Are politicians devoid of common sense?

I've come to the conclusion that they as soon or before they are elected all politicians have a common sense by pass.Just a few of the bleedin' obvious from recent times.
1) The total and appalling waste of lives and money fighting the the Taliban.Completely unwinnerable from day one as demonstrated by previous attempts and now they'll be back the moment we leave.
2) I wrote to the PM and told him the folly of supporting the rebels in Libya when he had not a clue who they were or what we were supporting. It turns out of course that it was largely Al Qaeda and this lot are just as bloody as the last. The middle east does not do Western style democracy
3) They are itching to get their hands into Syria happily the Russians have more sense.
4) Iraq another disaster born of Blair's and Bush's lies more lives and money sacrificed for no tangible result it's tribal like all the middle east and without a strong oppressive dictatorship will be constantly at some form of civil war.
5)International aid strongly condemned by the majority of people in these difficult as it requires us to borrow more money to heap on booming economies such as India who repay by placing their defence aircraft contract with France. I wrote to my local MP about the logic of borrowing more money to give away. His reply was that it was the government's moral duty and that others shouldn't have to suffer because times were hard here. I wrote back suggesting in that case perhaps he should use his money instead of ours to get the feel good factor. Strangely I got no reply.
6) Why are being penalised with higher fuel payments in the name of global warming and CO2 emissions when the average global temperatures have not risen since 1998 (Nasa data)in spite of rising CO2
That lot will do for a start there are millions more examples out there

With Britain for a friend, overseas territories don't need enemies, as a cursory examination of British Foreign Office policy since WW2 shows.
India abandoned 1947. Many dead.
Adventures in Korea and Malaya 1951;
Iranian Oil, 1953 30% profit for BP, 15% for Iran;
Egypt invaded to "protect" the Suez Canal 1956
More adventures in Africa, specifically Kenya, Rhodesia and Sierra Leone.
The Irish "Troubles" followed by the Falklands gesture.

Politicians like to have things going on that divert the public away from the lining of pockets.

and we are still in \oman from - - since when?

oftenwrong wrote: Politicians like to have things going on that divert the public away from the lining of pockets.

And yet we keep voting them back in, year after year.

The problem is Tories will vote tory because they dont want Labour in power and vise versa...so what we end up with is one or the other. And let's face it, neither really cover themsleves in glory when in government...all of them lie to us constantly...all of them protect their high level supporters and backers at the expense of the rest of us.

Common sense has long disappeared from our politicians. Why to we have an overseas aid budget of almost £10 billion a year sending millions to coutries like India whose own government can spend billions on new fighter jets and a space program instead of helping their own poor. Wouldn't OUR Tax payers money be better spent on our own needy and pensioners?

£50 million or so each to the EU could stop many of the public service cuts we are told we have to make because we have no money....so why are we letting our goverments of all colours give OUR money away???

Bluey. We have for as long as I can remember had an overseas aid budget, most of which I believe went into the Coffers of various Despots. The reason the issue has reared its ugly head is that Herr Cameron Quadrupled the amount of overseas aid at the very same time as telling us, who are having to pay, there is no money so we haven’t any choice but to steal money from the elderly, disabled and those without a job. It must be reassuring for a struggling pensioner or a disabled person that their lives don’t matter so long as India can have up to date state of the art Fighter Planes.
If a country is in the state of Despotism, somewhere along the line, the people either allowed it to happen or even fought on the side of the Despot. We on the west don’t have their problems because back in our history we had people willing to fight against such things, people like the Tolpuddle Martyrs, The Jarrow Marchers, The Parliamentarians (Civil War) and so on, The French had their period of Horreur or the Revolution, The Italians had the Geezer wot made the biscuits Garibaldi and so on. Many of these places have a much longer history than ours but have accepted their fate, who are we to interfere. If any aid should go abroad it should be by way of voluntary donations, not an unscrupulous Government stealing from our poor to aid India’s rich.

I agree with Blue as I have stated on overseas aid and also on the EU eating our money.
Another one for the list is the Olympic games in spite of all the evidence from other hosts who insisted they are money spinners only to find they are gigantic loss makers. The tourism growth alone is another myth borne out by the travel industry and the experience of others as it in reality it deters tourism but that doesn't stop them throwing even more money at it on this mistaken basis. Furthermore the employment generated went mostly to foreigners and the tat on sale is mostly imported. Good for the tube drivers of course who managed to blackmail a big bonus for not striking. No questions raised about this bonus I notice in spite of being totally unearned and which will be paid for by the users be they Londoners or visitors.
The other huge common sense bypass is throwing more money in bailouts to countries deep in debt they are unable to repay.Like giving alcoholics free booze to help them.
Then the answer to everything both by political parties and supporters is to throw money at it. It never solves problems it just employs more bureaucrats and increases taxes. For all the screams about cuts when it's all boiled down it hardly amounts to a row of beans just window dressing

This is a sad indictment on the British electorate if not on your typical British politician as I believe that most, if not all politicians are actually very clever and can also use common sense if they are allowed to.

