Taking sides: the dividing lines of British politics

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Fantastic article from the "New Statesman", sums up politics as is?

Taking sides: the dividing lines of British politics

All parties love the easy, polarising rhetoric of “us” against “them” – but how distinct are their ideas?

By Rafael Behr, Published 31 January 2013

There is a reliable way to tell if David Cameron is rattled. When the Prime Minister is on shaky ground, he hurls the charge of being “left-wing” at Ed Miliband as if it were the foulest thing he could say within the bounds of parliamentary protocol. The “Red Ed” label has never been a plausible line of attack but it is a comforting fiction for senior Conservatives who deride the Labour leader’s agenda as a slide into unelectable socialism.

Take time out from tribalism and read the article!

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2013/01/taking-sides-dividing-lines-british-politics

"It was introduced by John Major."

Ha ha stuffed!!!!!!!!!!.

Then whats the point of the Labour party if it just carries on with Tory policies?

I see the "labour Party" are ignoring the prospective mp's living locally with a proven track record as councillors in favour of candidates proposed by the unions. Nothing to do with cosseting up to their biggest backers of course, simply a case of the tail wagging the dog.

tlttf wrote:I see the "labour Party" are ignoring the prospective mp's living locally with a proven track record as councillors in favour of candidates proposed by the unions. Nothing to do with cosseting up to their biggest backers of course, simply a case of the tail wagging the dog.

You seem to forget tittf that Unions consist of hundreds of thousands or Millions of individuals that give a small sub every week/month FOR THE LABOUR PARTY.

Whereas the Tory party get their party funds from ? Bankers Hedge fund Managers and of course the people that avoid paying their correct amount of tax in the UK because they have HIDDEN their ill gotten gains in an off shore account, and maybe you will find in time that the people that pay tax via the PAYE ststem will pick up on that and do likewise.

I see the "labour Party" are ignoring the prospective mp's living locally with a proven track record as councillors in favour of candidates proposed by the unions.

tlttf. Even more nonsensical than your usual offerings, and that’s saying something. Who and what are you talking about? Is there a source for your latest ramblings?

It’s hard enough trying to keep up with your changing affiliations. First you urge us to give blank cheques to independent candidates, then you propose joining a party, UKIP. Now they have got some nice candidates who probably aren’t wicked trade unionists! One UKIP candidate claims that Jews killed each other in Germany so that they would get their own state of Israel, while another is a former BNP supporter who blamed the Second World War on the Jews. Farage says that he can’t vet all their candidates and that some of them might be BNP filth or even have criminal records. I just hope you’ll be very happy with your new friends, you deserve each other.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10018360/Nigel-Farage-We-cant-vet-all-council-candidates-to-keep-out-BNP.html

Ivan wrote:

I see the "labour Party" are ignoring the prospective mp's living locally with a proven track record as councillors in favour of candidates proposed by the unions.

tlttf. Even more nonsensical than your usual offerings, and that’s saying something. Who and what are you talking about? Is there a source for your latest ramblings?

It’s hard enough trying to keep up with your changing affiliations. First you urge us to give blank cheques to independent candidates, then you propose joining a party, UKIP. Now they have got some nice candidates who probably aren’t wicked trade unionists! One UKIP candidate claims that Jews killed each other in Germany so that they would get their own state of Israel, while another is a former BNP supporter who blamed the Second World War on the Jews. Farage says that he can’t vet all their candidates and that some of them might be BNP filth or even have criminal records. I just hope you’ll be very happy with your new friends, you deserve each other.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10018360/Nigel-Farage-We-cant-vet-all-council-candidates-to-keep-out-BNP.html

Well said Ivan I think the problem is some people can not make up there mind what party to support, but I have always thought once a Tory always a Tory.

The Party machine keeps grinding away at putting a spin on events. Now Cameron is all very World Statesman thundering against Syria's alleged use of Chemical Warfare.

Is that going to arrive here in 45 minutes like the Saddam's Iraqi WMD, do you think?

I have said all along that raving Dave could become a danger to this country.

