1001 reasons NEVER to vote TORY

[Jabberwocky]

It is called communism and it does not work. Why? because subsidies (welfare is one) create a comfort zone, which may sound wonderful, but creates resentment amongst others and removes the motivation for people/businesses to compete/change or adapt.

It also does not seem to occur to you that by subsidising one industry you are "de-subsidising another". Subsidies also create false markets that hike prices for consumers and kill off other markets (look what the CAP is doing to third world agriculture).

What complete nonsense - income support is hardly an inducement to do nothing when it only provides a pathetic standard of living - it is the lack of opportunities that do that - and that is mostly a result of capitalism - riches for the few at the expense of the majority.

[mcquiggd]

Tell that to the Rochdale Swamp Donkey.

[Dundeegeorge]

Tell that to every

Tell that to the Rochdale Swamp Donkey.

single parent in the sink estates around the country.
That is the real evil of s*c**l*st policy, the waste of people's talents engendered by the system.

[hyperD]

income support ... it only provides a pathetic standard of living

Boll0cks!

Welfare, benefits and tax credits don't just give you the baseline for food and shelter for your kids - it enables you to lord it at bingo halls, plasma tvs, smokes, booze and all sorts of luxury goods.

People quote the "I can't live on £56/week" crap but it's all the kid entitlement, disability, council tax paid for, tax credit/child, houses paid for, home care paid for, depression allowance paid for etc etc....

People who play the game make a comfortable living and have no incentive to work again. And that excludes the common practise of carrying out the occaisional cash in hand taxi work etc

Call it playing the system if you will like Bardsley, and pretend that "you are only getting what you are entitled to" but it is categorically wrong.

Welfare was orginally introduced to provide a basic standard of living for the widows that lost their husbands in WWII. Now it becomes another divisive "lifestyle choice", encouraged by this government.

[Jabberwocky]

Well DG lets just look back in history to a time when there was no welfare state - say the 19th century - was that a time of supreme opportunity and enterprise for the British people at the height of the industrial revolution - or were people working in the poor houses and sweatshops ?

No you earns lots of money and you don't want anyone else getting their hands on it - you are a conceited, self-centered tw*t.

[DodgyAgent]

Well DG lets just look back in history to a time when there was no welfare state - say the 19th century - was that a time of supreme opportunity and enterprise for the British people at the height of the industrial revolution - or were people working in the poor houses and sweatshops ?

No you earns lots of money and you don't want anyone else getting their hands on it - you are a conceited, self-centered tw*t.

So give us some examples of where economies have worked with state handouts being the norm

[BoredBloke]

"It propped it up for political rather than economic reasoning. The subsidies I am thinking of are not guaranteed and in fact are guaranteed to decrease after a few years - it gives the company time to become to reduce costs or if not reduce their workforce."

But that would never happen for the political reasons - the same political reasons which meant it didn't happen in the past.


"The coal miners were not an inefficient industry - they were just not able to match the lower living standards and abundancy of coal elsewhere."

That is a definition of inefficient. If somebody can produce the same thing elsewhere more efficiently than you, then you are inefficient. In the same pretty much everything is produced in areas where the labour market is cheaper.

"Gradual and decreasing subsidy would allow the older workers to retire and the younger ones to retrain"

How niave are you. So you have an employer who announces that x thousand people are being laid off. OK we'll give you a subsidy (in the same way that Blair didn't to Rover) if you keep these people on. This subsidy will be there for 12 months. OK says the company - I'll make them redundant in 12 months time then. The company in question is not going to waste its scarce cash retraining people it is about to pass onto somebody else. Neither is it going to offer its older staff the perk of early redundancy. It would use the cash handout tao simply stave off the day when it would have closed its doors/laid people off.

[Bagpuss]

Talking about effiecient when it comes to coal is a little off the point, we don't have much capacity left now. Aren't we struggling to find energy for the comming years?
Buying off Russia doesn't seem to be that good an idea!

[benn0]

Still not given an answer to the question I asked all that time ago though have you.

Again, How would you have solved the economic problems of the late 70's early 80's without the mass unemployment and hardship which was caused.

Or can you not think of a way of doing it?

ToryEnglish,

I answered that question - It involved rebuilding the economy from the ground up by stimulating spending at the lower end rather than resitribution of wealth from the poor to the rich that Thacher actively encouraged. She chose to ride roughshod over the working classes by throwing lives on the scrapheap. A lot of people I know aged around 50 resigned themselves to the fact that they would never work again in this country.
Look up John Maynard Keynes for more info. The only economic policy that has been proven to work. Tou obviously never experienced life at the sharp end in the early 80s. I did. Which is why I will raise a glass when she goes. I'm also doing nicely now thank you vey much and have the opportunity to work if I so wish. Something I couldn;t say then. As I;ve said before, despite its shortcomings, this country is a great place to live these days. It was not in the 80s. Yes, labour must take a lot of the blame for that but there were better and easier ways of turning things around. For her neglect of the working classes, thatcher must also take much blame for the social problems we now face.

[hyperD]

"Medic! Medic!"