I believe that once in harness politicians come under terrible pressure from many different directions.

They are snowed under by party politics and the power of the whips and they are sent by their constituency committees do do what they can for their constituents while they are also pressurised by general public opinion as to what they should do.

On top of that they are getting pressurised by the powerful money-men and the paymasters of each of their individual parties and after all of that their own wishes and needs also influence them in what they do.

Because of this state of affairs many of the people that usually take an interest from outside of politics are starting to wane in their hopes and wishes for decent government and a bit of fairness and as more and more of the electorate become jaundiced with politics it is only the hard-liners that are left supporting the parties.

Personally, I do not think that this rot will completely destroy what politicians can do so long as the great mass of the people keep letting them know that we are watching.

Regards.....

Papaumau.

QUOTE: " I do not think that this rot will completely destroy what politicians can do so long as the great mass of the people keep letting them know that we are watching."

Mostly we rely upon newspaper reporters to keep an eye on Politicians, but the antics of the Murdoch newspapers have just now put all newspapers on trial.

Parliament would dearly love to have control over what "News" we are permitted to read. Maybe they'll get it.

Being what I might consider myself to be a "modern" if no longer young citizen of Britain, I think that the effect of the internet has given us much more power than we ever used to have. I read my daily tabloid but like you suggest, "Oftenwrong", they are becoming less and less credible as time goes by.

Being an owner and webmaster of my own forum-set based around consumerism I know for a fact that the politicos watch the internet very carefully and that they have teams of backroom boys and girls doing nothing else than reading what WE write and reporting the interesting bits back to their bosses.

Politicians have always been afraid of public opinion and that is why they spend so much time keeping up with what interests us. ( Two perfect examples recently are what happened with Fred - "the shred" - Goodwin after public opinion forced that his knighthood should be taken away from him and also at the same time the CEO of OUR bank The Royal Bank of Scotland, Stephen Hester, was pressurised into giving back his already-reduced bonus of almost a million pounds in shares.

Yes, we are much more powerful than a lot of people think we are and if the daily rag out there wants to hold onto it's readers it is going to have to start to behave some time soon.

Regards...

Papaumau.

Papaumau
Well I hope you're right about our power although I have always felt they are much more influenced by minority pressure groups than genuine mass public opinion eg hanging and overseas aid to quote but two.
However I'm heartened by back benchers putting pressure on the PM to stop this ridiculous subsidy on useless and inefficient wind mills yet another example of a common sense by passes among this and previous administrations now all we have to do is repeal the bill legalising this unachievable carbon reduction percentage

I'm heartened by back benchers putting pressure on the PM to stop this ridiculous subsidy on useless and inefficient windmills

......after Cameron promised us "the greenest government ever", and even changed the Tory logo to a tree drawn by a two-year-old. Still, I expect Cameron's backbenchers are pleased that by promising to be all things to all men (and women), he deceived voters into providing them with their seats in Parliament.

......after Cameron promised us "the greenest government ever", and even changed the Tory logo to a tree drawn by a two-year-old. Still, I expect Cameron's backbenchers are pleased that by promising to be all things to all men (and women), he deceived voters into providing them with their seats in Parliament.

I doubt very much that he got many votes with that line.Anyway it's official the there's been no increase in Global temperatures since 1998 so there's no need to keep screwing money out of us to support this windmill nonsense.I'm not against natural resourced energy but it has been to be cost efficient or indeed just efficient would be a step forward

If I were a Power company Chairman producing electricity from conventional sources, I might spread a little cash around to convince people that all these new-fangled alternatives were useless.

It is because the Tories have smaller 'anterior cingulate cortex' areas of their brains, apparently. This can make them really quite stupid.

Of course, being an admitted tree-hugger and a climate-change supporter I take a slightly different view.

The worst thing that happened recently was when a bunch of so-called scientists faked the results that were supposed to support climate change so that their credibility and that of the rest of the climatologists was seriously damaged. Now that this subject has been brought into dis-repute it has become harder and harder for the truth to be taken across to the masses.

Nevertheless, the glaciers and the permafrost are still melting at an alarming rate and the food-chain in the oceans is being disrupted so that the krill and the algae and the rest of the bottom of this chain is being diminished so that the larger creatures, ( fish and mammals ), in the middle and top of the food chain are starting to diminish too.

