Since it's the budget tomorrow....

[Saracen]

Damn saracan you have very long posts haha, as much as i see the points you are making, torries have done enough in the past to screw over the working class that they cannot be trusted, i would like to see lib dems get in but it wont happen, we will get torries again they will mess up and vise versa.

Well, firstly, what parties did in the past isn't necessarily a guide to what they stand for now or will do now. If you need an example of that, there's none better than New Labour versus traditional Labour. A LOT of what new Labour have done is way different to old Labour, and it's not just about not calling for unilateral disarmament and dumping clause 4. There's been a seismic shift in emphasis. Ask the union leaders that thought they were getting a chance, and found the Labour government more interested in cosying up in millionaire industrialists and bankers than to the unions.

Why did Labour change? Because after Kinnock's humiliatingly unexpected defeat, they worked out the old policies were making them unelectable.

The Tories have also worked out that some old policies are no longer electorally feasible, and it's not the same people (with a few exceptions) anyway.

Of course, in both cases, we have to take on trust that what they actually do and what they said they'd do are the same, and that's a rather dubious proposition.

[Saracen]

Saracen

I was born just in the 70's and if I was honest no matter what Government was/ is in power i really do not think it would make a difference and I think the majority of people would agree.

i did state I did not know much about politics just observed what the majority think and at the time when Labour got into power the majority obviously thought Labour should be in power. Maybe that is not the case now but the fact of the matter is we can discuss all day who is and who isnt the best but the FACT of the matter is no one no matter how much they write can assume any party will be better that the other.

Only time can prove this and IF Conservative do get in which is more than likely maybe in time they can show us what a waste of time they are.

PS : I agree with Dangel I do destest the size of your ** Posts i got 3rd though and gave up.

I think it will make a difference who gets in, but perhaps not for the reasons most people might expect. I said it in the last post, but maybe after the point you gave up. The reason I want Labour out, whoever gets in, is that they all seem to get stale, and arrogant, if in power too long. The Tories sure did, and now Labour have. You only have to listen to the rhetoric, which amounts to .... it must be "right" to do it, and "it's important" because we say it is.

We desperately need a change, especially since the current ships captain was the navigator that guided the economy onto the rocks in the first place.

Long-term, I agree with you, I'm not sure it makes much difference. But right now, we need a change. And, unfortunately, the system is designed, and loaded, so that there's only really one practical alternative, no matter how much we might wish it not so. We really have a 2.1 party state. From election mathematics, I can't see any feasilbe prospect that the LibDems are going to get in, probably not short of a change to PR, which the other two won't do precisely because it'd wreck their comfortable little duopoly of power. So they play the game between themselves, with the occasional smug little grin at the LibDems on the sideline, and then carry on handing the baton back and forth.

As for the posts being too long, well, fair enough. If you don't want to read them, don't read them. It's a free country ..... though thanks to Labour, nowhere near as free as it used to be.

[Stoo]

I've had enough with the whole bloody lot of them..

Yup, Labour have made a nice big mess, and the Tories are now stood about in the playground pointing fingers saying just how bad labour are, and how the Tories would have done soooo much better.

Only when you ask them what they would have done, and what could have been done to avoid the whole mess, they turn more slippery than an eel covered in silicone oil, and say "oh, we can't comment on that, and we don't have the figures" amongst a bunch more flannel.

Although Vince Cable did a decent job on C4 news citing specific examples of methods to help recovery, the trouble is, would it actually help? Nobody really knows.

One of the things that annoys me the most is that my local MP, who has doing a very good job for the area (after the utter waste of space who was the previous Tory MP - more interested in making his own money than acting for the people..), will likely get voted out at the next election because of some brain-dead knee-jerk reaction!

Cutting your nose off to spite your face springs to mind - it seems that the whole system is broken..

Sod the political points scoring and schoolyard blame-game, how about we get all the brightest people together, along with *everyone* with political clout and try to work this out properly *together* ?

This constant swaying back and forth does nobody (other than the very rich - who can ride pretty much anything out) any good!

How to actually make it better? No idea - perhaps a 3 party coalition, all working towards the same goal? Perhaps more targeted elections? Local (local MP), national (the government), international (MEP?)?

Dunno, but there must me *some* way to achieve it.. But it would likely require people power on a scale I doubt has been seen before..

