Saviour Brown

[Speckled Frost]

Following Blair's jitters over his own leadership and the total slump in public confidence in Labour would Brown be any better?

[Rog]

Following Blair's jitters over his own leadership and the total slump in public confidence in Labour would Brown be any better?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Choosing between 'Bleah' and Brown is like being asked to choose between Full Blown AIDS and Rabies.

 

We need a decent government with decent principles and decent morality. In otherwords we in the UK need a Conservative government.

 

You guys in the Isle of Man simply need a government.

[ans]

Added a poll, hope you don't mind.

[When Skies Are Grey]

Decent principles and morality????

 

Shirley Porter, David Mellor, John Major, Edwina Currie, Johnathan Aitken.....fine upstanding members of the community every one

[Speckled Frost]

Poll away Ans my friend, poll away!

 

Conservatives - principle and morality?!

 

Age must be getting to you Rog - you can't seem to remember anything pre-1997!

[Static]

You missed Mr Jeffrey Archer from your list of principled and honest tory politicians!

[When Skies Are Grey]

Of course who could forget the esteemed politician and literary genius

[Speckled Frost]

To be fair Radz - you can't be expected to remember ALL the tory politicians to fall from grace!

[Rog]

You missed Mr Jeffrey Archer from your list of principled and honest tory politicians!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Any party will attract the undesirables who just want to use the party to further their own ends and some will actually be dishonest such as Archer but at least they are fingered and expelled.

 

Look at the disgraceful situation with Keith Vaz – there’s real nasty piece of work if ever there was. The situation became so bad that even the Telegraph, granted a paper that has more mature political editorial views trhan many such as the Guardian of the misnamed Independent ended up to appending the phrase ‘still a government minister’ whenever his name was printed in order to shame the NuLabour scum to do the decent thing if for no other reason than sheer embarrassment.

 

All parties eventually run out of support eventually even if as in the case of the Tory party prior to the election of NuLabour it was on the back of a ‘Time for a change’ campaign by the red-top press. NuLabour were not elected in, the Tory party were elected out. NuLabour never once expressed any real identifiable objectives of p5rinciples upon which people should vote for them, in fact if anything people who did vote NuLabour actually thought that they were voting for a very much different party with very much different principles than what they got.

 

It is my opinion, and the opinion of many, that NuLabour have been the worst and most disastrous government the UK has had for many years and that bleah has done more damage to parliamentary process not to mention the role of PM than any other PM in living memory with the possible exception of Wilson – of whom questions about his relationship with Russia still remain unresolved. I guess the TSR-2 saga to many if not most people on this forum will mean nothing.

 

One thing is certain sure. The damamge – the REAL dammage being done to the UK and the UK economy by Bleah and Brown whilst presenting the illusion that all is going swimmingly will result in some very nasty medicine being needed when a proper and really prudent administration takes over. Just as Mrs Thatcher had to steer a bankrupt nation back to fiscal and social stability so whoever leads the next Tory government will have to be prepared to do the same but with a country that is even worse positioned by the utter stupidity of NuLabour.

 

The one and only good thing that they are good at is propaganda.

[Ean]

What about a none of the above on the poll....or a Lib Dem's option?

[When Skies Are Grey]

Just as Mrs Thatcher had to steer a bankrupt nation back to fiscal and social stability

 

Try asking the communities in Wales, Sheffield and the Midlands about Thatcher's fiscal and social stability after she destroyed the coal mining and steel industries..or the working class families who needed the help of the trade unions for safe working practices and decent minimum wage....i think your blue tinted glasses need adjusting.

[magneto]

It is my opinion, and the opinion of many, that NuLabour have been the worst and most disastrous government the UK has had for many years and that bleah has done more damage to parliamentary process not to mention the role of PM than any other PM in living memory with the possible exception of Wilson – of whom questions about his relationship with Russia still remain unresolved.  I guess the TSR-2 saga to many if not most people on this forum will mean nothing.

 

Yo Rog

 

Sure you're not getting mixed up with the Rolls Royce Nene jet engine. TSR-2 saga had more to do with Americans.

 

(aircraft nerd alert)

[simon]

Of course who could forget the esteemed politician and literary genius

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Who played cricket for England, conquored Mount Everest and discovered the Beatles.

 

"Jeffrey Archer: Stranger than fiction" by Michael Crick is an amusing read. It exposes Archer as a serial chancer and and liar. Son of a serial chancer and liar.

[Rog]

Just as Mrs Thatcher had to steer a bankrupt nation back to fiscal and

Try asking the communities in Wales, Sheffield and the Midlands about Thatcher's fiscal and social stability after she destroyed the coal mining and steel industries..or the working class families who needed the help of the trade unions for safe working practices and decent minimum wage....i think your blue tinted glasses need adjusting.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The coal mining industry in this country was a dead duck long before Mrs Thatcher came into office. It was dead but the corpse was on life support and the costs of keeping it there were as well as the costs of the implications of having an indigenous coal industry were being paid for by the rest of us.

 

It was an industry that produced a product that was responsible for pollution at a level that can only be described as scandalous, at a cost per tonne that was nonsensical, and yet had immense political clout owing to the dependency of the rest of industry on it in its role as primary fuel for the nations power stations. Wilson once remarked that ‘whoever controls the miners controls the country’ and he was so right.

 

The unions had Britain by the nuts and at the time were totally indifferent to anything beyond their own selfish agenda and were supported by the selfish and ignorant membership. A membership who quite simply had not the first idea of the nature of international trade, the effect of high inflation on investment, on the need to address a world market and not just a domestic market, who seemed to think that a government could simply print money where more money was needed (As the Wilson government did until rumbled by the World bank audit and so forced to devalue the £) in short it was a classical case of ignorant uneducated selfish people imposing their will against what was prudent and needed with the result that Britain simply went down and down and down.

