I think the first bit of your assertion may be right - instinctive support for the private car rather than common-usage public transport (the Royal Train perhaps being the exception that proves the rule) may be a crude predictor of right vs left values. Not so convinced with the theory that a public transport forum will be dominated by TU members.
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Poll: Potential General Election: who are you voting for?
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I think the first bit of your assertion may be right - instinctive support for the private car rather than common-usage public transport (the Royal Train perhaps being the exception that proves the rule) may be a crude predictor of right vs left values. Not so convinced with the theory that a public transport forum will be dominated by TU members.
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An excellent point!
Although I don't really see the BNP as a political party - just a lot of angry people who want a fight.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Partly Brexit, but I think it's more than that. Personally I'm a Labour supporter, but I'm not tribal about being Labour - and I can understand and have some respect for the traditional 'conservative' philosophy of careful economic management, support for business, respect for traditions and the constitution etc. The kind of 'conservatism' that - say, John Major, stood for. But from what I can see, today's Conservative party no longer stands for any of that. On Brexit, they are pursuing a hard-core, no-deal Brexit that runs completely counter to any notions of support for business or running the economy soundly. To achieve this, the Government are running roughshod over constitutional principles - to the extent that we now have a senior MP making remarks that are obviously aimed at undermining the judiciary, apparently just because he doesn't like one of their judgements. Could you imagine John Major, Ted Heath, or even Margaret Thatcher doing something like that? And of course, to top it off, the Conservatives elected a leader (and therefore, Prime Minister) with a long and well known history of lying, as well as of making offensive and borderline racist remarks, and who appears willing to cosy up to Donald Trump. All of this runs completely counter to traditional 'conservatism' - and I'm pretty sure that's roughly the reason why we're now seeing a steady stream of more moderate Conservatives jumping ship.
From where I'm standing, I'm afraid the Conservatives are no longer a 'conservative' party in the traditional UK sense - they've morphed into an extremist, and very nationalist, party, that has few principles other than jingoism and doing whatever it takes to stay in power.
StaffsWCML
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Used to vote Tory but they have gone too far to the right now, no way I could consider it now with the people like Mogg running the show.
Voted for Blair when Labour were in power. Cant stand Corbyn or McDonnell, the Labour policy on Brexit is incoherent, just get off the fence.
Has to be Lib Dems now, middle of the road not to loony left or rabid right.
Voted for Blair when Labour were in power. Cant stand Corbyn or McDonnell, the Labour policy on Brexit is incoherent, just get off the fence.
Has to be Lib Dems now, middle of the road not to loony left or rabid right.
Arglwydd Golau
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...with a leader who has been unequivocally supportive of the Tory/Lib Dem policy of Austerity? How is that 'middle of the road'?
StaffsWCML
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Austerity is just a left wing media sound byte. Real time spending in many areas has increased.
How else were they supposed to stop the country becoming bankrupt? At the end of the day we were spending too much, we could not afford to keep spending £160 billion more than we brought in each year.
Labour solution was more tax and spend on economy that was already screwed. I fail to see how that was going to work. They talk of stimulating an economy but if you remove spending power from business and the rich you create more unemployment and a slower economy.
Arglwydd Golau
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Really? Better tell that to those awful left-wingers in the IMF, then!
And the left wingers in those incredibly unsuccessful high tax rate countries like France (top corporate tax rate 32%), Australia (30%), Germany, (29.9%), Sweden (top personal income tax rate 60%), Denmark (55.9%), Japan (55.8%), etc.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
Swinson, like the other LibDems, hasn't been unequivocally supportive of austerity, but did support the main aims. I think it was mistaken economics- I think then was the time to invest to keep the economy going- but it was something Labour were just as in favour of.
That is, unfortunately, complete nonsense and has been proven to be so.
The richest 1000 families in Britain have more than doubled their wealth in the ten years since 2009. This has not translated into a rising economy; real earnings for people in their 30s are 10% *lower* than they were in 2008, despite the cost of living increasing. Wage deflation was previously unheard of for a long time.
