What will be the big issues?
Tuesday 6th April 2010, 9:36AM BST.
With the election campaign about to start, what will decide the result?
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling the election “the big choice” for voters.
Conservative leader David Cameron said his party had the “big ideas” for the country while Lib Dem Nick Clegg said only his party offered “real change”.
The economy, taxation and public services are expected to be key battlegrounds.
Have your say using the poll and comment form below.
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After 13 years of lies and spin I am amazed people can’t see thro’ this shower
God help us if the Clown gets re-elected
In some respects I hope Labour win, they could never sort their mess out, and it may spark the revolution our Country needs.
Things can only get better!!!!
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Can we add Conservative tax lies to the list?
Oh sorry I forgot where i was posting this.
Just delete this then..
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Drew, I do agree with what you say BUT the alternative, and there is only one alternative are just as bad, or are your memories failing you.
Let me just remind you of previous Conservative values:
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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The polls are indicating a close call why? because people are not convinced by Cameron and his Tory Party and that includes me.
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Labour fairness when everyone in England pays for parking @ hospitals and prescriptions, yet our friends over the borders do not. Sadly the Tories (who are mainly an English party)do not seem willing to answer the West Lothian question.
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A start at 20% for the Liberal Democrats (The Independent 05/04/2010)will definitely worry The Tories.
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the big issue for me is the economy, i dont trust that amateur george osbourne with the economy, i think the publics got it spot on, we need rid of brown but we dont want the torys back, bring on a government of national unity as per the war, we would have the “dream team” of an energic pm in cameron with the expertise of vince cable at the treasury reiging in the savage right wing tendancies of the tories and ensuring compassionate cuts, if labour joined in then milliband could stay as foreign sec and roles for both ken clarke and mandelson should be found, the rest of them are so weak and cheating they dont deserve a place, but yeah, i;d take the best of the best, dont let the tories get a majority or they will wreck the economy again, but equally dont let brown back in
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Tough on crime
Tough on benefit scroungers
Tough on the unions
Tough on immigration
Tough on extremist elements in the UK
Promotion of self responsibilities
Repeal the hunting Ban
Hard cuts to services to sort the whole mess out
I think Tory’s have the edge. But please when you vote the guys in no moaning after, the tory’s is a vote for looking after number 1 and I will go along with that however I do think many will vote Tory to stuff Brown and moan for the next five years about it.
Saying all that now is the time for a party to enter the ring and remove elements that do not contribute to society,remove the over paid and not doing a lot guv employees,remove the incompetent from their jobs,break the unions strangle hold on the UK etc etc etc etc
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would ‘immigration’ go under the heading ‘foreign conflicts’?
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Not sure who to vote for this time round. They are all spouting the same empty promises.
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The key issue for me is that my constituency is so far down the Tory target list that if they won it they would have a Commons majority, so I shall be voting Labour. Telford is very similar to this. However, if Labour also won The Wrekin back, they would likely maintain their own Commons majority, so the Tories need backing there.
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the main topic will be the economy and the professional way it has been managed. there is no place for amateurs and novices in this election and diddy david cameron and cleggy can save their breath now
gordon brown will narrowly win the election by a narrow majority of 15 to 18 seats.
i certainly do not want to be reminded of the thatcher years and the major years.
i like to remember the good things new labour has brought us. 18 weeks wait for an operation compared with 18 months under tories, minimum wage, winter fuel payments, pension credits, family credits, free tv licence for the elderly, new hospitals, new schools, repaired schools to name just a few things new labour has done for us.
this is not the time for spivs toffs and fast bucks for the wealthy. 5 more years of common sense gentle socialism will suit most of us and if the pm needs to borrow more ideas off the tories and especially the lib dems so be it. the trident replacement can be dropt, and 2 new aircraft carriers and id cards. there are going to be cut backs but common sense tells me they should be gradual to allow the economy to recover.
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@Andrew Finch
Thatcher’s retired.We’re in the noughties now,keep up.
