Where should the Labour Party position itself? (Part 2)

First topic message reminder :

Just to prove what a liar I am, always “making things up as I go along”, I’ll add three more sources to the discussion, but no doubt that won’t convince the pig-headed amongst us:-
 
“The Beveridge Report proposed an allowance of eight shillings per week for all children (apart from for a family's first child if one parent was working), which graduated according to age. It was to be non-contributory and funded by general taxation. After some debate, the Family Allowances Bill was enacted in June 1945. The act provided for a flat rate payment funded directly from taxation. The recommended nine shillings a week was reduced to five shillings, and family allowance became a subsidy, rather than a subsistence payment as Beveridge had envisaged.”
 
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/beveridge-report-child-benefit.htm
 
“Known as the Family Allowance, the 5 shillings a week payment was given to parents only for their second AND subsequent children, thus helping shore up the depleted population by encouraging more births. It continued through the post-war boom but was restructured when the economy turned down again, being reinvented as Child Benefit in the second half of the 1970s. The new payments were tax free and first-time mothers also became eligible.”
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/8041636/Child-Benefit-history.html
 
“In the UK, child benefit is administered by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC). The system was first implemented in August 1946 as ‘family allowances’ under the Family Allowances Act 1945, at a rate of 5s (= £0.25) per week per child in a family, except for the eldest. This was raised from September 1952, by the Family Allowances and National Insurance Act 1952, to 8s (= £0.40), and from October 1956, by the Family Allowances Act and National Insurance Act 1956, to 8s for the second child with 10s (= £0.50) for the third and subsequent children.

It was modified in 1977, with the payments being termed ‘child benefit’ and given for the eldest child as well as the younger ones; by 1979 it was worth £4 per child per week. In 1991, the system was further altered, with a higher payment now given for the first child than for their younger siblings.”
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_benefit

ghost whistler wrote:

Redflag wrote:Boatlady he/she does not really want answers they just want to come on here and harp on about the Labour party & MPs, several of us have tried to answer the questions they have asked just to have it thrown back in our faces.    I think they are hoping to put us all off voting Labour in May and change our vote to Ukip NOT A HOPE IN HELL.

Don't put words in my mouth. Who do you think you are?

A better person than you GW, and I got that from jolly Mr Rifkin

Can we all calm down, please? I’m fairly certain that nobody in this discussion is planning to vote Tory, so we’re all on the same side of the great divide in politics. We may see different ways in which to move towards the fair and decent society we’d like for Britain, but let’s try to discuss our differences in a friendly and positive way. That is one of the aims of this forum.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every Labour supporter to be au fait on the minutiae of Labour policy, which is still developing. Cutting Edge isn’t meant to be an inquisition, where Labour supporters are expected to take part in a question-and-answer session akin to PMQs (not that you actually get any answers from Cameron).

If you claim that Labour is “unelectable” – when it has more members than any other UK party and has been ahead in almost every opinion poll for the last three years – you should try to justify your remark rather than move the goalposts by posing another question. If you wrongly claim that Labour invented the bedroom tax, it doesn’t get you off the hook if you ask something else.

I met a Tory on Twitter yesterday who is “proud” of what this government has done (presumably to the sick and the disabled, in fighting to protect bankers’ bonuses and in creating a massive extension of foodbank use). People such as him deserve to be the recipients of our wrath, not fellow travellers.

Forgive me for nit-picking, but if you are answering the most recent message on a thread, there really is no need to copy/paste it. You wouldn’t normally conduct a conversation by repeating everything which someone has just said to you, and people viewing these threads don’t need to read the same things over and over again.

Redflag wrote:

ghost whistler wrote:Don't put words in my mouth. Who do you think you are?

A better  person than you GW, and I got that from jolly Mr Rifkin

I'm not one of those that has constnatly made snide comments and cheap insults while blindly defending a political party that sold out your interests long ago.

if you think Labour are going to deliver what you want and what society needs then you're in for a rude awakening. There is no evidence for any of this when, AGAIN, they have sided with the Tories time and time again.

Ivan wrote:
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect every Labour supporter to be au fait on the minutiae of Labour policy, which is still developing.

That's an enormous misrepresentation of waht I have said.

Frankly if the official opposition hasn't got their act together 3 months before the election what hope is there?

Ivan wrote:
If you claim that Labour is “unelectable” – when it has more members than any other UK party and has been ahead in almost every opinion poll for the last three years – you should try to justify your remark rather than move the goalposts by posing another question. If you wrongly claim that Labour invented the bedroom tax, it doesn’t get you off the hook if you ask something else.

They may well be ahead in whatever poll you choose, for all their accuracy, but that doesn't change the fact that the modern iteration of Labour is wedded to the same values as teh Tory party. Granted they may be slightly milder but they are no less in love with big business, a failed economic system, and the values within. They have offered nothing and legitimised much of what the Tories are doing,. Miliband is hopeless, utterly hopeless. He has totally failed to stand his ground on almost every issue and is easily played by the right wing media. Ed Balls should be kicked out: a Tory in a red tie and a complete albatross. Even Burnham supported NHS privatisation. Most of these filth are professional landlords (like Michael meacher who likes to pretend he gives a damn about the poor). None of them give a shit about you or I. Look at Labour councillors like Robin Wales, the disgusting pig in Newham who has builled the Focus E15 mums - young single mothers struggling in our society.