Public debt, meanwhile, has also doubled in the ten years of Tory rule. The structural deficit has reduced but is still higher than under New Labour, and the deficit has only reduced because of sell offs of state assets. Those sales can't be repeated. Tax revenue has stagnated; we get more tax off the poor and less off the rich.
The Tory idea of "trickle down" has always been nonsense, and austerity has proven it beyond all doubt. The rich are vastly richer and they HAVEN'T spent it in the economy, they've hoarded it in tax havens. The rest of us are now significantly worse off- my generation are up to 20% worse off- than if austerity had never happened.
"Tax and spend" is not a dirty notion. It's how you run an economy. In lean times you invest to keep things moving, surpluses should only happen in boom as you recoup your investment.
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Having said that though the largest number of votes is for the Lib Dems with about double the number saying they are going to view for them than Labour.
Another point of interest is that more people are not voting than voting for the Bexit Party.
If this cutting pattern were to be played out in terms of MP's we'd see something like:
270 Lib Dem
137 Labour
111 Tory
51 SNP
30 Green
With a Lib Dem/Green/SNP coalition with 351 MP's out of the total ~650.
Given there's not a lot separating their views or could be a fairly stable coalition.
The main concern could be that of the SNP wanting another referendum on independence. However it could be that the others would work towards making Westminster/London have less power over all the regions. This could provide a big enough step for the SNP to keep calm on the matter. The other parties could also offer a free vote on of there should be another referendum on independence, which would almost certainly get voted down.
StaffsWCML
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Not awful, just incorrect both ways on occasion.
Is France successful? Wasn't particularly under Holland, I think Marcon has reduced tax rates as a lot of French business people were moving to London.
Invest to keep what going a bankrupt failing economy with a huge deficit? Crazy Greece style economics IMO, obviously we wont agree on this.
In your opinion it is nonsense. In my opinion (Corbyn's Labour view) on high tax, high state ownership, heavy unionisation, punishment of aspiration, taxation and spend economy is doomed to fail, it often does, this is also complete nonsense. Corbyn's biggest economic hero is Chavez and Venezuela which pretty much says everything we need to know about his and McDonnell's economic policies and how catastrophic they would be for wealth and jobs in this country.
Its not perfect but no country is, we now have less people paying basic rate of tax, more jobs, a higher minimum wage, better pensions provision, the rich will spend in the economy creating jobs in our service sector, banking, retail, travel, hospitality, luxury goods all create jobs, take away these people and spending power there are a lot less jobs and money. The rich own businesses, they pay for training, they pay wages, they pay pensions. They can not and should not pay for everything. If you drive them away, the state will be picking up a much bigger welfare bill for starters.
Of course public debt has increased, this is due to the £160 billion deficit left by Labour that had to be reduced gradually. I can just imagine the absolute public sector carnage had they reduced that spending overnight. I am not sure where you get the idea the poor pay more tax? The rich pay a much larger percentage of tax in this country.
Like the referenced Germany did, it is wise to run a surplus during the good times to cover you during the bad times.
Brown did a good job until about 2003, then for some reason he began spending more than we bring in. We should not spend more than we can generate at any point, especially during the bad times. Its never going to end well. When you completely run out of money the implications for jobs and prosperity for a lot of people are a lot worse.
Either way I guess we wont agree.
GDP per captia is within a couple hundred pounds of the UK, so hardly a failure.
StaffsWCML
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So is the UK a failure then?
Also how was it when the Socialist Holland was in charge, probably not as good id hazard a guess?
No country is perfect, no system is perfect. I think all-round what we have or at least 'had', is pretty reasonable and serves the wider majority quite well.
There are issues, there will always be issues. We have a heavily service based industry in comparison to high manufacturing/raw material industries based in other nations, for such a small developed nation we also have a high and aging population. Service jobs can a lot more easily be relocated if the environment is not suitable for a business or its owner.
The economy of the UK is rightly or wrongly quite unique globally, our service competitors are other low tax economies (banking etc). I don't necessarily like some of these industries but I think we have to accept we are no returning to large scale manufacturing or mining. In recent years manufacturing in the UK has increased.
Not yet. Give it a year or so of trading on WTO terms.