He shows his arrogance and anger at the dispatch box and I expect wishes to follow in his Witch mothers footsteps.

" Is that going to arrive here in 45 minutes like the Saddam's Iraqi WMD, do you think?"

I was definitely watching but nothing came, so I took Mrs Hornby to the pub. Was that ok...?

Have you still got the old Anderson shelter in the garden Phil?
You and the good lady might find it prudent to bed down there for the night and sleep it off.

PS...I give it 3 or so more posts before this is locked. This is the usual when the argument is lost

blueturando. Same old, same old…..never post the truth if a distortion is a possibility. Threads are locked when they go off topic and posters ignore reminders. As the title of this thread is relatively vague, that’s not likely to be an issue.

Nobody on this forum has ever ‘lost’ an argument with you, especially when you drag up evidence from New Zealand to support the tabloid myth of a welfare dependency culture in the UK, so stop deluding yourself.

As oftenwrong reminded us, PFIs were started by John Major, but I suppose that fact was too inconvenient for you to mention. PFIs are expensive, but in 1997 Labour inherited crumbling schools and hospitals – neglected during 18 years of Tory misrule – and so that people could have better public facilities there and then, not at some distant point in the future, they used PFIs to finance them.

The Blairites may not want to renationalise anything, but they’re not running the Labour Party now. Apparently, there’s widespread support in the country for the renationalisation of the railways, so I wouldn’t rule it out.

manufacturing, which fell more under the Last Labour government than at anytime under Thatcher

When Thatcher came to power, manufacturing accounted for almost 30% of Britain's national income and employed 6.8 million people. Nearly one in four of all our manufacturing jobs disappeared within Thatcher's first term (1979-83), but yes, manufacturing continued to decline under Labour.

Say one thing, do another...that should be your Party line

LOL. Which party was it that promised to "cut prices at a stroke", and not to take us into the EU without “the wholehearted consent of the British Parliament and people”? (1970). Which party promised to reduce unemployment from 1.4 million and not to increase VAT? (1979). Which party promised “to cut taxes, year on year”? (1992). Which party promised “no cuts to frontline services”, “no top-down reorganisation of the NHS”, “no cuts to Sure Start”, “3,000 extra midwives” and had “no plans" to increase VAT? (2010). The Tories can only ever get into power by telling a pack of lies.

Oh and you have the nerve to even mention the NHS

Yes, and I’ll shout it from the rooftops. Patient satisfaction was at its highest ever in 2010. Labour provided 85,000 more nurses and 32,000 more doctors. Labour brought back matrons to hospital wards, provided free breast cancer screening for all women aged between 50-70, set up NHS Direct, offering free convenient patient advice, and reduced average waiting times for treatment from two years to four months. Those are the things which people care about, the things which the Tories didn’t tell us in 2010 that they were planning to undermine.

I suppose you think the NHS is doing fine under Cameron? Up to 5,000 nurses sacked, waiting times increased, and the service being sold off in chunks to Tory Party donors, which is corruption. Even on a local level, I see that twelve ambulance stations in Nottinghamshire are being closed, leaving just one for the whole county.

Labour and its supporters are very good at moaning about things

I suppose next you’ll be telling us that the Tories provided constructive opposition during their years out of power, I wouldn’t put it past you. Maybe you’ll even deny that in March 2008, Cameron said: “Labour’s economic failure was the excessive bureaucratic interventionism of the past decade, too much regulation.”

The tories are traditionally a party of low taxation

Ah, that old Tory lie again. Repeat it as often as you like and it will still be a lie. VAT has gone up from 8% to 20% in three moves under three different Tory governments and the scope of the tax has been widely extended. National insurance for employees increased from 6.5% to 9% in Thatcher’s first four years and then to 10% under Major. The Tories are not tax cutters, they are tax re-arrangers. They ensure that the rich and the corporations which finance their corrupt party pay less, while the rest of us pay more.

Then you have the cheek to talk about state control. The most centralising PM outside of wartime was Thatcher, especially in the way she emasculated local councils and imposed a national curriculum on schools. Try studying the facts before opening your trap for once.

