General Election views

[Boac]

"BJ is just the best of a bad lot

Few would disagree."

I would.

[Boac]

See Lord Pearson's views on the BBC from March.

[Capetonian]

It is a terrifying thought that enough numbskulls may be foolish enough to vote for this dangerous man that he could become PM. Don't they read history, to see what Labour have done in the past?
Don't they know that history almost invariably repeats itself?

Jeremy Corbyn could win without gaining a seat, say Tories as they warn he is closer to election success than people think
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... ries-warn/

Hundreds of entrepreneurs' ready to leave Britain if Jeremy Corbyn wins election
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... rbyn-wins/

Another hung parliament would offer only permanent chaos and instability
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20 ... stability/

Corbyn's insane economic agenda would lead to calamity for the many, not the few
telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/09/corbyns-insane-economic-agenda-would-lead-calamity-many-not/

[Slasher]

3EE8D5AC-1FDC-4CAB-B202-E4DD303E312E.jpeg (61.56 KiB) Viewed 259 times

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Cape, you need to try and see it from Joe Average's point of view.
The Tories have absolutely failed a large number of people. Five years ago I spent a couple of months living in a Labour stronghold, and the reasons are easy to see. Five years of Tory austerity and balancing the nation's books, the entire point of the austerity, was further away than when they started (and still is!). Inflation is higher than wage rises throughout - that's real inflation taking money out of their pockets, not the BS government statistics. Public services are deteriorating, crime is ubiquitous, taxes keep increasing, and the fat cats keep getting fatter. The current lot aren't Thatcher; they haven't fixed the economy, the balance of payments, or given the working class anything.
So, the locals vote for Labour, who have at least promised them something. Their grandparents worked in nationalised industries. They had steady jobs and a pension. Their grandchildren would like that too. The Marxist scare stories are water off a duck's back because the UK isn't Russia - they tell themselves - and it isn't hard to find a Tory MP to hate and a Labour promise to love.
You are not trying to see it from their viewpoint. Neither is the Tory party. That's the problem. PR doesn't work, people want tangible results.

People will accept a benevolent dictatorship. Tory MPs aren't benevolent. They're uncaring about ordinary people, incompetent, and capricious. And a FPTP system and fixed term parliaments ARE an elected dictatorship. They can do whatever the f#ck they like for five years, and the Brexit chaos has proved that. Ironically it may be the only thing that saves the Tories, because there's an awful lot of people for whom that is a dealbreaker, and Labour have totally f#cked up on that one.

[Capetonian]

I suppose I don't know any 'Joe Average' people of the type who might be foolish enough to vote Labour. It's the mythical 'man on the Clapham Omnibus', and I probably and fortunately don't have the opportunity, or the will, to engage with such people.

All the people I know in the UK fall into one of two main categories.
They're either retired and relatively well off, and don't wish to see what they have worked for wrested from them.
The others are hardworking people who are working to achieve what the first mentioned group have achieved and don't wish to see those efforts thwarted. They would no more vote Labour than I would.

I used to have tenants who were, in the majority, lowlife scum. Lying thieving parasites who lived on benefits and the proceeds of scams and petty fraud. They all had massive TVs and all the latest computer games to play with. They all had money to smoke since they seemed to have inexhaustible supplies of illegally imported cigarettes which they sold on the black market, defrauding HMRC. I doubt whether they voted Labour, or anything, as I can't imagine them getting off their fat arses and leaving their smoke and BO filled homes to walk to a polling station.

Most people of my age had first hand experience of the misery under Labour governments in the 60s and 70s and later under Blair and Brown. I may have been more privileged, if that's the right word, than most, as I spent a lot of time travelling in what what were then the Soviet satellite countries of eastern and central Europe. I was thus able to see the destruction and the miserable oppression that those vile regimes inflicted on millions of people.

The Tories were left with little option but to impose 'austerity' in order to redress the balance of the economy after Labour's 'giveaways' which were nothing but window dressing, rather like the winter sales in the shops, when prices then go up afterwards to balance the books, or the stores go bankrupt. In the last few years we've seen both, in plenty.

Unfortunately people seem to have short memories and many are more influenced by empty promises than by the lessons of history.

[probes]

The root of all evil seems to be the pointlessly generous benefit system (in UK) - but of course (?) no real number of people would vote against it?