As with many other "anti" camps it is always easy to be "against" anything that is complex to support as if they feel the need to examine ALL of the available science so that they might have reason to support the premise, this takes a lot of effort.

NOW... to move slightly away from climate change:

Very few people in Britain and the world think, for a lot of good reasons, that going down the "renewables" route is not a good thing to do and even if the proposed targets for greenhouse-gas output and especially CO2 output are very ambitious ones to reach for I think that we should all do what we can to support this important requirement.

A typical example of real stupidity by central government is how the Tory-led government have slashed the subsidy to Scotland for the building of land-based wind-turbines up here when one considers that most of the output from these turbines plus from the other renewables, that Scotland is great at, will actually generate power that will be exported to power-hungry England and Wales.

Along with this bit of stupidity is another one where the people who run the national grid that carries this green energy from Scotland to the South are having to pay a premium for the distance that this power travels. The generators up in the North of Scotland pay much more that the generators in and around London pay and while we are charged a premium of cost to send power down South the Southern grid sections are actually SUBSIDISED.

Regards....

Papaumau.

AwfulTruth wrote:It is because the Tories have smaller 'anterior cingulate cortex' areas of their brains, apparently. This can make them really quite stupid.

What makes you think that this is confined to Tories the other parties have more than their fair share and Huhne is a Lib/Dem

What makes you think that this is confined to Tories the other parties have more than their fair share and Huhne is a Lib/Dem.

Kentdougal....Because according to most who post here, anything that a Labour politician does wrong is either excused, or just conveniently not mentioned...That's why it's hard to take them seriously on anything they say

kentdougal. Perhaps you meant to say "Huhne was a Lib-Dem" was he, with the poof Laws and the reptile Danny Alexander not the turn coats who sold their Party members down the swanny and Negotiated the lib-dem entry into the Conservative Party.
If they throw away all the principle we believed they held and accepted the Tory ideology. Then Huhne and co certainly aint Lib-Dems anymore, but scumbag Tory's.

If they throw away all the principle we believed they held and accepted the Tory ideology

You mean like Tony Blair?

Bluey. It really doesn’t matter what any Labour politician says or does at present. it’s the Tory led Coalition who are busying themselves with the ruination of our Country as its they who are in power. Surely you as a human being cant accept that the ruination of thousands of lives, with many more to come, is a price worth paying for failure. If the planned Tory fix was going to be a quick one, then perhaps I might understand it, but when the so called cure is worse than the disease, I’m afraid I can’t. If things where looking better and they promised they would reverse some of their harmful policies when we are on an even keel, then perhaps I would understand, but nothing they are doing is working, Herr Cameron thinks by McDonalds expanding and making more kids obese we are on a winner, when we all know we aint. Not only that, he stated categorically when his cuts started, “Nothing would be reversed”, but I bet he will give generous Tax Cuts to the wealthiest people ( Tory Contributors) in the Country.

If as he and Gideon have said, we will not be clear until well into the next parliament, so we are talking a minimum of 5 years of total hardship and possibly 8 or 9 years, assuming their plans work even after that spread of time.

For me that’s a price I am not happy with. People can not have their lives dashed, through no fault of their own, and have to wait for 2 Parliaments for things to look up and become employed again.

Most Tory supporters just don’t get it. We where toldover and over By Herr Cameron “we are all in it together” yet the poorest are doing all the paying whilst those that caused the problem, the Bankers and hedge fund managers, are not in it with them, but are in fact getting richer off the poor, disabled and the elderly backs.

Please, Please Bluey tell me something good the Tory’s have done, then even I may listen more. We can provide lists of the Good Labour have done, much of which you have agreed with, but no Tory can do likewise for the Conservatives.

I have come to the conclusion you must also be religious, because that also based on blind faith, just as you seem to have for the Tory’s.

Bluey
Tony Blair will in my opinion go down in history as one of the best Prime Ministers Britain ever had. People say he was Thatcherite, something I do not believe.

What Tony Blair believed and IMHO quite rightly, was that the Labour Party can not be for the working Classes to the detriment of the businesses that where needed to employ them. He spoke of his third way, and that’s what I believed he meant, I will say again as I have before, but fell on deaf ears or blind eyes in this case.