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as bill clinton said “its the economy stupid”
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I know you all keep talking about how bad the Tories where under Thatcher but I was too young to vote then and in my life thus far all I’ve experienced is increasing financial burdens under Labour with no view to improvement and reduction in services (I will be affected in my pocket by the increased NI) so I am forced by my own personal position to consider whether the Tories are all that bad or have maybe learnt their lessons from the Thatcher days or whether to give the Lib Dems some support. I even wonder if a hung parliament would make them all actually listen and tackle some of the problems we all face together and effectively with their power bases removed/reduced in the hope that come the next election one of the parties will have actually have shown themselves to be working truly for the benefits of our country and it’s inhabitants. I don’t know who I will vote for but I do know it will not be Labour as no one has managed to show me they are any better then the Tory or Lib Dem parties and therefore I can only go by my personal experience of being governed by them which has been negative. Atcham Jack you raise good points but for the young single working professional like me Labour have given nothing and have nothing to offer except a rise in NI
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It’s frightening that people still highlight the last Tory term, and put their convenient spin on the proceedings!
Bliar and Broon should be jailed, Broon for his mismanagement of the economy he inherited, the man is deluded and plain useless. Even tried to cover-up the 6 Billion loss on OUR gold reserves.
With regards to the riots in the 80′s, things are far worse now, the Country has lost it’s spine, and the 2.5 million on benefit and 3 million on incapacity are silent, hence we accept this political dross.
You get what you deserve.
Get the Markets up to Dec 2007 level and then I am off!
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#8Tough on extremist elements in the UK
After your post does that include you?
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John have you heard about the pheonix, (if thats how you spell it)
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“It never matters who we vote for, the government always gets in”. Since 1979 we’ve had Thatcherite tories and Blairite New Labour. Personally, I’ve seen no difference. The views of ordinary people no longer count. Government policy is basically whatever favours lobbyists and big business. Remember Cash for Honours and MP’s expenses? The economy only got in a mess because the government turned a blind eye to the banker’s excesses. Democracy is dead and the mother of all parliaments is seemingly a nest of corrupt and thieving scoundrels. I hope that many people, like me, will boycott the election so that we get a hung parliament on the lowest turnout ever. We don’t need an election, we need a revolution!
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So, another election arrives and along with it the question of who to vote for. Fortunately I live in Greece so I don’t have to decide but going by past performances I don’t think it makes a bit of difference. Whichever party gets in will look after their own and the proverbial “man in the street” will pay for it with higher taxes, minimal pay rises and public service cutbacks. Brown is a disaster, Cameron a joke and the other party is a non-runner. I watched a bit of Prime ministers question time today and ye gods, if that’s all we’ve got to lead the country no wonder it’s in such a mess. Back benchers braying like demented donkeys and the leaders doing the head shaking and laughing routine, pathetic. I wish you all the best of luck, from what I witnessed today you will need it.
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My vote is for the Purple Party (remember Jane Horrocks?) If only they existed… My vote will be for Labour – best of a bad lot etc- and I don’t want foxhunting being brought back.
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The question is has cameron changed the tory party for the better?,will it still be think of number 1?, will he be able to control the unions? have they modernised? and will they have modernised just enough to have the gumption not to bow to pc clap trap unlike Labour?.
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Jayne you would vote in a party over one small issue?? and a weak best of a bad lot argument.
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I’ll vote for anyone as long as they can get Paul Simpson out of Shrewsbury..
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@ Suellan, My brother inlaw talks about how bad life was with Mrs T as prime minister even though it was her government that made it possible for him to buy his own house ( cheaply ) from the council and also through funding made it possible to start up his own Taxi business after he’d spent nearly four years on the dole ( during the time of the Labour government ).
I think sometimes people talk about how bad things were with Mrs T as Prime Minister because they think its the right thing to say, a bit like when people who don’t know much about football saying they support Manchester United..
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for those who do not remember the tory years, let me remind you of their low points, 4 million unemployed, 15% interest rates one and a half million living rough in cardboard boxes. hundreds of thousand lost their homes through repossession.
compare that scenario to half percent interest rates, two and a half percent interest rates, and the government intervening to keep people in their jobs and homes. now is not the time for the novices, toffs and spivs with pollicies written on the back of a fag packet. the tories were rightly called the nasty party 20 years ago, what has changed
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and wheeling out veteran actor sir michael caine to a news conference will not assist the tory campaign either
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@Andrew Finch
So you are relying on Thatcher to make a comeback?
Desperate or what?
