Not very often I like the Sun....

Caporegime
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28 Jan 2003
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HA!

Conservatives are just the same as Labour, completely detached from the lives of real British people. Labour, tories and Lib Dems are all the same.

There are no voting options other than the extreme parties, who, lets face it haven't got a chance at getting into power. We're basically stuck in a voting hole and we have about as much choice as Iran did with their recent election.

It really is a sad state of affairs.
 
Associate
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16 May 2003
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756
HA!

Conservatives are just the same as Labour, completely detached from the lives of real British people. Labour, tories and Lib Dems are all the same.

There are no voting options other than the extreme parties, who, lets face it haven't got a chance at getting into power. We're basically stuck in a voting hole and we have about as much choice as Iran did with their recent election.

If they are all the same shall we just vote Labour again?
 
Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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33,188
There is far too much bad press about Labour, people should look to see what the tories plan, if the spending cuts they propose then you are looking at least 200,000 people on the dole PLUS knock on jobs from them, plus additionally they would lay off tens of thousands from the NHS, where are they going to get the money from to pay for these hundreds of thousands extra benefits? I think i saw somewhere that the average jobseeker when on HB and CTB it works out at a cost of over £10,000 per yer.

Additionally they were on about cutting the Police force that people say aren't working. David Cameron bleats that the Govt has failed on crime... Gordon Browns easy answer on PMQT was "There are more people in jail than there every was under any Conservative Govt"

The sad fact is that next General Election we are likely to see the Govt Bought in not Brought in, the Conservatives have got their war chest loaded in one event a banker (i poo you not) donated £500,000... one hour speech moaning about the Govt but with no substance and £500,000 better off!

meaning that all the other elected parties claim between them £252m.

Additionally education. Many people on here are probably moaning about the University fees etc that Labour brought in. The issue around this is that Labour brought in University fees because they brought in EMA to help more disadvanted youngsters be able to go to College (an area that i work in) and then College and University would not just be for the parents on good wages, but the parents on any wage can have their child given the opportunity to go to College and thus make the nation more academically gifted. This is often overlooked.

One thing i agree is that Labour have created a Benefits trap and should cut the amount of cash paid to long standing Dole Dossers (5+years).

Several things you've missed, the jobs they created in the NHS are being paid for out of tax payers money at a HIGHER wage than they would be giving people on benefits, Ideally we fire those people who are completely unneeded, spend the same amount on doctors, nurses and equipment so theres better treatment as opposed to faster paper being pushed, and those 10k people go and get other jobs in the UK that, pay money NOT out of our taxes. At worst, they all go on the dole and cost less money to pay.

As for University, they aren't creating a more academically gifted nation with more people at college and University, to help with the fact that more people want to get into Uni, because more people can afford it, A levels continue to be worth less every year, as do GSCE's and university degree's which are all easier now to cope with the higher demand and less inteligent people getting in. You aren't making more inteligent people, you're simply giving those who deserve to be in uni, worse degree's that mean less and teach them less. Considering you're talking about getting disadvantaged kids into uni, as Labour are trying to move uni fee's up to 5k now further sticking it to the poor I can't see your logic.

They've gotten too many people into going to uni, and now want to put off the poorer people to help calm the demand, because even then knew they screwed up the system.

AS for the fraudelent claims, for all we know the £252million in expenses is ALL Labour, considering the numbers of Labour and Conservative MP's, its incredibly UNSURPRISING both groups have by far the largest numbers of false claims.

There are more people in jail under the Labour party, as frankly if 1% of your population is in jail at any time, as your population increases, so does the amount of those in jail. It doesn't mean the police are doing a better job, nor that those in jail are less likely to reoffend, nor that society is safer because more people are in jail. In 12 years the population has gone up considerably, you'd expect jails to have more people in, however we never heard about as many people getting light sentences, off with warnings or early release of awful violent crimes 15 years ago, which is now largely due to jail overcrowding.

Labour has needed to build more jails for 10 years, but have flat out refused and the people being released and the sentences being given to the worst offenders reflects the total lack of space. Population increases, the number of criminals increases, the number of people in jail increases, the number of jails required increases over time. But only Labour disagree with this, they've also not done anything to help fund the penal system like multiple other countries with working facilities, even basic, for jails to help pay for themselves. Crime has worsened and Labours answer is to put as many faces out as possible to APPEAR to be fighting crime, but they are all under payed, under trained "fake" cops with no real power. Absolute waste of money, time, effort while real people are suffering as a result to the cut back in real policing being down in the country.
 
Associate
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...but the parents on any wage can have their child given the opportunity to go to College and thus make the nation more academically gifted.
Possibly one of the stupidest things I've read on OcUK, and let's face it, there's a lot to choose from.
 