He Reduced Hospital Waiting Lists (totally un Thatcherite)
He Introduced the Social Chapter (totally un Thatcherite
He introduced the minimum Wage (totally un Thatcherite)
He reduced Unemployment (totally un Thatcherite)
He gave t our pensioners the Cold Weather Payment (totally un Thatcherite)
He raised pensions year on year (totally Un Thatcherite)
The employed More hospital Nurses ( very un Thatcherite)They employed more Doctors (very un Thatcherite)
We had 10 years of unprecedented growth (very un Thatcherite)

I wont go on bluey, you know the list as well as we do. Now where’s the Tory list, after all said and done, they have been in power longer than Labour over the past 30 years. And all they ever introduced was VAT, then raised it time and again. Labour have never raised VAT other than after a temporary reduction in order to help the economy, Which it did.

bobby wrote:kentdougal. Perhaps you meant to say "Huhne was a Lib-Dem" was he, with the poof Laws and the reptile Danny Alexander not the turn coats who sold their Party members down the swanny and Negotiated the lib-dem entry into the Conservative Party.
If they throw away all the principle we believed they held and accepted the Tory ideology. Then Huhne and co certainly aint Lib-Dems anymore, but scumbag Tory's.

You are right in being left in being well-endowed with that little extra cortex. :-)

blueturando wrote:

If they throw away all the principle we believed they held and accepted the Tory ideology

You mean like Tony Blair?

Bluey bobby is right on the button at least Tony Blair did not try and sell our NHS to the private sector or sell Gas, Electric Trains and phone to the private sector companies that, that is why we are now known as RIP OFF BRITAIN.

And did not introduce the UNFAIREST Tax of all POLL TAX and what we have now Scam..er..on is well named and if the UK does not wake up soon we will be known as LITTLE AMERICA.

Yes folks, if you want to know about the legacy of what Madam Thatcher and her Tory lap-dogs did to my country all you have to do is ask the nearest Scotsman for the truth.

After Thatcher deliberately destroyed the general production-base and the heavy engineering base and the shipbuilding base and the steel-production base and the coal-production base up here and then went on to use us as lab-rats to try out her more noxious policies - including the Poll Tax - before implementing them down south, she became a detested pariah in Scotland.

Afterwards there was NOT ONE Tory sent down to Westminster from Scotland and over the years there is still only one miserable Tory representative in The Commons from all of Scotland.

The Tories have always been against devolution in any form but they could not stop the settled will of the Scots in getting their own Parliament and eventually a strong SNP government. They were also avidly against proportional representation but if it was not for a form of proportional representation being applied up here, ( known as the regional list ), they would not have any more than a total of three representatives in our parliament either. They now only have fifteen MSP members of the Scottish parliament out of a total of one hundred and twenty nine members.

It would do no harm if this knowledge and what happened in/to Scotland via the cruel and uncaring Tory rule was to be known and applied down south too.

Regards....

Papaumau.

Bobby....

Yes I am sure it's easier to get things done when you inherit a strong economy as Blair did, unfortunately I don't think the coalition have been that lucky...I could be wrong, but I believe the may be a global slowdown and large deficit that needs to be cleared at some time.

Saying that I did quite like the Tory Blair...he did come up with some good policies and was a strong admirer of Thatcher

Bluey, it seems not to matter a jot what the economy is or was. Herr Cameron has stated categorically, he will not reverse any of their policies, But is still talking of Tax reductions for the rich. surely that must tell you something.

As for Tony Blair being a strong admirer of Thatcher, if that where the case, why did he change nearly all of her policies and replace them with more Socially acceptable policies. I would be very interested in seeing where that quote came from, indeed if there ever was such a quote. I know some say that Tony Blair was a Tory, but IMHO he was nothing of the sort and was against everything the Tory‘s stood for, he was/is a realist.

Papaumau
Well what I do like on this socialist forum is the inability to face facts. Heavy industry,ship building and coal mining were finished in this country we simply couldn't compete with the unions strangling productivity with restrictive practices, huge wage claims and disputes - we were the sick men of Europe at the time although you would choose to overlook this.One thing the Scots were excellent at was producing militant union leaders - there are still some about living in and disrupting England. Hopefully when we get rid of Scotland we'll be able to send them all home.
I would just like to point out that there was nothing unfair about Poll Tax why should not all members of a household pay towards local council costs the problem is that all those in this cosy full house position we're happy with idea of others paying for them

Hi Kentdougal. ( That's a rather "Scottish" sounding name ! ).

I suppose that that is true to some extent as Scotland has always been a rather militant nation and Communism did have a rather tight stranglehold on the heavy industries at that time.

Being a lefty - even if I am NOT a Communist - I can see what drove the workers of Scotland into the Communist camp.

The hard right, ( still in existence in Britain ), always had it in for the hard left as both of their philosophies made this unavoidable clash, well....unavoidable !