The unions simply had to be emasculated and reduced to a role of providing support for their members but total remoedl from the nations politics where they had no legitimate place to be anyway.

 

We were bankrupt. As a nation we had not only metaphorically run up our credit card bill to the limits, we had been put on ‘stop’. We had gone to the World Bank and the only way that we could get a loan was by agreeing to fiscal constraints that included limiting how much cash we could take away when we went on foreign travel (remember having the amount that you changed at the airport stamped on the back page of your passport? I do.) severe changes to even our domestic energy charges including a substantial natural gas price hike to make it more exportable, and so on.

Even before that as a result of a worsening fiscal position there had been constraints being introduced for one example the restrictions on personal credit – remember having to pay a years rental IN ADVANCE if you wanted to rent a TV? Then there were wage freezes in an attempt to break the vicious circle of wage rise inflation where Joe wanted more than Fred who then wanted more than Arthur who then wanted more than Joe who --- get the picture? Investment in nationalised industries going straight into the workers pockets and not into plant? British Leyland and the sleeping workers? The Socialist ‘republics’ of Liverpool, Tower Hamlets, Coventry and so many more. Finally the winter of discontent with bodies being unburied, rubbish piling up in the streets and so much more.

 

That is what Margaret Thatcher inherited That is what had to be swept away. That’s why privatisation was so essential. Not just to take activities out of government ownership as a matter of principle, not only to free up funds, not only to enable Joe Public to actually own and therefore have a stake in the nation, but also to impose the discipline of the private sector on what were generally moribund inefficient and industries manned in so many cases by moribund, inefficient, lazy and selfish workers. It has worked and for the most part worked well.

 

The communities based on coal and steel were living in a financial fairyland – one that was existing simply by being parasitic on the rest of us and certainly so in the case of the coal workers. By virtue of the massive clout they enjoyed by their having established themselves like a cancer into the infrastructure of the nation by threats and persuasion to be the prime energy providers, they were living very well indeed. At OUR cost.

 

It had to stop. Thankfully we got Margaret Thatcher as leader of a Conservative government into office, someone who was prepared to take the hard decisions that the country AS A WHOLE needed.

 

Today in spite of inheriting an economy that was vibrant efficient, and with a better future than any government has in the past, Britain is now once again heading for big-time fiscal trouble. Brown and Bleah have successfully convinced most of the electorate that the economy of GB is healthy. In fact it most certainly is not. The analogy is of a family who have had their earnings cut quite drastically but who are using their ‘plastic’ to continue to live in the manner to which they had become accustomed and in fact to even advance their lifestyles.

 

The decimation of our foreign earnings, of our manufacturing export sector especially, and the huge release of funds by house price inflation, so much of which is as a result of people taking out equity on their existing property though that equity is solely based on the housing market – a very fickle thing indeed - will very soon become obvious when the nations bills start to come in as economies that are really sound pick up and world commodity prices start to rise and when the government bonds fall due for redemption.

 

I wonder just where do people think – if the ever do – exactly where the actual wealth is coming from that they are taking in the forms of extended loans against the perceive increase on the value of their houses? That money that they are getting they are spending on goods. The goods generally now that have to be imported. Who pays the exporter? And how? Only by either foreign earnings – which are diminishing day by day, or by foreign banks lending the UK money either in the form of purchasing Government Bonds (which must be bought back in the future at a higher price quite apart from paying interest in many cases) or by direct loans to British Businesses who must not only repay the loan but must service the debt by paying interest and often not in pounds but in some other currency.

 

Brown and NuLabour are leading the nation into the financial xxxx. There is no other word for it or way of putting it.

 

They are gambling in it ‘all coming right’ whereas it won’t and even if the world economy were to boom the UK is ion no position to benefit – we simply don’t have enough of what the rest of the world wants. Only by becoming a low cost society will we be able to do business and low cost means low wages and / or (more likely ‘and) high costs in the shops. Something else that is inevitable. But guess who will get the blame. Brown? Bleah? NuLabour? Not a chance. The poor sod who happens to be in Nr. 10 at the time, that’s who.

 

So don’t be too quick to condemn Mrs Thatcher. She was just the visible part of a process that was inevitable and one that will be required once again when NuLabour are finally swept away and work can start on restoring real health to the UK economy.

 

My predictions?

 

There will be a ‘night of the long knives’ aimed at councils who have expanded their ‘political correct’ appointments – ‘Diversity Managers’ on inflated salaries as an example. I suspect they and their staffs will be first against the wall of sanity. The civil service will be next. They will be the new miners in what will come – and a good job too. I look forward to the cuts that will come. They are sorely needed.

 

I dread to think what else will be needed and I deplore the inevitable fact that just as Mrs T gets the blame for cleaning up the utter mess that she inherited rather than those who created the problem in the first place so whoever has to clean up the mess that NuLabour are making today will carry the can whereas it’s Bleah, Brown, and the rest of the NuLabour shower who are really and quite literally the villains of the piece.

[The Old Git]

remember having the amount that you changed at the airport stamped on the back page of your passport? I do.

 

I can vaguely remember it when going on holiday with my parents.

 

I also remember the frequent strikes that brought the country to a halt, the four day weeks, sometimes the 3 day weeks, the rubbish piled high in London parks and the dead being kept in refrigeration units because they couldn't be buried

 

We really were the sick man of Europe in those days