I know most of the forum members here are either too young to vote or may not understand current political problems but i would like to hear your views. ignoring the expenses scandals as their mostly all guilty regardless of party. So the conservatives are planning to shift tax's around, The labour party plan to increase NI And the lib dems plan to lower tax's Gordon brown made a lot of sense in his analogy of Mr Rooney's ankle, the economy is damaged, they dropped VAT to help boost sales in an effort to stabilize the economy and with VAT back up to 17.5% with plans to increase NI, we've got to admit the economy is slowly turning around, slowly. Labour also encouraging manufacturing/engineering to return to the UK so we might have a physical exports rather than financial exports. Also movement in the education system to split it into two paths for students, with academic paths and vocational training. I like the lib dem proposal of bringing back the rail network, expanding and attempting to reduce ticket costs. This would increase mobility with the nation enabling people to travel easier to work further from home with out giving up too much. One thing i don't like it the conservative advertising campaign, its too sleazy and makes me wonder if its worth the effort in voting for a party that's that sleazy. I still believe no matter what party was in power the banks would have still got out of control and the recession would have hit anyway. These are my views, interesting to hear others. If you just going to reply with 'Browns an arse' with out clear evidence for your arguement, just leave it out ok.
All well and good until you read how they plan to fund it. The roads around the country are getting worse and worse with more pot holes, closures, repairs, etc and IMO the last thing we need is even less being spent on them. I pay my road tax, I expect it to go on the road as that should be what it's for. Using my road tax money to fund the improvement of the rail network is not what I want - why not put a 'rail tax' on train tickets? Doesn't that seem much more fair? "The scheme would be funded by cutting capital spending on roads by £3bn." "Motorists' group the RAC Foundation said it would be a waste of taxpayers' money when only 7% of UK journeys were made by train, compared to 90% by car." Labour/Lib Dems are wanting to increase NI. This is without doubt a tax on jobs as only those in work pay it. This hits both the employer and the employee and could lead to increased unemployment and job losses - surely something we can all agree is a bad thing given we're only just out of recession. As for sleazy ad campaigns, welcome to modern politics. Slating the errors of others rather than promoting the good you plan to do seems to be the best way to win votes. I don't think the conservatives are along in using this tactic - it's simply that Labour have been in power for over a decade making them an easier target and making their mistakes more relevant. I'm still not sure who I'm going to vote for as it will come down to policies, but working in finance, the last thing I want is a hung parliament as this will threaten our AAA rating and given the size of the deficit we really can't afford this. The interest is bad enough as it is and short term cuts in spending to lower this is a much better proposition long term than ignoring it and letting the interest build - much like with a personal credit card. I guess my choice will realistically only be between the Tories and Labour. At the moment Labour are behind IMO but I'm willing to change.
I think that a lot of people voting in this comming election wont be old enough to remember the tories in power, or at least wont be old enough to have been old enough to pay attention to things like politics when the tories were in power. I remember the 1997 election but I wasn't old enough to vote in it, I remember Major but only vagely and Thatcher is only a ghost figure from very early childhood. One thing we should remember is that New Labour has much more in common with Old Tory than with old labour. In my opinion neither of them represent the best interests of the majority of the population, the tories represent the interests of the very rich while labour represent the interests of the moderately rich middle class which is still not the majority of the population. I don't know if there is a party that represents the majority and to be honest I believe it is a broken system. Moriquendi
The majority of taxes are only paid by those in employment so saying its a tax on jobs is misleading. NI increase seems to be one of the fairest ways to raise the government finances and of course employers cry butthurt as nobody likes paying higher taxes. What other options do we have? I remember the 1997 election and there was a lot of excitement and optimism about the prospect of a new government. This election seems to be more of a FFS we have to choose one of them?
