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'Nasty evil @%$kers. . .'

I walked through town yesterday. Once a thriving place, it has been decimated by Tory policies and a lack of ‘caring’. Homelessness has increased, open drug taking and selling is prevalent, every other shop is closed, vape shops and nail shops dominate. People look as if Hope has gone. This is the worst Tory party that has ever governed. I hope beyond hope that there is a change and that that party cares.
 
Birdseed007 said:
One of the biggest problems the Tories will have in future years is that having shafted the young so comprehensively for decades they're going to end up unelectable as their traditional final salary pensioned, blue rinsed, golf club swinging demographic dies off. A generation of people still paying off their university loans, unable to afford a house, concerned about the destruction of the planet, fed up of working 60 hour weeks on zero hours contracts for low pay, who have witnessed the destruction of the core services of the state from education to health to roads to libraries is not going to vote for the party that created this mess. They're not stupid and they won't forget...

I also think that we're witnessing a reappraisal of the Thatcher legacy. I think for a time there were many across all classes who had her on a pedestal for "reinventing and reinvigorating" Britain. Unfortunately the consequences of what she did are now coming home to roost. Privatisation of the utilities such as water, gas, electricity, buses and trains has been shown to have utterly disasterous consequences. Those private monopolies have trousered vast profits while asset stripping and failing to invest in the infrastructure they were responsible for safeguarding. Does anybody seriously believe that we would have the sewage and drainage problems we now have if the water boards were still Gov't owned? Does anybody think that selling off council houses was a good idea (which now sees local authorities paying exhorbitant rents to private landlords to house the needy). Can anybody seriously suggest that the massively expensive train fares we now have to pay weren't far cheaper under British Rail? What she actually did is sell off the family silver for a song and thus created the biggest transfer of wealth from the state (owned by all of us) to the wealthy capitalists (the few) in living memory. In 1992 I used to buy a return ticket from University in Birmingham to Liverpool for £6.49 on my student railcard. The British Rail Inter-City train was fast, comfortable and reliable. Since then inflation has risen around 300%. Try buying a ticket on the same route for about £20 today (allowing for that inflation) and you'll be sorely disappointed!!!

I had a GP friend around for dinner last week. They bemoaned the privatisation of key elements of the NHS and cited just one example - hospital cleaning which has (of course!) been privatised. They said that whereas the old NHS employees cost little and did a superb job (because they were proud to work for the NHS, had fair terms and conditions and a good pension). Now sadly the external cleaning companies (doubtless owned by Tory voters!) charge a flipping fortune and employ staff on lousy zero hours contracts who are demotivated and simply don't do a good job. Hospitals are overpaying for bad service and the only person who benefits is the geezer who ownes the cleaning company...

In the past week or so I was pondering why it is that as a middle income earner I am being taxed into oblivion and yet receiving so little in return. I discovered an ex city trader with a lot of interesting stuff to say about what has and is happening in Britain and I would strongly recommend checking out his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics

One final thing to say. As a 40% tax payer who earns a decent but unimpressive five figure salary it sticks in my craw that my multi-millionaire Brother in law is probably paying a marginal rate of tax under 10% thanks to his clever accountants and "wealth management" services. We need a tax on wealth, not income because buggers like him with his £22m house in London, his £10m villa in Majorca and his £2m Princess yacht can't possibly hide those assets as well as they can hide their income. And no I don't think he will necessarily bugger off somewhere else if that happened - all his clients are here, his kids are settled in superb private schools here and he loves the life he has here. England is a great place to live if you're stinking rich!! We need collective action by the EU, UK and USA on this. There's a whole strata of society (the Sunak's, Reece-Mogg's etc) who simply aren't paying their dues and it's about time they did...

So yes I will vote Labour, as will many others this year. It will be a landslide, but I'm not convinced that Labour will be much more than Tory-lite under Starmer. Labour will have no money to seriously do much to improve matters, they're scared of announcing a wealth tax and too timid to take utilities back under state ownership. The country's decline will continue, just slower. Britain is finished as a good place to live for the many because (as in America) the unions are too weak and the capitalists have too much power and wealth. I'm not feeling optimistic.

Birdseed007
Click to expand...

Have no fear, that final salary pensioned, blue rinsed, golf club swinging demographic will spend their time fighting for the mighty apostrophe to save the country from starvation!
 
Birdseed007 said:
One of the biggest problems the Tories will have in future years is that having shafted the young so comprehensively for decades they're going to end up unelectable as their traditional final salary pensioned, blue rinsed, golf club swinging demographic dies off. A generation of people still paying off their university loans, unable to afford a house, concerned about the destruction of the planet, fed up of working 60 hour weeks on zero hours contracts for low pay, who have witnessed the destruction of the core services of the state from education to health to roads to libraries is not going to vote for the party that created this mess. They're not stupid and they won't forget...