One last thing....Is it Labour and the Lefts master plan just to make everyone one in the world equallly poor?

Yawn, another one of those fatuous remarks you get from Tories when they're devoid of arguments. I could have sworn that it was wicked socialist trade unionists who were trying to raise standards of living, while it’s Tories who want to abolish the minimum wage (and who undermine it with ‘workfare’ schemes) and want us to compete with Asian sweatshops. How strange that it’s under a Tory-dominated government that the number of people needing to be sent to food banks has tripled to 350,000 in the last year.

How can you pretend to be concerned that Labour didn’t build enough council houses, when you support a party whose only interest is in selling them off as bribes? How can you feign concern about the growth of inequality in one post and then support the idea of a flat tax in another? Do you expect anyone to take you seriously, or are you just a troll trying to make trouble here? Kindly go back to the drawing board and do some research before you post any more of your Tory codswallop.

Happy with the source Ivan?

Labour's radical plan to switch cash from housing benefit to build homes
Policy hint: Liam Byrne signalled the policy in an interview
Liam Byrne interview: 'We spend billions on housing benefit but don’t build houses. It can’t go on'


25 April 2013

A radical plan to divert billions of pounds from housing benefit into a major housebuilding scheme are being drawn up by Labour, the party’s work and pensions spokesman said today.

Liam Byrne signalled the policy in an exclusive interview with the Standard. The Labour moderniser said that ballooning sums of taxpayer money paid in rent subsidies could be better spent on “increasing the amount of homes there are for people to go to”.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labours-radical-plan-to-switch-cash-from-housing-benefit-to-build-homes-8587865.html

I appreciate it isn't what the luvvies want, but he is a serving minister and he is another champagne socialist. Should I apologise?

Ivan, of course I change party's, I'm not stuck in the fantasy warp that is inhabited by most that post here. Personally I'd have a parliament full of independents who have to mutually agree on who is going to be the leader/spokesperson. Each member would be there because they were voted in by their constituents (not the millionaire unions nor individual millionaires). I would bin council tax and introduce a land tax (everybody would have to pay whether they have buildings or not, whether there are people living there or not). Everybody would pay a standard tax similar to PAYE, it would then be up to the individual to prove he/she has expenses to offset against that. My list could go on and on though I accept you'll throw a hissy fit and try to denounce it in your pathetic attack mode. Still needs must and in a true socialist world you need an enemy to keep the prolate in place.

tlttf wrote:Happy with the source Ivan?

Labour's radical plan to switch cash from housing benefit to build homes
Policy hint: Liam Byrne signalled the policy in an interview
Liam Byrne interview: 'We spend billions on housing benefit but don’t build houses. It can’t go on'


25 April 2013

A radical plan to divert billions of pounds from housing benefit into a major housebuilding scheme are being drawn up by Labour, the party’s work and pensions spokesman said today.

Liam Byrne signalled the policy in an exclusive interview with the Standard. The Labour moderniser said that ballooning sums of taxpayer money paid in rent subsidies could be better spent on “increasing the amount of homes there are for people to go to”.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/labours-radical-plan-to-switch-cash-from-housing-benefit-to-build-homes-8587865.html

I appreciate it isn't what the luvvies want, but he is a serving minister and he is another champagne socialist. Should I apologise?

Suspect you're missing (or ignoring) the point, t.

Labour are committed to a living wage.

Massive house-building will bring down house prices and rents.

Either on its own will lead to a massive decrease in the need for housing benefit. Both together will all but eliminate it.

Oh, and he's a Shadow Minister, btw, not a 'serving minister'.

I'm no fan of Byrne, but even he deserves to have his statements taken in context.

Isn't it painful when one witnesses a bit of reason and common sense juxtaposed with a load of bollocks...?

Ivan wrote:I suppose you think the NHS is doing fine under Cameron? Up to 5,000 nurses sacked, waiting times increased, and the service being sold off in chunks to Tory Party donors, which is corruption. Even on a local level, I see that twelve ambulance stations in Nottinghamshire are being closed, leaving just one for the whole county.