[OFSO]

True. Nobody in my family has ever been on benefits. Perhaps I should be the first, get some of that money back.

[om15]

I understand the point made by Fox, there may well be a small minority of people in the UK who play the system, but many do not and are on crap zero hours contracts or work that simply doesn't pay enough to provide an acceptable standard of living, also the influx of eastern European labour has held down wages in the agricultural sector.
I agree with some of the points made by Corbyn, however don't believe that giving unfettered powers to bastard trade unionists is anything but disastrous. The Tories will get half hearted votes not because anyone is impressed with them but because the alternatives are so awful, that is very depressing.
I would be happy to see moderate rises in taxation, both private and business, and controlled spending on HNS and welfare, a control on bad landlords and efforts made to reduce the population in the UK, or incentives to get people to move to less populated areas, Scotland needs more people but has put in place great disincentives for people to relocate there.

In my ideal world I would;
Increase management control and spending in the NHS, impose huge fines including property seizing for landlords that rent out property with safety or physical defects, cancel HS2 and use the money to fund huge building programmes in the north of England, sell the BBC, reform the prison system and introduce gulags, turn the Country into a European offshore tax haven, ban piped music in public places and re introduce military national service, raise the drink driving limit and create more public libraries.

The thing I have against Labour is not so much their aims and principles but their total incompetence and internal corruption on anything to do with other peoples money, if they were shrewd and careful with our money I might support them, but they will only hose it around black lesbian illegal immigrants and union leaders instead of wise investment. Looks like we are stuck with the Tories who are not that much better.

[Slasher]

Partys and their manifestos aside, it seems to me to be a repeat of sorts of Clinton v Trump. Both awful candidates but pick the lesser of the two evils.

Nonetheless under the Westminster system the Party in power can technically change PM the next day after Voting Day. That can’t happen in America.

[Ibbie]

Bring back Harold Wilson!

[ian16th]

Bring back Harold Wilson!

The Pay Freezes of the 1970's you mean?

[G-CPTN]

Bring back Harold Wilson!

14 years of Tory misrule . . .

[ian16th]

The one thing about Harold, was after he quit, and one saw the disintegration of the Labour Party, one realised how clever a politician he had been to hold that motley crew together.

[om15]

[Pontius Navigator]

Bring back Harold Wilson!

14 years of Tory misrule . . .

13.

Remember Ted Heath with a pay rise every 6 weeks or so?

[ian16th]

Remember Ted Heath with a pay rise every 6 weeks or so?

The only time I didn't vote Tory!

I had just moved house, I applied for a postal vote, and when It arrived I tore it up.

I suppose that was the ultimate abstention.

[Pontius Navigator]

One of the best scenes in The Crown series 2 was with HW. First he pointed out he had never been a worker one of the youngest Oxford dons of the century at the age of 21. He was a lecturer in Economic History at New College from 1937. At the end the Queen made it known she would accept an invitation to dine at No 10, an honour only previously granted to Churchill.

I think it was a master stroke appointing Denis Healey as Minister of Defence for the whole of his first term and chancellor for the second in contrast to the revolving door in the Blair/Brown years with Defence very much a side show to the Foreign Office.

I recall the shock exhibited by Roy Judd when Wilson announced his resignation; no leaks in those days.

[Pontius Navigator]

Remember Ted Heath with a pay rise every 6 weeks or so?

The only time I didn't vote Tory!

I had just moved house, I applied for a postal vote, and when It arrived I tore it up.

I suppose that was the ultimate abstention.

On reflection I don't think I actually voted until I was in my 30s as I appointed my parents as proxy and moved around too much to have a domicile for a postal vote.

[4mastacker]

......Increase management control and spending in the NHS.....

On that point, a recently retired consultant surgeon who worked at a major city hospital has joined our canal society and his view of the NHS is quite enlightening.

He reckons the NHS has more than enough funding thrown at it, the problem is the wasteful use of that money and the over-administration and bureaucracy within the service. However, it would take a very brave government to take on reform as any attempt to reduce the administrative elephant in the room would be met with howls of outrage from the usual suspects. He's not the first doctor I've met who has been scathing of the bureaucracy within the service.

I have absolutely no issues with the clinical side of the NHS, but you have to question the attitude and competence of the administrative side when they sack staff for having the "wrong" hair colour whilst at the same time complaining there is insufficient staff to keep X, Y and Z departments open.