I also think that we're witnessing a reappraisal of the Thatcher legacy. I think for a time there were many across all classes who had her on a pedestal for "reinventing and reinvigorating" Britain. Unfortunately the consequences of what she did are now coming home to roost. Privatisation of the utilities such as water, gas, electricity, buses and trains has been shown to have utterly disasterous consequences. Those private monopolies have trousered vast profits while asset stripping and failing to invest in the infrastructure they were responsible for safeguarding. Does anybody seriously believe that we would have the sewage and drainage problems we now have if the water boards were still Gov't owned? Does anybody think that selling off council houses was a good idea (which now sees local authorities paying exhorbitant rents to private landlords to house the needy). Can anybody seriously suggest that the massively expensive train fares we now have to pay weren't far cheaper under British Rail? What she actually did is sell off the family silver for a song and thus created the biggest transfer of wealth from the state (owned by all of us) to the wealthy capitalists (the few) in living memory. In 1992 I used to buy a return ticket from University in Birmingham to Liverpool for £6.49 on my student railcard. The British Rail Inter-City train was fast, comfortable and reliable. Since then inflation has risen around 300%. Try buying a ticket on the same route for about £20 today (allowing for that inflation) and you'll be sorely disappointed!!!

I had a GP friend around for dinner last week. They bemoaned the privatisation of key elements of the NHS and cited just one example - hospital cleaning which has (of course!) been privatised. They said that whereas the old NHS employees cost little and did a superb job (because they were proud to work for the NHS, had fair terms and conditions and a good pension). Now sadly the external cleaning companies (doubtless owned by Tory voters!) charge a flipping fortune and employ staff on lousy zero hours contracts who are demotivated and simply don't do a good job. Hospitals are overpaying for bad service and the only person who benefits is the geezer who ownes the cleaning company...

In the past week or so I was pondering why it is that as a middle income earner I am being taxed into oblivion and yet receiving so little in return. I discovered an ex city trader with a lot of interesting stuff to say about what has and is happening in Britain and I would strongly recommend checking out his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics

One final thing to say. As a 40% tax payer who earns a decent but unimpressive five figure salary it sticks in my craw that my multi-millionaire Brother in law is probably paying a marginal rate of tax under 10% thanks to his clever accountants and "wealth management" services. We need a tax on wealth, not income because buggers like him with his £22m house in London, his £10m villa in Majorca and his £2m Princess yacht can't possibly hide those assets as well as they can hide their income. And no I don't think he will necessarily bugger off somewhere else if that happened - all his clients are here, his kids are settled in superb private schools here and he loves the life he has here. England is a great place to live if you're stinking rich!! We need collective action by the EU, UK and USA on this. There's a whole strata of society (the Sunak's, Reece-Mogg's etc) who simply aren't paying their dues and it's about time they did...

So yes I will vote Labour, as will many others this year. It will be a landslide, but I'm not convinced that Labour will be much more than Tory-lite under Starmer. Labour will have no money to seriously do much to improve matters, they're scared of announcing a wealth tax and too timid to take utilities back under state ownership. The country's decline will continue, just slower. Britain is finished as a good place to live for the many because (as in America) the unions are too weak and the capitalists have too much power and wealth. I'm not feeling optimistic.

Birdseed007
Click to expand...
Brilliant post, my same thoughts precisely.

Thanks Birdseed.

Twas me that met the milk snatcher and left her with a flea in her ear after she was over an hour late for her appointment at my school around one lunch time, my stomach was rumbling badly in need for my lunch meal now over an hour late.

What snatcher did with all the milk she snatched became a butter mountain and a lake of milk.

She sent all of it to Russia, selling it in a cheap deal to off load it all.
 
Birdseed007 said:
So yes I will vote Labour, as will many others this year. It will be a landslide, but I'm not convinced that Labour will be much more than Tory-lite under Starmer. Labour will have no money to seriously do much to improve matters, they're scared of announcing a wealth tax and too timid to take utilities back under state ownership. The country's decline will continue, just slower. Britain is finished as a good place to live for the many because (as in America) the unions are too weak and the capitalists have too much power and wealth. I'm not feeling optimistic.

Birdseed007
Click to expand...
Yes up until yesterday I would have agreed that it would be a two horse race and this would be the election when Labour will scoop the pool, mainly because Labour are becoming MK11 Tories. So basically it will be the same no matter who wins.

My son spent the weekend canvasing and one point is coming across faster than expected. The Reform UK is picking up about 20% of the vote and most of them are in the 20-30 age bracket which does not bode well for the future.
 
Mick P said:
Yes up until yesterday I would have agreed that it would be a two horse race and this would be the election when Labour will scoop the pool, mainly because Labour are becoming MK11 Tories. So basically it will be the same no matter who wins.

My son spent the weekend canvasing and one point is coming across faster than expected. The Reform UK is picking up about 20% of the vote and most of them are in the 20-30 age bracket which does not bode well for the future.
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No matter how bad Labour appear at this time, they are nowhere near the incompetence and callousness of this unscrupulous Tory shower.
 