It's something over 7,000 now, as I understand it. What's worse is the hidden toll - I send an FOI request to every acute hospital in England about the positions they're simply not filling for cost reasons but are keeping on the books to avoid the bad PR of 'more nurse cuts' - initial responses indicate that the number dwarfs the 7,000 officially terminated positions.

How strange that it’s under a Tory-dominated government that the number of people needing to be sent to food banks has tripled to 350,000 in the last year.

Hold on mate - didn't you hear Dave say that the number of people visiting Foodbanks increased tenfold under Labour? lol Only thing is, there's no comparison between something from 4,000 to 40,000 or thereabouts and increased from 40,000 to 350,000 - but Dave's a trooper, and not one to let mere facts stand in the way of a good sneer.

Phil Hornby wrote:Isn't it painful when one witnesses a bit of reason and common sense juxtaposed with a load of bollocks...?

TYVM!

blueturando wrote:

GREEDY BACKSTUDS

Funny one really Redflag??? The tories are traditionally a party of low taxation and the free market, where as you and your lot are the party of high taxation and state control....Seems to me its you lot who are the GREEDY BACKSTUDS as you want to steal everyones hard earned money for yourselves to waste on what ever YOU want....Its just not cricket old chap

Your problem blue along with the rest of your ILK is you "DO NOT WANT TO PAY ANY TAX AT ALL", you leave that up to the people that HAVE to pay tax via PAYE then there are those of your kind that stick there money in OFF SHORE ACCOUNTS.

You have a "BRASS NECK" to suggest that your party is the party of low taxation and the free market, it is the bloody free market that got us into the mess we are in today and "Do Not Dare" say this is all Labours fault. The Banks night at the Casino caused the majority of this trouble, RBS got £45.80 Billion LLoyds TSB £20.54 Billion Northern Rock £22.99 Billion Bradford Bingley £8.55 Billion then there was £26.05 Billion to support deposits MMY by Eunice221,

Its a ptiy you all did not band together and pay the £3.6 Million (I do not believe these figures) for the Maggots funeral because I for one along with Millions of others BEGRUDGE the 6p it is costing US the tax payers, as far as I was concerned they could of put her in a bin bag and stuck her in the furnace that was what was awaiting her anyway.

Kindly desist, Redflag .

Seeing pictures of that nature at this time of day could put a chap right off his Cornflakes...

Phil Hornby wrote:Kindly desist, Redflag .

Seeing pictures of that nature at this time of day could put a chap right off his Cornflakes...

I did not mean to put you off your cornflakes PH LOL, just proving a point to some on here that take the truth and twist it to suit there tory ideology.

tlttf wrote:Ivan, of course I change party's, I'm not stuck in the fantasy warp that is inhabited by most that post here. Personally I'd have a parliament full of independents who have to mutually agree on who is going to be the leader/spokesperson. Each member would be there because they were voted in by their constituents (not the millionaire unions nor individual millionaires). I would bin council tax and introduce a land tax (everybody would have to pay whether they have buildings or not, whether there are people living there or not). Everybody would pay a standard tax similar to PAYE, it would then be up to the individual to prove he/she has expenses to offset against that. My list could go on and on though I accept you'll throw a hissy fit and try to denounce it in your pathetic attack mode. Still needs must and in a true socialist world you need an enemy to keep the prolate in place.

But your still stuck in Tory Ideology tittf, your land tax making people pay for something they will never ever get the use of in itself is unfair, whereas paying council tax for bin men that lift your rubbish or care homes for when your old keeping the roads swept drains unblocked and a decent sewerage system. So why do you not go and change your party maybe the UKIP would welcome your kind with open arms.

Red, if a land tax was used then your hated money grabbing private landlords would have to pay for an empty property, do you think it could force rents down. Also 90% of the land in the UK is owned by the rich who simply sit on it whilst it goes up in value before selling to your hated buy to rent mob.

Explain how paying that instead of the council tax affects bin men and care homes, surely it would bring in more money and ensure everybody pays their share based on what they own?

Yes I'm voting UKIP at the locals, the only independent is a former failed councillor. By all means stay in your bubble and forget it's local with local issues, what ever floats your boat.