Associate
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Niptons Ridge
Labour has needed to build more jails for 10 years, but have flat out refused and the people being released and the sentences being given to the worst offenders reflects the total lack of space. Population increases, the number of criminals increases, the number of people in jail increases, the number of jails required increases over time. But only Labour disagree with this, they've also not done anything to help fund the penal system like multiple other countries with working facilities, even basic, for jails to help pay for themselves. Crime has worsened and Labours answer is to put as many faces out as possible to APPEAR to be fighting crime, but they are all under payed, under trained "fake" cops with no real power. Absolute waste of money, time, effort while real people are suffering as a result to the cut back in real policing being down in the country

A lot of the population boom has been down to severely lax immigration laws letting all sorts of people into the country. A majority of them are here to milk our overly stretched benefits system. They leave a country where they get nothing and come here, where they may get paid for housing, etc etc.

I don't know what other people's views are, but I would be in favour of some sort of national service for young people, who had not got good enough grades, etc to get into Uni or on apprenticeships / training schemes, or decent jobs. The law at the moment is not giving the law abiding citizens of this country the proper protection they deserve (not the fault of those on the front line, I hasten to add). The penalties given out to offenders can be somewhat pathetic, what sort of deterrent is a 3 month asbo to a clued up trouble maker.
I would be firmly in favour of any yobs (who claim benefits) or parents of them getting their benefits reduced. This might be more effective that the punitive measures handed out at the moment.


I was in my teens at the time of the miners strike (when the conservatives were in) and at first they had a fair amount of public support. Scargill and his antics soon eroded most of that.
The most unpopular thing the tories did in the eighties was to implement the then Poll Tax, that is still around today in a derivative known as the council tax.


Brown is out of his depth, he has been struggling to keep afloat since Blair dropped him in it. (Excellent sense of timing from Blair, knew the crap was about to hit the fan and pulled the ripcord)
Brown also knew that if he had called an election when he was meant to, that there was a possibilty of him losing so he bottled it.

Cameron talks a good fight and between the two of them, he would win imo.

It's certainly going to be interesting going into the next election.
 
Soldato
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North East
Aint read the thread cept the first post a bit. Anyhow i think labour are ok. Sure nowts perfect and no government can do everything at the same time. It takes time to sort things out it could take the next 10 years and still nothing will be perfect (for any government party i might add).

Least with labour my life aint been too bad. So ill stick with it. Even tho i dont vote i hope they stay.
 
Man of Honour
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5 Dec 2003
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Just to the left of my PC
The Sun is as two-faced as the poiliticians.

During most of the Blair years they were singing Labour's praises, now they are ranting that they were rubbish for all of the last 12 years.

Make up your mind. Or just make it up as you go along I suppose :p

The Sun is extremely consistent.

They consistently pander to whatever will sell more papers. That is the sole point of it. The Sun is not two-faced. It just wears whatever masks are most popular at any given time. It's true face is always the same - selling papers. I think the classic example was it running raving campaigns to ban all guns while also campaigning in support of Tony Martin when he murdered people using an illegally owned gun.
 
Caporegime
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Adelaide, South Australia
I hope you're not an economist :p.

Gold reserves, killing off manufacturing, increasing imports, giving more and more power to the financial sector that conjured up money on a market that couldn't sustain it, and so on.

Firstly, I'm talking about his time as Chancellor, not as PM - and I've already agreed that he made a mistake with the gold reserves. But "killing off manufacturing and increasing imports"? Nope, post #47 shows that this isn't true. "Giving more and more power to the financial sector"? I think you'll find that started with Thatcher; I'm not aware of anything Brown did as Chancellor that gave more power to the financial sector. On the contrary, he gave more power to the Treasury and the FSA.

Wikipedia's article on Brown's Chancellorship shows that he achieved a great deal and enjoyed many successes during his tenure. He kept inflation low, reduced corporation tax for large and small businesses, increased tax thresholds, achieve higher greater growth than anywhere else in the Eurozone, reduced unemployment from 7% to 5.5%, reduced the national debt and expanded government spending on health and education.

OK, so perhaps 10/10 was an exaggeration, but Brown was a pretty damn good Chancellor. And before you ask: no, I didn't vote for Labour, and never have.

The Sun is extremely consistent.

They consistently pander to whatever will sell more papers. That is the sole point of it. The Sun is not two-faced. It just wears whatever masks are most popular at any given time. It's true face is always the same - selling papers. I think the classic example was it running raving campaigns to ban all guns while also campaigning in support of Tony Martin when he murdered people using an illegally owned gun.

+1

The Sun is neither left nor right; it is stridently, faithfully, consistently populist.
 
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Soldato
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London
If The Sun has this much so called grip on our nation that this u-turn will change who votes for whom, then may God have Mercy on us All!

What we should all do is just rip the paper in half much like the Union boss Tony Woodley did yesterday!
 
