"UK economy back at pre-crisis level"

[Sledfang]

Well, I believe the Tories are capable (because they're already doing it, just about) and Labour isn't, so if that's the case then voting absolutely matters. In practice that might not be the case, but I don't want to risk it. Many disagree with me so would vote for someone else, such as Labour. We'll find out in a couple of years when the next government is in and it's had time to do stuff.

Ya I didnt mean voting was entirely pointless, I always vote. If I was in the UK I would vote Tories over Labour.
I just dont think any western economy can avert crisis without reigning in rising population, emigration, & debt.

Non-western economies can do just fine with massive amounts of people because they dont care about child labor & fair wages.

[MerinPally]

Ya I didnt mean voting was entirely pointless, I always vote. If I was in the UK I would vote Tories over Labour.
I just dont think any western economy can avert crisis without reigning in rising population, emigration, & debt.

More likely to get all of these with the Tories than Labour. The safest bet to get those would be to vote UKIP, but then that's not going to happen because it would ruin the country.

[Deleted]

Well, I believe the Tories are capable (because they're already doing it, just about) and Labour isn't

You are looking at this wrong.

Whether the UK economy is in recession or booming depends on the global economy.

The performance of the UK relative to the global average is where you find out how good or bad a government is.

[Deleted]

I'm from the Labour heartland but Ed Miliband is unelectable. I wouldn't trust him to run a fucking bath.

[draykorinee]

I'm from the Labour heartland but Ed Miliband is unelectable. I wouldn't trust him to run a fucking bath.

This, David I would have gone with but I can not trust Ed at all.

[Deleted]

Gay marriage is fantastic. Well, unemployment has dropped to it's lowest level since January 2009, it started increasing after the Financial Crisis but obviously delayed a bit to wait for knock on effects. Housing is picking up, the economy is in better shape. Help to Buy is actually a pretty good thing but it's just being mismanaged, the idea is good. People are generally better off now than they used to, inflation is lower. Whilst bad things happened with reducing the welfare state, it is actually a good thing - just poor execution, the idea is sound.

I'm not gona argue that Cameron was any good, because he isn't, he's been really shit especially for getting anything done. What he has done however is fix the economy, albeit badly and that is my focus and something I do not believe that the other parties can reciprocate. People are generally better off, the economy is on the mend and things are looking up - that's good for me. I don't care so much that he fucked up a badger cull or he told immigrants to go home, whilst that's monumentally stupid the important things to me are the economy and unemployment, and those are now better. Now that the most important thing is sorted, I hope he starts taking a bit more notice of things in your list. If he doesn't, then even I will have questions for the general election after 2015 with regards to the Tory party - in the meantime, now that all the shit created in the wake of Gordon Brown is fixed or on the way to being fixed, these things will be more important. My priority is the economy, so I want to keep him because I feel he can continue the recovery and hopefully speed it up. If you have a different priority like your list and various others then you'll vote for someone else, whereas as far as I'm concerned, the majority of those issues are trivial in comparison and the tories are the better option.

Different person, different weightings, hence different vote. We just have different political ideals. I see no problem in taking a short term hit for long term gain, probably why I like Thatcher so much. Many others disagree.

This is what I don't understand.

Housing - House price rises are not a good thing. They are unsustainable and, as such, create a bubble. People then go into debt trying to afford them and more and more live beyond their means. This means part of the recovery is based (again) on cheap money and debt. This won't last and is destined to bust. There is only so much the houses can rise before they rise too far beyond what people can afford. Not only that, but it also means we increasingly run a two tied society of landowners and tennants. There was a reason we started to move away from this a hundred years ago.

Unemployment - Unemployment is decreasing, but underemployment has skyrocketted. Zero hour contracts mean people cannot survive without assistance from the Government, which does nothing to bring Gov spending down. Instead, it has turned into the Government subsidising private profits on a massive scale. Profits which are then hidden off-shore... It's lose - lose for everyone involved but the companies.

Economic recovery - the figures are laughable and are based on the unsustainable. It requires the exploitation of workers in the service industry and an ever expanding house market. When the interest rates finally go up, the results are likely to stifle any recovery we've seen under this government and, worst case, plunge us back into another recession. People can increasingly not afford to live, poverty is growing.

People are better off - who? Wages have been rising below inflation / frozen since the Tories came into office. VAT has increased, services from the Gov have been cut, energy prices have increased, rents have increased. I cannot think of anyone but the wealthy being better off under this Government as a direct consequence of their policies. The wealthy do not drive the economy, it is actually the working class and middle class that do. If their disposible income is stripped, the economy dives.

[Deleted]

Unemployment - Unemployment is decreasing, but underemployment has skyrocketted.

This is true unfortunately. Wages are rising behind inflation in the UK which isn't a good sign.

Still, the UK doesn't have the real unemployment figures of the U.S.

If it did the people would hang the politicians.

[Deleted]

This is true unfortunately. Wages are rising behind inflation in the UK which isn't a good sign.

Still, the UK doesn't have the real unemployment figures of the U.S.

