Topic: UK Politics - The Coalition Years

[Super Duper Branko Strupar]

"after all, we are one of the most densely populated islands in the world"

You know I wonder if the people who write this sort of rubbish ever leave Central Landahn

take a trip out of town and there are miles and miles of empty countryside with not a soul in sight

Well, you're wrong here. I've never lived in London for a start, I am currently in Leeds and before that Wylam, Northumberland so.....
And i don't want to argue with you as I like your posts so would rather discuss and debate if that's OK? Same goes for everyone. If Im wrong or misunderstanding, then tell me your story, after all it is my name and my name alone above my posts.

Of course we have miles and miles of countryside, but as a guess, I reckon if you look for other countries who have such a population in such a small area we'd be quite high up the list for denseness of population and for a 1st world country that makes it even more prominent for my arguement.

What I'm trying to get at in a nutshell is the American Republican philosophy is probably a f***ing good arguement when you live in small towns in the middle of nowhere, miles from the next place, which can be as different as hell, but thats ok because they rarely interact.
What I'm saying is you cant have that self agenda as a general rule in a country where 62 million people are separated by 400 miles or so. And that's just blatent. To deny the issue of population size in this country as a major player in its economy and social ethos is just wrong.  theres millions of other people right on your doorstep (in comparison to bigger countries), of hugely varying beliefs, religions, preferences, sexual orientation, so why is it a good idea to ignore that when we clearly have an impact on each other, regardless of how much or how little we want that to be the case. If a Mosque goes up in London, people in Manchester moan about it... see what I mean? National news reaches everyone and its so close to home, shootings in London, Manchester, Glasgow, wherever you are, its close, and we are such a close society we are all effected by it.

But most Americans (and everywhere else) live in BIG cities (eg Australai where 97% of the country live in cities)

the problem in the UK is that we have a National meeja which isn't really the case in the USA - so ANy story goes thermonuclear

Yes. But I'll find that website I was reading a while back which breaks down where abouts in the US the votes for Republican and Democratic votes come from......
 Democratic tend more to be from highly populated areas, republican sub-urban and rural.

And the media thing is spot on

[Dave]

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4314-broadband-uso-delayed-to-2015.html

Universal broadband delayed until 2015
Thursday 15 July 2010 15:08:38 by John Hunt

The UK Culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has at today's broadband summit announced a delay to the roll out of a universal 2meg broadband across the country. The government had previously stated they wanted to ensure virtually all homes could connect to the Internet at a speed of 2Mbps by 2012 but this has been delayed to 2015. Whilst the universal service obligation (USO) wouldn't have made it to every home, dropping this back by three years is a blow to the UK's broadband roll out.

The reason for the delay is blamed on the previous government having left insufficient resources to meet the target. Labour put forward plans to implement a 50p tax on all phone lines to help fund investment in to next-generation broadband for rural areas, which when deployed, would have no doubt helped boost some communities well past the 2meg barrier. Labours plans for directly investing in 2meg by 2012 would have used the excess funding from the digital switchover (DSO) to fund this. The new government are now saying that this isn't enough to cover all areas. It's not clear where they instead expect to find a new source of funding, particularly with industry asking for more public money to deploy next-generation services.

Hunt also reiterated today his ambition that the UK should have "the best broadband network in Europe" by the end of parliament in 2015, but gave more information in that he defines this in terms of the number of people connected and the speed of their access. Whilst many will be connected to fibre-to-the-cabinet deployments by this date, there may still be great swathes of people on slower services and only just receiving 2meg broadband, widening the broadband divide.

[Adam^]

If Osbourne is trying to save money, why don't all MP's just take a 30K salary then ?

[Super Duper Branko Strupar]

Are the Tories going to pedal this exact excuse for every policy or change they make? Its as if they are cancelling or 'putting on hold' all of Labours plans they had, blaming the cuts/cancellation/delay on 'lack of funds' only to try and acheiv the same thing but on their own agenda and in their timescale to try and make it seem when they do come about, that it was all down to them.

Just watched V for Vendetta again last night. I'd reckon Cameron fancies this role of 'High Chancellor like

[Mowen]

They're creating a bigger divide between rich and poor man,re-establishing their beloved class system.
Of course they're destroying the social fabric.
And I'll wager they'll be riots on the streets when it kicks in,and not just bandwagon charvas.

Yeah, because labour didn't do that in their 13 years 

[Incognito]

No they didn't.

[Mowen]

Even Ed Milliband thinks it did

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10598613

[Incognito]

Minimal riots and fairness in the things they introduced,hardly the same as how things are shaping up now really.

[Mowen]

Anyone seen those goalposts?

[Incognito]

I cant follow the Miliband link to comment tbh.
All I will say is it seems to be the in-thing to bash the 13 years we've just had.And in my opinion,that shouldn't be happening.Fairness to all was prevolent in the minimum wage,child tax credits,winter allowance for OAP's,a rebuilt NHS,better standard of education etc.The only goalposts being moved are by these 2 circus parties in Government now,especially the one you voted for,who are now holding up the Tories by supporting policies they campaigned vociferously against at the Election.
That's what is really moving the goalposts.

