UK PoliGAF: General election thread of LibCon Coalitionage

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Chinner said:
hey guardian readers, drop your prejudice against the tories!!!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/wintour-and-watt/2010/apr/08/davidcameron-conservatives
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Article worth it for this picture alone.
David-Cameron-visits-Norw-001.jpg
 
Ghost said:
What good are schools, hospitals or social services without good people running them?
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At the end of the day, it's the teachers, doctors and social workers that need to be good. Not the management boards or back office staff in the public sector. I don't think people quite realise the scale of waste that goes on behind closed doors. I actually work part-time in a public sector job and even my job is a waste of taxpayers' money! Some months I spend more hours on training than I do working, bearing in mind that training courses are around £300-500 a pop. Despite only working part-time, I get non-contact time which basically means I get paid for doing nothing. As for our public service budget - all I will say is that we have recently had a very nice kitchen refurbishment and leather chair upgrades. Multiply my (comparatively small) organisation across the country and you have a shocking picture of the scale of public waste. Not to mention that the public sector operates a very closed network - I got my job because my boss use to be my grandmother's neighbour and one of my referees was a public school headmaster.

It's nice that Labour supporters like you want to defend my job, but quite honestly, I'd rather be paying less taxes. Anyway, I'll get a golden goodbye if I get made redundant before I leave. :P
 
blazinglord said:
At the end of the day, it's the teachers, doctors and social workers that need to be good. Not the management boards or back office staff in the public sector. I don't think people quite realise the scale of waste that goes on behind closed doors. I actually work part-time in a public sector job and even my job is a waste of taxpayers' money! Some months I spend more hours on training than I do working, bearing in mind that training courses are around £300-500 a pop. Despite only working part-time, I get non-contact time which basically means I get paid for doing nothing. As for our public service budget - all I will say is that we have recently had a very nice kitchen refurbishment and leather chair upgrades. Multiply my (comparatively small) organisation across the country and you have a shocking picture of the scale of public waste. Not to mention that the public sector operates a very closed network - I got my job because my boss use to be my grandmother's neighbour and one of my referees was a public school headmaster.

It's nice that Labour supporters like you want to defend my job, but quite honestly, I'd rather be paying less taxes. Anyway, I'll get a golden goodbye if I get made redundant before I leave. :P
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People always say that its just the teachers and the doctors that matter but i think thats a load of crap, these are the biggest organisations in the country by a mile, what makes you think that it isn't a skill to manage them? There are companies that fail every day because of crap management.

It's always going to highly inefficient because of what it is, and yes that means there are savings that can be made, both parties intend to reduce spending dramatically. All I'm saying is if you want good public services, you need good employees at all levels. And a blanket proposal like linking wages scales will discourage that. The market will decide what the good people are worth, the public sector has to at least have the capability to react to that.
 
Ghost said:
People always say that its just the teachers and the doctors that matter but i think thats a load of crap, these are the biggest organisations in the country by a mile, what makes you think that it isn't a skill to manage them? There are companies that fail every day because of crap management.

It's always going to highly inefficient because of what it is, and yes that means there are savings that can be made, both parties intend to reduce spending dramatically. All I'm saying is if you want good public services, you need good employees at all levels. And a blanket proposal like linking wages scales will discourage that. The market will decide what the good people are worth, the public sector has to at least have the capability to react to that.
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I completely agree with you that the market will decide what highly-skilled people are worth. Of course highly-skilled workers will probably follow where the money is. But what I'm asking is whether that is necessarily a bad thing? Why should the public sector compete with the private sector? My view is that the state provide basic services - keep people alive, educate children ready for the workforce etc - any premium extras, people should pay for it. Our disagreement is really over how 'good' public services should be.
 
Voters should support the Liberal Democrats in constituencies where Labour cannot win, Gordon Brown has indicated
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Voters should support the Liberal Democrats in all constituencies, iapetus has indicated.
 
Watching Darling and Osbourne debate on the BBC, really want them to stop talking and just have a fist fight.
 
Chinner said:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/8608282.stm

pretty interesting. reminds me of someone said, (admittedly he was EDL) he was joining the army and apparently they stopped letting muslims in and expected a revolt. still don't believe it, but it was pretty lolworthy.
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"Anyone looking at it will think about mosques and Muslims and think about them negatively."

You're on a fucking military firing range where soldiers due to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan are training. It's not like they erected a temporary mosque in the high street and then razed it.

I'm so pissed off that the MOD apologised. Makes it look like they had actually done something wrong.
 
Chinner said:
TOO MANY TWITS MAKE A TWAT
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Prophetic Cameron :lol

Here we go, day 4 of Labour continuing to dig the NI hole...

BBC live feed said:
1723: Chancellor Alastair Darling has sent a letter to his opposite number George Osborne, demanding that he explain how the Tories plan to save £30bn from the public purse, the BBC's political correspondent Peter Hunt reports. "Your entire economic strategy is now clearly in disarray and confusion," Mr Darling writes, "If your plan is real, it's time to show people the details." The chancellor says he has released the letter to the media "because of the importance of this issue".

