UK People...

[root]

The polling stations are now open.

you've got 15 hours to decide the countries future.

Don't forget to vote today.

(i'm going now before I go to work)

 

[Luke_Uk_Baggy]

After work for me! I still have a few hours then to make a decision.. As im not wholeheartedly convinced as of yet.

 

[David Lindon]

Well its going to be interesting, we could end up with a hung parliment

 

[Kage]

I just don't understand politics. Never ever been interested to vote.
Think what you like, but I've just never been bothered to. I just see it as some idiots acting their way through. All the wavey arms etc. I just can't bring myself to watch any of it, to find out who to vote for

Maybe I'm just in an angry mood right now

 

[~Darkseeker~]

people who vote for labour are delirious and under the impression something good has come from new labour's 13-year reign of terror.

tories are just posh b*stards who are oging to screw over the working class at the first chance they get.

id vote lib dem, but im not of age.

hung parliament would be best though, no stupidity or genocide that way.

 

[J03]

people who vote for labour are delirious and under the impression something good has come from new labour's 13-year reign of terror.

tories are just posh b*stards who are oging to screw over the working class at the first chance they get.

id vote lib dem, but im not of age.

hung parliament would be best though, no stupidity or genocide that way.

I wouldn't be quite that strong-worded. What have they done, exactly? A Lot of mishaps have been out of their control.

 

[root]

what have they done...

Firstly, I'm going to say this will be biased, I'm not a labour supporter, in fact I almost hate the party, and the people. -that's the people at the top, people like Gordon Brown the supposed prudent

I'm not a conservative supporter, though between the two I'd (perhaps controversially) say that they were the lesser of two evils.

so... anyway, what have labour done?

well...
they promised Electoral reform and proportional representation, they promised that 13 years ago, it was a big thing.

however they won by a landslide, suddenly the first past the post system was working in their favour and it wasn't a bad thing.

what they did do instead was change constituency boundaries, whilst it was only a rough guess based on marginal seats and results the election calculator on the BBC website had suggested that if the vote was actually split down the middle 33% labour 33% conservative 33% liberal democrat then the representation in the houses of parliament would be roughly 300 seats for labour, 200 seats for conservative and 100 seats for lib dem.

Labour Promised a reform in the house of lords, an end to hereditary peers. (people being born to rule).
when this came up in parliament it was voted FOR by lib dems and even some torys, it was voted AGAINST by labour, including Tony Blair -the man who stood up in the campaign and said that he wanted reform there as a pledge of something he'd do if he got into power, he got into power and voted against it.

Labour promised "education education education".
what we got was academies, the first ones failing miserably in ofsted reports.
we got new schools, but all the money used to build these new school was borrowed on what's known an PFI finance, -importantly when we talk about the debt and deficit this PFI finance doesn't show on the books... what that means is that when they talk about the trillion + debt, the billion + deficit it's actually worse than the numbers that are seen.

same with the NHS, labour promised that the NHS would be made great, what we got was new hospitals built with borrowed money (again PFI finance). we got hospitals that are understaffed and over managed.
we got Doctors (GPs) who managed to negotiate a pay rise whilst also getting a reduction in duties, GPs no longer have to work on call, they are replaced by agency staff, staff who have shown to have made bad calls and caused deaths.

Labour SAID that they'd be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.
what we got was a change in the way the crime was recorded, now if you're mugged, and the mugger has a knife if they don't stab you it's neither a knife crime, nor a violent crime, just a regular robbery. we have police apparently not recording crime officially so that they can meet "targets" set by the government.

I know that September the 11th was a world wide event, but since they we've had lots and lots of new laws that are billed as anti terror, but are shown to be reasonably ineffective.
the police can now stop and search you with no reason.
you can be arrested for taking photographs in built up areas.
you can be arrested and detained without charge for 42 days.

When labour got power in 97 there was a deficit, to be fair they DID clear this deficit. but then Gordon brown appeared on TV saying that he'd abolished boom and bust economics, so when times were good our "prudent" chancellor never put any money aside.

so when the recession came there was no money at all in reserve.
(and don't believe the hype about global recession, recessions happen, it's a fact of life, they are also cyclical occurring between every 8 - 15 years usually.

