Well done Darling!
NI going up.
Punish the working man again to fund the state.
No doubt there will be an increase in state benefits or will they be capped as well? I doubt it.
Typical labour tactics, we need money, where can we get it…hmm tax the workers.
Say what u want about the tories, I was raised under a tory govenment, we lived on benefits…I had all my university course paid for and i got a termly grant as well, no tuition fees. Along comes labour and screws it all up. Education for all? forget it.
Come on David C. we need to kick the left out and put things RIGHT

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National Insurance going up 1% (with the outstanding amount) for those over £20,000 – how “Rich” are these people. The Pre Budget Report very conveniently stopped in order to allow Darling to say nothing whatsoever about where all the cuts and increased taxes are going to come from AFTER THE ELECTION.
Then the con about ring fencing Schools, Hospitals and Community Police Teams. Monty Python Balls let the cat out of the bag only ten minutes ago on Sky News. Schools budgets next year will be stood still, no increase and no decrease, in 2011 and 2012 they will go up 0.7%. So no allowance whatsoever for inflation (Teachers salaries will go up for two years at 1%, ie 0.3% more than the school budget) or growth/improvement. The same for hospitals and Police. What should also be noted is that budgets for these three services are SPECIFIC, ie “hospitals”, “schools” and “policing teams”. They make no mention of cuts in the “NHS”, “EDUCATION” or the “POLICE” all options are open on these and already we see cuts in the NHS and Policing.
Borrowing will continue, until, (their figures), a ceiling of £178 BILLION has been reached in 18 months time – again AFTER the election when they will begin to reduce it.
They insult our intelligence, a gang of charlatans and con men, having wrecked the country, they now perform a holding operation with lies, half truths and spin in order to con us until after the election when the day of reckoning will come. They should be prosecuted for treason for what they have done and continue to do.

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Neither Party has any real idea.

However this is what I would do to save our once proud country

1) I wouuld cancel all benefits paid in cash. Anyone on benefits will be given food/energy vouchers to live on reducing benefits being frittered away in pubs, bookies and on unrequired luxuries. In term those people on benefits wishing to spend on luxuries will be given the kick required to accept any job.

2) We have a huge amount of unemployment therefore we no longer require any foreign nationals to work in this country hence the Uk will be shut for foreign nationals wishing to work until we achieve near to enough zero % unemployment.

3) Anyone earning under 25K per year will no longer pay tax on earnings however those earning over 25K per year will pay a greater amount of tax but once tax is taken off they will not earn under anyone not paying tax.

4) A greater push to become a manufacturing country again.

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They’re all going to tax you more, whoever gets into power. There’s no more valuable stuff to privatise, bar the public services, so tax and ‘efficiency savings’ it is, whether that’s pay freezes or reduciton of people on benfits. The deficit needs to be reduced no matter what, so tough times ahead. The government spent just as badly as the public with their credit cards/easy loans/mortgages leading to debts.

There’s likely to be a hung parliament coming up – who will the Lib Dems join up with?

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Thank you Labour
Same old tax and waste!
Beyond repair this time.
Going going gone!!

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No 2 Steve

Oh what short memories we have.

Here are some of the things provided courtesy of the Conservative governments 1979 to 1997.
Doubling the VAT rate
High Interest rates
Rioting on the streets of our major cities in Toxteth, Brixton and Handsworth.
Poll Tax riots
Record Home reprocessions
Demutualisation of Building Societies
Giveaway Privatisations in Electricity, Gas, Water and Public Transport.
(where are the lower bills and fares as a result of market competition?)
City of London Big Bang which eventually brought the big Bust which required a government rescue to prevent complete financial disaster.
Black Wednesday when £14 billion was spent in one day trying to rescue our overvalued currency. (Failed – Chancellor Lamont’s advisor, one David Cameron).
Record high unemployment.
Three (3) major recessions (1981, 1988 and 1992)
NHS waiting lists UP to 2 years.
Contracting out of NHS cleaning (MRSA anyone)
This isn’t social flak. These are just some of the things that happened when government was last guided by Conservative Values.
Just in case you had forgotten.

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If the Conservatives do win the next election, at least have some comfort that David Cameron will have been elected by the general public!

Unlike our Scots friend Winky!

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After reading this news report, its reasons like these, why I am currently in Perth, Australia, studying here to increase my job prospects. Granted I pay more for tuition at college than I would in the UK. However, when I look at the way they are now putting taxes up even more and NI and putting this, that and the rest-up in price, I am glad I am here and my aim is get permanent residency and live here. I feel there is no opportunity in the UK anymore and no quality of life. I wish the govt parties could read this so they know the country is in such an embarressing and sorry state, that it drives british citizens away – to another country no less.
I miss my family and friends immensely, but I will never miss the high taxes, the NHS system, the lack of jobs and general ‘no-one gives a crap about you’ attitude. Proud to be British? Not anymore…

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Why should this country worry when there are people who see what Labour have done to this country and still insist on supporting this unholy shower. This once great country has been reduced to the dregs by people who in many other countries would have been prosecuted at least and shot at worst. No intelligent person can view what Labour have done and then vote them back into power. To do so shows just plain thick, blind, stupidity and crass unintelligence if one wants more of what we have had over the past 13 years. There are another five political parties all crying out for votes, one or two may not be very savory but any of the others are a more sensible alternative than voting for Labour.
English Exile comes out with the purile rubbish that we have come to expect – question why did you make yourself an exile if in fact you did. FACT, in 1997 Gordon Brown, Labour took over the Chancellorship from Clarke the Tory Chancellor. No sensible political/economic expert would argue against the fact that Brown took over the best economy that this country has ever had at the time of a party/government change. It was so good that Blair said that he would keep to it with existing Tory spending plans for two years, which he did. Then Brown took hold of it and wrecked it by excessive borrowing and spending
Just in case some forget, in 1997, Labour slated the Tories for having a £5 Billion “black hole”, yesterday Darling admitted that the Labour black hole would reach £178 BILLION by the end of next year with total Government debt set to reach over ONE TRILLION POUNDS. Yes Labourites, feel proud of the charlatans that you support, they have brought us to our knees which will take over 30 years to remedy.