+1 'the truth' When the Tory party was last elected the nation was in great debt due to the WW2, a debt that took decades to recover from. I believe it was Wilson that stepped down leaving the Tories to attempt to turn around the national debt, as people wanted change and Wilson just didn't know what to do. however, what the Tories did generated wealth in the short term, but actually hammered the nail into the nations coffin a little deeper. By cutting manufacturing and engineering in the UK during the late 70's and on into the 1990's, being that many world leading companies were British, was a mistake, and a big one at that. The biggest mistake was cutting MOD research funds in order to purchase foreign technologies, mostly off the yanks. Doing so meant big defensive companies lost contracts and went bust or got bought out by other companies domestic or foreign, which in turn meant with a cut in research funding, science based research in university was reduced. The Uk was one of the biggest in defensive R&D in the world, it was the countries best export, considering other countries held other markets, such as japan with its electronic based consumer market, and Europe on a whole exported cars, and power generation products. When the Tory party reduced this funding, the country in affect lost its biggest export, and was replaced with a get rich quick scheme in exporting banking services. It was at this point england hop aboard the fail boat. Now after Black Wednesday in 1992 the British population started to loose it's faith in the Tory party, with 'New Labour' entering in 1994. Ever since then the scares of what the Tory party did to the UK are still too deep in the public mind to let them back in power. Fast forward a few year and you soon see its happening all over again, national debt whilst labour in power due to an event not entirely labours fault, and yet the public want blood again, which is opening the door for the Tory party to enter again... Right now Gordon Browns plans on increasing NI might seem like a kick in the teeth, but the national debt needs solving, and hoping and praying for it to disappear wont solve sh*t. Most recently a lot of road damage has been due to the winter we have just come out of, with freezing water damaging the road surface. However Road tax actually only pays for major routes, which are in good condition, local roads around towns and cities is in fact funded by council tax not road tax. So pulling money from the road tax fund and improving the rail network is a great idea.
Yes, tories are going to do well for themselves this time around. Kids in my school hadn't even heard of Maggie. Personally, I remain on the fence (and like all non-voters am reviled and scorned for it, despite being in the thinking non-voting minority) because no one party represents my views even approximately. This has always been my problem with the polar political system and the Labour/Tory dichotomy - in all the rivalry, I find neither very appealing, and that hasn't changed since they all sissified and became all but identical in effect. Finding no party that represents my views I suppose I should vote for the one that I think will do the most good, hitting nearest the mark, but I can no longer decide who that would be. They have individual benefits on select issues, as the OP exemplified, but no overall distinguishing benefit strikes me about any of the 3. It's like choosing to save two limbs and lose two, and your vote only decides on the precise combination being lopped and preserved.
Try and keep an arm and a leg, as the tax's will be taking the other two, At least you'll still have your shirt and an arm to fap and a leg to hop on.
i personally do not know who to vote for either as they all seem to be very much the same all fighting for the middle ground voters and very few of them actually stand up for their original parties principles i do think Labour have been so succesful in milking the 'fear of maggie' however i do think it is a lot of spin on what was a incredible situation, as Burnout has said getting rid of the manufactoring was a mistake, however if maggie had left it as it was we would be in a worse situation as the unions would be running the country demanding high wages without pushing inovation, just look at british layland, totally cr@p cars sold at a high price because they where british built, which would have been the situation even more so without maggie tackeling them, ok it has hurt us now since we do not actually have a major export other than banking which we all know what has happened to that, what we as a country need to do is try and get some more exports, as we have always generally relied on one and when that has hit a blib we have been thrown into a massive hole. personally i think we should start positioning ourself as a green manufactoring country, the world needs power in a ever increasing volumn what we need to get set up is a manufactoring industry based around power generation, either making the power generating machinery or actually exporting the power generated on top of trying to keep a banking arm and also pushing one or two other exports my problem is the only party which is moving along these lines is the green party and they are not able to see passed their own inflated morals and see any other issues not related to 'being green'
Being green isnt just a hippie thing. Its about having to use less energy which reduces costs of everything, be it through intelligent manufacturing process selection, using local suppliers, using locally sourced materials, using recycled materials. These processes are far more efficient in reclaiming energy otherwise lost, and someone has to foot the bill. I will either be publicly announcing I am voting for the bnp to watch people rage, or most likely the green party.