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i gave you the low points of tory rule now for a few good points, er yes selling of council homes were good for those home buyers and it gave individuals a sense of responsibility, the problem was the money was given away in tax reductions, when thje money was better invested in social housing for the new generation of young families etc who had found the bottom of the ladder kicked away.
the tories sold of our gas, our electricity, our railways our trustee savings bank, our telephone company and if they hah had the time our post offices.
now what will they sell off if they are elected, i will tell you, our halifax, our northern rock, our lloyds bank, our royal bank of scotland and our nat west bank. not sold to you and i, when we will get the benefit when they are sold as going concerns but sold off to the tory toffs, who are bank rolling the tory party who will also benefit from the tory inheritance tax break for their mates, not you and i note. the nasty party at work. from a former chairman of a tory constituency young conservative association who saw the light 40 years ago. do vote on 6.5.10 and vote early!!
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for me its all about personality, dave cameron has a nice smile but i think gordon brown is ugly and he has a scottish accent, so i will vote for the nicer looking one
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For those like the “atcham jack’s” of this world when comparing the Thatcher years, it just needs to be looked at in the same situation that we now find ourselves.
Perhaps any learned blogger on these streams can tell me of one occasion in living memory (and I am a pensioner) when a Labour Government left office without leaving a legacy of utter devastation in their wake. On every single occasion Labour have left office they have left behind a wrecked economy and a country on it’s uppers. When Thatcher took over that was no exception. She had to implement public service spending cuts of a massive amount in order to get the economy on an even keel, this was after Dennis Healey (Labour Chancellor) went to the IMF to stop us going bankrupt. She succeeded in doing it but getting there was not pleasant for some.
Labour have now done it again, they have fullfilled their old modus operandii by virtually bankrupting us and it falls to the next Government to save us from going under. And whichever Government that is, we are going to be rocked with astounding spending cuts. The debts, based on the billions borrowed by Brown have to be repaid. And, just in case any of us are under any illusions, Alistair Darling admitted after severe probing on TV that if he regained office, a Labour Government would have to make spending cuts in the public services more severe than Thatcher ever did. He admitted that those cuts would be in the order of 25%. Can you imaging that – yes 25%, that is reducing budgets for everything in the public services by one quarter.
I am hoping Labour get in again because you Labourites are finally going to see what we have been landed with and in simple terms WE ARE £1.5 TRILLION, yes I said TRILLION and I will repeat it, TRILLION in debt which at best will take us 30 years to pay off. It is unfair to expect another party to put their reputation on the line again to undo this Labour catastrophe, Labour should be made to do it themselves – they caused it – let them mend it. Clegg and Cameron are mad to even want to be given the poison chalice.
And just in case anyone thinks that if Labour get in they will be paying off our debt year by year – THEY WON’T, all they will do is reduce their borrowing by roughly £10 BIllion each year until the debt is repaid and until then we pay £4 BILLION in interest on our borrowings until it is repaid. Perhaps you Labourites can get your heads around that when you compare now with the Thatcher years. Vote Labour and you deserve all you are going to get in the years to come, I have no sympathy at all for you. This Labour Government is criminal and they should be put before a court for “misconduct in public office”, they have, like every Labour Government before them, brought this country to the verge of utter ruin and devastation. I read the blogs from Labourites and I almost weep for the country that I once loved and now despair at the thought of what they have done to it and will do again if given the chance. And just another little parting shot for the lovers of the Labourite charlatans, for the first time ever, my £500 monthly Old Age Pension, long regarded as absolutely inviolate to the thieving hands of Government, has just been made subject to Income Tax for the first time – and why, because I have just had a £2 a week pension rise and Darling failed to increase the levels of Income Tax Allowances this year to match it. Remember the 10p tax increase that Brown levied on all the taxable pay of the poorest paid in our country, the 75 pence a week rise he gave to pensioners, the 85 pence a week he still gives to 80 year old pensioners. You Labourites are delusional and refuse to face reality of what these charlatans are about.
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corruption of mps and how to stop them – simple – sack them – vote the incumbents out now
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Be prepared to vote with your feet on May the 6th.
Make sure you’re wearing a clean pair of socks.
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Here is a good one for you all…….
I have just been filling out the voting from overseas paperwork (all 8 pages!!). Not only do I need to find another British Citizen living in my country to witness the form who is unrelated but they make a great comment in the last section……
The postal vote papers will be sent out 4 days before the election and must be returned by election day……now some places in the UK would struggle to do that with the way the Royal Mail works but when the mail takes 7 days EACH WAY to reach me some good that is!!!
Honestly, what else can the powers do to make it even harder, voting in blood maybe????
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Q: What are the big issues?