After many years of strife between the shipyard workers, the heavy engineering workers, the car-makers and the ruling elite in Britain the people became tired of this battle and supported the actions which destroyed the unions. Now we have just a very weak framework left and we find that the workers and the middle management levels of Britain are getting hammered at every opportunity by the still-active right-wing politicos.

At that time when we were still able to produce great ships and we supplied all or most of the coal that Britain needed, the slash-and-burn exercise which destroyed this base meant that we were no-longer the great coal-producers, the great shipbuilders or the great heavy-engineers and we were then also forced to import millions of tons of government-subsidised coal from Poland.

I honestly believe that it was at that point that the greatness finally went out of "Great" Britain.

Regards.....

Papaumau.

"The largest cargo vessel ever to moor at the Port of Tyne has arrived in the river - bringing "coals to Newcastle".

The 750ft (230 metre) long Alam Penting has a cargo of 75,000 tonnes of coal, from New Orleans"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-14417376


The Torys must be congratulated for giving employment to American miners and seamen. EDIT and Shipbuilders.

Pity they Cannot / will not provide for their own!

Astra
The Tories didn't buy the coal the power station did no doubt because it was either more competitive or cleaner than produced here. I repeat the coal miners and ship builders were responsible for their own demise . What is it about the left that have to live in the past the world has moved on and we just can't still be saddled with all the restrictive practices , strikes and disputes otherwise we just don't survive. I would like to point since this has all been brought under control our motor production industry for example is bigger and more successful than it's ever been. The days of walking 60 miles to work for 48 hours a day buying a Hovis and still getting change out of a farthing have gone forever. Get over it

Well said Kentdougal

Ever watched two chimps picking fleas off each other...?

Yes it was your holiday snaps....nice family likeness

Kentdougal. Exactly what is it you are refering to when you say "our motor industry"

Bobby
The ones that manufacture vehicles in this country and employs our citizens to do it.It matters not one jot who owns the companies to the people picking up their pay packets or to you or the rest of us. Living in the past again if was owned here you'd be moaning about management bonuses

Many thanks Kentdougal, now I am truly in the land of the enlightened. Now I know that diacrapsu, mitsushitsu , Nissan/Renault etc are all British, otherwise why should you refer to them as our’s.
These company’s are here because they received more than generous Tax concessions in a bid to get the Thatcher unemployment queue down, you know the unemployed from our own trully British crap motor industry. and then make a good living by exploiting agency and part time employees, those who are not agency or part time are on the minimum wage or very close.

When these British cars are built then sold, and the pittance paid to those that built them, Where do you think the profits end up. It sure aint into the UK economy, but back to the mother Country of the Foreign owned car Manufacturers. Next you’ll be trying to tell me TaTa is a British Company.

blueturando wrote:Yes it was your holiday snaps....nice family likeness

I was behind the camera, and that's no way to talk about Mrs Hornby...

Kentdougal -

" Get over it"

Nice to be nice huh?

Iffin yer looked at the link, which I very much doubt - 'duty for the underrlings what?' You will see the ship on the River Tyne. Are you aware that under the riverbed, here in County Durham, there is enough coal for the next 400 years at presesnt consumption rates?

NAH disnae metter diz it that?

At the time of Your Margarets slash and burn through British Industry, Reagan was having problems with the teamsters union and with his air traffic controllers and with his rail and steel and car workers. (Does that sound familiar?)

Reagan being anything other than British realised the importance of these industries to HIS COUNTRY, and sorted the problems as any RESPOSNSIBLE politician should!!

From the 1970s there was a whittling down by Tory administrations of industry renewing machinery and tooling up with modern equipment. (Grants given - sometimes up to 50% in value of new machinery were steadily withdrawn, with NO implication of a refill to take up the gap!) YES there were a few arseholes in the mix, but nowhere NEAR the numbers you lot on here seem to be describing - a couple hundred nobheads and YOU ruin the country's industrial base using these idiots as your reason?
That is not good book keeping - (never a Tory trait - double entry all the time innit!)
To add insult to injury, the coal under County Durham by will of Maggie can NEVER be exploited, as a change to legislation will be required and the Greens will NEVER allow that to happen

SO!

The Greens in your time (NOW) are as harmful a hindrance to industrial progress now just as the communists were back in ours!!

Smell the coffee!

Jaap Ghoshen, CEO of Reanault said not so long ago that if Nissan Sunderland did not get the Leaf contract, he would close the show and move all to Slovenia. (It would take less than 6 months to remove Nissan Sunderland lock, stock and barrel to anywhere in the world.)

In 1811 they had the Luddites, now we have The Greens. Equally opposed to any kind of CHANGE.

Hold on very tight to Nurse, for the fear of something worse.