Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

question not understood and i'm not even sure of its purpose, though perhaps i have missed something during the day

Labour's high tax manifesto is driven by misdirected anger

Facing a choice between providing sound answers and expressing populist fury, Ed Miliband has gone for the latter. But the public will remember that Labour had its chance to address their problems - and wasted it.

In 2013, Tony Blair wrote that the guiding principle of the Labour Party “should be that we are the seekers after answers, not the repository for people’s anger”. In 2015, Ed Miliband has replied to that challenge with an election manifesto that is entirely about anger.

Labour knows that its economic credibility is low. It was in government when Britain entered recession and its profligate spending made getting out so very difficult. Thrown into opposition, it warned that the Coalition’s austerity agenda would lead to another recession: it did not. Then Labour claimed that the UK would see a crisis in living standards: it did not. With its analysis in ruins, the party decided it might be able to eke out an election victory by playing the policies of envy. This meant loudly condemning inequality. Never mind that, for instance, the number of non-dom tax payers actually soared under New Labour – when it was so “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. Never mind, either, that the Coalition has actually raised more money by cutting the highest rate of income tax. And never mind that employment is now at an all-time high or that the much demonised zero-hours contracts are few in number and liked by many of their users. Never mind any of the facts at all, because Labour calculated it stood a better chance of getting into office with anger rather than answers.

In his righteous fury, what does Mr Miliband offer the country? Underwhelming yet uncosted pledges. He says that the economy is safe in his hands, that he can both reduce the deficit and spend more on public services through increasing taxes on the rich. But it is pure speculation as to how much money will be raised through a mansion tax, by raising the highest rate and by abolishing non-dom status. In any case, these things will surely discourage aspiration and ambition. What would be the point of striving to expand a business in Mr Miliband’s Britain? Labour costs would be higher. A cut in the main rate of corporation tax will be reversed. Anyone who has the audacity to buy a larger house or the misfortune to live in one that accrues value will be hit with the mansion tax.

Elsewhere there is a return to pre-Blair policies that will please various special interests. The Health and Social Care Act will be repealed, while Labour sets about discouraging private investment in the NHS. The free schools experiment will end, and the manifesto suggests that Labour has less interest in discipline than in promoting “creativity, self-awareness and emotional skills”. There is no commitment to preserving current troop levels. There is plenty of government intervention in the private economy through price fixing. And there is also a return to the idea of regulating the press by statute – an assault upon the free press that nicely encapsulates the aggrandisement of state power that would occur under Labour.

Of course there are deep social problems in modern Britain. But it is the Conservatives who have the better answers. The answer to inequality is to aggressively raise standards in schools and take more low-paid people out of tax. The answer to poor service in the NHS is greater consumer power, insisting that hospitals observe best practice, and trying to get GPs to provide better out-of-hours care.

The answer to standard-of-living issues is to cut taxes for everyone so that people have more money in their pockets. And the answer to boom and bust and financial instability is, we would suggest, to think twice before voting Labour. After all, their historic record is a bad one. If Mr Miliband wishes to run for election insisting that the public should trust him, he will have to wipe clean memories of the note that was left behind by the party’s former chief secretary to the Treasury apologising for the absence of money.

People’s memories are probably longer than Labour expects. And the demand for answers will, hopefully, triumph over misdirected anger.

Ho! Ho! HO!

Off to the bank we go!

Manifesto Policy Guide: Check the pertinent aspects of different political party policy here

Poll Tracker: Find ALL the polls and keep up to date with them here

NB. Don't forget to BOOKMARK these sites so that you can return to them again later

I like Cameron's and tories record over the last five years

U-turn after U-turn, lie after lie.

What a record.

With his past record Dodgy Dave should be behind bars!

Q. Why do people want to invest in London property, Fred?

A. "I don't know," says Fred. "They must be mad."

Q. Has employment risen under the Tories, Fred?

A. "I don't know," says Fred. "And if it has, the employers must be cheats, anyway. Stands to reason."

Q. Have you heard of a thing called the 'feel good factor', Fred?

A. "Bah! Humbug! It's all lies! Tory lies as well! And you can believe me because I'm not just a hateful lefty, I'm objectively biased towards Socialism."

I think your last comment has answered you own question.

But a simple question for you is all the "massive" increase in hours worked has productivity and GDP hardly moved since 2008-2009.

Surely if Cameron was the Messiah he could have worked a miracle by now rather than confidence trick.