Hopefully this link will work:https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/uk/france?sector=GDP+per+capita+(Dollars)&sc=XE34#tbl
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Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
Including regressive taxes such as VAT and Insurance Premium Tax (both of which have risen sharply under The Tories) the marginal tax rates are much higher for the poor. The poor lose more of their income as a percentage than the rich do. Middle earners who can't escape PAYE get clobbered far more than either the poor or the rich.
Now a smaller percentage of more money means the rich contribute more of the revenue, but in terms of percentages the middle and poor get left with the burden.
cjmillsnun
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I would vote for my cat (or any of the local cats) as the local MP. We’re in a safe Tory seat here and our MP is a brown nose.
Paddy O'Doors
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You're not alone. Although if a General Election was announced now I would find it difficult to choose between them and the Brexit Party.
I'm a member of a trade union, but I absolutely detest Labour so I try not to think about my sub's ending up in their coffers.
berwicksfinest
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Possibly going off at a tangent, it doesn't matter who gets in, law ought to be passed holding to account any party that promises things yet doesn't deliver citing excuses
Can't support that idea. Circumstances change. As an electorate we need to do a better job of holding elected officials to their word.
berwicksfinest
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How??
edwin_m
Veteran Member
I don't think it's possible to make promises legally binding. But after the failed attempt to prosecute Boris for the lies on the bus (still going round and round...) I think we might need an offence of knowingly telling lies with intent to influence the result of a vote. This would only apply to things they know, or reasonably ought to know given their position, to be untrue at the time they say them, and promptly and prominently issuing a correction could be a defence. There might have to be an exemption for matters of national security.
Macwomble
Member
It'll be SNP next time round. Lost all faith in all of the "major parties" between their antics over Brexit & their downright ineptitude.
Macwomble
Member
Wouldn't say that. I've voted Tory all my (voting) life....50 years.......but I just can't vote for them now. Boris has taken them far to far to the right for my liking & May's (attempt at) government was a complete & utter shambles.
Bevan Price
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Is there enough jail space to hold all those national & local politicians who got elected after "dodgy" promises that they failed to implement ?
By refusing to vote them back into power.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me every general election, shame on me.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
The problem is a general election happens whether you take part or not.
If you reach a level where you think all politicians are liars- as many have- where do you go from there? Abstention doesn't change anything and you then also get the fatuous line "if you didn't vote you can't complain".
I agree that election promises can't be legally binding, btw.
Well quite.
The issue now is that there's no sanction for lying. A colleague of mine was a local councillor and suffered a vile dirty tricks campaign of lies from her (Conservative, obviously) opponent. It was all untrue and he must have known. But he won, she lost, and nobody gives a toss. We saw that with the Leave campaign, blatantly flouting spending rules using some gormless patsy, and nothing at all happened.
There has to be something done to clamp down on it. Without a base level of honesty democracy can't work. What should be done? That's the toughy.
We've reached the stage now where the Tory *government* can buy adverts on Facebook which are complete lies- as has been shown this week- and there is no sanction at all. None. Democracy can't function like this. For some on the Brexit Right, I think that's their aim.
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To my mind, the problem isn't FPTP, it's standing political parties and the whip in parliament.
If candidates had to stand on the basis of what they believe (or, more likely, what they think their constituents want to hear) rather than a national platform, and MPs were free to vote their conscience (or, more likely, what would get them re-elected) then our democracy would be more responsive to what people actually want.
Indeed if we had a loose coalition of MP's rather than parties then we could have each given an amount of time to put forward policy ideas and to gain enough support from the others fire or to be brought into being.
Working out spending and taxes could be quite a bit harder. However even that could be done; if there's a basic level of spending which would be happening regardless of policy then that's fixed to each department. Then any extra savings/spending is added to/taken away from the spending pot.
For instance if someone creates a policy which saves £1 million then that money becomes available to be used to cover the costs of a different policy which means that extra money is required. Change the tax policy and it changes the amount of money available.
The problem with such a system is that you'd probably need to rely on civil servants more.
However it could allow an easier route to policy from people's ideas whilst giving more direct answers to as to why X can't happen or at least the cost implications of it happening
That would be an improvement, but still not much good if your MP does not share your view.
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