just an excuse to use the thread title really as i have no interest whatsoever in politics, as you well know, but is there any other viable alternative to take over from honest tone?

and what price a snap election in the autumn?

I'm looking forward to Golden Gordon I think politics could be more tribal. With the Tories getting their act together the election will be close like 1992 and my bet is a similar 25ish majority for Labour.

No there is no other alternative (yuck did I sound like Thatcher then?) Miliband next time I think.

If Labour get a bounce in GB's first 100 days then I don't rule out an early election and nor do others I have spoken to.

Oi! That's The Stranglers. You can't do that!

i am fuckin' pissed off with gordon brown!

he has raised income tax for the poor and cut it for the rich!

what the fuck is that all about.

votes

surely there are more single people earning less than 17k per annum than corporations

will the middle classes vote labour for 2p in the pound ?? Would they have voted tory for the same money ??

i just don't get it.

Probably - but corporations don't vote. I guess Brown is betting that as a demopgraphic poor single people are just not significant enough.



Brown thinks so.



They did for 17 years.

i am probably mostly pissed off because i am reminded that most people must be better off than me because i have never earned 17k per annum in my life

call centre wages are typically under 7 quid an hour. (i got that from the mirror so it must be true ) which is about 13k (if my sums are right .. it's a long time since i did pay calculations) and not all our jobs have gone to india and some of us must vote!

i have never quibbled about paying tax, i am a bloddy socialist but i can't get my head round making the poorest worst off. I just can't.

Labour has increased child benefit greatly, unemployment/inflation/interest rates have all been good. Living standards have risen and we have an extra 2m in work. We have had sustained investment in schools and hospitals.

Child tax credit is claimed by by 9 out of 10 families, 700,000 children have been lifed out of poverty. The link between the state pension and earnings is being put back after Thatcher got rid of it.

I don't want to go back to 3m unemployed (by the dodgy tory figures) and 15% interest rates.

But the reality with the 2% cut is this it has spiked the Tories they don't have a clue how to respond Brown realises that proggresives have to be in power to do good. Losing to the Tories at the next election means an attack on the welfare state and the poor just like the 1980's. To help our people we need to hold the centre/the don't knows/the swing voters.

The Greens won't get in nor the Lib Dems, it's a two horse race.

The sad reality of our country is millions read the mail/express/telegraph so to counter that the centre left needs to hold onto some of the Sun/Times readers.

Trust Mick H to come along and trumpet the New Labour horn...

and i thought he was single and low paid too


the war in iraq and trident and fucked up dentistry may just have put me off voting labour.

if the next leader is likely to be a man who taxes the poor to pay the rich i give in.

'tis the final straw.

and a system that relies on the low paid filling in bloddy forms to claim money that is so complicated it all goes wrong and they have to pay it back ...

it just gets worse.

[quote name='Beryl the Peril' date='Mar 23 2007, 08:19 PM' post='208478']
and i thought he was single and low paid too




the war in iraq and trident and fucked up dentistry may just have put me off voting labour.

I'm happily married with two kids Beryl,

We have had 1,100 extra NHS dentists recently? I have a NHS dentist I'm off there today.

I'm glad of the child benefit and tax credit I get it makes the difference between managing and not for me and my family.

What's the alternative to Labour folks Lib Dems? Greens? Respect?

and the alternative to Brown? Galloway, Sheridan? Maybe we should bring back uncle Joe and the CPGB?

Kind of amusing you mention Uncle Joe in a Gordon Brown thread.

Fair point that Rob, well spotted.

i am quite fond of the CPGB myself



so you don't give a toss about single people being worse off.

the new dentistry charges mean i am having to find over a hundred quid this week to get my tooth fixed.. although, 'tis true, i did eventually find an nhs dentist to do it.



the tax credit system is in bloddy tatters and those most in need find it most difficult to get the money. it stinks.

i would stay and say more but it would only spoil my day.

