BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: Folk Form # 1
Date: 03 May 08 - 05:35 AM

As a Londoner, I am glad the Livingstone regime has been overthrown. We should be having street parties.

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 03 May 08 - 05:19 AM

The 1970's were an entire object lesson to the labour party that there is no way for them to 'keep their supporters aboard' or appease them, and as sapper points out - it ended in the winter of discontent.

The problem I have with the tories is that the supporters they keep aboard are probably quite as bad as a trade union movement, puffed up with its own importance - namely the Ulster unionists (didn't the Irish policies that saw your friends getting shot over there sicken you, Sapper - they were quite unnecessary and stopped almost as soon as Labour got in?) other supporters are the Murdoch press, the millionaire cliques that pay no taxes, the list goes on.

I don't think Blair had any choice with Afghanistan and Iraq. He knew how America had vindictively buggered up our economy when we refused to support them over Vietnam. He wasn't going to spend his tenure picking up the pieces like Wilson did.

However because of this Brown and Blair spent a lot of time picking lead out of their ass from their own supporters. The raising of the 10p tax rate was inexplicable and inexcusable.

The failure to clean out M15/MI6 (particularly after that suspicious suicide of the scientist). The failure to tackle huge profits by cartels and monopolies operating in this country - and make them pay sensible amounts of tax. These have been the real moral failures.

As a Labour Party supporter - albeit a passive one - I am sorry for its failures. As someone who has worked as a teacher, and seen the iniquitous 'National Curriculum' come and go, and then someone who has had to manage living on allowances with my disabled wife. I can see that the Labour Party has more inherent decency than the tories. It occurs to it to do decent things that the tories would never think of.

And they don't sneer at us from the party platform, like Peter Lilley did.

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: autolycus
Date: 03 May 08 - 04:46 AM

The English are essentially a small 'c' conservative lot. They are never amused and, having been criticised heavily when small by their upbringers, who had themselves been criticised heavily when small by their upbringers who were    et cetera, as a result are arch fault-finders who seek to find the weakness of others, like their politicians. (tho' it doesn't stop there, natch).

So you can have done a great job for a long time, but one bad error will count for more. Thus can the voters blithely ignore, forget, or re-write and re-remember the things you got right.

All of this is of the essence of a blaming society, where it's always someone else who carries the can.

An alternative is some form of loyalty. (Or even memory) We are often loyal to partners, and to family and real friends. Sometimes to country.

GUEST Shimrod expresses amazement at the idea of loyalty.

It used to be the Concervative's secret weapon.

All the the above is why I'm relieved that I never sought political office. What with the kind of voters we have who are moody, irrational, ignorant, disloyal, resentful, and so easily swayed while denying with their last breath that anyone can sway them, that they are basically ignorant, that they are moody, that they are irrational.


As ever, we'll get the politicians we deserve. If we don't like the result, we can ignore WHO put them in, just be annoyed with them by voting others in, and the merry(?)-go-round will continue.

Wake me when it's over.


Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: DMcG
Date: 03 May 08 - 04:19 AM

You are absolutely right, of course, Villan, but that still seems to me to be a poor use of voting.

Back in the days that people tried to have witty default signatures on emails, one of the favourites I received was something like:

"XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Please find enclosed your lifetime supply of democracy"

Voting someone into power in a local election to send a message to someone else, while ignoring what the person you elected actually wants to do seems to me to waste one of the very few Xs we really have. Your view may, of course, differ.

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: sapper82
Date: 03 May 08 - 04:16 AM

Yes, Richard, I do have a memory.
I have a memory of being on duty to provide fire fighting cover for the Firemen's strike in 1977.
I have memories of one of the troops on my squadron going to Glasgow to clean the streets of rubbish in '78.
I have a memory of being on standby for going to Liverpool to bury bodies at the same period.
I remember RCT lads driving oil tankers past picketts of striking hospital porters when they'd stopped the civvie drivers from delivering fuel oil.
I remember the same strikers vetting people trying to get to hospital casualy departments to see if they were sick enough to pass.

That is why I am a Tory and that is why I will never vote for a socialist in any form.

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: Rasener
Date: 03 May 08 - 03:39 AM

The local elections have always been a means of showing the government "that one isn't amused"

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: alanabit
Date: 03 May 08 - 03:36 AM

It looks like Labour are losing power the same way as Schroeder did in Germany - by pissing off their own supporters. They have tried to hang on to power by increasingly stealing the Tories clothes. That sort of political transvestite will always be doomed to opposition. All Brown has to do to stay in power is to keep his own supporters on board. It's the old political maxim: Oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them.

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: DMcG
Date: 03 May 08 - 03:24 AM

Many of the general public interviewed mentioned things like the 10% tax rate, fuel prices, food prices ... The depressing thing is that so many people seem unable to distinguish between local and national government. Either that, or they think 'sending a message to Westminster' is more important than how their local services are run.

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: Rasener
Date: 03 May 08 - 03:03 AM

Here comes poverty. Richard, its already there, without Boris influencing it. Sounds like a neat idea to pass the buck to the incoming Mayor.

Subject: RE: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: Padre
Date: 03 May 08 - 01:22 AM

Do I take it from your 'sky is falling' input that the Liberal party has lost some local election (or did they win)?

And what will you do with gasoline in a milk bottle? You will have a hard time pouring it into the gas tank of your Austin A-40.

Subject: BS: UK local elections: here comes poverty
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 May 08 - 08:04 PM

Oh shit have people no memories?

Local authority services will be destroyed.

Dare we hope, as rubbish collections disappear, as the needy are shovelled onto the streets, as the oligarchs come to rule the planning system, and God help the people because the local authority won't, that the stupid, stupid English will learn, will even begin to see an inkling of how they will be dispossessed and reduced to lackey status if the old Etonians and plutocrats get to control parliament and the country again?

Time to stockpile milk bottles, petrol and rags.