rough figure to go by) = £742.40

this has to pay for the following:
rent £450pcm
utilities (gas/elec) £200 per quarter, so that's roughly £50 pcm
council tax £100 pcm
tv license £11 pcm
vehicle insurance £50 pcm
telephone £12.50 pcm
internet £19.46 pcm
house/contents insurance £10 pcm
fuel to travel to work £120 pcm (could be less, but that's what I used to pay last year, so it's probably a lot more by now)

So far I'm not including water rates, road tax, credit card bills, overdrafts, medical/prescription expenses, or feeding myself.

So Already I'm looking at £822.96 before I factor in food, clothes, the occasional pint with a few friends a couple of times a month, and other bills (ie car repairs/mot/road tax/vets bills/pension... the list goes on).
Ok I could get rid of the internet/car or whatever but that still only leaves me with £633.50. Add to that about £25 per week food comes to £733.50.

So, to save for the future/pension etc, or put some money aside for anything else, I'm left with £8.90 disposable income pcm with which to achieve this.

I know I'm not living in some fly-blown dust bowl where the next tribe might machete me or my family to death, or anything like that (so I should count my self lucky), but really, what kind of life is this?

Most of the figures are based on what I'm currently having to pay out and on previous work income (since the construction industry fell over and the halfway decent salary I had as a draughtsman vanished into the banking crisis) in menial jobs. And I'm sure there are those who have it worse off even than that.

So, the illustrative point I'm trying to make is that it will make little or no god-damn difference whatsoever who wins the next election - I will be no better off financially (lets face it; financially is the only real benchmark working stiffs are interested in). Indeed the very real outcome is that it will cost me even more to break even every month.

This is why there is voter apathy and a total lack of faith in politics or the future of this country. Because for Mr average, he may as well **** into the wind for all the real difference it will make to his life in the long or short term; whether he votes labour, tory, lib-dem, snp, green, bnp, monster raving loony party. As such the right and privilege of your democratic obligation serves no real purpose to you or your family in any real tangible way.
It may be a touch cynical for me to say it, but voting only means something to those who are canvassing for your vote.

That is why we have 'politicians' and not statesmen running our country - I know there is some overlap in the following quotations, but I hope my inference is clear (I have not edited the entries, save to remove the audio guide to pronunciation).

pol·i·ti·cian

 –noun
1.a person who is active in party politics.

2.a seeker or holder of public office, who is more concerned about winning favour or retaining power than about maintaining principles.

3.a person who holds a political office.

4.a person skilled in political government or administration; statesman or stateswoman.

5.an expert in politics or political government.

6.a person who seeks to gain power or advancement within an organization in ways that are generally disapproved.

states·man

  –noun,plural-men.
1.a person who is experienced in the art of government or versed in the administration of government affairs.

2.a person who exhibits great wisdom and ability in directing the affairs of a government or in dealing with important public issues.

I have a dislike for labour (as the current government) and the way they have run things for the last 14 years; mainly because of their lies and deception and total lack of decency and the effrontery of their ambition in gaining and holding on to power and for their attitude towards anyone who had any money saved for a rainy day (pension tax anyone?), student fees (they all had the benefit of a free education to get them to where they are today) and many more things which mark them out as generally deplorable as individuals and despicable as a party.

But is my vote really to be wasted on the lesser of two current evils by voting tory in the hope that labour will loose the election, or do I spend it on some idealist fringe party with no hope of influencing anything?

That last sentence is the quintessence of what my vote is worth. Probably yours too.

 

[starfighter]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8612610.stm

With policies like this I can't take The Conservatives seriously.

It seems like they are just trying to win over older voters than anything else.

Is anyone honestly going to stay married or get married to someone they don't love for a tax break.

fake marriages will save Britain. Yay for discrimination and not being married so I now pay more tax because I am obviously an inferior person.

 

[meghatronic]

With policies like this I can't take The Conservatives seriously.

Is anyone honestly going to stay married or get married to someone they don't love for a tax break.

/facepalm

 

[Dolph]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8612610.stm

With policies like this I can't take The Conservatives seriously.

It seems like they are just trying to win over older voters than anything else.

Is anyone honestly going to stay married or get married to someone they don't love for a tax break.

fake marriages will save Britain. Yay for discrimination and not being married so I now pay more tax because I am obviously an inferior person.

Do you not think that something that adds another layer of responsibility before the state gets involved in the event of unemployment etc is not worth a tax break?

 

[meghatronic]

minimum wage = £5.80ph (re-calculate that figure to £4.83 ph if you're under 22 years old or £3.57 ph if you're under 18)
x 40 hrs per week x 4 weeks = £928.00
- 20% income tax/NI (as a rough figure to go by) = £742.40

You're being deliberately inflammatory or disingenuous here.
Yearly salay £11,136
Personal allowance is £6,475.
Therefore tax on £4661 is £77 a month, NOT £186 as you claimed.

That's an extra £28 a week you miscalculated by - more than most of my bills.