THE GORD GIVETH AND THE GORD TAKETH AWAY

Ooh that's awful. Many thanks Pink as it's the best laugh I've had all day. I just lurve awful puns & that one is brilliant.

that cheered me up pink

the new dentistry charges mean i am having to find over a hundred quid this week to get my tooth fixed.. although, 'tis true, i did eventually find an nhs dentist to do it.

Dentist update Beryl, My NHS dentist replaced my filing for free which was a relief as I often panic about money.

if it was his fault it needed 're-filing' i should think so too!

what has that got to do with the price of eggs

How depressing

The key word here is RELATIVE. most of the people described as poor by Barnardos will live in centrally heated homes, they will not be going to sleep hungry like many children in Africa, They will be watching the news reports on their families tv's.

The middle class careerists in the "Poverty" industry have a vested interest in talking up any problems.

The only people who you could really describe as poor are those children who have parents who have mental illness or drink/drug problem i.e those who have extra problems beyond living on benefits.

The welfare state is not perfect but it does work, we do have a safety net in this country which means nobody is poor in absolute terms.

My family spent much of the 1980's on benefit, my dad spent time in prison and we lived in council housing all my formative years, I went to a very poor comprehensive school, we read the Daily Mirror in our house and I recieved free school meals, I think you get the picture. I know what I'm talking about here.

It was a hard life, a struggle for my mum and dad but it was a loving home and my dad got himself a steady job and I went to university the first member of my extended family ever to do so.

Real Poverty is what we see in Africa with preventable illness's killing children and lack of electricity, running water and the absence of free schooling.

Gordon Brown has given us debt relief and record funding to Africa, unlike the Tories who have never cared for the third world and don't really want immigration into this country.

You're right about Real Poverty of course but don't you think it's scandalous that there are homeless people in UK, the 4th richest country on the planet? Wouldn't it be great to think that kids all had a pretty decent start for their lives? Let's not forget that the gap between the richest and poorest in Britain has increased in recent years, to say nothing of the gap between the richest countries and the poorest. And have you noticed that all the talk is of the Chinese or Indian miracle? Africa getting left behind again.

You're right about Real Poverty of course but don't you think it's scandalous that there are homeless people in UK, the 4th richest country on the planet? Wouldn't it be great to think that kids all had a pretty decent start for their lives? Let's not forget that the gap between the richest and poorest in Britain has increased in recent years, to say nothing of the gap between the richest countries and the poorest. And have you noticed that all the talk is of the Chinese or Indian miracle? Africa getting left behind again.
[/quote]

Scandalous sure, When I was growing up in the 1970's (pre teens) in London you never saw people begging in the streets, then in the mid 1980's all the rough sleepers started appearing, I presume a mixture of care in the community and Thatcherite economics was responsible, since 1997 the visible begging and rough sleeping has declined hugely but everyday as I go to work and back we have the Big Issue seller and a regular begger. Why? I presume that this is a combination of mental health and drugs/alcohol problems, it's very sad for me but I'm glad it's much better.

I don't believe that the wealth gap is as important as looking after the most disadvantaged that's why I support the NHS and the welfare state and poor Africa is indeed left behind again.

You see, I think it's really important because it indicates the level of disadvantage, injustice and, yes, poverty there is. However, I couldn't agree any stronger about the NHS and schools and all that.

i think gordon brown has got it in for me and mine

every time it seems we will be ok for cash he changes the fuckin' rules! first it was the incapacity benefit, then tax on pensions at a higher rate and now i've just discovered he is changing the rules for pension contributions... which could possibly benefit me hugely ... however the new rules will apply just too late for me

bum poo wee wee.

it's personal

Did anyone else see the hustings on Newsnight last night for Deputy Leader.