Mick P said:
My son spent the weekend canvasing and one point is coming across faster than expected. The Reform UK is picking up about 20% of the vote and most of them are in the 20-30 age bracket which does not bode well for the future.
Click to expand...

Del monaco said:
No matter how bad Labour appear at this time, they are nowhere near the incompetence and callousness of this unscrupulous Tory shower.
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Perhaps it's not Labour that you need to worry about this time around but Reform in 5 or 10 years' time. Another cohort of disillusioned voters who want to give the Establishment a bloody nose as happened in 2016 and too young to remember what happened then this time vote Reform and in they come. Cue some nice reforms, sorting out the immigrants, the gays and the homeless. Won't that be nice. Because they're the source of all our problems, aren't they? That bloke asleep in a doorway, he's the source of all our current economic woes, for sure.
 
stevec67 said:
Where indeed. The thing is that theirs is a difficult sell, aren't they those dodgy vegetarians that want to ban cars?
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Also very easy to hijack the Greens more popular views, you want more solar panels, yes we will splash them everywhere, so there's no need for them, the message is already there.
 
Kirk said:
It would seem a vote for the Greens is potentially a wasted vote then.
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You can vote for whoever you want, that's democracy. However theone thing that should worry you is why there no party that gives you what you want and then ask yourself the question why.

I think Labour are going to win and to be fair they are not a lot of different from the Tories and this is what the vast majority of voters want. We can play one against the other. Starmer killed Corbyn off and became a second Blair. Killing off Corbyn makes the UK a much better place.

If your wishes are not fulfilled by the two main parties, you just don't count from a political perspective and that's how the majority of voters want it for reasons of stability etc.
 
I think you have to ask yourself whether 'what the vast majority of voters want' is because that's what the vast majority of voters are told they should want.
 
Birdseed007 said:
I also think that we're witnessing a reappraisal of the Thatcher legacy. I think for a time there were many across all classes who had her on a pedestal for "reinventing and reinvigorating" Britain.
Click to expand...

She never reinvigorated Britain. It was North Sea oil that did that, but most of the benefits were frittered or confiscated so that, unlike Norway, we have nothing to shew for it. (Actually, we do, an asset-stripped country that has been cruelly misgoverned by an ideologically driven and morally bankrupt political party that thinks it can no wrong. Lucky us ! We'd have been better off without the oil.)
 
Not sure which is the right approach to democratic voting. The Australian way where voting is mandatory or here, where you can suit yourself. Maybe my age, but the paucity of real choice in who mismanages our governance is greater than ever.
 
Mick P said:
You can vote for whoever you want, that's democracy. However theone thing that should worry you is why there no party that gives you what you want and then ask yourself the question why.

I think Labour are going to win and to be fair they are not a lot of different from the Tories and this is what the vast majority of voters want. We can play one against the other. Starmer killed Corbyn off and became a second Blair. Killing off Corbyn makes the UK a much better place.

If your wishes are not fulfilled by the two main parties, you just don't count from a political perspective and that's how the majority of voters want it for reasons of stability etc.
Click to expand...

Parties are plusses and minuses. Voters who think political parties should give them exactly what they want are being a tad narcissistic. It's all compromise in the end (thankfully). And yes, it looks like Labour will win, something JC failed to do twice over.
 
Kirk said:
It would seem a vote for the Greens is potentially a wasted vote then.
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Many votes are wasted. Anyone voting other than Conservative in, say, Richmond-on Thames, is wasting their vote. Unless, like Lord Sutch, they want to make a point and consider that to be worthwhile. Which it may be. It's like the people who spoil their papers by writing "none of the above". Be my guest. I think that they're wasting their time on a pointless gesture, but if they don't then carry on. A Green vote is better than a spolit paper gesture, at least it's counted as a positive rather than just "500 spoiled papers". Spoilt how?
 
stevec67 said:
Many votes are wasted. Anyone voting other than Conservative in, say, Richmond-on Thames, is wasting their vote. Unless, like Lord Sutch, they want to make a point and consider that to be worthwhile. Which it may be. It's like the people who spoil their papers by writing "none of the above". Be my guest. I think that they're wasting their time on a pointless gesture, but if they don't then carry on. A Green vote is better than a spolit paper gesture, at least it's counted as a positive rather than just "500 spoiled papers". Spoilt how?
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Participation is important, no doubt.
 
Kirk said:
Participation is important, no doubt.
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Absolutely. I've always voted, people fought wars for that right and regardless of the outcome I will exercise it. I'm fortunate at the moment, my constituency is a bellweather. Con to 1997, Labour in 97, Con again 2011 and ever since. I hope to see it go red again this year, with my single vote help. Sometimes the result has come down to hundreds, or only just over 1000. Only 300 in 2017, and 1500 in 2010.
 
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