Haze,

Post 58609

I think he might have smelt you!

Manuel.

Never thought I would say this.

Hurry back from your holiday.

This election is becoming more and more a farcical!

You may now understand why I don't vote for any of the showers and will be happy to see a coalition government, which may be representative of all and possibly provide sensible policies.

===-=-=-=-=

I never wrote the above.

I didn't wrote it either!

The Tory manifesto basically offers a "cradle-to-grave" approach, just like the founding document of the welfare state, the 1942 Beveridge Report. David Cameron's earlier speech also emphasised that theme. "We are the party of working people, offering you security at every stage of your life," he said.

Ed Miliband, or any Labour leader since the Second World War, could have uttered that sentence. Because in 16 words, Mr Cameron has basically nicked the Labour Party's mission statement. He has stolen its soul.

And that's why it is so clever. The Prime Minister is pretending to be more Red than Ed.

But his approach is actually true blue, because although the manifesto aspires to the kind of state Beveridge intended – not the leviathan we have ended up with, where hundreds of thousands of households are paid to be workless – it does this through Tory means.

It is quite clearly Labour's objective to allow as many immigrants into the country as they can, and to get as many people onto benefits as they possibly can, because that is the demographic who are most likely to vote Labour.

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy in many respects - except it invariably breaks the bank and leaves the country without a pot to p!ss in as happened last time. It's good to see the Conservatives are now heavily backed to get most seats in May, and the odds of them getting over 300 seats are shortening on an almost daily basis.

Yes, but they have been in power for nearly 5 years, and have a achieved virtually nothing on the invasion of freeloaders.

They cant keep blaming the Dim/Libs, the hoards that are coming here is not an accident, it is by design.

And the tories have done nothing about it, nothing!

They have been quite good at stopping non EU migration. The fact is that we cannot legally stop EU migration. We can make it tougher for them to stay by restricting benefits for a long time period, but we cannot actually stop them. Because most EU migrants get jobs, there is nothing that can be done. We have more jobs here than the rest of the EU, so this is where they come.

Are you talking about EU immigration or non-EU immigration?

If you're looking at non-EU immigration, the coalition government have done an awful lot, and immigration has fallen. Coalition policies have certainly been successful, and Cameron deserves much credit for that.

But if you're looking at EU immigration, it's up, and the government is powerless to intervene because of freedom of movement between EU member citizens. If you want to blame anyone for that, then blame Gordon the Moron. What the muppets who think that all of the problems will be solved if the UK quits the EU fail to realise, is that it will still have to allow freedom of movement between member states as part of an essential free trade agreement.

Also, this is nothing new. The UK is suffering from an aging population crisis (you've just gotta read some of the posts by the geriatric morons on this thread) which has been known about since the '80s. Tax paying immigration is needed to contribute towards the social security system, and ensure that you all receive the treatment you need free of charge in the years to come.

And sure, Europe certainly has problems. Folks who signed up to the Common Market four decades ago didn't envisage a Europe full of eastern Europeans, and it's when they were allowed in that the wheels started to fall off the bus. But, as Cameron goes to great lengths to say, it's change within the EU that's needed - not an exit.

Once again this evening, after taking a break from this site, I come back to it and read all of the 'unread by me posts' on this thread (8 of them actually) and then click on 'Thread List' at the bottom of the posts.

And what happens?

Well I do go back to the Thread List page but, importantly and just like every other evening recently, I see there are still '8 unread posts' to read.

Well, that can't be right. So I think some counter or counting tool or other thread post tool isn't working properly.

Anyone else getting the same user experience?

Can someone else post something up about it on the 'Bugs thread'?

Yes yes, it's all somebody else's fault.

And we have done nothing to fix it.


Vote for more of the same......no thanks!

There is nothing much you can do about it. Even Farage wants a trade agreement with the EU after leaving it. A trade agreement with the EU requires a country to sign up to free movement of people and the human rights legislation. Basically, you are stuck with migrants. Farage isn't telling the whole truth. As a country, we are not even close to being the highest for immigration. Germany has vastly more than us. They also take the largest number of asylum seekers.

One of the reasons that immigration is such a target, is that we have been through a recession and our economy has not yet fully recovered. When people suffer a degradation in their living standards they look for people to blame.

Stop talking bollox haystack, are you stupid or what?

where is the free movement of people between the US and Oz and the rest of the world versus what is going on here??