badgerx16

The Institute for Fiscal Studies assessment of the three conteners' proposals for managing the national deficit; http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn99.pdf The concluding paragraph: "It is striking that the parties are all aiming to deliver at least two-thirds of their fiscal tightening through spending cuts rather than tax increases, and that they have not announced any measures that would make big savings in welfare spending over this period. Bear in mind that when the last Conservative government faced the need for a significant fiscal tightening in the early 1990s, we estimate that the then Chancellors Norman Lamont and Kenneth Clarke aimed to split the burden roughly 50:50 between tax increases and spending cuts. This might suggest that all the parties are overambitious in the amount they think they can squeeze out of public services. Whoever forms the next government, that points to greater reliance on tax increases and welfare cuts after the election than the parties are willing to admit to beforehand."

Do you think this event will change how they cast their vote ?

Other than you, does anybody read it ?

You wishy-washy liberal

Every politician insults the electorate every time they say 'trust me, I know best'.

But what did SHE say ? Maybe he's right ! ( Though he should have been more careful )

As they sing in The Producers "A little peace of Poland, a little peace of France".......

The only bit I agree with from the article; “The public are seriously disillusioned, cynical and distrustful of politicians,”.

Bangles

Democracy is 22% of the electorate delivering a 66 seat overall majority. LOL

thunder

Lorenzo

trim

Dune, as I posted on the Electoral Reform thread, the extreme end of FPTP could give us the following; In half the seats Party1 get 51% of the vote and Party3 get 49%. In the other half of the seats, Party2 get 51% of the vote and Party3 get 49%. The result of this is that Party1 and Party2 will have half of the seats each, yet will have polled only 25.5% of the total vote, leaving Party3 with 49% of the vote and no seats. Is this acceptable ? If not, why is acceptable to extrapolate it to, for instance, @33% each for the 3 main parties, yet LD get only 10% of the seats. That is hardly in the spirit of democracy. It seems clear that the majority of the public want reform, yet the 'big 2' resist it because the national demographic, with the LD being the only party with a truly national appeal, works in their favour due to the local concentrations of red and blue supporters.

I'd go for that, but depending on how much Labour need LibDem support, maybe another couple of cabinet positions.

fields

irrigation

Dune, rather than lying about BTF ( and I have searched the forums ), try this link; http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2007/02/team_cameron_ar.html :cool:

handicaps

graft

Norsemen

Boiled

D'Amour

Boyard

Where did all the threepenny bits go ?