British Leyland was renamed to the Rover group in 1986, producing the popular mini for how many years. Maggie also tried to push British companies into area's of industry they had no interest in nor could compete in either. In turn when she forced these companies to diversify it caused them to loose money, a lot of money at that. This nearly caused British Aerospace to go bust. NEI (northern engineering industries) on of the biggest organisations in the world to nearly going bust in 1989 to then be bought by rolls royce. Maggie had her eye on creating business in banking industry, and with the unions in an up roar about industry the Falklands war and the later gulf war just helped to keep are defensive industries a float. Odd how war helps are economy..... Falklands being the first deployment of the British harrier jump jet, something the British government could have made a lot of money on, but weren't interested in, ending up with money from the American marine corp to fund research. From this the Tory government was in decline up until 'New Labour'. I also believe the Unions got out of hand, in turn the heads of the unions actually became too right wing with personal interests at heart rather than interests of the union. That was the problem, the union heads in effect no longer represented the union members. Now this past history has caused the nation to have very bad memories of the Tory party, and recently the Tory party started to be rather touchy feely so to put it, to only change very recently to there old habits of advertising sleazy. Don't read me wrong i am not pro anything right now, except I know improving mobility with the nation would only help matters. Brown is helping to turn around the economy with plans towards NI increase. So right now labour and lib dem's are still my personal choice on those merits alone.
Whoa.. Easy tiger! Two big assumptions there... While there will be plenty of members who can't vote, I imagine a majority will be able to. And what makes you think our peers (registered voters or otherwise) "may not understand current political problems"? As for all those mentioning Maggie... why? Why not mention Jim Callaghan instead? Maggie, for all her sins, was the perfect antidote to the rot that set in in the late seventies. She should have gone a year or two before she finally did, but you can't write off her entire legacy - especially if you can't event remember her. Tony Blair was needed in 1997 - the Tories had stagnated an had stopped governing the country and were merely fighting fires; the slate needed to be wiped clean. Don't get me wrong, I can't stand Blair (he's a sleazy duplicitous war criminal IMHO) but I certainly don't begrudge him his first term - he was the catalyst for change in both the Tories and the Lib Dems, which can only be a good thing. Roll-on 13 years and we have Gordon Brown in exactly the same predicament as John Major - out of touch with the electorate, in denial about his legacy and merely fighting fires again. I don't care what your political leanings are; it's time to start again. There are some that will tell you that you must vote Labour - any other vote will let the Tories and their 1980's Thatcher policies into the seat of power. Others will tell you that voting Lib Dem or indy instead of Tory will allow Brown to cling onto power in a hung parliament and will be the trigger for many more 'winters of discontent'. While it's true that voting for smaller parties will dilute the vote of the big two (this will slightly favour labour), that's not a reason to vote red or blue. However, your vote should really be about policy, both over the last parliamentary term and as 'promised' in this years the manifestos. Forget your inherited bias, the Tories aren't Thatcher clones in the pocket of big business, and New Labour aren't the union-crippled commie pinko's of old either. [From my personal perspective, I'm going to do whatever I can to topple Brown before he brings in ID cards, before he removes further freedoms and rights (Terrorism Act, Digital Economy Bill) and before he borrows yet more money that I'll have to pay back.]
I've decided I'm voting for Liberal Democrats. They have the right policies imo and are not proposing miracles like the Conservatives without saying how they're going to do it, e.g. all those planned cuts but what about keeping the unemployment rate to a minimum...
