The 2015 Popularity Contest (aka UK General Election )

[JDL]

I reckon it's best to vote for whoever is best for public services.

Historically that's been Labour - not sure if any of them are any good for it currently.

Does that encompass social services too? Like looking after vulnerable working class girls in places like Rotherham and such?

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Does that encompass social services too? Like looking after vulnerable working class girls in places like Rotherham and such?

I don't think that is something to make political hay out of.

 

[EFCNIK]

Does that encompass social services too? Like looking after vulnerable working class girls in places like Rotherham and such?

That was obsessive over political correctness working its magic yet again. Nothing realy to do with funding.

Over 1000 girls in one town. Over 1000.

 

[JDL]

That was obsessive over political correctness working its magic yet again. Nothing realy to do with funding.

Over 1000 girls in one town. Over 1000.

It was willful ignorance of the problem by a Labour council voted in by the very working classes the girls came from, and its 1400 that we know of. The real figure is much, much higher.

 

[JDL]

I don't think that is something to make political hay out of.

Yes it is as the Labour party let down the people it is supposed to represent. If nobody is prepared to tackle the issue then it will continue like it did for 13 years.

 

[davek]

That doesn't look that far from what the Nordics have though? I mean they mention participatory budgeting in there, which is great, but giving people the freedom to decide how money is spent is not any different to giving them the freedom to decide how they spend, and who they spend, their education or healthcare money with is it? They also talk about fixing the deficit, and the Swedish actually have it enshrined in law that the state has to run a 2% surplus over the course of a business cycle. They decided that because of the changes in demographics and how they saw that impacting upon tax revenue.

Likewise with their healthcare system. The state has significantly increased spending on healthcare, yet still implemented a small fee each time you see a doctor to try and ensure that only people that really think they need to see one do so. The evidence suggests it seems to work quite well.

Likewise, Finland spend less money and less time on schooling than we do, yet achieve much better results. There are lessons to be learned, much like the participatory budgeting example from Porto Alegre, and I'm not sure that the tribalism that politics often engenders is the best way for those lessons to be heeded.

If you cant see what a think tank like commonweal are advocating, which is a brake and reversal of the marketization of everyday life and a narrowing of inequality, differs from what's happened in Sweden where inequality is increasing on the back of a right wing government intent on giving tax cuts to the well off, then maybe you're not drawing the right conclusions.

 

[JDL]

If you cant see what a think tank like commonweal are advocating, which is a brake and reversal of the marketization of everyday life and a narrowing of inequality, differs from what's happened in Sweden where inequality is increasing on the back of a right wing government intent on giving tax cuts to the well off, then maybe you're not drawing the right conclusions.

Are you seriously suggesting that Sweden is a Right wing nation?

 

[davek]

@davek in "On another planet" non-shocker.

Maybe you'd like to elaborate on that and tell me why the Labour Party isn't the neo-liberal organisation I describe it as...or is that a bit more difficult than telling me I'm 'on another planet'?

 

[davek]

Are you seriously suggesting that Sweden is a Right wing nation?

...here's another one who reads and responds to what he likes to believe is written rather than addressing what actually is written.

Go back and read it again.

 

[TheBlueGibbon]

Yes it is as the Labour party let down the people it is supposed to represent. If nobody is prepared to tackle the issue then it will continue like it did for 13 years.

I don't think any party can make a political point about sex abuse scandals except maybe UKIP and the Greens.

 

[Milk]

Ed Miilibean will be gone before the next election. Labour nearly losing to UKIP in Heywood & Middleton gives Balls the remit to start swinging them.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Yes it is as the Labour party let down the people it is supposed to represent. If nobody is prepared to tackle the issue then it will continue like it did for 13 years.

Bad governance is not something that is determined by political affiliation. Seriously, this thread has been doing just fine. Do not take it down that route please.

 

[davek]

Ed Miilibean will be gone before the next election. Labour nearly losing to UKIP in Heywood & Middleton gives Balls the remit to start swinging them.

No he wont. They'll stick with him. It'd be even more catastrophic to switch horses now.

I hope they do actually. The bigger panning Labour get the better. Reward their treachery by demolishing it.

 

[JDL]

I don't think any party can make a political point about sex abuse scandals except maybe UKIP and the Greens.

As far as i'm aware Thatcher didn't cover up Savilles abuses, the BBC on the other hand.... The issue is that an entire council and care system continually ignored the problem of Pakistani men abusing young white girls as to avoid accusations of racism.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

That's labour for you. They need the block voting from minority communities and will do anything they can to get them, even if it means letting hundreds of muslim ( not asian as the newspapers report) men rape young non muslim kufur meat.

Nik, that's a horrendous accusation, it really is.