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english exile,i like your list. you may want to add to it,
1,000,000 living in cardboard boxes, homeless, the mental homes closed and the mentally ill added to the cardboard box problem

remember the tory westminster council who sold off cemeteries for £1 each, that same council led by dame! shirley porter was responsible for exiling thousands of council tenants so that westminster council remained blue.
never trust a tory, never vote tory or ELSE!!!
privatisation of the railways
sell off of tsb bank
de mutualisation of building societies, eg halifax, bradford and bingley etc

the seeds of the credit crunch and banks greed were sown by maggies government

doubtless next may, when voters have the choice in front of them they will remember the good things labour has done and remember the damage done to the country by the maggie/major axis

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KB, I go broad for work as this government is creating a brain drain but I still passionately want Britain to be great again and take its rightful place on the world stage. Would have been Nice to see Gordon Brown get a Nobel Peace prize, after all he’s sending more troops out the same as Barrack! And Al Gore did his share of bomb dropping as Vice-President, and got one. But oh no, the Brits as the laughing stock of Europe.

I think you will find that the Tories are repelling the hunting ban as they respect the rights of minorities – even if you don’t have dark skin. Equality is for EVERYONE, not just the majority.

It makes me laugh that the Labour Government spent more time debating the fate of a few mangy foxes than it did the fate of millions of Iraqi’s before invading them!

And the smoking ban that has ruined the Great British Pub!!! In Germany they applied the same EU Directive and have smoking pubs and non-smoking pubs, and some mixed – everyone’s happy. But no, this do-gooder lot had to ruin a great British institution because it felt that some people could decide not to work in a pub. A building site is more dangerous – but people choose to expose themselves to that risk.

Why o why can’t the British people be trusted to decide on their own personal acceptable levels of risk after being informed by the state of the risk?

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For those who don’t follow the Gilt Market, the yeild in UK Government stock has sharply risen. This means that the lenders to the government (banks, pension funds etc) would rather lend their money to Johnny Foreigner Governments and get less profit in exchange for greter certainty of it being repaid.

We are no better than 1930′s Germany!

The whole world has no confidence in how his country is being run with spiralling debt in a vain attempt to buy votes.

I always believed that we should keep the pound and determine our own economic future, However, if this is the best we can do then we should join Euroland and let them make better job (assuming they will have us now).

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One way of saving money – only pay out benefits on the first two children. This will make any potential parents think properly before creating a child. It will reduce the parents who have loads of children just to get a bigger house and live on the money they get off the govt. I dont agree with the conservatives who want to increase the threshold on inheritance tax. This will only benefit a small minority. We need to look at all budgets and prioritise them as we are in such a mess. The £250 gift given to newborns could also go as inflation will eat away any benefit to the individual but as a whole costs the tax payer a lot.

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Winja,

The reason that people still seek to blame the Tories for our current malaise, is that it is they who made the fundamental changes to our economy that led to where we are.

We became heavily over-reliant on the financial services ‘industry’ for our wealth. In the end it consumed itself in its own greed as we have seen. And who were the great champions of so-called ‘service industries’?

We were also over-reliant on the housing market, and have an enormous demand for privately-owned housing, which dates back to the wilful undermining of the publicly-owned housing we used to have. Who was responsible for all those council house sales and refusing to allow the proceeds to be re-invested in public housing?

We hear complaints about the wages and salaries of the average working man reducing in real terms, whilst the very wealthy get richer and richer, seemingly regardless of economic circumstances. Who was it who removed protection and the right to protest efectively from the working man, and in some cases the basic right to join a trade union? Who was it who made huge concessions to the wealthiest people in the country in their taxation policies/ And who is it who would continue with this in allowing inheritance tax breaks for the wealthiest if elected?

I’ll leave you to guess the answers to the above – one clue – the answer to each is the same.

Now, if you were to ask me if New Labour have been foolish in continuing to follow these doomed policies, I would probably agree, and like Genbac and Neil above, I’d rather have seen a party of the ‘real’ left restoring a degree of balance – but at least New Labour haven’t been as rabid as the Tories were at their peak, and have had the courage to invest in jobs, education and the NHS, where the Tories didn’t.

Lucy’s typically nasty racist jibe in her last comment simply serves to illustrate the emptiness of her argument. To compare the ‘right’ of people to torment small animals, with the fundamental human right to avoid discrimination on the basis of skin colour or religion is just vacuous.

As for wasting parliamentary time, if the bloodsports enthusiasts had simply accepted that democracy didn’t favour them, we wouldn’t have had to waste so much time on such a trivial issue. In the end the principle of the rights of our parliamentary democracy outweighed this pressure group, and was the really important issue under consideration.

I doubt if any jobs were lost as a result of the hunting ban – in fact is seems to be more popular amongst people with wider views nows, largely perhaps because they find it morally more acceptable not to set out to torment small animals for their idea of fun in the first place.

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