1729: It's tit for economic tat here... George Osborne now says he's writing a letter back to Alistair Darling, demanding that he publish an internal government estimate of the number of jobs that could be lost if the planned National Insurance rise goes ahead. Have they never heard of email?

1806: "What are you trying to hide? Why do you not want the public to know the truth about the jobs losses that your own Treasury officials believe will follow from the National Insurance rise?" Those are the words of shadow chancellor George Osborne in a letter to Alistair Darling. He wants the chancellor to publish an internal document which he says reveals the real impact of an NI hike.
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"Parties accept jobs will be lost in efficiencies battle"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8611825.stm

This is getting ridiculous now.

Somebody wake me up on May 6th.
 
The Financial Times today had an article where the main Tory economic adviser said that in order to raise the £6billion needed to fill in the hole from not raising NI, they'd have to cut up to 40,000 jobs in the public sector.

So yeah, all those Tories who said that raising NI will cost jobs...:D

Edit: Should point out that the 40,000 jobs would be ON TOP of other savage cuts to all public sector services too. ALL the parties need to come clean on that though.
 
Dark Machine said:
The Financial Times today had an article where the main Tory economic adviser said that in order to raise the £6billion needed to fill in the hole from not raising NI, they'd have to cut up to 40,000 jobs in the public sector.

So yeah, all those Tories who said that raising NI will cost jobs...:D

Edit: Should point out that the 40,000 jobs would be ON TOP of other savage cuts to all public sector services too. ALL the parties need to come clean on that though.
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yeah read that, pretty disgraceful and something that needs to be point. im currently at my parents, and when it was said on tv was dad was like "they're none jobs anyway". didnt bother saying anything
 
Dark Machine said:
The Financial Times today had an article where the main Tory economic adviser said that in order to raise the £6billion needed to fill in the hole from not raising NI, they'd have to cut up to 40,000 jobs in the public sector.

So yeah, all those Tories who said that raising NI will cost jobs...:D

Edit: Should point out that the 40,000 jobs would be ON TOP of other savage cuts to all public sector services too. ALL the parties need to come clean on that though.
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I don't quite understand why this is a bad thing? It's not like those 40k jobs will be doctors and binmen. It's going to be civil servants and "management" people who are just not needed. The public sector is so incredibly inefficient that huge cuts need to be made.
 
Chinner said:
yeah read that, pretty disgraceful and something that needs to be point. im currently at my parents, and when it was said on tv was dad was like "they're none jobs anyway". didnt bother saying anything
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Parents :lol
 
Didnt see this posted before anywhere, apologies if it has been.

http://www.voterpower.org.uk/

In the 2005 election, more than half of all voters voted against their winning MP.

Their votes were simply thrown away.

In the UK, the only voters with any real power to choose the government are those who live in marginal constituencies.

Less than 20% of constituencies can be considered marginal.

The rest of us have little or no power to influence the outcome of the election.

In fact, statistical analysis by the nef (the new economics foundation) shows that one person in the UK does not have one vote...

...it's more like 0.25 votes.

In some ultra safe constituencies the value of your vote falls to practically zero.
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By putting in your postcode you can find what "fraction of a vote" your vote is worth because of the first past the post system. Mine is about 0.4
 
0.554 or 0.771 at uni - though it seems unlikely that the candidate in my university area would be ousted seeing as it was a Tory gain from labour in '05.
 
Chinner said:
0.015.

lol. gonna vote lib dem anyway. fuck fptp.
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0.066 for me. I'd almost call our electoral system corrupt, but I thought that before checking this. If major parties in general cared about our democracy, then we'd no longer have such a undemocractic, authoritarian system.

Drunken me despises Geoff Hoon. Sober me does too.
 
0.382 here.

Voters in Liverpool Wavertree have 1.51x more voting power than the UK average.
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Well good for us. Last election was 49.51% Labour, 40.6% Lib Dem.

Vince Cable and Friends it is then.
 
As a person born and raised in the UK, but now an American Citizen, I find it absolutely incredible that the UK monarchy exists as anything other than a quaint tourist attraction, and literally unbelievable that hereditary peerage is not only legal in the UK but that 92 of them are able to affect the legal, financial and political institutions of the country simply because they were born into an inbred mess of corrupt parasitical medieval land theft.

They have of course, since the 1999 act, been seriously curtailed, but as an institution, it can't offer a single logical defense for its existence, period. Not one.


And if you vote Tory, you're supporting that.

If it makes you feel any better, America has been creating defacto peerages for hundreds of years now and there are plenty of these odious parasites running our systems of power and government too. Rothschilds, Bushes, Kennedys, et al.

It's like the war of Independence ended and the plutocrats over here said, "Right, now to set up our own slightly re-branded version so we don't have to do anything dirty, like work our way to the top."
 
I'm now seriously considering voting Tory (good god i can't believe i said that), purely because of their policy on Nuclear. I feel one of the most important parts of our economy over the next 10 years or so will be to become oil and energy independent. Sadly Lib Dems want to cancel the Nuclear building program and focus on green technologies, but i believe that only Nuclear is going to get us to that goal fairly quickly. Green technologies are too inefficient to give the UK energy independence soon enough.