A: What most of the corrupt, thieving and lying intake of the last Parliament will hopefully be on the street selling after May 6th
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sharon, wem – really ????
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stuart is right previous labour govs. have left a mess but this government inherited a healthy economy but at what cost, leaky school roofs, old hospitals, waiting list for a hip or knee operation 18 months. so tony blair and gordon brown had to sped money the tories should have done to get the country moving again. in the last 2 years money has had to be spent rescuing banks and keepin jobs open and people with rooves over their heads.
yes vote tory vote for cut backs, hospital closures primary schools closed and replaced by a large infant school. vote for tax cuts for the rich, 25% vat, 18 month nhs waiting lists. and more policies that osbourne has written on a fag packet
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i agree labour spend alot because there was years on underinvestment in capital assets like roads, schools and bridges, you can look around you and see in shrewsbury even, new theatre, new schools in monkmoor, bicton etc then planned new bypass etc, just wouldnt have happened under the tories, the private sector wont invest in these things they are social benefits and need to be paid for from taxes
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atcham jack, There is not one single provable FACT in your comment above at 37. You are the typical Labour supporter who is not above gilding the lily, the odd exaggeration or plain downright lies. It would take a book to prove how wrong you are but a few little examples which can also be applied to all the rest of the nonsense that you put down. Hospitals A&E Departments are being closed right now in numerous places by your Labour Government. More Hospitals have been closed under the Labourites (Blair/Brown) than were ever closed by Thatcher. It is a lie on your part or the most spectacular imagination to say that the Tories will close hospitals. Not one word has been said to this effect by them. Ed Balls (Labour) has already said that he can and will make £4 Billion of cuts in education, the Tories have said absolutely nothing re this. How come therefore they are going to close primary schools, nobody but you is aware of that fact.
You say keeping jobs “open”, FACT millions have had their pay reduced, put on short time or have been declared redundant under your Labourite friends. At present 2.6 million people are unemployed, 1 in every 8 people are not in employment for various other Labourite reasons and the unemployment rate for 16 to 18 year olds is at it’s highest level ever recorded. As for tax cuts for the “rich”, Darling is going to wack a rise in National Insurance contributions (that’s Labour speak for a tax rise by stealth) on every person in this country earning £20,000pa and above – ARE THEY RICH? if they earn up to £30,000. Some of the poorest in our country earn £20,000 if they have kids and a mortgage. Osborne has said that he will cut this and I say thank god for that. You appear to go along with the Labour stance to inflict it on those people though, this is the height of Labour hypocracy. Criticise non-existent Tory tax increases but support factual Labour tax (sorry NI) increases Just in case you are not aware of it, this country is a fraction away from the same situation as Greece who has just had it’s international Poors credit rating reduced to zero. That having been said, fine, those Labourites who want Brown back in after three quarters of the Cabinet wanted to give him the sack say’s all we intelligent people want to know about Labour. Intelligence is not a strong point in the Labour cabinet, they think we are all fools, well we are not. And on a current topic, the filthy emails, the slimy twitter write- ups, the disgusting insults aimed at all and sundry by Labour politicians is now back with a vengeance. Not content with Draper, Whelan and MacBride concocting the most vile write-ups – for which they all got the sack from Brown’s office, we now have the Labourite in Moray, Scotland doing vicious twitter comments of which, half the cabinet were aware of. What would you Labourites say if it was a Tory doing write-ups like that. According to the Labour Party stalwarts, including half the cabinet who did nothing to stop this idiot, as a pensioner, I am now a “COFFIN DODGER”, now there is their innermost feelings for the elderly. You have taken over the mantle well and truly from the Tories, that is, Labour is now the NASTY, FOUL MOUTHED and ODIOUS party.
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Drew (comment #1), and Andrew (comment #8) – I note, with a degree of weariness, that once again your posts are completely devoid of any facts. Drew – yours is simply a ‘doll out of the pram’ rant – are you really planning to leave the UK? – Please, do us all a favour and go!
Andrew, despite the fact that you have never been a public servant, and judging from your posts clearly lack the basic skills to become even the most junior of them, you see fit to judge them as ‘incompetent, over-paid and not doing a lot’. Where do you get your information from – the Daily Mail? I would suggest your description would better fit the greedy fat-cats who have drained our economy of so much cash. Which takes me neatly onto facts.
