Originally posted by UK Wizard
arh my arch nemisis sminkeypinkey
- Who else, eh?
The Tory's couldn't get rid of the minimum wage, it doesn't matter if one or two members oppose the minimum wage the majority support
it.
- They hate it in principle.
I'd lay a stack of £ on it never go up under them (as they'll whine on and on and on about how it would cost jobs). They'll just try to let it
wither away and then kill it off......as they did with the old 'wage councils' (you see, you young whippersnappers know nothing
, we've
been here before and been through it before)
The energy bill has risen at a rate in which the allowance means less and less each year. Your also forgetting that money doesn't equal
exactly the same as it did then.
- What? £10 in 1996 was worth so much more then than £300 today? Sorry Wizard but this is so far off of the mark.
This gov's heating allowance is a major help to many of the elderly and so far in excess of anything the tory party ever did it is just no
comparison.
So we want to increase our population
- A halt to the impending population decline would be a start never mind increase thing.
...bad idea for a Island of this size.
By incuraging the population we're only going to end up where we are now but worse off.
- Nonsense. This 'island' has plenty of room......just not down in the SE of England.
Labour is dealing with unemployment by increasing those in 'service careers' while those in 'Industry' are disappearing by 102,000 in the
last quarter of the year.
- Labour inherited a situation where Thatcher had destroyed 20% of the UK's manufacturing capacity and then 10yrs later Major did much the same.
One can hardly blame Labour for the new reality of the UK's reliance on service sector jobs. Equally the UK public want an effective civil service
and public services.
That is the nature of democracy, responding responsibly to the public wants.
MRSA, it causes the deaths of 5,000 people each year, due to pointless targets and privatised cleaning staff.
- Er, who is responsible for the loss of the in-house (public sector) cleaning staff and the privatisation of those services? I think you'll fid it
was your tory mates.
The NHS needs re-structuring not just a mass amount of money pumping into it.
- No. The NHS does
not need privatisation by another name. It is incontestable that it is improving and on it's current course that
improvment will continue.
Jayzuss one would thought the tories hadn't tried and gotten the thing to the shambles it was in not very long ago!
MRSA (bad as it is) is not sufficient 'reason' to destroy the NHS, it's thanks to this governments' stats we even know what it is and where as
your tory pals refused to collate the stats in their time.
I'm still at (one more year to go) school, yes there is finanicial investment, but what about discipline, top up fee's, over examining
etc
- Again. I have never said things are perfect but the quibbles you cite are not sufficient to ignore the enormous improvement or investment going
on.
What about the £1 trillion in debt the people of Britain are in!!!
- Hmm, there's a first. So the gov (but only now and only this gov) is responsible for people's private borrowing?! That's a good one.
I suppose by the same token you'll now give the gov credit for the peoples' record level of assets?
Recessions are often due to international or industrial restructuring.
- No. That's far from the full story Wizard.....our gov can see them coming and accelerate them and deepen them with their own actions and this is
exactly what Thatcher & Major deliberately did. The recessions in the UK in the early 1980's and 1990's were longer and deeper than anyone else had
them in the comparable developed world.
Gov's can deliberately engineer them (in Thatchers case) mainly by grossly over-valueing the £ and holding it there against all advice and (in Majors
case) mainly by raising interest rates to record highs and keeping them there (12% for over a year and a peak of 15%...
central bank rate
not customer rates, they were much higher).
Evidence for the cutting of tax for the very wealthy????
- You have got to be kidding me.
Go look at any compendium of the effects of UK gov tax policy over the years. Under the tories taxes were cut with the greatest effect going to the
already wealthy and corporations.
tell that to all the old grannies who don't have enough to pay their council tax.
- You looking for a perfect world again? You could try asking some of the grannies threatened with prison for not paying their poll tax about local
authority charges.
It's a problem area for Labour and tory govs. People want to stay in the same house all their lives, not unnaturally. This tends to mean people
growing older in houses not suited to one or two elderly people. If they were prepared to move to somewhere cheaper and more manageable it might be a
different story. But they tend not to. It is a problem we have yet to solve.
And lets not forget the 66 stealth tax rises.
- Yeah but that only works when you cop every indirect tax rise going. I don't smoke, I don't drink much and I don't drive much.
I actually expect this 'stealth' nonsense and support it.
I fully recognise the sad truth of the childish instincts of many of our tax-payers who refuse to just pay their income taxes at a proper rate
necessary for the decent public services they say they want.
Stealth tax has ensured that at least if you don't do some of these things you don't pay them.
.....and you still have the fact that taxes are now lower than they were for almost all (except some of the top third) under Thatcher.....was she a
high-taxing 'socialist'?
Poll tax a bad idea then and a bad idea now, but it wouldn't be introduced now.
- Naa, probably won't be but it's nevertheless an excellent guide to their instincts.....
....
and their attitude of how they actually respond when the people, no matter how many, actually say no to their idiot schemes.
Imagine if it had been a Labour gov threatening tens if not hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people with prison terms for refusing to pay
something like and so unpopular as the poll tax, we'd never have heard the end of it, 'Stalinist socialists this', 'gulag reds' that and 'commie
bootboys' the other.
Funny how it's ok really and just silly harking back when it's the tory crowd though eh?
[edit on 8-11-2004 by sminkeypinkey]