Lib dems have fantastic policies in regards to other parts of the country (especially electoral reform and economy issues), but i cant support a party that'll suspend the plan to build more Nuclear power stations.

I think I'll vote Lib Dems for Local and EU elections, but Tory for General Elections, atleast until we achieve energy independence.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/10/conservatives-tax-breaks-married-couples
Conservatives commit to £150 tax break for married couples
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The marriage tax break is bullshit if you ask me, and just comes down to conservative values of wanting to preserve marriage. It's hilarious though, they're trying to encourage people in failing marriages by giving them a tax incentive, i mean who gives the shit if the little kid is placed in this situation right? This is conservative thinking at it's best.


Dax01 said:
That's fucking ridiculous.
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Yeah I know. It's pretty horrible. Seems like we have a genuine chance of getting this fixed though.
 
I'm not sure who I'm voting for. All I know is that it won't be the useless pricks that make up the Scottish National Party.
 
Xavien said:
I'm now seriously considering voting Tory (good god i can't believe i said that), purely because of their policy on Nuclear. I feel one of the most important parts of our economy over the next 10 years or so will be to become oil and energy independent. Sadly Lib Dems want to cancel the Nuclear building program and focus on green technologies, but i believe that only Nuclear is going to get us to that goal fairly quickly. Green technologies are too inefficient to give the UK energy independence soon enough.

Lib dems have fantastic policies in regards to other parts of the country (especially electoral reform and economy issues), but i cant support a party that'll suspend the plan to build more Nuclear power stations.

I think I'll vote Lib Dems for Local and EU elections, but Tory for General Elections, atleast until we achieve energy independence.
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Agreed with your point on nuclear energy.

Go to 1:53 in the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ace16FnrJQ&feature=related#t=01m53s
 
Xavien said:
I'm now seriously considering voting Tory (good god i can't believe i said that), purely because of their policy on Nuclear. I feel one of the most important parts of our economy over the next 10 years or so will be to become oil and energy independent. Sadly Lib Dems want to cancel the Nuclear building program and focus on green technologies, but i believe that only Nuclear is going to get us to that goal fairly quickly. Green technologies are too inefficient to give the UK energy independence soon enough.

Lib dems have fantastic policies in regards to other parts of the country (especially electoral reform and economy issues), but i cant support a party that'll suspend the plan to build more Nuclear power stations.

I think I'll vote Lib Dems for Local and EU elections, but Tory for General Elections, atleast until we achieve energy independence.
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I mentioned a couple of pages back that nuclear power is my only real sticking point with the Lib Dems. If you don't want to vote Tory, I'm pretty sure that Labour is in favour of looking into more nuclear power.

From the Lib Dem perspective, it does smack of a kneejerk populist policy. It's a very clean, very efficient method of generating power that could dramatically increase our energy independence and easily provide a huge proportion of our power requirements. But nuclear is scary, of course.

Not saying that it's the perfect solution to all our woes, but to take it off the table completely is ridiculous.
 
Apparently David Cameron was in my village today, though i didn't see him. I guess it must be one of their targets for him to visit, though it's kind of suprising since the current lib-dem MP has always been decent and was completely uninvolved in the expenses scandal. Also i found it amusing that he came here since there's a local business called "David Cameron Hairdressing". I'm wondering if he posed in front of it.
 
Chinner said:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/10/conservatives-tax-breaks-married-couples

The marriage tax break is bullshit if you ask me, and just comes down to conservative values of wanting to preserve marriage. It's hilarious though, they're trying to encourage people in failing marriages by giving them a tax incentive, i mean who gives the shit if the little kid is placed in this situation right? This is conservative thinking at it's best.
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i'm still struggling to understand this policy. do they actually think that marriage is the cause of a good relationship not a symptom, do they actually think people are going to stay together longer because you pay them to marry; i mean how do you even back that claim up with data, do they have time machines and no ethical responsibility to get figures for how marriage affects relationships. if it is just an excuse to cut taxes, then why not give it to everyone especially as those who lack a strong relationship guiding their lives are probably more likely to get into trouble and fall into miserable poverty cycles, and why only give it to those with one parent working so the most needy don't get a chance at it.
 
I can only imagine that its a gestural policy, I dont believe that the Tories seriously think that a £150 tax break will promote marriage. Actions speak louder than words so I guess the Tories want to show their support for marriage (and I think more importantly Gay Marriage) by actually making it part of their policy.
 
defel1111 said:
I can only imagine that its a gestural policy, I dont believe that the Tories seriously think that a £150 tax break will promote marriage. Actions speak louder than words so I guess the Tories want to show their support for marriage (and I think more importantly Gay Marriage) by actually making it part of their policy.
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That may well be true, but it seems weird for the party that has been obsessing over the deficit for the last year, warning of it's dangers and positioning itself as the party of fiscal responsibility to indulge in a pure giveaway like that.
 
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