I listened to it, rather than watch it (looking at them all just puts me off what they have to say!) and I've decided that Hazel Bleurgh is even more disagreeable than I used to think.
She's such a Blairite poodle and the fact she so "loyally" follows whatever dogma comes out of No 10 (she was pledging her allegiance to Gordon in the most sycophantic way) shows how insincere she really is.
Hilary Benn and Harriet Harman came off best, with that other fella (the new one) saying some interesting stuff but clearly doesn't stand a chance.

saw a clip of it on breakfast tv this morning. the bit where they were all disowning the war.

key phrases like "at the time the whole world thought..."

err, no they didn't you bunch of lying motherfuckers.

That was pretty much what I was thinking. Interestingly - Jon Cruddas and Harriet Harman said they regretted voting for the war. The others were all "there's no point using hindsight, etc".

Before that I thought Peter Hain had come accross quite well - none of them came out well after that though.

I must admit I didn't bother watching .... we are talking about a replacement for 2 Jags Prescott, so it doesn't really matter

That Alan Johnson really winds me up. Saw him on Question Time and briefly again last night. He looks like a smug git with the smile of one who gets the joke before you do. The man is Tony Blair in another guise. I'd probably opt for Hain but only because he had a 'radical' past, a poor reason i know but the lot of em are uninspiring.

I don't think there's a lot to choose between them politically, and the Deputy Leadership isn't necessarily as significant as Blair and Prescott made it; I'm disappointed at not having the chance to vote for McDonnell or Meacher, but there you go.
For what it's worth, I think Cruddas is OK, but less of an outsider than he may appear. It's interesting that some of the Left MPs have nominated Benn or Hain.
Johnson is probably the most "Blairite" and Harman the most "Brownite"; I'm not keen on either, to be honest.
Hazel Blears is well respected by people who know her and took a principled stand against closure of a local hospital maternity unit despite her position in the cabinet. She's also been a pretty good chair in trying to get party members more active.
Hain said (before the newsnight debate) that he wanted to see less structural change in the NHS which would be a radical and very welcome shift in policy. But I think Benn is probably the best bet for the Left; he has inherited his Dad's sincerity, if not his brand of socialism.

My major issue with Bleurgh, highlighted last night, was that all she is interested in is winning and staying in government regardless of what that means or how far to the right it takes the party.
That just isn't good enough for me and is completely disingenuious.
She's an awful phoney.

I think, though, that she is actually fairly representative of the party membership in that attitude; there is a prevailing view that we have to keep winning because the alternative is unthinkable. This is the legacy of the Thatcher years amongst those of us who were in the party during that time, when we sat on the sidelines unable to prevent the destruction of almost everything we believed in.
It will probably take disillusion with Brown and a sense that a Cameron government would be bearable for that consensus to change, at which point Labour might move leftwards.
And for what it's worth, I find Blears more genuine than Harman, Hain or Johnson, though that's mainly a personal response.

But I don't see how "the destruction of almost everything we believe in" is any better just because its being done by "our" party, for the sake of a few votes.

Peter Hain I find quite interesting, as someone else said he's got a fairly "radical" past and from my families experience is a pretty decent guy.
He's my parents MP and my dad often sees him in Tescos. Although these days he's "not alone", just as he wasn't at Tolpuddle. That must be really annoying when you're trying to buy your groceries.
There just doesn't seem to be an ounce of human in Blears everything she says sounds insincere, even when, like last night for me, you're not even looking at that smug face of hers.

Well it depends on your view of the performance of this government as compared to the conservatives: I would say that the Blair government over last decade can take credit for a number of major achievements blighted by mistakes, some of which have been disastrous. I don't feel that it has destroyed almost everything I believe in by any stretch of the imagination.

On the other hand, for me, the Eighties felt like a time of no good news: just a constant erosion of the economic and social fabric of the country, underinvestment in public services, privatisation policies that benefited the rich and impoverished the rest, et cetera.

And actually, I think that most of the policies that Blair's government has pursued and which I disagree with would have been implemented by the Tories anyway.

