the snap general election thread

LHW99

since the second world war the Tories have consistently been more likely to borrow than Labour, and have consistently borrowed more?

However the Labour left wing during the Wilson / Callaghan Governments managed to mismanage things to such an extent resulted in the UK requesting the largest loan from the IMF up to that date. it was not all used because "the IMF crisis reinforced a change in policy orientation away from full employment and social welfare towards the control of inflation and expenditure."
It seems that the Labour left still don't believe in moving away from high welfare payments or control of expenditure.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/sterling-devalued-imf-loan.htm

Spidernick

Conrad wrote: »

The audience bias was a hideous spectacle. Lucas on mentioning Trident got rapturous applause and whoops. I can think of dozens more examples.

Shows the left for the corrupt manipulation they go in for, what an appauling spectacle but Rudd still won.

I think you are showing your own personal bias there. On another thread I have tried to be objective, as follows:

Spidernick wrote: »

Trying to be objective, I think Rudd did pretty well and her performance will go down well with rank-and-file Tories and won't do her future prospects any harm. It's not easy trying to defend an incumbent government's record and be attacked on all sides. She followed the 'coalition of chaos' line, of course, but that was to be expected (and to be fair they all had their soundbites to get in). Did anyone else think that she is not on board with the party line on energy? She seemed pretty muted at that point in the debate and, as a former Energy Minister, I wonder if she isn't more in tune with the Greens on this issue. I could be wrong.

Corbyn's performance was a bit mixed - he was good at times, but overall nothing to write home about (but no gaffs).

I have to say that I don't know who I thought was best out of Caroline Lucas and Angus Robertson, as they were both excellent and, to my mind, the stand out performers. I was really impressed with both of them.

Tim Farron did pretty well and will have won some more supporters (his Bake Off comment also made me laugh!). Leanna Wood (bless her) may as well have not been there, as she didn't land many punches. As for Paul Nuttall: give me strength! As much as I don't like Farage, the man has charisma and substance, something sadly lacking in Nuttall, to my mind.

OK, I struggle more than a little when it comes to UKIP, but overall I think that's a fair assessment.

Arklight

Fella wrote: »

The Tories target was unreasonable & they have already done some clamping down. Labour pretending they'll raise £6.5bn is a simple lie, if it was that doable the Tories would be doing it already. Or maybe the Labour Govt would have clamped down on it during their 13 years in power?



You obviously haven't looked at this indepth to see some of the things Labour are choosing to class as Capital investment. If you think they're talking about £250bn of roads & railways you're wrong. Here's an example from just yesterday: £2.7 billion extra for childcare spending, glibly written off as capital investment. Don't make me laugh.




In which case clearly the "realistic" thing to do would be make a sensible estimate - which would be in the tens of billions. Labour have simply chosen to leave it out completely, which suits you very well.




Duh, do you not get the money has to come from SOMEWHERE. You can't take £8billion a year out of the economy then adopt a stupid grin & say "that doesn't count, it's not Government expenditure."




So tax changes that are apparently going to to take tens of billions away from corporations are only going to cost £3.9 billion? wow, didn't realise it was that easy. So the money just comes from nowhere yeah? Seriously, a child can see this is nonsense. Business will relocate to more profitable areas, sack people, pay lower dividends, stop wage increases, cost-cut in a million ways. Only a child cannot see this.




I'm fine with sums, but I see how you wouldn't understand that.

The sad thing is that you actually go back and edit this tripe, and this is what you settle with.

Fella

Arklight wrote: »

The sad thing is that you actually go back and edit this tripe, and this is what you settle with.

I wonder if you'll ever be able to make a rational argument, rather than snipe and whine?

Anyway you shouldn't be up this late on a school night..

Moby

YouGov poll out tonight, Tory lead now down to 3 points. Strange times.

alewin

masterwilde wrote: »

tories are ready to sell of all the NHS property, ready and waiting, they just need voting in, then they will sell the land and buildings to developers and they will rent it back to the NHS.

the Tories are seriously destroying public services.