[Gazza]

Come the revolution, they'll all be put up the wall brothers......

I dunno, just always wanted to say that with feeling...

[Lanky123]

Dunno, but there must me *some* way to achieve it.. But it would likely require people power on a scale I doubt has been seen before..

The only way I see it happening is if we get a hung parliament in a future election (no party having an outright majority of seats) and therefore one of the big two being forced to make a deal with the Lib Dems and form a coalition government. As the current electoral system does the Lib Dems no favours at all they might put electoral reform as one of the requirements on a deal. I'm sure both the Torys and Labour would fight tooth and nail to avoid ruining their cosy little game but that's the only way I can possibly envisage an outside chance of a change in the system.

[TheAnimus]

I remember well Thatchers destruction of British industry, which we are still paying for.

It would be very hard to suggest that thatcher was the course of the decline, rather than a result of a symptom.

The people who killed off british industry, the unions who refused to allow any change, anything that didn't help the workers in the short term was not even allowed to be debated. This is obvious because the workers in other countries, such as germany, where willing to work alongside mechanised production. When another country is willing to do the work, arguably to higher quality, and you are striking, you simply don't deserve to have that job.

Take coal mining, why on earth pay someone who obviously has an un-realistic idea of their worth. Coal is worth only as much as the market can command. When people can dig coal out of an open cast mine in Africa, it isn't worth digging it out from underground in wales. A more dangerous, and expensive operation.

[Blitzen]

Come now comrades...take up your arms and fight

[Stringent]

Its strange though, when was Labour in power last and what happened then? They messed it up. They have done it again. Worse IMO. People vote because they want change, not because any of the other parties policies are good, they just appear to be better than the alternative. We need a proper change, not any of the three main parties, someone completely different like, I dunno ... BNP?

[Blitzen]

I have always voted Labour......but not for NEW Labour again.
If the word NEW also means TORY then no more. Tory Labour is making me wretch.

This is a real dilemna for me as i cannot vote T.Labour again but i certainly wouldn't vote for a Conservative Britain.
Labour are a shambolic mess with the heads firmly up their own rectums. The stark fact is though, if anyone is foolish enough to believe the Tories would be any better needs to take their medication.
The are ALL as bad as each other once the 'Power Grab' starts.

Unfortunately, although a supposedly democracy, we are stuck between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

[TheAnimus]

You voted for them before?

Didn't you think they would squander ****loads of cash on hospitals, schools, and other nobel endevors, but never stop to think where the money would come from?

Now we desperately need someone who will rein in spending (have you seen how much the NHS just piss away its astounding!).

The question is how long do we need that for.

The other question is what bad things will the Tories do when their in power next.

[pollaxe]

I've long nurtured the theory that being an MP should be like jury duty. Anyone expressing a desire to run for Parliament would automatically be barred from selection.

My feeling is that even if you plundered the best minds from every single party in this country, you would be hard pressed to form a decent cabinet.

[TheAnimus]

That could actually be an excellent idea!

I mean do we really want Lawyers running things?

Lets try and think of a lawyer that has ever done anything that was good?

You get umpteen stories of people who did well despite adversity, and people like Branson who have no GCSEs, creating jobs and running efficient companies. Anyone know of a Lawyer who ever did that!

[Lucio]

Here's the thing, even if we had a General Election tomorrow, and power did change hands, what would it *really* change? I can't see any sitting Goverment busy going through and removing laws passed prior to them being in power that they don't like, it's too complicated and no one would want to sit down to figure out who owes what and so on.

It's like a computer application that's been running for years, more and more code gets added as "new and exciting" features, old code gets re-used and changed to mean different things and ultimately no one really understands what is really going on behind the scenes. The only real solution is to delete everything and start again, but no one's willing to put all the work and money in.

[Saracen]

Here's the thing, even if we had a General Election tomorrow, and power did change hands, what would it *really* change? I can't see any sitting Goverment busy going through and removing laws passed prior to them being in power that they don't like, it's too complicated and no one would want to sit down to figure out who owes what and so on.

It's like a computer application that's been running for years, more and more code gets added as "new and exciting" features, old code gets re-used and changed to mean different things and ultimately no one really understands what is really going on behind the scenes. The only real solution is to delete everything and start again, but no one's willing to put all the work and money in.

