1976_Child

Andy, do you mean an old person who is in a nursing home? If anyone had called my late grandmother an 'elderly service user' I would have ****ted them!! Perhaps too much time spent in front of Power Point presentations and not enough time wiping bums etc methinks. I think this buzz-speak says it all

Maybe not, so? Should I extrapolate your anecdote out across the entire country and determine that privatised utilities are therefore crap?

1. Do you mean the Football Association? WTF?? Don't get where you are coming from here. 2. Too many, for sure. But why are nurses less likely to roll up their sleeves and get the cleaning done themselves. Could it be that job is now thought to be beneath them? How did that culture ever take hold and who was responsible. Sure as heck Flo Nightingale would not have let the wards get dirty! 3. Errr, pretty darn good actually. Better that Railtrack (or whatever they are now called) is once again 'nationalised' but the train companies are doing a good job imho. 4. Well, first of all and contrary to popular myth, there is not a lot of the stuff left under Britain. At least not anthracite. And that which is left is either a long way under ground and in pretty shallow seams - which makes it very expensive to mine - or it is near the surface and in areas of outstanding natural beauty which would not really benefit from open cast mining. I know it would be a wonderful thing if we still had a strong coal industry but wishing it were so does not make it so 5. Fairly chaotic, granted. Somethings should never be privatised but that doesn't mean they have to be sloppily run. 6. Again, prisons should never be private for-profit. 7. Come off it, the state owned infirmaries and nursing care was hardly blameless in this regard. 8. I have to be frank, I am happy. Well actually I guess it is more a case of me not being unhappy. In the case of the water companies these are not actually privatised in the true sense of the word. Yes they have share holders and are 'for profit' but they are still under real firm control from the state and 'customers' can't switch water supplier.

That is bloody priceless! Don't forget that the Lib Dems have got Harry Potter as their 'celebrity endorser'. Now, I have nothing against school-boy wizards with crap spectacles but I would take the Tories hard-man Michael Caine over a pre-pubescent little twerp with a wand any day.

I actually think that Darling really does get it - that is the mess the country's finances are in. I think he has been held back by Brown but secretly really wants to stamp his authority on the previous budget. Alas, it was not to be. Darling is actually one of the very few Labour ministers (past and present) who looks like a decent honest bloke, not some slimy little boot-spittle like the rest of them appear.

here, here! That is the essence of why I am prepared to lend Cameron my vote. I actually do believe that he, and the party, is now fundamentally changed from the 'Loads a money' rampant capitalist party it was in the 80s. Times are very different now, but I too will be very disappointed if Cameron wins and then turns around and tries to re-stoke the financial system at the expense of the rest of us. Don't forget that he alone amongst the main three leaders has said that he will introduce a bank tax and also he has stated publicly that he wants to cap city bonuses - which any sane-minded man should find utterly disgusting (the bonuses, that is.)

Ok, so let's play devil's advocate here and suggest that even if everyone was gainfully employed and inflation was running at 30% per annum then ALL the people would be worse off than if three million are unemployed (and being supported just above the bread-line by the others) but inflation is a mild 2%. We could give everyone on the dole a job tomorrow building bridges to no where. We could have all those who sign on at the Southampton job centre go and dig holes in Bournemouth, all those who sign on in Bournemouth go and dig holes in Pompey and all those who sign on in Pompey go dig holes in Southampton. Then when the whistle blows they can all rotate one position and start filling in the holes and repeat ad infinitum. All we need do is crank up the printing presses and print up a whole bunch of money to pay them all! They would all be really happy.... for about a year and then suddenly their after work pint would leap up to £10, then £100, then £1000 etc.. It may have been a crass statement, but actually it is sound economics under the current system (see my other posts in other threads)

Parliament?

Well actually you are kinda correct here. The perception is that the Indie is left-wing. As for the Beeb I have always thought that they do an excellent job of being neutral, and I particularly like it when they are forced to report on themselves! Then they are the very definition of professional; the chairman of the Beeb being grilled by Paxman over the Jonathan Ross saga was magical. I really don't clasify myself as any 'wing'. I really do believe that the 'wings' of political thought are a hangover from days gone by. On many views I would be thought of as communist such as my pet-hate, second (holiday) homes. I firmly believe that unless there are strong mitigating circumstances if you are rich enough to buy a second home as a 'little retreat in the country' or a 'city pad' then you should have to pay 10 times the amount of council tax on that property which should be ring-fenced for providing subsidies for affordable housing. On other issues I might be perceived as a right-winger, such as my attitude to the EU and other international institutions and my strong support for Trident. I get the impression that the older generation tend to think along these outdated left-wing/right-wing lines but my generation views the world differently and has by and large no particular philosophical bent one way or the other.