The reality is that prior to the bankers’ recession, we had a debt to GDP ratio of 43%. (Drew – you can Google GDP if you need to…) This is well within ratios common in recent decades under different regimes.
However, the direct effect of the bankers’ greed and recklessness added a further 30% to that figure virtually overnight. This is a high figure, although not the highest we’ve had – it was 100% or so in the late ’50s and early ’60s for example.
Immigration, in total, including all fully legal immigration, costs a tiny proportion of GDP – even if we banned all immigration, it would get us back only a small proportion of what the banks owe us.
As for unions – they have little power these days, but are essential for workers to stand up for their rights against employers who seek to use the recession for gain. Only exploitative, grasping employers have anything to fear from them these days. Those that co-operate with unions usually find the partnership a fruitful one.
The polls associated with this article indicate that the economy is the number one concern. The question that really needs to be asked is ‘Who is most likely to recover the money from the bankers?’
The Tories have indicated that they would sell off ‘our’ banks at the earliest opportunity – it’s funny how they’re so keen to sell stuff that we already own isn’t it? They pulled the same confidence trick when they sold our public utilities, which are now all foreign-owned, and making huge profits at our expense.
So Osborne will sell the banks back to his city mates, and leave the public saddled with their debts. He’s also indicated that he will scrap the 50% higher rate tax, get rid of the increase in NI, give the wealthy tax breaks via cuts in inheritance tax and corporation tax, and somehow fund expensive cancer drugs too! (But whilst removing the guarantees that women with breast cancer will be seen within a specific time limit!).
How will he achieve this? Partly by double-counting government efficiencies which are already being made, and also by ‘renegotiating’ private sector gov’t contracts. Does anyone really think that the mega-corporations who run many of our public services these days will simply roll-over? The only way that they would reduce their costs would be to send more of the work to low-cost countries such as India and China – and you can bet the Tories would let them! Ridiculous economics – did they not do maths ‘O’ level at Eton?
The fact is that the recovery, albeit slowly, has begun. The Tories’ plans would result in a sharp increase in unemployment, in both public and private sectors, and we would all pick up the tab by way of benefits, reduced tax revenues, reduced NI revenue etc. The last Tory administration created 3.5 million unemployed – if we used the current method of calculation the figure would have been somewhere between four and five million. Whilst those who make their money by gambling with other people’s money did very well out of those years, for the majority of ordinary workers they were dark days.
Whilst I would have liked to to have seen more ‘old’ Labour policies during the current administration, the fact is that the steady approach taken, avoiding knee-jerk dogmatic responses, has got us to the end of this massive recession, created as it was by the excesses of global capitalism, more quickly than was expected. We shouldn’t put that at risk with the sort of ‘change’ that the Tories are planning.
And Stuart, who are you trying to kid that Thatcher slashed public services because she didn’t have the money to support them? She had the money to give tax cuts of 43% to the richest people in the land didn’t she? She paid for those by extending hospital waiting lists and leaving state school buildings to decay! It’s easy to end a period of government cash-rich if you starve the public services of cash year after year.
She cut public services out of nothing but dogma – of course those people she and her party favoured rarely needed them – they had private medical treatment and private schooling for example. Your point about Labour closing more hospitals is simply not valid – changes in healthcare technology, paid for during the 13 years of Labour power have meant that many treatments previously only available as an in-patient can now be done on an outpatient basis, or even at a GP. The same applies to many hospital clinics. Your comparison simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
If you cannot see the improvements in general healthcare then you are either lucky enough not to have needed much of it, or you are kidding yourself.
I note that our local Tory candidate makes no mention of the bankers’ greed in his election leaflet – it’s quite clear that the interests of the Tories still lie with the wealthy – they may have donned a different coat in Cameron, but underneath they’re the same old dark, socially divisive lot they always were.
In recent days, we’ve seen them actively canvassing for support from the business community for their proposed NI cut – none of this support was spontaneous – the Tories approached these businesses, as the boss of Jewson stated on the radio yesterday.
Of course these Tory employers all came out in favour of the Tories – no news there – but why would ordinary people listen to them? I’m sure for example the former workers of Bairdwear will have been hanging on every word from the mouth of the boss of M&S – the company that shipped their work abroad without a second thought for British employees.
Are these people really the Captains of industry, who’ll invest an NI cut in British jobs? Don’t make me laugh! It’ll go straight into shareholders pockets or their fat cat bonus pot…
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