You are so wrong and sadly if something is said often enough people like you will believe it is true.

I remember listening to LBC radio last week, there was mention of a tweet doing the rounds of a report that contained plans to privatise parts of the NHS and people were retweeting it as proof that the Conservatives wanted to privatise the NHS, it was in fact a document prepared by Labour in 2006 with their plans for the NHS.

The Conservatives have privatised some small sections of the NHS but it is tiny in comparison to what Labour had done under the Blair/Brown years.

The Hospital PFI scheme was first introduced by John Major, but when Labour got into power they took it too a whole new level and signed some very expensive contracts of up to 30/40 years where the private sector, financed by banks, built hospitals which were then rented by the NHS.
This way the spending did not show up in Government borrowing figures as nothing was initially paid out but over the length of the contract including interest, the NHS will have paid sometimes over 10 times the cost of building the hospital in the first place. This is costing the tax payer a lot of money and will do so for years to come, all from a "prudent" chancellor.

If you like Corbyn so much, this is what he had to say.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/26/pfi-labour-nhs-health-service-private-finance-initiative

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/26/labour-has-duty-to-resolve-mess-of-hospital-pfi-deals-says-jeremy-corbyn

BobQ

masterwilde wrote: »

tories are ready to sell of all the NHS property, ready and waiting, they just need voting in, then they will sell the land and buildings to developers and they will rent it back to the NHS.

the Tories are seriously destroying public services.

Why should this surprise anyone?.

mayonnaise

Rinoa wrote: »

Back in 1964 Sir Alec Douglas-Home was challenged by Harold Wilson to a TV debate.

He declined on the grounds it would turn into a 'Top of the Pops' charade. The winner would simply be the best actor, who of course would have his lines prepared for him in advance by a script writer.

Smarter than he looked was Sir Alec.

Smart Alec lost the election though.

Enterprise_1701C

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Then let's hear Corbyn's plans for the economy. Anybody can spend money that's the easy part. Generating the wealth is more of a challenge.

He doesn't want to generate wealth, not for the people anyway, what he wants is the biggest state he can get, all drawing social security, so that they all vote labour next time.

Why do you think Blair opened the doors so wide, his thinking was that if a labour government let a lot of immigrants in they would vote labour.

That is precisely the thinking of corbyn, spend big, get interest rates up, get people chucked out of their houses and dependent on the state. As for the garden tax, that is an horiffic manipulation of the north/south divide, and I would imagine a lot of the money raised by it in the south would be syphoned off and sent to prop up the north.

And I don't believe for one minute that he would actually say no to a "progressive alliance" with that woman that runs Scotland, he is willing to sell the country out in any way he can - he has already stated he wants closed shops back, that is not a good idea, the unions only have their own interests at heart, they do not care if it bankrupts the country, we would be the poor man of the world let alone Europe if he gets in.

Fella

Enterprise_1701C wrote: »

He doesn't want to generate wealth, not for the people anyway, what he wants is the biggest state he can get, all drawing social security, so that they all vote labour next time.

Why do you think Blair opened the doors so wide, his thinking was that if a labour government let a lot of immigrants in they would vote labour.

That is precisely the thinking of corbyn, spend big, get interest rates up, get people chucked out of their houses and dependent on the state. As for the garden tax, that is an horiffic manipulation of the north/south divide, and I would imagine a lot of the money raised by it in the south would be syphoned off and sent to prop up the north.

And I don't believe for one minute that he would actually say no to a "progressive alliance" with that woman that runs Scotland, he is willing to sell the country out in any way he can - he has already stated he wants closed shops back, that is not a good idea, the unions only have their own interests at heart, they do not care if it bankrupts the country, we would be the poor man of the world let alone Europe if he gets in.

Exactly. Another part of that is his desire to renationalise everything in sight. Hey presto, he'd have created hundreds of thousands more public sector workers which he will see as nothing more than potential union members & labour voters.