Poll: Who will you be voting for on May 5th?

[Feek]

nero, do you ever listen to the news, or read the papers. Pretty much every month for at least the last five years when the statistics are announced, unemployment is down.

Here are some documents detailing the trends for the last few years.

K.

 

[Guinnezz]

If your voting Con dont forget Michael Howard is a romanian immigrant who wants to crack down on immigration ! .

 

[Matblack]

Improved education??!

I work in education .

As do I

Please remember that education is not limited to school based education, as a careers advisor I am seeing more opertunities and an acceptance that schools and colleges are not the only places or nessesarily the best places for young people to learn, this government has recognised this but only recently.

That said I am not a Labourite but I do believe that the conservatives would have taken the emphasis away from alternative curiculum by not recognising the need for it in the first place.

MB

 

[Matblack]

nero, do you ever listen to the news, or read the papers. Pretty much every month for at least the last five years when the statistics are announced, unemployment is down.

Here are some documents detailing the trends for the last few years.

K.

I suspect Mr Nero is now going to give you a stock answer that any figures you present of statistic relevance have to be gov. funded/ specified and hence are spun.



MB

 

[Tunney]

I doubt that I'll be voting. The area where I live is overwhelming Conservative and has been since the dawn of time. My vote really wouldn't count for anything.

If I were to vote, I'd probably vote Labour. They're a bunch of lying weasels who've wasted a lot of money and increased taxes way too much. But, the economy is doing well relative to the rest of the world and that's the most important thing, in my opinion.

The cynic in me wants to vote Conservative though. They'd lower taxes by cutting services that I don't use (no kids needing an education, private healthcare provided by my employer) and ruin the economy, hopefully leading to a house price crash so that I could afford to buy a place of my own.

As I said though, there's no point in me voting.

 

[Harley]

You are joking, right? I don't see the mah00sive interest rates, the huge unemployment and the large number of properties being repossessed like they were when the Tories were in power.

K.

You don't see the mahoosive interest rates and unemployment rates, etc, because the situation Labour inherited from the Tories in '97 is VASTLY better than the situation the Tories inherited from Labour in '79.

It is totally meaningless to compare performance under the Tories and performance under Labour unless you do it in the context of the situation that each was handed when they came to office, because they have to adopt the policies needed to address the situation they face.

The situation Labour had when they came to power was so much better precisely because the Tories had bitten the bitter pill and forced through reforms of trade union law, economic reform, debt recovery and so forth. And a large amount of Gordon Brown's much talk-about economic stability and prosperity is precisley because of those reforms whih, I might point out, Labour opposed toothe and nail while in opposition, and conveniently forgot about when they came to power and could have repealed them. That says something.



As for who I'd vote for, well, it'd be for whoever I feel has the best chance of getting Blair out. If I could wave a magic wand and determine the next government, it would be "Hello, Prime Minister Howard." This is not because I particularly trust or approve of the Tories. It's because I distrust and despise them a bit less than I do the other parties.

Actually, thinking about it, I lied over the magic wand thing. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd usher all MP's onto a boat, sail it out in to the middle of the Atlantic and pull the plug out. Personally, I reckon Guy Fawkes had a great idea, but was ahead of his time. Let's scrap the lot of them, and start again. Maybe we'd get lucky and acquire a few that aren't power-seeking, duplicitous, self-serving hypocrits.

How about an education minister that's actually worked in education for a minimum of a decade? How about a doctor or nurse to run health? And a novel idea .... let a businessman run Trade and Industry.

Oh, and any MP gets a maximum of two terms, and their pay is based on the pay they got before becoming an MP. And the Golden Rule .... NO PROFESSIONAL POLITICIANS!!!

Maybe it would be a disaster, but it couldn't be much worse than the farce we have at tbe moment.

 

[Haly]

Actually, thinking about it, I lied over the magic wand thing. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd usher all MP's onto a boat, sail it out in to the middle of the Atlantic and pull the plug out. Personally, I reckon Guy Fawkes had a great idea, but was ahead of his time. Let's scrap the lot of them, and start again. Maybe we'd get lucky and acquire a few that aren't power-seeking, duplicitous, self-serving hypocrits.

How about an education minister that's actually worked in education for a minimum of a decade? How about a doctor or nurse to run health? And a novel idea .... let a businessman run Trade and Industry.

Oh, and any MP gets a maximum of two terms, and their pay is based on the pay they got before becoming an MP. And the Golden Rule .... NO PROFESSIONAL POLITICIANS!!!

Maybe it would be a disaster, but it couldn't be much worse than the farce we have at tbe moment.

Sounds a good idea to me
Personally I disagree with you regarding Howard being the lesser of the evils but the points above I definitely agree with.

 

[Matblack]

Sounds a good idea to me
Personally I disagree with you regarding Howard being the lesser of the evils but the points above I definitely agree with.

You are however making the assumption that there is such a thing as a non-self serving attention seeking MP. What you could have is a faceless grey suited beauracrat but we don't like them either can't win can we?

MB

 

[Ricochet J]

I can't vote but me family is up for Labour. And I totally agree

 

[VIRII]

Feek - Interest rates were due to the exchange rate mechanism of keeping our sterling in line with what Europe wanted it to be in terms of Francs and Deutschmarks.
Trying to tow Europes line is what caused us all those problems, then again a vote for labour is a vote for Europe.