That cartoon is just what I wanted to see - brlliant!

tlttf quoted: "....ballooning sums of taxpayer money paid in rent subsidies could be better spent on “increasing the amount of homes there are for people to go to”.

Umm. What's wrong with that as a comment? Quite a lot of the money spent by the Tory-led Coalition on fixing things that weren't broke could have been better spent on increasing the amount of homes there are for people to live in.

Happy with the source Ivan?

tlttf. I’m no admirer of ‘The Standard’, which is just another trashy right-wing tabloid for simpletons. Furthermore, as someone posted on Twitter, it’s “so far up Boris’s arse that you can read the headlines when he opens his mouth”. Johnson has duly rewarded with new appointments both his pet propagandist, Andrew Gilligan, and the former editor of the paper, Veronica Wadley, for all the help they gave him in duping London voters like you. As to Liam Byrne, I have no idea whether he quaffs champagne, and I doubt if you know either, but then you’ve never been shy about posting unsubstantiated claptrap.

However, the story is okay, even if you have failed to comprehend it. Labour won’t just cut people’s housing benefit and possibly leave them homeless, as the Tories are more than happy to do. As skwalker1964 has succinctly explained, a living wage and a larger supply of homes to rent will eliminate the need for most housing benefit, which in effect is just a massive handout to greedy landlords.

Maybe one day you’ll learn to think things through, but I expect that’s unlikely. The only way that anything would get done if there were 650 so-called ‘independents’ in Parliament is if they came together in groups in to pass legislation. Like-minded people would find themselves collaborating regularly, and within a year or two they would form loose associations which would just become parties again. For example, the only people who would be interested in UKIP’s ideas of a flat tax, a massive increase in defence spending, doubling the prison population, stopping equal marriage and bringing back foxhunting, would be other far-right headbangers, so they would be bound to associate with each other.

Well thanks for believing that was me OW and not from the paper. How does stopping benefit to those in need help them. Yes I can see that building new homes should be paramount, surely stopping benefits to fund it isn't the right way forward?

tlttf. Stop trolling. You know perfectly well what skwalker1964 was saying. Once the houses are built, there would then be no need to pay the housing benefit.

skwalker1964 wrote:-
It's something over 7,000 now, as I understand it.

Having previously been accused of “making things up as I go along”, I probably erred on the side of caution. At PMQT on Wednesday, Ed Miliband talked of 4,500 fewer nurses since May 2010, which was roughly the workforce figure for November 2012 and may well be out of date.

In February this year, there were 4,897 fewer nurses in training since the general election, and on the current rates of loss, by the end of this Parliament the NHS is on course to lose over 12,000 nurses. Your figure of over 7,000 by now is indeed very credible. So much for the liar Cameron and his "no cuts to frontline services".

http://www.sochealth.co.uk/2013/03/12/nhs-nursing-under-staffed-and-under-pressure/

blueturando wrote:

GREEDY BACKSTUDS

Funny one really Redflag??? The tories are traditionally a party of low taxation and the free market, where as you and your lot are the party of high taxation and state control....Seems to me its you lot who are the GREEDY BACKSTUDS as you want to steal everyones hard earned money for yourselves to waste on what ever YOU want....Its just not cricket old chap

As opposed to the tories, whom only want to steal the hard earned money of those in lower earning brackets?? "The Conservatives have said that they do not regard the new 50p tax rate as a "permanent feature" of the tax system, but "could not even think of abolishing the 50p rate on the rich while at the same time asking many of our public sector workers to accept a pay freeze". Quote by Osborne at conference speech 2010.
Quote here ,Fuller quote here

In regards to the preference of a free market, that worked out very well in regard to the banking Fuster Cluck, granted it happened during labour being in power but like any form of major disaster it doesn't just happen they're is a series of events that set something of that scale in motion and the ball started rolling during the previous governments reign ~ THE CONSERVATIVES. By de-regulating the banks back in 1983 she essentially left them to their own devices, granted it could be viewed that in order to predict what would follow would have taken a very powerful crystal ball and some pretty vindictive actions on her part. However considering her parting shot at her own party in 1990 taking the UK into the ERM which led to the catastrophic "Black Wednesday" 2 years later, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think if she can do this to her own party after they turned on her, she would think nothing of setting this in motion...