[Mowen]

Miliband

Ed Miliband has told the BBC narrowing the gap between rich and poor would be his "central aim" if he won the Labour leadership race.

Despite its efforts, the gap had "got wider" under Labour, he said.

Happy to help.

I don't see why the poor state of the current political climate should be used to glorify a massively disappointing long term from Labour, particularly by the end. Smacks of NE5 to me.

[Mowen]

Oh, and p.s., if we're talking about moving the goalposts how about Labour moving from a left wing to left of centre party to a right of centre New Labour.

[TheGreatNUFCSwindle]

Under the last Labour government ..the gap between rich and poor widened ..thats a fact .

[Pilko]

Smacks of NE5 to me.

Surely not, this debate seems quite interesting.

[Mowen]

Under the last Labour government ..the gap between rich and poor widened ..thats a fact .

Keep up, I've just said that.

[Mowen]

Smacks of NE5 to me.

Surely not, this debate seems quite interesting.

Ashley's s*** which means Freddie was good!

[Incognito]

I think the credit crunch and following recession exacerbated the gap tbh.Neither were the Govts fault.
Massively disappointing?The things they brought in which I explained earlier isn't massively disappointing imo.They did an awful lot of good for this country.They even dealt with the credit crunch better than anyone else would have.Of course there were some things they did which were disappointing.But on the whole,this was the best Govt.that I have lived under.
As for the New Labour "goalposts" thing.They were elected in '97 under that banner,they didnt suddenly change after campaigning the election on old Labour policies,everybody knew what they were voting for.You can't say the same about the Lib-Dems can you?

[Thomson Mouse]

Oh, and p.s., if we're talking about moving the goalposts how about Labour moving from a left wing to left of centre party to a right of centre New Labour.

I hardly think that's exclusive to Labour, do you?

Labour first figured out that in UK politics if you are as close to the middle ground as possible, then you've got a good chance of winning, especially when you're in opposition - all you need to do is wait for the govt  to f*** up.  Step forward Tony Blair and David Cameron.
This is exactly the reason why Blair led 'New Labour', not Gordon Brown and why Cameron is now leading the Tories.

In terms of terms served though, I wouldn't call Labours massively disappointing. As has been stated, they fixed a lot of the 'common mans' services that the Tories utterly destroyed. This takes money to do.

The main let downs with Labour were the lack of financial regulations which means things are a lot tougher now after the GFC (having said that, you could argue that London wouldn't be the financial capital of the world if they hadn't done this) and the Gulf War.

At the moment the Tories are like kids in a sweet shop, they have one of the greatest excuses ever to cut public services and give the money to their mates in big corporations.

[Incognito]

Re: the Iraq war,if anybody seriously thinks the Tories wouldn't have done the same then they are fools tbh.Hindsight is a wonderful thing.At the time I agreed with the war,and even now just removing Saddam seems a good as excuse as any.It was the dupliciity in it all that made it wrong.Whether Mr. Blair had any idea of this is another story.

[mrmojorisin75]

for me there's two types of tories:

1. the deluded/naive/stupid/gullible who believe that trickledown and all that s*** will work, and
2. the eyes open hard faced c***s who don't care about anything but their own pockets

while i have little time for either i'd take #2 everyday 'cause the first group are f***ing morons

re: widening the gap between rich and poor, the point that some people are missing here is that it may have happened under labour during the last 13 years but it wasn't 'intentional' if you like...for the tories widening the gap between rich and poor is the end itself, that's all they're about

[Thomson Mouse]

Re: the Iraq war,if anybody seriously thinks the Tories wouldn't have done the same then they are fools tbh.Hindsight is a wonderful thing.At the time I agreed with the war,and even now just removing Saddam seems a good as excuse as any.It was the dupliciity in it all that made it wrong.Whether Mr. Blair had any idea of this is another story.

Couldn't agree more, but for me in hindsight it was a let down. Personally I think Mr Blair knew exactly what he was doing.

[mrmojorisin75]

Re: the Iraq war,if anybody seriously thinks the Tories wouldn't have done the same then they are fools tbh.Hindsight is a wonderful thing.At the time I agreed with the war,and even now just removing Saddam seems a good as excuse as any.It was the dupliciity in it all that made it wrong.Whether Mr. Blair had any idea of this is another story.

Couldn't agree more, but for me in hindsight it was a let down. Personally I think Mr Blair knew exactly what he was doing.

 

[Super Duper Branko Strupar]

for me there's two types of tories:

1. the deluded/naive/stupid/gullible who believe that trickledown and all that s*** will work, and
2. the eyes open hard faced c***s who don't care about anything but their own pockets

while i have little time for either i'd take #2 everyday 'cause the first group are f***ing morons

re: widening the gap between rich and poor, the point that some people are missing here is that it may have happened under labour during the last 13 years but it wasn't 'intentional' if you like...for the tories widening the gap between rich and poor is the end itself, that's all they're about

Anyone who thinks 'the trickledown effect' is a way of solving poverty and injustice is a gullible fool

[cp40]

Somebody has to deal with national Debt.

[madras]

Somebody has to deal with national Debt.

theres more than one way to do that.