Whatever happened to 'Broken Britain'......did Dave manage to fix it?

First topic message reminder :

Remember how before the last election, you know before there were mass demonstrations and riots, when we had 10,000 more police officers and more nurses and soldiers, when more people were in work, Dave kept shouting about 'Broken Britain' and how it need to be 'Fixed'.

Well now Two years on has he managed to 'fix' it and if so how would we know?

Why is he not shouting about his success?

boatlady wrote:Actually, Red, I don't believe the government want to sell the UK to America, but to their friends in big business, who actually seem to employ most politicians on both sides of the pond

I know I am expecting too much from those on this forum to watch the adverts on TV, you will see so many for private health including private clinics and private health Insurance trace them back and just see how many of them are owned by American big Corporations. Also take a look at the NHS the Tories have handed most of the NHS contracts to American private health Corporations.

I watch them, Red and I watch them with a growing sense of sadness. Private companies selling services which have long been available on the NHS.

The huge proliferation of pay day loan companies is also a worry. I seem to remember that companies like Wonga were supposed to have been kicked into shape but I see them still offering loans at 1509% APR. This government is turning a blind eye to this when they shouldn't be.

Thank you Claudine I am glad there areothers that have seen what I have seen, as for the pay day loan companies two of which are owned by Tory donors I bet that does not surprise you Claudine, these companies are just as bad as the unlicenced loan Sharks but the likes of Wonga & Quick Quid have the Tory party backing whatever they do.

Yes, looks like he achieved his objectives - it's now working the way he wanted

I would not say that Davy boy has acheived all that he wants to do boatlady, there has not been any WORKHOUSES built or we are not all going round tugging our FORELOCKS to Davy boy and his mates.

True - what I should have said is he is on the way to achieving his objectives

If you start to think about Charles Dickens books and the stories within those books boatlady then you will reach what Davy boy wants to achieve.

And in some respects, we're already perilously near

The balanced view of Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/frances-ogrady-tuc-boss-unions-are-the-sacrificial-red-meat-for-conservative-mps-a6842936.html

I do think people have to join unions again - and that would mean the unions operating in the workplace as the Labour party operates in the community, engaging the workforce, person by person and making sure everyone knows the benefits of union membership. I've been shocked and discouraged by the number of people I meet who don't understand the value of union membership

boatlady wrote:And in some respects, we're already perilously near

I agree boatlady but the people of the UK have not woken up to that YET, and so far the Unions have done NOWT but with the trade union bill going through the HOC they want us the people of the UK to try and stop this bill.

I think the people of the UK need to get a backbone and stand up to this Tory gov't Civil Disobedience or REVOLUTION French style would stop the Tories and all of those big business that have been taking the P**S out of the normal working man & woman of the UK. This has been happening around the world but that is for them to sort out.

When I read through this forum, I despair, and I despair not only at what this government is doing to people, and to our treasured institutions such as our NHS, but also at the fact that based upon the latest opinion polls, and also upon revised boundaries, a general election tomorrow would produce a Tory majority of 70+ seats.

There is not a single shred of evidence anywhere which points to Labour been more electable due to either the present leader or the new leftwards direction of the party, indeed quite the opposite.

I regularly post under various names on various political forums, and to put it bluntly - many grass roots Labour supporters are living in fairyland, the excuses are almost beyond comprehension.
The reason why Labour have gone backwards in most polls is because "the polls are wrong" -- "the polls are run by Tories" -- "there is plenty of time yet" -- "it is because of the right wing media" -- "it is because of the biassed BBC". Are these people serious ?, it reminds me of the last hiding place of the opposing argument, that the facts are wrong.

Today I was expelled from another Labour Party forum, and my crime ?, because I wrote a critical article about the present direction and leadership of the Labour Party, with no insults, nothing abusive, using data, statistics, polling, historical evidence and opinions of long standing, respected members of the party.

Many within the present Labour Party wont stand for dissent, if you dont agree with them or criticise what is happening, you are silenced, booted, ejected and removed, welcome back to the 1980s and Militant, the reinvigorated fascists of the left.

witchfinder. It’s good to see you here again. Neither you nor anyone else will ever be expelled from this forum for having views which disagree with the majority, unless of course they are illegal (racist or homophobic or constitute hate crimes – and I know that’s not you!). Can I suggest that you re-post the article which caused your expulsion on a suitable thread on this forum? Can you also send me a personal message telling me which Labour forum expelled you, so that I can pay it a visit and maybe recruit some others who are being treated unfairly? Thanks.