Perhaps eating your words or a rather large slice of humble pie is on the menu for yourself Blueturando

Since the topic is closely related to the provision of Social Housing, an article in today's Independent may cause jaws to drop. Yarlington Housing Group, which manages 9000 homes around Yeovil in Somerset requires new applicants to sign an agreement to keep fit, give up smoking and actively look for work. Tenants' performance will be reviewed at the renewal of Agreements. The spirit of the Work House is alive and well in this 21st. Century.

The article doesn't say what Lib-Dem Yeovil MP David Laws thinks about all that.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/social-housing-residents-told-to-sign-ambitionplan-as-part-of-tenancies-8590713.html?origin=internalSearch

tlttf wrote:Red, if a land tax was used then your hated money grabbing private landlords would have to pay for an empty property, do you think it could force rents down. Also 90% of the land in the UK is owned by the rich who simply sit on it whilst it goes up in value before selling to your hated buy to rent mob.

Explain how paying that instead of the council tax affects bin men and care homes, surely it would bring in more money and ensure everybody pays their share based on what they own?

Yes I'm voting UKIP at the locals, the only independent is a former failed councillor. By all means stay in your bubble and forget it's local with local issues, what ever floats your boat.

Thats the point tittf they would not be empty as long as this gov't does not build social housing the private landlords or land owners will be coining it in, so the land tax would pay for the public sector bin men and the likes ? What about the people that do not own land or a property they pay the same as someone that has plenty of acres what is fair about that, at least with the council tax you pay what the house you live in is valued at, your way is not workable some one with a two up two down would pay the same as some one with 5-6 bedrooms two reception rooms three bathrooms kitchen and space for live in nanny or servant and of course there indoor pool.

I am surprised but flattered to be followed on Twitter by Natalie Bennett, the new leader of the Green Party. The only MP in that party, its former leader Caroline Lucas, has tried to get support in Parliament for a land value tax, and it sounds to me like a good idea. The aim is to target a £100 billion annual windfall that at present is hardly taxed at all.

This is what Winston Churchill said in 1909, at a time when he wasn’t a Tory:-

"Roads are made, streets are made, railway services are improved, electric light turns night into day, electric trams glide swiftly to and fro, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains – and all the while the landlord sits still… To not one of these improvements does the land monopolist as a land monopolist contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is sensibly enhanced."

Landowners cannot change the value of a plot of land. Its value depends only on its size and factors that are determined by the community (such as local facilities), not the landowner. The landowner can increase the value of the property, by building on it or extending existing structures. But any increase in the value per square foot of the plot on which the buildings stand is a free ride, and any profit made from this is pure freeloading on the efforts of the community. For some time, landowners have been making £100 billion a year on average from a rise in land values. Writing for ‘The New Statesman’, David Cooper has paraphrased Churchill: “Never in the field of human endeavour has so great a reward been given for so little effort”.

Caroline Lucas wants to reclaim this windfall via a tax which is levied on the value of the plot of land, without taking into account any building on it. A vacant plot in a row of houses would be taxed the same as a similar built-on plot. Buildings are the result of effort and enterprise by the landowner who should be rewarded with their use or profit. The value of the plot is not the result of any effort on the part of the landowner and any increase is a windfall. At present, vacant sites are left derelict. Developers sit on vast land banks and create an artificial housing shortage, because the tax system encourages land hoarding. Keeping a property empty and unused makes excellent sense to speculators, since a minimal amount of tax has to paid on an empty plot.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/why-all-progressives-should-support-land-value-tax

Much as I agree with the Green philosophy in so many ways, the stark economic reality is that if all their good intentions, particularly on energy, became Law the cost of living would increase by 50%.

So to quote St. Augustine, "Lord, make me chaste, but not yet."

Ivan wrote:

skwalker1964 wrote:-
It's something over 7,000 now, as I understand it.