Fixing the economy is simple, create jobs so people have money to spend. Problem is, none of the major parties is offering big incentives for companies to bring back the jobs that where moved to china and none are punishing the companies for moving away even more jobs to china. In short, none of them will be able to fix the economy (and no, fake financial products that not even the banks themself understand don't count). So for me the decision would be based on things like education, health care... but I don't agree with any of them on the majority of things, so I've decided to say screw it and won't vote.
well i cant deny the mini was great (hence my user name) but everything else was pretty cr@p in all honesty maggie, well she was good and bad in equal extremes but then we needed someone who would stick by their guns and not be steam rolled into anything, although as ever some things where not great about what she did, all history now and nothing can change it i agree that new labour was something this country needed however much i dislike them just for the student loans/tuition fees, the Torys at the time where rotten to the core so we did need something different. my problem is with brown at the moment, i know the idea of NI increase to make more money to pay back the countries loans sounds a good idea but i just don’t think he has got it right, same as his fix to the banking crisis and the car scappage, all of them good headlines but i just do not think it has hit the core of our problem as they have just sent the country and the people into more debt national AND personal debt are at a record percentage of our earnings as a country and individuals, and since our society is a consumer and financial society. hitting the working people with even more tax is only going to hurt us more since it is going to mean less money available to spend in the shops so less profit, so more redundancies, so more benefits, and even less money to be spent in the shops and the need to get more taxes..... what we need for the long term is to get more money into peoples pockets which would allow people to pay off their own debt and free up some surplus cash to be spent as a consumer, meaning more demand for the businesses so more jobs so increased tax revenue and less benefits
Firstly, Maggie never forced anybody to do anything of the sort - clearly if you have sources to contradict me, I'm all ears. Secondly, diversification is usually a strength in business - putting all your eggs in one basket means you are vulnerable to specific trends in the market. Thirdly, British Aerospaces woes in the early 90's were self-inflicted and resulted in the board being ousted. The only intervention (allegedly) made by a Thatcher was Mark Thatchers involvement (along with a few bribes) that may or may not have won the Al Yamamah contracts, which apparently are still responsible for a sizable portion of BAe's current profits. Funnily enough, a few years later on and BAe's diversification instincts saved the major industry in my home town (around 5-7000 jobs). How on earth is this Maggie's fault? Perhaps you are right - perhaps the Falklands Conflict and Gulf War I were orchestrated to serve the UK military industrial complex. But at least both were legal... How clever Blair must have been arrange his own wars (OK, not all were entirely legal but who's counting...) that cost hundreds of billions. The Harrier GR1 entered service in 1969, though I admit Sea Harrier was officially launched in 1980. As for making money on it, it was sold to Spain, Thailand, USA and India... what more do you want? The modern AV8B/GR9 was developed as part of the Mutual Weapon Development Programme because we had the know-how but not the money; the US had the money and much of the know-how, but were willing to share to make the project cheaper for both sides. We are free to sell the GR9... but because the MoD cut corners, no-one wants to buy a multi-role aircraft without a radar! Without the Yanks, there would be no Harrier II. Self-interest does not define whether a body or person is left- or right-wing, and I would suggest that the raison d'etre of a union concerns self-interest. However, to suggest that Maggie was somehow responsible for unions becoming too strong is laughable - most would argue that her neutering of the unions went too far. Ironically, the recent BA-Unite dispute has be partially attributed to Browns inability to control the single union that effectively bank-rolls the party. Clearly you - along with many others, I suspect - have little or no memory of the previous Tory governments or of previous labour governments. In terms of expenses, I'd say al parties were equally culpable, but it wasn't the Lib Dems or Tories selling peerages, lying about payments from Bernie Eccleston, or the recurring Peter Mandleson fiascos. Perhaps you might want to do a little homework to remind yourself of the last 13 years excesses. There has been enough labour sleaze, you could write a book about it. Or two. However, all this finger-pointing might not be beneficial. Certainly Tony Blair doesn't think so. Except that not everyone agrees. I don't think I disagreed with everything you said, but I'm afraid that's simply because I didn't have enough time...
