General Election 2010

[gambogaz1]

I'll be sticking with Labour. Maggie & her party completely destroyed my area in the late 80's so will never get a seat here again.
I really do like the Libs and some of there policys are brilliant, but sadly too many of them are too radical, and can't be trusted at a time like this when the economy & finances are so precious.

[milk monitor]

do you mind me asking how old you were when labour got in, in '97?
The reason I ask is that when I left school in the 80s the country was a mess. Higher unemployment than now (despite how Cameron spins the figures) a health service in ruins, elitest education system, interest rates of 15%+ on your mortgage.

Not at all was I 16 when Labour won in 1997 and I’m 29 now. I am however aware of history and those measures and circumstances which you describe were remedial measures, taken to repair damage inflicted under the previous socialist government. The nation was bankrupt and when you call in the IMF you agree to their conditions.

“15% on your mortgage” – correct, this is what happens when the gilt market has no confidence in the (labour) governments ability to pay debts. The positive is that it also means also 15% on savings. Last point you can’t compare that scenario to the present because we are not yet in the trough, see where the unemployment figures are then.

The tories build the system that caused this crisis. Brown's mistake was not limiting the power that the banks had been given.

I disagree.
Allowing a 15 year runaway boom fuelled by:

Deregulation of the banking industry, allowing low interest rates, allowing personal debt to explode, overseeing 300% house price inflation which was decreasing living standards, creating a measure on inflation that ignores mortgage payments and thus runaway housing market which creates the illusion of wealth but decreases livings standards, ignoring real inflation that was being masked by cheap goods from China, allowing banks to gamble peoples savings on the stock market, selling off all the gold at 1/5 of today’s price. Just off the top of my head

A country is just like a company in that it cannot live beyond his means it does there is a trade deficit. The deficit was £50bn before anyone had heard of the credit crunch. That’s an annual increase in debt of 50bn. Now we have a annual deficit of £180bn and the best Labour can come up with is that they will half the deficit in 4 years.

This is still increasing debt by 80bn and does nothing to address the national debt which stands at 850bn. Add to this off balance sheet debt 1.2 trillion public sector pension liability that mushroomed under Labour and the PFI bill that is coming £800bn also driven by Labour you may be starting.

Boom and bust has not been eradicated, we just had the biggest boom ever and now will follow a huge bust.

the last 13 years have been extremely prosperous. The recession we're in is largely down to people over exposing themselves to debt.

All of that prosperity was based on cheap money and debt. Wages increases were lagging inflation and the hole was plugged by debt. That now has to be repaid and it will take years.

I predicted on this site six months ago that the banking crisis would become a sovereign debt crisis, as I did that Greece would go bust, we are just starting to see that this was correct. I also said Spain will be the big one that can’t be propped up but we not quite there yet, Portugal is next.

[Mattb]

Agreed, basically the whole notion that the boom would never end, and that lending any old person totally unaffordable amounts of money they couldn't possibly give back was always likely to go very wrong. I don't think people quite understand how much this black hole of national debt is.....it's really quite staggering.

[pokerpete]

By the sounds of it, I must be the only person in the country with no unsecured debt, all my family bills covered and disposable income.

maybe come friday you'll get the chance to live as an adult under a Tory govt. I hope not, but it's possible. We're not even talking about the watered down, slightly left of centre conservatism that New Labour's opposition have been offering over the last decade. It sounds to me like proper Thatcherite Concervatism with a huge capital C.

Interesting times

[pokerpete]

Incidentally, I don't disagree that old Labour had to go, but Thatcher fixed nothing, she just passed it down the line.

[gambogaz1]

Thatcher made the Balance sheet look better, but left the country a run down wreck.

What gets me about the conservatives is 12 months ago they attacked labour for this stimulus spending plan saying that the debt needed to be addressed, well 12 months on the stimulus seems to have worked and now Labour are addressing the debt (NI Hike) and the conservatives are just trying to win votes by Veto'in it.
We've all gotta pay, there's only so much waste they can find.

[milk monitor]

By the sounds of it, I must be the only person in the country with no unsecured debt, all my family bills covered and disposable income.

maybe come friday you'll get the chance to live as an adult under a Tory govt. I hope not, but it's possible. We're not even talking about the watered down, slightly left of centre conservatism that New Labour's opposition have been offering over the last decade. It sounds to me like proper Thatcherite Concervatism with a huge capital C.