Blair's big challenge was to make the Labour Party swallow the Thatcherite policies he continued. All that stuff about "the third way" (remember that?) was to cover up the fact that he was using Tory policies and ideology. How soon after the Tories were defeated did it become apparent that, despite having a huge majority, the Blair government were not going to change things that much? We all expected change because the Tories were so awful but what's really happened is not that much. Ethical foreign policy? Education education education? Investment in the NHS? Changes in taxation?

Now Gordon Brown is to be the new leader of the party. Will things be any different? The Tories are already manoeuvering into a different position. They haven't a hope of convincing the electorate that taking over from where Blair leaves off is the right thing to do. For a start, Blair's popularity has collapsed. But also, Cameron can't convince his own party that he supported Blair all along. But they do think that there's a space to the left of where they were standing 6 months ago and they think they can fill it. They think that's where the electorate is right now. I think they're wrong because the electorate wants change and I think they want the kind of change that will benefit them and their kids. Brown may well offer some left of centre policies on NHS and schools, he may work harder for peace in Iraq. If he does this kind of thing, his popularity will increase and the Tories will once again be second.

I think it is important who becomes deputy leader. The deputy needs to be someone who can work to increase Brown's popularity and see that policy decisions are communicated well. I think it would be great to have a woman as deputy - It's about time the Labour Party did something positive about gender. Hazel Blears is actually quite bland though - motorcycling indeed - and Harriet Harman sends her kids to private school. Of the men, I think Peter Hain is a smooth politician and an old smoothy; Alan Johnson is one of those "I was brought up in dreadful circumstances so I must be a good bloke" blokes and his recent pronouncements on private schools are the usual Labour claptrap about education; John Cruddas has lots of great ideas but I think he's too left wing - pity as I really like him, as does RedKen; Benn is a thoroughgoing Labour Party member and seems OK.

I hope it's John Cruddas because I'd vote for him but I think Hilary Benn will be the winner.

I think that suggesting Blair's policies were "Thatcherite" is unfair, given the level of investment that has been made in public services; I think that the problems we face now are the result of difficulties in sustaining that level of investment and the fact, which I find desperately sad, that a lot of the investment was mismanaged and wasted. My main criticism of Blair is that his obsession with "modernisation" has distracted the public sector and resulted in a great deal of waste.
The most radical and "Left" thing Brown could do would be to put a moratorium on structural change and let the public sector get on with the job; a reduction in government imposed targets would also be very helpful. To win the next election, he needs to manage the inevitable economic downturn, "win back trust" (which I think is hugely problematic) and regain the support of the Left through some fairly small gestures and a different way of presenting his policies.
Cameron's Tories will take votes and seats from the Lib Dems, but whether that will put them into government is in the balance.
I agree with you about your preferences as far as the deputy leadership goes, but if I had to put money on it, I think I'd bet on Hain.

John Gray writing in The New Statesman on 7th May:

"A late by-product of the Eighties, Tony Blair will be remembered for using his party as a vehicle for an outdated version of the Thatcher project. Applying the half-truths of the political generation that preceded him, he secured ten years in office and is sometimes described as the most successful leader Labour has had. In fact, he has wasted a decade of unique opportunity and damaged Labour irreparably.

In domestic policy, Blair pursued the neo-Thatcherite strategy of thrusting markets into public institutions while expanding state power. His legacy is a hollowed-out party [and] whether or not it manages to form a government after the next general election, Labour faces a rerun of the disarray and paralysis suffered by the Tories since the fall of Margaret Thatcher.

The coup that created new Labour was a reaction to Thatcher's success. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the project's other architects concluded that, for Labour ever to return to power, it must adopt Thatcher's policies. New Labour was the result of this strategic choice rather than of any change in the basic beliefs of the party.

Yet, under Blair, the party soon became a vehicle for a version of neoliberalism more dogmatic and mechanical than even that which Thatcher had come to represent. Blair not only endorsed the Thatcherite settlement, in which market forces were accepted as beyond political control, he injected market mechanisms into areas Thatcher never envisioned. The core of the state was targeted - with large sections of the prison system, social services and healthcare being contracted out to private suppliers or forced to create internal quasi-markets. Here, Blair was more of a prisoner of ideology than Thatcher. Unlike Thatcher, however, he is a neoliberal by default rather than from conviction. A politician of considerable intuitive gifts but intellectually mediocre, he allowed himself to be shaped by the conventional wisdom of the Eighties."