 

[i know nothing]

Not eligible as I reside overseas.

If I were voting (and I really wish I could) it would be Conservative.

 

[VIRII]

nero, do you ever listen to the news, or read the papers. Pretty much every month for at least the last five years when the statistics are announced, unemployment is down.

Here are some documents detailing the trends for the last few years.

K.

Unemployment might be down but then again the method of measurement has changed. The figures you are seeing are not straight forward comparisons.
It is like saying education has improved because more people are getting higher grades and yet from these very forums alone it is obvious that standards of English are dropping.

 

[nero120]

How about an education minister that's actually worked in education for a minimum of a decade? How about a doctor or nurse to run health? And a novel idea .... let a businessman run Trade and Industry

Have you ever read the Tom Clancy book Executive Orders? I think President Ryan had it spot on there!

 

[Haly]

You are however making the assumption that there is such a thing as a non-self serving attention seeking MP. What you could have is a faceless grey suited beauracrat but we don't like them either can't win can we?

MB

True :/
But I'm young, someone's got to be optimistic and think that one day there will be a nice selfless MP in the world

 

[Harley]

Personally I disagree with you regarding Howard being the lesser of the evils but the points above I definitely agree with.

It's a tough call, I guess ..... but at least Howard hasn't taken the country to war, and lied through his teeth about the basis for it.

Whatever Tony "two-face" says about it, we've all seen the nature of the information presented to him about WMD, complete with the cautions and caveats about it's limited nature and reliability the intelligence community put on it, .... and we've seen the absolute certainty Blair turned that into when he told us about it.

Now, so far as I'm concerned, that leaves two options: either he deliberately lied to us all and took us to war based on those lies; or he's so grossly incompetent, or so wrapped up in his own self-belief, that he actually believed the cobblers he spouted.

And to this day, he refuses to apologise for it. All he's ever apologised for is the fact that the intelligence was wrong, not that he so grossly misrepresented what it actually was. In apologising for it being "wrong", but not for what he said and did, he's really saying "it wasn't me, I was misled". I sure that's a great comfort, even if it were true, which it isn't, to the families of those that paid with their lives.

So, if you prefer Blair over Howard, is it Blair the war-mongering liar or Blair the raging incompetent you prefer?

That, in case you didn't notice, is what they call a loaded question.

 

[nero120]

Unemployment might be down but then again the method of measurement has changed. The figures you are seeing are not straight forward comparisons.
It is like saying education has improved because more people are getting higher grades and yet from these very forums alone it is obvious that standards of English are dropping.

Exactly, that and the fact that government figures are intended to make the government look good. If 'unemployment' is down thats a good thing, because you'd assume the people who were unemployed before are in work now. But since university places have risen massively whilst labour has been in power, that must have taken up some of the slack right?

 

[Haly]

So, if you prefer Blair over Howard, is it Blair the war-mongering liar or Blair the raging incompetent you prefer?

That, in case you didn't notice, is what they call a loaded question.

lol it is a bit
Personally I don't like either of them so while a third option exists I vote for it, i.e. Liberal Democrat. Some would say it's a wasted vote but if I couldn't vote for them I'd ruin my ballot paper instead so it's slightly better than that.

 

[Guinnezz]

Better to appear guilty these days than incompetent.

 

[Harley]

lol it is a bit
Personally I don't like either of them so while a third option exists I vote for it, i.e. Liberal Democrat. Some would say it's a wasted vote but if I couldn't vote for them I'd ruin my ballot paper instead so it's slightly better than that.

Can't get off the hook that easily, m'dear. You said you prefer Blair to Howard.

I understand voting LD, but in light of Blair's immediate record, it doesn't explain prefering Blair to Howard.

In all seriousness, given the way Blair took this country to war, I can't think of much, or even anything, that would make someone less suitable for continuing as PM. Sure, I'm no Howard fan (and have given reasons why in the past), but I can't get over our PM taking this country to war on a lie. No matter how much of the night Howard has about him, he's vastly better than Blair.

Even if the war itself was still justified for other reasons (and that is VERY much open to debate, and only time will tell if the casualty count was worth it), the contempt Blair showed for the electorate in the way he presented the case makes him, in my view, totally ineligible to continue running this country if he is prepared to con the people over going to war, what won't he mislead, or spin, the people about?.

 

[bam0]

lol it is a bit
Personally I don't like either of them so while a third option exists I vote for it, i.e. Liberal Democrat. Some would say it's a wasted vote but if I couldn't vote for them I'd ruin my ballot paper instead so it's slightly better than that.

I've never quite got that, about votes being wasted, it depends on the area you're in, being as we dont directly elect a prime minister.
I think I gave the figures for my area earlier (41% LD, 34% Con, 22% Lab), here a vote for labour is a wasted vote as there is next to 0 chance of them turning that around, in fact I think both the Conservatives and Labour have given up even trying round here, we get something through the letter box pretty much every couple of weeks or so from the Lib Dems with regard to what they are doing, what they plan to do etc, i've seen two things from the Conservatives over the last 2 years and nothing at all from labour.
The places where you votes matter more is areas where the party you want to vote for came closely 2nd last time.