 

[Hatter The Mad]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8612610.stm

With policies like this I can't take The Conservatives seriously.

It seems like they are just trying to win over older voters than anything else.

Is anyone honestly going to stay married or get married to someone they don't love for a tax break.

fake marriages will save Britain. Yay for discrimination and not being married so I now pay more tax because I am obviously an inferior person.

It is to partially negate the benefits of being a couple but living separately for extra living benefits. It makes perfect sense

 

[Hatter The Mad]

I just cannot see of think of a list of reasons to vote FOR Labour, but numerous reasons to vote for Conservative (as below) or Lib Dem.

It boggles my mind why anyone would want to give Brown a mandate for his 13 years of screwing up.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5903158/the-case-for-voting-conservative.thtml

1. School reform. In itself, it's enough reason to vote Tory. Gove has specifically promise that within four years of a Tory government everyone will have an independent school offering to educate their kid for free. This should have been a 1981 Tory proposal, but Keith Joseph lost a battle with the civil service (after he recruited a young Cambridge graduate named Oliver Letwin to help him fight it).

2. School reform will be a model for public service revolution. Cameron's plans to let bureacracies stage their own buyouts is a nod to this general idea: letting bureaucracies grow into industries. We quote Letwin, describing a country where "hospitals compete for patients, schools compete for pupils, welfare provider compete for results in getting people out of welfare and into work." This is the Cameron mission, and it is nothing short of revolutionary.

3. A growth agenda. Corporation tax will drop from 28p to 25p - en route to 20p. Low business tax means more business activity means more jobs means surer economic recovery. This is tory economics: drop tax rates, and you end up with more tax revenue through greater economic growth. Brown thinks higher state spending will lead the recovery - precisely the illusion which led Japan into its "lost decade"

4. New approach on tax. Osborne will introduce real-world taxation modelling - or so-called "dynamic tax scoring" - to the Treasury. This will remove the pernicious bias towards extra taxation. It will hopefully explain to Osborne that the 50p tax will lose him a nine-figure sum in tax revenue.

5. The IDS welare reform agenda. Which will actually cure the "giant evil" of welfare dependency, as Beveridge famously put it. I elaborated on this in a piece for the Daily Telegraph yesterday.

6. Family reform. Cameron is more pro-family than any other post-war family leader - he can't afford to go very far with tax breaks now, but will when he can. And he does so on the basis that the family is the first, best and cheapest provider of health, wealth and education. Tory welfare policies will go with the grain of human nature, rather than against it.

7. The liberty agenda. Cameron has said he'll support MPs in reversing the hunting ban. He'll abolish ID cards. Why? Because Conservatives believe very strongly in liberties - that the state should be small, and people should be big.

8. Europe. Now that the hated EU referendum has been passed in defiance of British public opinion, there is not much we can do to reverse it. But Cameron has given guarantees that Britain will adopt an Irish-style policy: no more integration without a referendum. If the Greek and Spanish fiscal fiasco does indeed produce a two-speed Europe, Cameron will be sure to negotiate the best settlement for Britain as we edge away from a federalism which has no democratic support. Cameron would not relish such a battle, but he knows if he didn't perform then his party would rebel in a way that makes Maastricht look like a picnic.

9. The unions. They'll test Cameron early on, and the battle will be existential. If he caves, he'll be as broken a figure as Heath was after the 1972 U-turn.

10. Cameron's Character. He's at his best when he's in a crisis - his gut instincts are always right. Think about how he saved the party in the election-which-never-was by producing radical policies. His versatility to changing circumstances (and his ability to dump bad ideas that lesser, vainer politicians would remain wedded to) is perhaps his strongest characteristic. When you think about the ever-mutating problems he'll find in No10, then it's fairly clear: Cameron is precisely the right man for what lies ahead.

Now, The Spectator does not agree with Cameron on everything. But our differences are more over timing than direction: we’d like the revenue-destroying 50p tax abolished immediately, rather than the two-year timeframe that Hammond talks of. We’d like more radical health reform, and consider the NHS pledge to be unwise and impractical. If he does form the next government, we shall hold him to account even more ferociously that we did Brown: we expect more from those whom we respect. In Coffee House will seize on his errors, as we have done Brown’s.

But if the scale of Labour’s failure is astonishing, then so is the scale of the Conservatives opportunity. In Cameron, the party has an exceptional leader – and someone who has the potential to be a transformative leader. Some CoffeeHousers are more sceptical than others about just what he can achieve. But let’s do what we can go get Brown out, put Cameron in No10 and find out just what he can do.

 

[Naffa]

Vince Cable attacks 'nauseating' businessmen over NI letter

Lib Dem Treasury spokesman accuses Tories of 'barefaced cheek' by co-ordinating letter criticising national insurance rise

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/09/vince-cable-business-national-insurance

Yet again, Mr Cable appears to be spot on, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Mr Jack]

The unions. They'll test Cameron early on, and the battle will be existential. If he caves, he'll be as broken a figure as Heath was after the 1972 U-turn.