Having previously been accused of “making things up as I go along”, I probably erred on the side of caution. At PMQT on Wednesday, Ed Miliband talked of 4,500 fewer nurses since May 2010, which was roughly the workforce figure for November 2012 and may well be out of date.

In February this year, there were 4,897 fewer nurses in training since the general election, and on the current rates of loss, by the end of this Parliament the NHS is on course to lose over 12,000 nurses. Your figure of over 7,000 by now is indeed very credible. So much for the liar Cameron and his "no cuts to frontline services".

http://www.sochealth.co.uk/2013/03/12/nhs-nursing-under-staffed-and-under-pressure/

Yes, the figure seems to fluctuate a little. Whichever it is, it's dwarfed by the almost 20,000 nurse positions that are simply left unfilled for cost-saving reasons because of the government's 'clawbacks' etc.

http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/massive-hidden-gulf-in-nhs-nurse-numbers/

Covers a lot of ground, doesn't it, this topic?

Covers a lot of ground, doesn't it, this topic?

I guess that’s the advantage of it having a suitably vague title!

Much as I agree with the Green philosophy in so many ways…..

I wasn’t suggesting that we all rush out and join the Green Party, or adopt its energy proposals, but maybe the idea of a land value tax would be worth considering.

"A land value tax".
Hmmm. Now does that "land" extend into Earth's core at an acute angle in the form of a cone?

In which case does it include the mineral rights of everything within said cone?

and does the same cone extend into the space above The Earth to infinity? In which case can the registered Owner claim trespass if an aircraft flies through it?

Such trivial technical questions can surely be left safely in the hands of the lawyers -for an appropriate fee...

Is there an actual difference between any of the main parties anymore?

Brian Monteith: Labour’s talking Eds are full of double standards

By Brian Monteith
Published on 07/06/2013 12:47

Is there any point to politics in Britain now? Listening to our political leaders is like living in some sort of weird drug-fuelled dream.

Black has become white, austerity has become munificence – why, I swear Hibs won the cup the other week (maybe that’s stretching the point too far . . .).

http://www.scotsman.com/edinburgh-evening-news/opinion/brian-monteith-labour-s-talking-eds-are-full-of-double-standards-1-2959428

tlttf. Why that non-story was posted on the ‘fairness’ thread, I can’t imagine, but I moved it to here.

What will you dredge up next in your cut-and-paste marathon? Did Ed Balls have two eggs for breakfast, while Ed Miliband had only one? Does that represent a split? What's the purpose of all this? Do you think that Labour supporters on this forum are going to be so impressed by Fraser Nelson's lies or 'Daily Mail' xenophobia that they're going to rush off and join UKIP? In your dreams!

Of course you didn't think of posting this morning's news that George Osborne has just pocketed a £400,000 profit on his part-taxpayer funded constituency home? Wasn't that 'convenient'? After trying to tell us that the Tories are the party of the working class now, have you switched your allegiance yet again?

This is getting so boring. Ever heard of discussing issues, rather than always hiding behind some dodgy piece of so-called journalism? There is a time for cut-and-pasting articles – I do it myself quite often – but not to the exclusion of messages containing any form of reasoned argument.

Not a problem Ivan, I posted it there because it simply highlights that there is little difference between any of the parties (fairness). The link is from a Scottish paper (I'm sure you looked). There's no need for me to mention tory screw ups' (yes there are plenty), however considering the majority on here highlight them why should I bother. I'm simply trying to bring about a bit of balance and highlighting the lot of them are looking for profit.

I love your final paragraph mentioning reasoned argument.

But it would be nice if once in a while you put your hands up to the things that the Tory party are getting wrong, instead of just quoting the Daily Fail. I know the Labour party did not get everything right in their 13 years in office, and have put my hands up to it, but if my party behaved the same way as the Tories do they would not be MY party for long.

As Ivan has said Osborne made £400,000 profit on his second home, the one WE the taxpayers paid for, if that was a Labour MP we would never be allowed to forget it from yourself, but because its a Tory MP that is OK. Just what I and others have been saying, one law for them and a different one for the rest of us.