The labour party are meant to be socialist, but they've taken hundreds of billions out of the state pension pot.


some very good things that they have done.

banned fox hunting.
introduced equality laws.
introduced minimum wage.


I'm not including the Northern Ireland peace process, as a good thing that Labour has done. for start, this was started under a conservative government.
for second, this was much more an achievement by the Clinton Administration in America.


so no, not all things that have gone on in the world can be blamed on the currently government, but the fact that no provisions were ever made for the future can be blamed on the current government.

tories are just posh b*stards who are oging to screw over the working class at the first chance they get.

Now this is a funny thing to say.

I'm not singling you out, most people in the country are saying it, and most people in the country are sadly wrong...

take a look at two key policies to reduce the deficit.

Torys have said that they'll take away tax credits from the highest earners, making benefits more means tested.
they use the phrase why does a person on an MPs salary need state help?

Labour have suggested that their policy for reducing the deficit is to increase national insurance contributions, so this takes money away from everyone rich and poor alike.


the trouble with people who are in the older generation is that they are stuck in a mindset, they vote either red or blue.

red being socialist and blue being conservative.

the trouble is that colour system is a bunch of Bull.
in '97 Labour re-invented itself as new labour, they left the left and moved to the right.
in this election the torys have moved more to include socialist reform increasing benefits for the poorest whilst removing benefits from the richest.

Basically you used to have
Conservative on the right, labour in the left and lib dems in the middle

now, new labour has basically become old conservative, (most of the cabinet are privately educated, very rich, you have figures like two jags Prescott claiming to be slat of the earth working class whilst actually coming from a very privileged background. and doing a lot of things to help their rich friends.
new labour = old conservative (right wing)

conservative have now appeared to move to the left, and so become a centre left, (centre socialist) party

lib dems have moved to the left and are seemingly very much a left wing socialist party.



the old stories that labour will help the working class, tories will rob the working class and help the toffs,
the old image that labour are only working class and not just toffs.

it's all not true.

 

[Luke_Uk_Baggy]

Interesting views root.

I honestly dont think they make the parties views clear enough. And a lot of people remain in two minds. (There is a vast amount to compare and contrast in lots of different areas) They say what they want to say, where the other parties pick fault at everything else.

Glad they did something televised though, as this would bring in a greater audience, and help educate the hundreds of thousands of redundant votes.

Looks like a hung parliment now though.

 

[berry120]

I voted, but I'm not really passionate about the whole thing. I don't really care what party out of the 3 gets in - and I make no apologies for taking this stance.

No single party has clear views that I'm completely for or against - all the manifestos for me are somewhere in the middle and as such I haven't got a strong view either way.

Yes, labour mucked up, but what's to say some other party won't muck up the same way? We're all human, we all make mistakes and whatever party gets in, mistakes will be made. So for me it comes down to choosing who will screw up the country a bit less over the next few years than all the others - and that's not a decision I feel I can really justly make!

If there was a party that actually admitted they made mistakes rather than tried to blag their way out of them and pretend they were perfect - I'd probably go for it. Unfortunately in the world of politics, such a party doesn't seem to exist.

 

[J03]

what have they done...

Firstly, I'm going to say this will be biased, I'm not a labour supporter, in fact I almost hate the party, and the people. -that's the people at the top, people like Gordon Brown the supposed prudent

I'm not a conservative supporter, though between the two I'd (perhaps controversially) say that they were the lesser of two evils.

so... anyway, what have labour done?

well...
they promised Electoral reform and proportional representation, they promised that 13 years ago, it was a big thing.

however they won by a landslide, suddenly the first past the post system was working in their favour and it wasn't a bad thing.

what they did do instead was change constituency boundaries, whilst it was only a rough guess based on marginal seats and results the election calculator on the BBC website had suggested that if the vote was actually split down the middle 33% labour 33% conservative 33% liberal democrat then the representation in the houses of parliament would be roughly 300 seats for labour, 200 seats for conservative and 100 seats for lib dem.