Actually, that kind of mass revision of laws can happen. It's happening right now (and has been for quite some years). In Russia.

They have basically taken the old Soviet law books, burnt them and started again with a codified legal code, bearing a fair resemblance in structure, though not necessarily in content, to the US Code. But it took the fall of the Soviet Union for it to happen.

In a fairly small way, it happens here all the time too, but incrementally rather than wholesale. A new bot of legislation comes win which amends some older bits, repeals others entirely and brings in new bits.

But part of our problem is that the "law" in the UK actually consists of multiple types of law. You have statutes (Acts), that are basically laws debated by and voted on by Parliament as a whole. You also have Statutory Instruments, which are essentially a sort of short-form law often implemented by a senior Minister, usually by virtue of power granted in another Act. As an example, the Sale of Goods Act is, clearly, an Act, but the Distance Selling Regs are Regulations created and implemented directly by order of the Secretary of State.

But then there's precedent, A fair bit of the law we live by is determined by the decisions of courts, who determine what an Act or Reg means, and moreover, how one set of circumstances differ from another. And, of course, that precedent is constantly refined, as a court decision establishes that this situation is different from that one because <some reason> and therefore the law applies differently, or doesn't apply at all. Precedent also evolves as a superior court basically says an earlier court got it wrong.

and then there's common law, which more or less is law because we've been doing it that way for so long that the tradition has sort-of mutated into law. Unless a statute or court decision overrules it.

But every time a new law comes out that impacts on a given subject, it risks throwing all previous precedent into doubt as it may be that it changes the basis on which a court made a decision, and it certainly junks all precedent based on law that's been repealed, which might end up meaning that a decision that went one way because a given piece of law overruled another now goes the other way because the precedent that informed that previous decision no longer applies.

And some of those Acts go back, what, 1000 years?

There is, in my view (as a non-lawyer) quite a bit of law that could badly do with being repealed and/or revamped, and dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. For a start, we could do with codifying a lot of stuff that related to high tech areas, such as communications and broadcasting, intellectual property rights and fair use, and criminal acts in computing, such as hacking, cracking, privacy and so forth. The technology regularly outstrips regulation.

But a wholesale codification of the entire law base is a project that would take, in my view, probably a couple of decades or more.


So in general, you're right. No government can realistically spend the time necessary to go through and strip out everything the last lot did, and in many areas, they may not want to. They might, however, realistically reassess some of it, and junk some.

For instance, both Tories and LibDems are committed, if elected, to junking the ID card scheme. But what do they mean by that? Cancel current plans? Cancel existing contracts? Or remove the established enabling legislation entirely? Similarly, some of the more intrusive and anti-civil liberties powers Labour have enacted and that the others have opposed ..... will they repeal them, or merely leave them quietly in place?

[Saracen]

I've long nurtured the theory that being an MP should be like jury duty. Anyone expressing a desire to run for Parliament would automatically be barred from selection.

My feeling is that even if you plundered the best minds from every single party in this country, you would be hard pressed to form a decent cabinet.

One thing I would like to see is a more meritocratic Parliament.

Younger people might not like it, but I think that the criteria for being an MP ought to include a minimum period of actually having done something in the real world. We have too many professional politicians.

It used to be the case that MPs had some experience of the real world because they'd been there and lived/worked in it.That might be years as a shop steward, or it might be years as a company boss. You might be a lawyer or a miner, a policeman or a vicar, an accountant or a schoolteacher, a journalist or a dustman, a doctor or a bus driver. But now we have a growing trend for people to be professional politicians, whether like our current Glorious Leader going from university (political history IIRC) into politics, or like he that would be leader, which is pretty much straight in as a political adviser, and then to politician.

I'd like those that seek to tell us how to run our lives having had some experience of living a real working life, outside of the Westminster Village environment, themselves. And that is what I meant by "meritocracy".

[shaithis]

For instance, both Tories and LibDems are committed, if elected, to junking the ID card scheme. But what do they mean by that?

IMO, it's the same as the million other promises of "what will change if we get into power" that all the parties come up with, yet never follow through on. Once the ball is rolling, that will probably be it regardless of who gets into power.

I have only voted in 2 of the 4 elections I could have for this very reason, I gave up a long time ago on trusting what they promise as half of it is invariably complete