The Tory party are about to split

[xoggoth]

if they demonstrate they are trying hard to stop being less fortunate

Quite. The half of Marx's mantra that today's left never seem to remember - "From each according to his ability"

It's the big corporates who pay less tax than my Ltd Co, who need to cough up

Agree with that too. All for rewarding merit but too much of our economy is not about merit but the privileges that wealth can buy.

Capitalism is not the same as a merit-based free market economy I believe in. Ok, so a successful businessman may have deserved the wealth he got from his business but does he necessarily merit a huge increase in that wealth from investment? One can get 11% after fees from investment in London property. That just drives up costs for anyone living there.

[d000hg]

To be used as toilet paper? Its all it is fit for.

As opposed to the MAil, Sun et al... "a balanced diet" of news is best. Read the Guardian, BBC, Telegraph and Independent rather than the one who says things you like.

I had to queue for an hour or two to buy 3 gallons of petrol
I was only allowed to work three days a week.
Power went off routinely, without warning
Unions kept me out of work for a few days; the blockade was by miners, my job was in an electronics company.
TV stopped at ten pm, if the power was on.
I didn't have a pay rise for three years
Bins weren't collected, at all, not just every week or two.
The dead were left unburied. Some places hired refrigerated lorries to store the deceased
Marginal tax rate was over 35%, interest rates were in the teens.

Want me to go on...?

Yeah and that's clearly 100% due to left-wing government. One data point - that we had a semi-socialist government and things were bad - isn't definitive. Just as how right now we have a centre-right government and things are generally pretty messed up in different ways.

Your "I know exactly how things are, Labour were to blame" is EXACTLY the flip-side of the ex-miners "Thatcher ruined our lives and our communities" - they're equally fixated on a view they have held for decades and have no interest of changing.
The reality is never that one-sided.

[malvolio]

Apart from free university education?

And maybe a cheap council house?

I'm all for benefits reform.

But I would like to see the big corporates and super rich pay more taxes so that we can have more police on the street to fight terrorism, more teachers so that class sizes are kept under 30, and more carers to wipe the arses of the dribbling boomers who have most of the money.

Didn't go to uni. No council housing available: we finally got a hosin2g assoc flat but only when I threatened to stay where I was renting a room in a house they had bought to convert into flats

So like I said, dream on.

[SueEllen]

Didn't go to uni.

We can tell that from your arguments.

A Labour government doesn't automatically mean bad, while a Tory one isn't automatically good.

Look at the tulip shower we are in at the moment due to the crap leaders of both parties in the current past and present.

No council housing available: we finally got a hosin2g assoc flat but only when I threatened to stay where I was renting a room in a house they had bought to convert into flats

Everything depends on your location - people forget that. The council can't give housing if they don't have any.

[BrilloPad]

But I would like to see the big corporates and super rich pay more taxes so that we can have more police on the street to fight terrorism, more teachers so that class sizes are kept under 30, and more carers to wipe the arses of the dribbling boomers who have most of the money.

Why not just put taxes on property instead?

Though if there are more police they will not be on the street. They will be protecting our beloved leaders.

[malvolio]

We can tell that from your arguments.

Doesn't mean I don't have a degree, or an education... and vice versa come to that, as your response demonstrates.

A Labour government doesn't automatically mean bad, while a Tory one isn't automatically good.

From experience I have to disagree

Look at the tulip shower we are in at the moment due to the crap leaders of both parties in the current past and present.

True - but I would rather look at manifestos and intent rather than personalities. YMMV.

Everything depends on your location - people forget that. The council can't give housing if they don't have any.

I was in Western London at the time, so hardly a deprived part of the country. No council housing in any of the four boroughs in that area. No private rentals I could afford. Housing association stuff was mostly close to derelict, I was very lucky in "acquiring" a newly converted flat at a rent that meant we could just about save a deposit for a house - although I was working three shift six day weeks with the odd side job on occasion to do that.

Put simply, today I would not have been in that situation, despite your own impression of how hard things are.

[SueEllen]

Doesn't mean I don't have a degree, or an education... and vice versa come to that, as your response demonstrates.

I was being rude.

I had interesting conversations with my A level teachers/lecturers who were more mature and taught both A levels and lectured polytechnic/university courses about how syllabuses kept being cut.

<snip>
True - but I would rather look at manifestos and intent rather than personalities. YMMV.

Some people do that each time they vote for the Mayor of London - there as those who get elected have a tendency to distance themselves from the party for a while so you may as well vote for the one whose party doesn't want them around.

I was in Western London at the time, so hardly a deprived part of the country.

Which is why there was no council housing. More deprived areas of the country have more housing though most of it you wouldn't want to live in.

<snip>
Put simply, today I would not have been in that situation, despite your own impression of how hard things are.

Think you are talking to the wrong person I'm not PG.

[contractorinatractor]

You can call her whatever you'd like. Indeed, I believe you do. Korbyn is an utterly disingenuous Marxist ****. Some of us are old enough (or pay sufficient attention) to remember precisely what an utter **** he is. Does that help?

Back in the day when a few newspapers controlled the flow of information even more so than now?

You're a smart cookie indeed. Sounds you know him well You're voting for a party and manifesto, not a person. It was your type who were persuaded by the personality cult of Tony Blair. Rather sad.

[SueEllen]

Back in the day when a few newspapers controlled the flow of information even more so than now?

You're a smart cookie indeed. Sounds you know him well You're voting for a party and manifesto, not a person. It was your type who were persuaded by the personality cult of Tony Blair. Rather sad.

What was the alternative to Blair?

A Tory party full of infighting containing those "bastards" lead by John Major? A Tory party lead by Tory Boy "I drink 20 pints " William Hague? A Tory party lead by "something of the night" Michael Howard?

Remember voter turnout decreased from 1997 with a low point in 2001.

[jamesbrown]

Back in the day when a few newspapers controlled the flow of information even more so than now?

You're a smart cookie indeed. Sounds you know him well You're voting for a party and manifesto, not a person. It was your type who were persuaded by the personality cult of Tony Blair. Rather sad.

Indeed, I do. You, perhaps, not so much

You're not simply voting for a party or a manifesto with Labour. The manifesto was a product of the NPF, so obviously the hard-left views of the leadership team were heavily watered down. I think you'll find those hard-left views reasserting themselves in policy implementation, via budgets and other legislation. It's only fair™.