Interesting times

Well I have to say I am disappointed with the substance in that response. I took each one of your points and explained why you were wrong, I expected you to tell me the *reasons* why you disagree. It took minutes and I see wasn’t particularly robust as I read it back. I could have added much more.

It is a simple equation you cannot spend what you don’t have into infinity or you will go bust. Gordon Brown is addicted to spending; you can’t blame the party who pays it back to avoid even worse consequences. We live in a political system where any party who was truthful about the cuts would have no chance of being elected. It would be bad enough if we didn’t face natural factors that make us uncompetitive as a developed democracy i.e. labour costs, but we are not creating any real wealth.

Real wealth is created by making things, extracting things or doing things more efficiently that they have been before (innovation). Yet the dumbing down of society means that we have no engineers or scientists, yet everyone on the checkout at JJB sports has a degree. An army of historians, media graduates, artists, politicians and archaeologists leave the universities every year not knowing where they fit in to society. This leads to the public sector expanding, which h is paid for with debt as the private sector has been chronically mismanaged.

I have zero debt and plenty of money in the bank, and it astounds me even more that you could take this view being in a similar position. Do you realise that your savings have been devalued by 30%? Do you not want a decent rate of interest?

The root of the problem is that house prices have to fall as they are too expensive, they are just being propped up at the moment by cheap money and it has to stop so that we can have decrease in asset values.

For the winner it is a poison chalice. My major fear is that a Labour government would try to inflate away the debt and that would wipe everybody.

[kingzilla]

What makes me very angry are the Tory posters that are dotted around that labour will make the Rich and Poor divide worse. HOW DARE YOU
That is exactly what your party stands for.

[pokerpete]

By the sounds of it, I must be the only person in the country with no unsecured debt, all my family bills covered and disposable income.

maybe come friday you'll get the chance to live as an adult under a Tory govt. I hope not, but it's possible. We're not even talking about the watered down, slightly left of centre conservatism that New Labour's opposition have been offering over the last decade. It sounds to me like proper Thatcherite Concervatism with a huge capital C.

Interesting times

Well I have to say I am disappointed with the substance in that response. I took each one of your points and explained why you were wrong, I expected you to tell me the *reasons* why you disagree. It took minutes and I see wasn’t particularly robust as I read it back. I could have added much more.

It is a simple equation you cannot spend what you don’t have into infinity or you will go bust. Gordon Brown is addicted to spending]

bit busy at work mate.
I had time for a quick reply, same as now.
Some of us work for a living you know

[Istenem]

What makes me very angry are the Tory posters that are dotted around that labour will make the Rich and Poor divide worse. HOW DARE YOU
That is exactly what your party stands for.

not strictly true that. in ideological terms: conservatism seeks to reward hard work so those who deserve wealth can enjoy the fruits of their industry, skill and endeavour. the welfare state remains but there is sensible encouragement to get people making money for themselves rather than relying on state benefits. while the rich can get richer, the poor don't get poorer unless, through ignorance, laziness or irresponsibility they deserve to.

a truly socialist labour party (and libdem for that) would seek to overburden SMEs which has the effect of driving commerce overseas and discouraging foreign investment. so the only reason the gap would narrow is because people in this country who work hard are working for free.

[milk monitor]

Pokerpete, I too work for a living as I have since leaving school, I have taken a day off work to take delivery of some furniture.

[pokerpete]

I assumed you did mate.

[harry2]

Same old story. Another election by Christmas, maybe.

[pokerpete]

The "wasted vote" thing runs deep.

I think more likely a labour leadership race, hopefuly an Electoral Reform referendum, then back to the polls next year.

[Matt Vinyl]

Sorry to lower the tone, but the phrases:

-Waking up to a huge election

-Hung like a Parliament

-Mourning Tory

...are making me smile slightly this morning!

Anyway, this 'result', for want of a better term is certainly not ideal in any way at the moment.

On the point about people who were denied the opportunity to vote, I turned up at my Polling Station to see at least 18 people ready to process the handing out of Ballots and my partner and I were the only two people there! So the news that some PSs only had two elderly women dealing with the voters and a queue however long is a bit concerning.

Like someone mentioned on the radio this morning, it's a bit embarrasing that we head over to other countries to ensure they run a fair election, when we can't do it ourselves!