The Labour Party
Join Date: May 2006
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Having lived through the 1970s and Labour governments that looked much like the present Labour front bench, I'd rather see the most incompetent of Conservative governments running things than go back to the 3 day week, power cuts, dock strikes, lorry driver strikes and all the rest.
I'd also like to avoid seeing junior servicemen treated as they were then so badly they frequently had to rely on the Station Commander's fund to pay their household bills. A flying officer I knew in 1978-9 had every pay top-up (in substitution of pay rise, which were more limited then than now) and social assistance for his family, including free school meals for his children.
Anyone that thinks the Labour party now has any better answers than they did then needs to read some history.
I'd also like to avoid seeing junior servicemen treated as they were then so badly they frequently had to rely on the Station Commander's fund to pay their household bills. A flying officer I knew in 1978-9 had every pay top-up (in substitution of pay rise, which were more limited then than now) and social assistance for his family, including free school meals for his children.
Anyone that thinks the Labour party now has any better answers than they did then needs to read some history.
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Odiham
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Why do we spend so much time worrying about stuff that hasn’t happened yet and that we cannot, individually, effect?
I find my life is immeasurably happier when I ignore all the agenda driven media tripe and just live my life.
I make the most of what I have from day to day and try not to worry about whether I’m better or worse off than last year.
I know we can’t help ourselves from reading everything in the news and getting all hyped up about it but, really, whatever is going to happen will happen anyway and from day to day (unless nuclear war breaks out) your house will keep standing and there will be food on your table at the end of the day.
Slightly rhetorical and I don’t expect to start a new pprune based political movement but just my thoughts.
BV
I find my life is immeasurably happier when I ignore all the agenda driven media tripe and just live my life.
I make the most of what I have from day to day and try not to worry about whether I’m better or worse off than last year.
I know we can’t help ourselves from reading everything in the news and getting all hyped up about it but, really, whatever is going to happen will happen anyway and from day to day (unless nuclear war breaks out) your house will keep standing and there will be food on your table at the end of the day.
Slightly rhetorical and I don’t expect to start a new pprune based political movement but just my thoughts.
BV
Gets my vote, far too much handwringing going on across the country about what might or could happen when they, just as equally, might not. When are you setting this party up?
Join Date: Apr 2010
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and it was Labour who built the British A bomb, joined the Berlin Air lift, went to war in Korea, continued the deterrent, spent a zillion on Chevaline, kicked off Successor & ordered the new QE carriers................
The yoof of today think that Labour is what we had from 1997 to 2010, forgetting that was a much more centrist New Labour under Bliar.
The country wasn't in too bad shape then if you ignore the raft of PFIs, selling of half our gold reserves, assisting with bank deregulation that made the 2008 crash much, much worse and then compounded the problem by propping the banks up.
Those are the bits that Corbyn's Labour like to pretend didn't happen and that the idea of spending our way out of our current problems is a new and radical one and the only answer.
Perhaps if the last Labour govt hadn't left a note in the Treasury saying 'There's no money left', people might give the present bunch the benefit of the doubt but when they promise jam today and jam tomorrow with no idea of how to pay for it, it will make high house prices and personal debt look like something to dream of.
The country wasn't in too bad shape then if you ignore the raft of PFIs, selling of half our gold reserves, assisting with bank deregulation that made the 2008 crash much, much worse and then compounded the problem by propping the banks up.
Those are the bits that Corbyn's Labour like to pretend didn't happen and that the idea of spending our way out of our current problems is a new and radical one and the only answer.
Perhaps if the last Labour govt hadn't left a note in the Treasury saying 'There's no money left', people might give the present bunch the benefit of the doubt but when they promise jam today and jam tomorrow with no idea of how to pay for it, it will make high house prices and personal debt look like something to dream of.
Join Date: Sep 2005
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I think you have misunderstood my post, I have served considerably longer than 7 years. My point was that ever since the current Conservative government has been in power we have had year on year cuts.
Join Date: Feb 2006
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Partly to offset the financial mess Labour left the Country in. You do not suddenly come into power and go at it with a hatchet to make ones self popular and win votes, you do it because the previous bunch have left it in such a perilous state that you have to.
Oh, and let's not forget that the 3 day week was a measure to keep British industry going in the face of militant NUM strikes - the same militant left that now power Momentum.
Or that the NUM voted to strike after refusing a 16.5% pay offer.....................
Or that the NUM voted to strike after refusing a 16.5% pay offer.....................
And I forgot how many servicemen were lost/injured after Labour sent us to war in Iraq and Afghanistan..................
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The ‘Labour broke it and we will fix it’ mantra was an effective election slogan in 2010 but given what’s happened since even tories don’t parrot it anymore.
Join Date: Feb 2006
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A lot of that spending was to bring the Army etc into the 21 century to fight a war that Labour put us into. Even by their own admission
Britain facing 'worst recession since World War II', Darling to admit in Budget - Telegraph
In the most important Budget speech for a generation, the Chancellor is likely to concede that the economy is heading for its worst annual decline in more than 60 years.
Wednesday's Budget would be a "day of reckoning" for Labour, the Tories said, with Mr Darling forced to finally "lay bare" the worst public finances "in the world" and the wider economic carnage of the party's past decade in power.
Two leading economic forecasters predict another 18 months of "serious grief" for the British economy and sound a warning that any recovery is at least a year away, with almost a million more job losses to come.
One of Labour's leading union backers, meanwhile, will say that the Budget is the "last chance" for the party to show why it was elected in 1997.
Mr Darling is expected to admit that the economy will shrink by at least three per cent this year and that the Government has been forced into record levels of borrowing that will mean tax rises and billions of pounds of spending cuts.
Wednesday's Budget would be a "day of reckoning" for Labour, the Tories said, with Mr Darling forced to finally "lay bare" the worst public finances "in the world" and the wider economic carnage of the party's past decade in power.
Two leading economic forecasters predict another 18 months of "serious grief" for the British economy and sound a warning that any recovery is at least a year away, with almost a million more job losses to come.
One of Labour's leading union backers, meanwhile, will say that the Budget is the "last chance" for the party to show why it was elected in 1997.
Mr Darling is expected to admit that the economy will shrink by at least three per cent this year and that the Government has been forced into record levels of borrowing that will mean tax rises and billions of pounds of spending cuts.
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: North Up
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Would it not be unwise to form a 5th column within the labour party?
Get a Toryboy Fettesian ouanquer to head up the 5th column and off we go to War.
It's worked before.
Join Date: Jan 2014
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The Secretary General of the TUC was on Breakfast this morning to tell us how the government will need to pick up the bill for the Carillion collapse and spend more on this and that, blissfully ignoring the point made to him that a government doesn't have any money of its own.
Bliss.