Soldato
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Possibly one of the stupidest things I've read on OcUK, and let's face it, there's a lot to choose from.

Not really, anyone with a shred of logic can see that before kids from poorer families cannot afford to go to college, but with possibly £30-£40 available now it is, its up to them to get into debt at University afterwards
 
Associate
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7 Dec 2002
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Not really, anyone with a shred of logic can see that before kids from poorer families cannot afford to go to college, but with possibly £30-£40 available now it is, its up to them to get into debt at University afterwards
You don't make people academically gifted by paying them to go to 6th form or college. Attending a school to study for A-Levels is free - it costs no more to send a child to study for A-Levels than it does for them to study GCSEs. Buses are cheap, and walking/riding a bike (heaven forbid!) is free. Lunch can be made for a matter of pennies. But if money is so tight so that even these expenses (which are not seen as a problem for lower school) are a problem, then these kids can do what all other 16yr olds do if they need cash - they get a job.

Giving kids £40 a week to spend on petrol, computer games and McDonald's does not suddenly make a nation of academically gifted people. People's academic talent is independent of any sort of monetary wealth. If someone has a gift for a subject and money is a problem, University scholarships will be, and always have been available.
 
Soldato
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In the Gym
Several things you've missed, the jobs they created in the NHS are being paid for out of tax payers money at a HIGHER wage than they would be giving people on benefits, Ideally we fire those people who are completely unneeded, spend the same amount on doctors, nurses and equipment so theres better treatment as opposed to faster paper being pushed, and those 10k people go and get other jobs in the UK that, pay money NOT out of our taxes. At worst, they all go on the dole and cost less money to pay.

Yes but at a higher wage DOES mean invariably a higher rate of tax, and while i agree that it still takes out of the system, it invariably helps, as with more staff it helps to get more people off waiting lists and out of beds sooner. For example my wife works at the local NHS and says the wards are in many instances bedlam, and on busy days having a lot of staff helps to free up more for people arriving. But the last comment, by that reckoning we would all be better off on the dole if we were in a Public Service job.

As for University, they aren't creating a more academically gifted nation with more people at college and University, to help with the fact that more people want to get into Uni, because more people can afford it, A levels continue to be worth less every year, as do GSCE's and university degree's which are all easier now to cope with the higher demand and less inteligent people getting in. You aren't making more inteligent people, you're simply giving those who deserve to be in uni, worse degree's that mean less and teach them less. Considering you're talking about getting disadvantaged kids into uni, as Labour are trying to move uni fee's up to 5k now further sticking it to the poor I can't see your logic.

But if more people are having qualifications it gives more emphasis to getting people on to better things. Even if they can't get a decent job. For example a mate of mine has a degree in Computing Science and he works behind a bar for 4 nights a week and works part time in the day for his own business. Does about 2 jobs building computers and doing repairs every week. I'll partially agree about grades being worth less, but people are always too quick to put people down. "I got my degree this year"... "Yeah, but its not worth the same as one from the year before" :( <-- that persons confidence is hammered after a comment like that and on the news the SU (Student Union) head quite a while ago attacked a minister for making the same comment you have. Right, the logic i am trying to make the point is that: Poor families often could not have their child go to FE, so labour brought in EMA for the millennium, thus poorer families now had an avenue to get their children better. If they wanted to go to University based on the points system it is a possibility. Before it was more about catering for the families that could afford to provide for their children whilst at College as opposed to that childing having to go out to get a job. Financial Incentive. Labour won't be the only driving factor behind the £5k, lecturers will be wanting their piece of the pie to or else they'll strike. Sorry for the WoT

They've gotten too many people into going to uni, and now want to put off the poorer people to help calm the demand, because even then knew they screwed up the system.

AS for the fraudelent claims, for all we know the £252million in expenses is ALL Labour, considering the numbers of Labour and Conservative MP's, its incredibly UNSURPRISING both groups have by far the largest numbers of false claims.

Thus there is a further need and potential to recruit new talent for University, as you say its usually the well off, private educated (Cambridge Educated) individual who gets their University place.

How is it all Labour? Think about it of the Total Claim of £500m the Tories took £248m, the other parties (inc Labour) claimed £252m, its certainly not all Labour as we know Lib Dems, UKIP all have quite a few seats now across Boroughs etc.

There are more people in jail under the Labour party, as frankly if 1% of your population is in jail at any time, as your population increases, so does the amount of those in jail. It doesn't mean the police are doing a better job, nor that those in jail are less likely to reoffend, nor that society is safer because more people are in jail. In 12 years the population has gone up considerably, you'd expect jails to have more people in, however we never heard about as many people getting light sentences, off with warnings or early release of awful violent crimes 15 years ago, which is now largely due to jail overcrowding.