I partly share your concern about some of the people who have recently jumped on the Corbyn bandwagon. For example, I’m appalled that Hilary Benn gets attacked for having views which are different from those of his father. We’re all entitled to our own opinions, we’re not clones of our parents. Furthermore, Tony Benn held views to the left of his father, and from what I know of him, he would have respected his son’s right to disagree with him.

However, having read your post above, I have to take issue with a number of points. Firstly, as someone who started the thread entitled ‘The gradual destruction and right-wing bias of the BBC’, I would have expected you to agree with those who endorse its title. I also think you give too much credence to opinion polls, especially after their unreliability was exposed last May. The polls that matter are the real ones, and you were spectacularly wrong with your prediction for Oldham, where Labour increased its share of the vote, something very rare for the incumbent party to do in a by-election.

I wish that Ed Miliband hadn’t resigned on the day after the general election, but he did and so a leadership contest was triggered. At first I was intending to support Andy Burnham, but I was sickened when he, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall abstained on the welfare cap which will leave some people with almost nothing after they have paid extortionate rents. I looked at all four candidates and asked myself if there was a sure-fire winner amongst them and decided that there wasn’t. The campaigns of three of the candidates were dull and seemed to be offering just more of the same after two general election defeats. Rev Richard Coles summed up the contest: “I think one reason why Jeremy Corbyn is doing well is that his words don't sound like they've been signed off by daleks”.

Corbyn was democratically elected by a landslide, he is now Labour’s leader and will almost certainly be until at least the 2020 election. That’s the reality of the situation. Those in the party who continue to make waves are helping the Tories by sending out a signal to the public that Labour is divided. They also look like bad losers, throwing their toys out of the pram because they didn’t get the result they wanted. Any attempt to unseat Corbyn and trigger another leadership election would just help the Tories further and distract attention from the dreadful things which they are doing to this country. Then, either an angry membership would re-elect Corbyn, or there would be a mass exodus, depriving the party of the many extra foot soldiers which it has garnered since last May.

Most of Corbyn’s views, apart from those on NATO and Trident, were considered mainstream in the 1980s. As the journalist Steve Richards said: "When Corbyn utters views, similar in some respects to those of Roy Jenkins and the SDP, he is seen as an extremist". And as the playwright Alan Bennett commented: "Since the 1980s, one has only had to stand still to become a radical”.

Britain is broken. It’s been broken by Cameron and his gang of thugs and spivs, with more and more foodbank use, the NHS in crisis, more children in poverty, more homelessness, and more job insecurity and underemployment. But it won’t be repaired by meekly accepting that the centre ground in British politics has moved so far to the right in the last 37 years. And it won’t be repaired by constantly carping about a decision which was made by hundreds of thousands of Labour members and supporters who hope for something different from the neoliberal consensus.

Despair Fatigue

From an article by the anthropologist David Graeber:-

From a distance, Britain looks like it’s experiencing one of the stranger paroxysms of masochistic self-destruction in world history. Since 2010, the British government has set out to systematically unravel much of what makes life good and decent in the country. Conservative leaders started by trashing the UK’s university system, while eyeing the greatest source of national pride and dignity, the universal health guarantees of the NHS. All of this is being done in the name of an economic doctrine - austerity - that no one genuinely believes in and whose results pretty much everyone deplores, in response to an existential crisis that does not exist.

It appears that the entire political class has become trapped in the bizarrely successful narrative that swept the Tories into power after the crash of 2008 and still sustains them long after its consequences have run beyond any sort of humanity or common sense. Pretty much every major sitting government was booted out after the crash, and in the UK everyone accepted the opposition’s narrative that the British crash resulted from irresponsible social spending and government deficits.

The effects of the spending cuts have been devastating. Social housing has been ransacked, subsidies have been cut, and squatting in residential properties was made illegal at exactly the moment tens of thousands were being “decanted” from their homes. To be poor now means to be endlessly assessed, monitored, and surveyed, and almost invariably found wanting. No one really knows how many thousands of people have died as a result of the freefall in government support.

If you wish to read on:-
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/despair-fatigue-david-graeber

Do you ever have a sensation that the Bullingdon Tory administration are just playing a private game with the rest of the Nation called - Let's see what happens when we do this .... ?

Did he fix it?


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