You don't make sense. So what about the late 70s when the country was completely dysfunctional? eh? I have conceded that the 80s were not great for many people, can you do the same with respects to the period of time that the Labour party completely ****ed up the country during the 70s? Or are you genetically incapable of acknowledging this inconvenient truth?!!

the Lib-dems have also been funded by a non-dom tax 'avoider'. Clegg's attitude is that it is ok because the person in question is not a member of the Lords. Well that won't wash with me! Either you do accept cash from non-doms or you don't but Clegg should not then criticize the tories because they do too. On the subject of the Lords. There is one glaring example of Labour's shortcomings. They correctly booted out (most) of the hereditary peers but then conveniently stopped short of a full-blown reformation of the upper chamber into a fully elected House of Lords because it meant they could stuff the place with their cronies, which in fairness is what the tories have always done when they were in power. And there was Brown on one of TV debates saying that if he is returned to power he will sort out the Lords!! Ah, bless! He has only had the past 13 years to do it after all!

well the same could be said about Labour voters too. I have voted for all sorts of parties in the past, including Labour. There are PLENTY of people who have got stinking rich under New Labour and countless people who have also fallen through the gaps into absolute poverty. Just look at Blair for Christ's sake! Then look at Mandelson and all the sleaze bags who have funded the Labour party. Oh, by the way the bankers (who i detest utterly) have been looked after very well by New Labour. There has been more face-time between Labour ministers and bankers/corporate execs than with unions and shop floor workers. Also, it amazes me how many people still hark back to the 80s but not the 70s. In the 70s the country was utterly dysfunctional. Maybe the 80s weren't great for working people but the 70s were a disaster for everyone.

Boll0x. Utter, utter boll0x. The Independent is nothing of the sort. It is, always has been and always will be a left-leaning paper. It may keep its powder dry and not come out in support of any left-leaning party but that doesn't change its stance. The only place it excels is in international coverage.

So I come across as a Tory, I must therefore be a Tory. There's logic. It hasn't hit a nerve at all. I am used to that sort of 'journalism' these days. The facts remain that the article is utter tosh, the sort of thing which adds nothing to the real debate. It is akin to the coverage the Sun gives against the Labour party. It is fluff, and factually incorrect fluff at that.

And the last decade hasn't been good for the rich?!! Come off it. The gap between rich and poor has widened massively since Labour came to power. Not to mention the fact that fat-cat trade union bosses like Bob Crow are paid more than 100k and that uber-socialist John Prescott likes to play croquet and live in a mock-tudor detached house with ten acres of land. The Tories in the 80s may well have made it easier for their buddies to get their noses in the trough but New Labour have done exactly the same in the 2000s

You don't make sense. In your warped world anyone who criticizes the Labour government and remarks that the country is in a carp state must automatically be a Card Carrying Conservative! And how can you 'beg to differ' on something that you have absolutely no knowledge of!!! The article is pure fantasy bull****. Typical of that sort of Champagne Socialism. Some effete wordsmith sitting in his ivory tower getting paid handsomely by a left wing paper to slag of the favourites in the election and pontificate to 'the people' about how things should be. It is desperate stuff.

yeah, sod it. I'm going to vote Labour because the country is in such a great shape and I have no worries at all.

Conservatives get most seats, but not a majority (or at best only a majority of 3 or 4). Cameron gets keys to Number 10 but with a minority government. Labour squeaks into second place, Brown is disowned on television during the post-election coverage over Thursday night. Brown clings to the door frame of Number 10 while security guards pry him out of downing street. The Labour party implodes into a bitter civil war which lasts until the autumn party conference and are too busy to try to suck up to Clegg. Liberals know that if they dig their heals in and veto any Tory legislation the public will turn against them so they grudgingly go along with most legislation, especially on the economy and budget cuts. However Cameron has to tread on egg-shells in case he angers Clegg so no real progress is made. This time next year we all get bored rigid by yet another general election, but this time Cameron gets a solid majority.

It's nothing new! If you remember the Biblical story about Joseph and his amazing technicoloured coat you will see that when pharaoh hired Joseph to sort the country out, Joseph (being a good Keynesian, and having interpreted pharaoh's dreams correctly) set about saving a certain amount of the harvest each year for seven 'boom' years. Then the recession (drought) came and Egypt was sitting pretty and could feed its people. However Joseph's brothers where starving so they trekked to Egypt prepared to buy grain (go into deficit). However he brothers' current account deficit did not also widened as there was only one currency in those days: gold!

Which is what Keynesian economics is correctly about. It gets my heckles up when I hear people, usually on the left but also Tory, who bleat on and on about having a 'Keynesian approach to recessions'. Brown did pay down some of the debt in the early years but only with the windfall from selling the 3G mobile phone licenses. Otherwise it was all spend, spend, spend.