If scum like that is who you want to support, then you can do it without me.

oftenwrong wrote:

why do you support Tory ideology?

ghost whistler wrote:I'm not one of those that has constnatly made snide comments and cheap insults while blindly defending a political party that sold out your interests long ago.

if you think Labour are going to deliver what you want and what society needs then you're in for a rude awakening. There is no evidence for any of this when, AGAIN, they have sided with the Tories time and time again.

That is all you have done since you came onto this forum make snide remarks and insults about the Labour party and people on this forum, so the best thing I suggest we do is allow me to make up my mind as to where my X will go on the 7th May & you put yours wherever you want it.

So you are saying that you agree with the behaviour of someone like Mayor Robin Wales. That's the logic of your comment: that you think I'm being snide when i point out the kind of man he is. A Labour councillor.

You agreee then with the Labour party's support for slave labour - forcing people into unpaid work under threat of abject poverty? Is that the politicis you support, or will you respond with more ad hominem crap because you don't have an argument?

You agree then with Labour's support for the Tory spending plans? Fracking?

Where was the social housing provision in 13 years under Labour that has contributed to the current crisis exacerbated by the Bedroom Tax?

Give me an answer.

HERE IS YOUR ANSWER "GO LIE ON YOUR RIBS" TROLL  and do not come back until you are prepared to tell the truth  
. :

And what truth would that be?

Do you deny all the things I've said?

I’ll say it once again - if you are answering the most recent message on a thread, there really is no need to copy/paste it, we only want to read it once. If everyone copied the whole of the previous message, each post would be as long as the entire thread.

I don’t see that the recent exchanges on this thread are achieving anything worthwhile, whether it be the name calling or the misrepresentations of Labour Party policy. We just have to accept that some of us are pragmatists who would rather have part of the cake than none of it, while others are purists who would rather go hungry if they can’t have the whole cake.

My local party has some trade union members, including me, who would like to see some more red-blooded policies. Amazingly, it also has a few people who still like Tony Blair. They like him because he won three elections in a row and, although I happen to think Labour would have won in 1997 even if Arthur Scargill had been the leader, they may have a point. It was only because Labour won elections that it was able to bring in the minimum wage, income guarantees and the various ‘perks’ for pensioners, tax credits for the working poor and smaller class sizes. It was only because Labour won that we got more teachers, more doctors, more nurses and a reduction in waiting times for operations from 18-24 months to 4 months. I wish at least the railways and the private water monopolies had been renationalised, but it’s not surprising that they weren’t because Blair never called himself a socialist (though Ed Miliband does).

What no doubt annoys some members of this forum are unsubstantiated smears such as “Labour is wedded to the same values as the Tory Party”, when it certainly won’t be wasting £43,000 of taxpayers’ money fighting to defend bankers’ bonuses, or selling state assets off on the cheap to George Osborne’s best man. Furthermore, nobody is “blindly defending” the Labour Party; we all have various gripes, from Ed Miliband’s leadership to the Iraq war and yes, “poor social housing provision in 13 years”. But what we do agree on is that Cameron and his evil gang must go, that the murderous sociopath Duncan Smith must be removed from the DWP, and that the bedroom tax and the Health and Social Care Act must be repealed. That won’t be achieved by voting for the TUSC, Left Unity or the Green Party, but then it all depends on whether you are a pragmatist - subscribing to Otto von Bismarck’s dictum that “politics is the art of the possible” - or a purist. Rather than have further unpleasantness, perhaps we should just leave it at that.

I suspect this thread may be finished - the discussion keeps going round and round.

Originally, I think the idea was an invitation to a bit of blue sky thinking about our 'ideal' Labour party - which would have been entertaining and interesting - if it's going to become just another excuse for a quarrel, maybe we need just to agree to differ

I do not think it is the problem of agree to differ boatlady, more to the point to try and get Labour voters to vote Ukip as you know they are deperate for voters & candidates because they do not seem to be able to keep the ones they have.

I do not know about anybody else but I am fed up with GW asking questions then not believing what we are saying, but does believe the LIES coming from the Tories, as far as I am concerned I will not be answering any more questionsas or posts from GW.   Because if you do not give the answers he/she wants insults and snide remarks is all you get.

The latest Ashcroft poll result suggests that Miliband is on course to form the next government, showing much stronger than Cameron in the England which exists beyond Westminster.  People believe that  finances are only really improving for the Toffs, and that UKIP is still essentially a one-trick pony.

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/generalelection2015/labour-surge-past-tories-in-new-poll-while-ukip-slump/ar-BBhU1wT

Let the doubters chew on that.

boatlady wrote:-
I suspect this thread may be finished

I couldn't agree more. This thread is now locked.