It was going so well until he started using words he doesn't know the meaning of.

Existential

 

[Hatter The Mad]

Vince Cable attacks 'nauseating' businessmen over NI letter

Lib Dem Treasury spokesman accuses Tories of 'barefaced cheek' by co-ordinating letter criticising national insurance rise

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/09/vince-cable-business-national-insurance

Yet again, Mr Cable appears to be spot on, as far as I'm concerned.

Why? Do you not think that the private sector employers, the ones who will ultimately bring us out of a recession and secure good employment figures, are qualified to speak out?

 

[Mr Jack]

Why? Do you not think that the private sector employers, the ones who will ultimately bring us out of a recession and secure good employment figures, are qualified to speak out?

I have to say I thought James Kahn's analysis on Newsnight sounded closer to the money. That aside, yeah, they have a right to speak out but you're talking about a bunch of very rich men backing the party most likely to give them stonking great tax cuts - they're hardly unbaised, here.

 

[Hatter The Mad]

I have to say I thought James Kahn's analysis on Newsnight sounded closer to the money. That aside, yeah, they have a right to speak out but you're talking about a bunch of very rich men backing the party most likely to give them stonking great tax cuts - they're hardly unbaised, here.

Of course, but they have other backing, too. What other country (apart from those in absolutely dire situations) is increasing personal taxes AND employment taxes to help cut the deficit?

It isn't JUST a bunch of rich businessmen. The FIRST group to speak out about this was the Federation of Small Businesses, then the CBI, then others to follow.

Was it not Obama who recently said increasing employment taxes would be a "stupid thing to do"?

 

[Hatter The Mad]

My favourite site futurefairforall.org is digging up some fantastic links reminding us about Labour's 13 years of economic incompetence, and why we're in a worse situation now than we should be.

This is the kind of stuff people need to be reminded about.

• In 2003, IMF warned Brown he'll breach his own borrowing rules, and stressed the need to cut deficit http://bit.ly/cmQqKa #changewesee
• Gordon Brown repeatedly changed the economic cycle timeframe in which he measured his 'golden rule', so that he wouldn't break it http://bit.ly/bucB2E #changewesee
• Again in 2005, Brown warned he was "on thin ice with the economy" by leading forecasting company http://bit.ly/bd0Em3 #changewesee
• Early as 2005, the CBI (and OECD, and ASI) warns Brown about his widening budget deficit and 'black hole) http://bit.ly/aATFdS
• As early as 2001, Chancellor repeatedly warned about the dangers of personal borrowing + downturn http://bit.ly/aTTqRp
• As early as 2004, OECD was warning Brown about mounting budget deficit and rate of borrowing -BBC http://bit.ly/aW3LQt
• In 2005, UK had slowest rate of growth in 12 years. Brown "still didn't heed warnings of slow-down" http://bit.ly/amORKo
• “The fact is [Brown] had already run out of money this time last year" - 2005, ITEM http://bit.ly/csLfJc

www.twitter.com/futurefairfor

 

[Dolph]

Do they have a copy of Brown's 1996 speech when he came up with this gem...

"I tell you we have learnt from past mistakes.... Just as you cannot spend your way out of recession, you cannot, in a global economy, simply spend your way through a recovery either.... losing control of public spending doesn’t help the poor, It's those who depend on public services who suffer if spending has to be reined back.”"

If only he'd stuck to it...

 

[Slam62]

Of course, but they have other backing, too. What other country (apart from those in absolutely dire situations) is increasing personal taxes AND employment taxes to help cut the deficit?

It isn't JUST a bunch of rich businessmen. The FIRST group to speak out about this was the Federation of Small Businesses, then the CBI, then others to follow.

Was it not Obama who recently said increasing employment taxes would be a "stupid thing to do"?

oh come on how else do you pay off debt apart from paying it off.

Cameron is such a fool, do you think I care about another 150 quid a year.

We need to tax those in work a lot more and stop wage rises. I would rather that than cut services, If you then can't afford your mortgage, tough.

Oh yes, and if you believe for one second all this efficiency saving stuff then isn'tit past your bed time?

 

[Dolph]

oh come on how else do you pay off debt apart from paying it off.

Cameron is such a fool, do you think I care about another 150 quid a year.

We need to tax those in work a lot more and stop wage rises. I would rather that than cut services, If you then can't afford your mortgage, tough.

Oh yes, and if you believe for one second all this efficiency saving stuff then isn'tit past your bed time?

Thank god all the major parties disagree with such a stupid move then...

Raising taxes won't actually increase the revenue raised by a meaningful amount (because Brown has been milking the limit anyway), the only solution is to bring spending down to an affordable level.

 

[Slam62]

Do they have a copy of Brown's 1996 speech when he came up with this gem...



If only he'd stuck to it...

The financial crisis was caused by a deregulated financial centre, deregulated by Thatcher.

Then all you needed was the greed of the very wealthy.