Ok, no problem. So as a care professional (I take it you mean you look after the elderly and infirm?) do you really think that the Labour party has done a good job of preparing the country for what was so obviously a distorted demographic profile even 30 years ago? Let me be brutally honest; no party got it right, because all politicians - indeed the democratic process itself - is geared to short termism and quick fixes rather than look at the problems we have holistically. Here's why we are in the mess we are in with regard to care for the elderly: 1. After the second world war, to cut a long story short, the monetary system changed. Money (the stuff you have in your wallet) fundamentally changed. [i'm using some poetic license here; technically sterling changed between the wars, but for the purposes of the global monetary system sterling post-war also changed with Bretton Woods] 2. At about the time that young women were being 'liberated' in the 60's and early 70's the monetary system of the US, changed as well. It became a debt-based monetary system and not a gold-backed system. (btw, I am not necessarily advocating a gold standard here, but these are the facts). So what does this have to do with women? Well, once the monetary system became debt-based, and again I am taking some liberties here and skipping over quite a chunk of detail, but basically inflation in almost every thing took off. Suddenly it became necessary to have two adults working full time to pay the family's bills. This coincided neatly with the rising women's rights movement (which was itself spawned from the embers of WW2) and so here we are now with a middle class where most two-parent households have two adult incomes. Now, I am not making any moral or philosophical argument for or against women in the work force; these are the facts. 2b) Initially women took on careers because they wanted to - it was a break from the traditional housewife existence - but now, they might still want to work but the majority also need to work. 3) So we now have a situation where the monetary and economic systems demand that we have exponential growth in the total value of all transaction in the economy (GDP) and we have an 'all hands on deck' attitude to employment. Everyone must be productive! And the value of production can only ever be measured in monetary terms! And we have crazy situations such as good friends of mine (husband, wife, three young girls). Husband is a well paid executive earning about 50K. Wife is a registered nurse. They were both working all hours they could until one day they sat down and realised that her income from nursing, net of tax and travel costs, was barely covering the costs of child care and after school baby-sitting! At the other end of the age spectrum, where families were once dependent upon one income, and the concept of a 'nuclear family' of parents and children only living together was not the norm but the exception, now we have the situation that the productive economy (as judged by money) is called upon to pay for service such as you provide. And the blunt, bare mathematics of the situation fall over when confronted with the demographics. You are doing an absolutely vital job, but in previous years it would not have been expected that the money-based economy would pay for it; families and communities would have provided the care.... but now they can't because everyone needs to be 'productive' and earn money. Maybe this has been a convulted way to explain it. But the salient point here is that in order to fix the problems we face today we need to look at the entire economic and monetary system we humans have built. An you can only do that by first stepping away from the existing mindset. If you have a spare hour, you should watch this: it is American, and everything is referenced to America but it is exactly paralleled with our experiences in Britain.

what do you do Thorpe?

Andy, why don't you try replying to my post above rather than throw insults around. I am voting Tory, I am not 'a' Tory. And I certainly do not have the attitude that I'm all right so stuff everyone else. Quite the opposite. I am not all right. I am dirt poor, haven't got a bean to my name and am really struggling to make a living. I do however have a brain, and I can see what is coming.

I think people who, and I hesitate to say it, are educated and bright will know that there is pain to come. The problem is that vast, vast numbers of people have absolutely no comprehension of how the economy works, how the monetary system works or even have a basic understanding as to the difference between money and wealth. To a lot of people, money and wealth are the same thing. They have been so brainwashed by the relative prosperity of the last 30 years that the abstraction of money from the physical world of wealth and sweat has become the norm. It is however still an abstraction. The government has no money, and now that the country's mineral deposits and fossil-fuels have been depleted almost no remaining true wealth. Money is an analog for productive labour. Take away the production, or inputs to production such as physical resources and capital, and the 'money' has no value. Now don't go thinking I am a capitalist evangelist. I am not. But this is the way the monetary and government-sponsored welfare state is currently constructed and without fundamentally changing the system you will see big public dissatisfaction when the easy-money tap is turned off. None of the parties are looking critically at the root cause of the problems we face. And almost no one in the country at large has any real understanding of it either.

Christ alive people! Haven't you got it yet? There is no more money left! There will be cuts. The only way to cut the sort of amounts needed is to reduce the public sector head count. It is mathematics. This is why, who ever forms the next government, I predict that there will be bloody revolution in our streets: a) If the cuts are made there will have to be such pain that those people who got used to a comfortable existence courtesy of the state - never mind how necessary they are - will be out on the streets rioting or b) If the cuts are not made the bond market will implode and the entire country will grind to a halt like Greece, and once again people will be on the streets rioting. A good investment right now would be in a company which makes riot gear for the police! This is not going to be peaceful.