I think, in hindsight, this is why I left the party when Blair became leader. Labour sacrificed its traditional values for the sake of getting power. The major problem for the government over the past 10 years has been how to keep their voters and members content while at the same time doing what the party has never stood for. Thus, the war in Iraq, private investment in public services and sucking up to people like the Dirty Digger. Labour policies became de facto exactly what Tory policies had been. Remember when they said that they were not going to make massive changes to the economy in the first budget? They still haven't joined the Euro and all targets for the police, hospitals and schools are still barmy. And of course Blair is leaving just before there's a downturn in the economy.

As for Alastair Campbell - don't get me started.

I watched Newsnight the other night. I forced my self to stick with it.
This is how I looked at it:
Blears v Harman. Harman wins by a mile. Mainly because Blears is so bad. (Why they brought their gender into it, I dont know).

Benn v Hain. Benn wins, as he seems to know what he's talking about with aid to the third world, and Hain comes across as too slick.

Cruddas v Johnson. Give it to Cruddas.
He would get my vote overall - as long as he presses for a million or more council houses to actually be built.
It might mean eating up some green belt, but it has to be done.

i know peter hain and alan johnson from my old cwu days so i have mixed feelings. I used to go on demos with both of them but they both voted for the iraq war

Well, some of that I agree with, but you're not going to change it outside the party.
I'm not at all sure about the Euro though. And some of the problem is the shift in culture Thatcher achieved: I believe in centralised planning on the model that worked through the fifties and sixties, but that makes me as anachronistic as the Flat Earth Society in many respects - and that's because of a consensus that was established well before Blair took over.

Outside/ inside - I don't think it really matters any more. I've always had problems with the Labour party. Even when I was a member, I didn't think they did enough to speak with members. In my local branch, there were some very powrful people who were politically very right wing. You know, the birch 'em and hang 'em brigade, the "we've always done it this way" members who talk loud and shut debate up. I think it's been too long that the Labour Party has tolerated stuff like this. It needs a good shake up ideologically and needs to look closely at its values and what it really stands for. The trouble is, Blair's regime has closed all that down. The party doesn't represent its membership and its membershihp is no longer big enough to call representative. They've spent too long worrying about the game of winning elections rather than the politics of what to do when you've won.

Democracy is about speaking with the electorate, finding out what they are concerned about and then doing something about those concerns. It's about getting people going and I think the Labour Party is patronising and paternalistic. It isn't very good at listening or explaining any more. I hope Gordon Brown can change that but, until he does, I'm not rejoining. I don't want my friends nor colleagues to think that I support this government in any way.

All true, and exactly what we have to change.
However, in all fairness the Left have always been as guilty as the Right of the Party when it comes to closing down debate.
I remember all those discussions with the Militant Tendency about Black Sections.....

Digby jones to take the labour whip in the house of lords?

this sums up new labour for me... bring in an anti trades union pro laisez faire TORY. this is the end of the mainstream labour movement in england.

totally totally from red to blue. you bastards.

He's an irrelevancy; just as the inclusion of Cruddas in the "Big Tent" would have been.
The acceptance of Thatcherite economics within the Labour Party took more than a decade. It will take at least that, and a lot of debate, to overcome it.

Gordon Brown like his predecessor, officially tells the left to go fuck themselves.

wot he said.


i felt fuckin' sick yesterday when i saw that on the news and heard that brown had praised that@her at the tuc. Why didn't he get chucked out

He talked so much shit at the TUC meet that his arse can take early retirement.
His reasons behind his refusal to up public sector wages were tired, lame and laughable, don't get me started on affordable housing.
Well done Gordon, I won't be voting for you.

do you live in his constituency?