Interestingly i did a session with my kids on violent crime in/as a session the day and the information i had showed clearly from 1995 there were approx 330,000 Violent Crimes, in 1997 (after the massive Police Recruitment drive by none other than Labour) Crime was reduced to 180,000 incidents. I think you should check the stats of light sentences as in the same breath, the average length of stay in prison has increased under Labour and quite a few sentences are now harsher. The jails are vastly overcrowded with some 80,000 people in there i agree.

Labour has needed to build more jails for 10 years, but have flat out refused and the people being released and the sentences being given to the worst offenders reflects the total lack of space. Population increases, the number of criminals increases, the number of people in jail increases, the number of jails required increases over time. But only Labour disagree with this, they've also not done anything to help fund the penal system like multiple other countries with working facilities, even basic, for jails to help pay for themselves. Crime has worsened and Labours answer is to put as many faces out as possible to APPEAR to be fighting crime, but they are all under payed, under trained "fake" cops with no real power. Absolute waste of money, time, effort while real people are suffering as a result to the cut back in real policing being down in the country.

I agree a quick Google tells me they have built around 8 new Prisons and have as a result of the overcrowding started the building process of the newly dubbed "Titan" Prisons to help alleviate pressure. Its the same situation that the Road networks and rail networks were tens of billions of pounds worth of underfunding over 20years from the Conservatives, Labour have just made their mistake on the prisons.

But if you look at the Crime figures, it hasn't worsened under Labour, its dropped. And additionally Police do help reduce crime with a visible presence. I wouldn't say Police are underpaid especially on £20,000+, the unfortunate thing about the comment you made is that "Cops do have power (hence why they can arrest and take people in) its the Judges that have no real power to impose the sentences we'd like to see i.e. a guy i read about today in the local has 31 previous convictions and he's just been given his 2year (min) sentence.

Police imo are a little overworked, but there have been several articles written by groups including one titled. Conservative Party, a Party of Crime or something like that that pokes that under the Conservatives there were an estimated 3m crimes a year:

Chris Huhne said:
- Home Office statistics showing a 81% rise in recorded crime between 1979 and 1997, the last period of Conservative rule
-During that time, violent crime increased by 164%, robbery by 405% and burglary by 86%, he will say. He will also claim similar rates of increase now would mean almost 4m more crimes a year.

^ The above is all facts and figures from a mixture of Private/Independant Survey/Investigatory groups.

In fact if you look on the Tory website it states:
"Labours Top down approach to fighting crime has failed"

It goes on to make the main points of their "Manifesto" (loosely used as some things are very likely to change as and when it suits)
- We will scrap stop and search forms and cut bureaucracy to allow police officers to spend more of their time on the streets fighting crime

That will mean that Dave will need to scrap some elements of the HRA and the EU Regs

-We will reform the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which regulates police surveillance, so that authorisation is not needed in straightforward cases. At the same time, we will take steps to prevent the misuse of surveillance powers by local authorities.

In other words less Camera's on the streets but more lax approach to a situation by increasing Police powers to that of Judge Dredd!

- We will strengthen police powers of stop and search to enable officers to respond decisively to incidents or threats of serious crime

OK but S&S reduces knife/gun crime and takes drugs off the street - you've only got to watch someone getting S&S'd and the Police finding drugs to see this (the chances are you will have seen it followed in my instance by the geezer going ape that they've seized his £60 of weed)

-We will take our reforms further by empowering local people as well as police officers. By introducing directly-elected police commissioners, and by requiring all police forces to publish crime maps and hold quarterly beat meetings, we will enable local communities to hold their police force to account.

But Labour already Publish crime maps... Police meetings with local residents where they can openly question WTF they are doing if things are going bad.

- To ensure that we have adequate space to house offenders, our plans for renewal of the prison estate will increase capacity by 5,000 places above Labour’s plans.

Fantastic, but 3 prisons cost £3.2bn so an additionally 5,000 inmates means if building Titan prisons £1.2/£1.3bn a pop so you're up to £6bn and change

*All points above from Conservative Party Website (Crime and Justice)
 
Soldato
Joined
31 Jul 2006
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Belgium land of chocolate
In fairness to the Tories they have a track record of sorting out Labours mess. Pretty much a repeat of what happened when they took over in 59 and 79.


Oh and HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA to whoever said they've give him '10 out of 10 for Economical management'

I grew up under a tory government in the 80s in Scotland. (Remember the poll tax?) The 80s were grim and I mean grim.

God help us if you think that the tories of the 80s were good for Britian.

:eek:

Tories were all about making London Financial capitial of the world and stuff the rest of the country it didnt care about anything north of the watford gap. I haven't seen any policies that change this opinion. Yes the financial center supported the rest of the country in the 80s and 90s economically but socially the tory induced decline in manufacturing is what has torn this countries social fabric apart.
 
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