Labour Promised a reform in the house of lords, an end to hereditary peers. (people being born to rule).
when this came up in parliament it was voted FOR by lib dems and even some torys, it was voted AGAINST by labour, including Tony Blair -the man who stood up in the campaign and said that he wanted reform there as a pledge of something he'd do if he got into power, he got into power and voted against it.

Labour promised "education education education".
what we got was academies, the first ones failing miserably in ofsted reports.
we got new schools, but all the money used to build these new school was borrowed on what's known an PFI finance, -importantly when we talk about the debt and deficit this PFI finance doesn't show on the books... what that means is that when they talk about the trillion + debt, the billion + deficit it's actually worse than the numbers that are seen.

same with the NHS, labour promised that the NHS would be made great, what we got was new hospitals built with borrowed money (again PFI finance). we got hospitals that are understaffed and over managed.
we got Doctors (GPs) who managed to negotiate a pay rise whilst also getting a reduction in duties, GPs no longer have to work on call, they are replaced by agency staff, staff who have shown to have made bad calls and caused deaths.

Labour SAID that they'd be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.
what we got was a change in the way the crime was recorded, now if you're mugged, and the mugger has a knife if they don't stab you it's neither a knife crime, nor a violent crime, just a regular robbery. we have police apparently not recording crime officially so that they can meet "targets" set by the government.

I know that September the 11th was a world wide event, but since they we've had lots and lots of new laws that are billed as anti terror, but are shown to be reasonably ineffective.
the police can now stop and search you with no reason.
you can be arrested for taking photographs in built up areas.
you can be arrested and detained without charge for 42 days.

When labour got power in 97 there was a deficit, to be fair they DID clear this deficit. but then Gordon brown appeared on TV saying that he'd abolished boom and bust economics, so when times were good our "prudent" chancellor never put any money aside.

so when the recession came there was no money at all in reserve.
(and don't believe the hype about global recession, recessions happen, it's a fact of life, they are also cyclical occurring between every 8 - 15 years usually.

The labour party are meant to be socialist, but they've taken hundreds of billions out of the state pension pot.


some very good things that they have done.

banned fox hunting.
introduced equality laws.
introduced minimum wage.


I'm not including the Northern Ireland peace process, as a good thing that Labour has done. for start, this was started under a conservative government.
for second, this was much more an achievement by the Clinton Administration in America.


so no, not all things that have gone on in the world can be blamed on the currently government, but the fact that no provisions were ever made for the future can be blamed on the current government.

Now this is a funny thing to say.

I'm not singling you out, most people in the country are saying it, and most people in the country are sadly wrong...

take a look at two key policies to reduce the deficit.

Torys have said that they'll take away tax credits from the highest earners, making benefits more means tested.
they use the phrase why does a person on an MPs salary need state help?

Labour have suggested that their policy for reducing the deficit is to increase national insurance contributions, so this takes money away from everyone rich and poor alike.


the trouble with people who are in the older generation is that they are stuck in a mindset, they vote either red or blue.

red being socialist and blue being conservative.

the trouble is that colour system is a bunch of Bull.
in '97 Labour re-invented itself as new labour, they left the left and moved to the right.
in this election the torys have moved more to include socialist reform increasing benefits for the poorest whilst removing benefits from the richest.

Basically you used to have
Conservative on the right, labour in the left and lib dems in the middle

now, new labour has basically become old conservative, (most of the cabinet are privately educated, very rich, you have figures like two jags Prescott claiming to be slat of the earth working class whilst actually coming from a very privileged background. and doing a lot of things to help their rich friends.
new labour = old conservative (right wing)

conservative have now appeared to move to the left, and so become a centre left, (centre socialist) party

lib dems have moved to the left and are seemingly very much a left wing socialist party.



the old stories that labour will help the working class, tories will rob the working class and help the toffs,
the old image that labour are only working class and not just toffs.

it's all not true.

I know it might seem silly and pedantic... but do you mean "It's all not true" or "It's not all true"? There is a fairly big difference