I was being fair, after all this is a PC hardware/gaming forum which in general has a younger age of members. I was leaving it open to everyone, and if anything trying to encourage everyone no matter there age to get involved in what's going on, to show an awareness towards what is happening. I prefer the idea of labour in the ideal of a political party for the working class, after the so called removal of the class system where would such political party lie? If this is true, then it would make sense why its hard to differentiate between 'RED' and 'BLUE' on this one merit. I am disgusted like everyone else about the greed that has been found out in the expenses scandal, however on a whole every party is guilty of it, hence why i asked for it to hold no merit towards such opinions. If forum members moan about the Digital Economy Bill, then understand that its in the interest for all political parties to try and pass it. I dislike ID cards, however my drivers license and passport have put me into the system, so what's the difference really. I still don't hold any sides here, its just a balanced view of what i think the country would benefit from. Mobility and physical exports. I like the 'green' aspect of industry as a selling point. I also hate the car scrapage scheme, it helps the better off get rid of there cars, and get a discount on a new car! How is that fair? Most people driving bangers, can't afford or haven't got the credit rating to take on finance of a new car. So the scheme hasn't helped anyone but those in wealth of some form.
In defence of the Tories AND the Lib Dems (and all the smaller parties) - they can't offer hard figures - they can only tell you their priorities... Only the government, knows the true extent of the problem and it is inevitably worse than they will ever let on. There are certain figures in the public domain and others that we can guess or assume, but not enough for George Osbourne or Vince Cable to publish an actual spending plan against. It would be somewhat easier for both parties if the Government were to publish its overdue spending review, but unfortunately they are refusing. Source
I like this, its generating more interest than i had hoped. Diversification in a company though only spreads its funding too thinly and its either massive pay off for the risk, or breaks the company. Example of this was when BAE shut its plymouth R&D department in (1991-2) as it cut back its funding mean its research wasn't as advanced compared to competition by the french and americans. I can't disclose what this R&D department did, as its under the official secrets act still.
People, think of Maggie, and think bad because off all the cut's she had to do. They are usually the Labour supporters who are that stupid to remember that it was Callaghan who destroyed the economy with Labour, and left it a complete mess for the Conservatives to sort out. They forget that under Callaghan the Unions had taken charge, a lot of Britians were working a 3 day week due to the lack of resources and money, and the the Winter of discontent. If you think MAggie is bad, then do your research before actually making a comment. Why were the mines closed down? Coal wasn't our main source of power anymore, and they were bringing a huge loss to the economy, yet the Miners still wanted more money. Mining was a dieing industry and would have had to been closed down sooner or later. Maggie had to make the huge cuts because of the mess Labour had left them to clean up, Labour have never been a good government, the only good thing they brought in was the NHS. I mean look at the Recession, we're one of the last countries out of it, because Gordon Brown goes back to Keynesian economics to try and get us out of it, a form of economics that has been constantly been proven to be wrong. Gordon Brown one of the "greatest" chancellors we've ever had? The great chancellor that sold all our gold which could have brought us out of the Recession a hell of a lot quicker. And now he says he's come to help the Middle class? My Dad was, and still is being constantly screwed by him, why? Because he is a hard working man, who owns a house and a family, yet a lot of his wages goes to those either in Prison, or the ones who decide to scrounge off the Benefits system, which Labour have let happen. Labour are a disgrace, and I'd rather see BNP in charge before them. (I'm voting Conservative). Most Labour voters just hear on the Media, in the Labour papers of what is good about Labour, but never decide to look into the past briefly, look at what they did before Maggie, and what they have done now.
That's just business.... The successful (or lucky) businesses find the right balance, the rest fold (or get swallowed up). Unfortunately, because of the lack of native raw materials and the cost of labour, manufacturing has become progressively more difficult in this country over the last 40 years - even high-tech manufacturing. This partly the reason why so many business leaders are against the proposed NI rise...