If it did the people would hang the politicians.

yeah, we have more people in jobs, but lower wages per capita, and lower productivity....

so what the means is we have created a load of shite jobs, and forced people into them, and we are celebrating the creation of a working underclass who strive but get nothing in return but debt.

Yeah I can see why the Tories like it, anyone with more than 2 braincells should be appalled.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, I believe the Tories are capable (because they're already doing it, just about).

Yeah, if by doing it you mean cripling our economy, slowing down the recovery, privatising the NHS, selling out to the US in a massively damaging trade deal, lowering wages, attacking the worst off in society, wasting public money whilst claiming to cut the deficit (and failing), and supporting increased city wages.....

Yeah, I can see what the Tories are doing, and quite frankly its sickening.

[apepi]

What does Tories stand for?

[Masark]

What does Tories stand for?

Tory means the Conservative party.

[Grummgug]

I still believe national elections really come down to who voters would rather have a beer with. When Tony Blair rose to power, he was a guy people would like to have a beer with. So Labour flourished. Right now, the Tories offer David Cameron, and people would like to have a beer with him. No one wants to have a beer with Ed Millibrand.

[Deleted]

I still believe national elections really come down to who voters would rather have a beer with. When Tony Blair rose to power, he was a guy people would like to have a beer with. So Labour flourished. Right now, the Tories offer David Cameron, and people would like to have a beer with him. No one wants to have a beer with Ed Millibrand.

I'd like to chuck a beer in his face, you could not pay me to sit down and have a drink with Cameron. He is slimy, deceitful and incompetent. How people think he has a good image is beyond me.

Still, its better than Clegg, he's not even worth tipping a beer over.

[apepi]

Tory means the Conservative party.

I know that, but why are the conservative party called Tories?

[Grummgug]

I know that, but why are the conservative party called Tories?

The founders of conservatism were Tories, that's why.

Back 200-300 years ago, you had two political factions:

Tories: believed in monarchism
Whigs: believed in parliament control over monarchism.

Kings and royal families backed the Tories. Aristocrats, wealthy merchants, and the 1%ers backed the Whigs.

Conservatism was founded by moderate Tories as a "middle ground" between the two factions. They still believed in Tory social values (by that we mean order takes a priority over chaos) but they embraced the free market ideas of the Whigs. Conservatism eventually replaced Tories completely, but the name stuck.

The Whigs underwent a transformation where they found political success by championing social causes over the economy. This upset the aristocrats, wealthy merchants, and 1%ers in the Whig party and those groups began to leave and join the conservative party. What was left of the Whig party renamed itself the Liberal party. The Labour party overtook them but they held mostly the same views.


------------------

So basically 300 years ago you had:

Right-wing Tories backing the King
Left-wing Whigs backing the aristocrats

Those two groups were at odds with each other.

Then the King ultimately lost a lot of power. The Aristocrats then switched to support the right-wing, and the Left-wing survived by championing the poor and social issues.

Right-Wing Conservatives backing wealthy merchants and the economy.
Left-Wing Labour backing the poor and social issues at the expense of the economy.

In a rather odd twist, in order to promote social issues, the Left-Wing requires a strong, powerful central government. This is IMPERIAL in nature. You need powerful central control to exert pressure on the free market to promote such changes. And not surprisingly, the royal family tends to back the left-wing now.

So we've almost come full circle in modern times:

Right-Wing Conservatives support the free market.
Left-Wing Labour claims to support the poor and social issues but have actually become IMPERIAL and get backing from the royal family.

The Whigs have become Tories and the Tories have become Whigs!

The arguments made by the left in modern times are almost exactly the same arguments made by the right 300 years ago.

Back then, Tories would have told you that the free market isn't to be trusted, that you need a strong POWERFUL government to control things so everyone is better off. The only difference is when Tories 300 years ago made this argument, it was in support of the King. Today, Labour makes this argument, but its in support of "big government".

[Masark]

I know that, but why are the conservative party called Tories?

History that dates back to the 17th century.

[Grummgug]

A more accurate terminology to describe left and right today is to refer to the left wing as imperial and the right wing as free market. That's basically the gist of what is going on.

The left wing is about control. They want to control

what you eat (fast food is bad...lets ban it!)
what you say (racial slurs)
how you measure things (let's force people to use metric!)
what kind of light bulb to use (you must use fluorescent, lets ban incandescent!)
what kind of car to drive (you must use a hybrid! let's ban gas cars!)
what kind of energy to use (you must use solar, let's ban fossil fuels!)
how much water you are allowed to consume (let's fine people for using more than their fair share!)
what kind of bags you can use (let's ban plastic bags and switch to paper! this is after 20 years ago when we banned paper bags to save the trees and forced everyone to switch to plastic!)
how to commute (let's force everyone onto mass transit!)

That is their mindset. Control the people. The left is Imperial

Every new idea a liberal has, its grounded in the idea that the people are stupid and need to be controlled.

The right just says screw it, let people do what they want, its a free country.

[Deleted]

A more accurate terminology to describe left and right today is to refer to the left wing as imperial and the right wing as free market. That's basically the gist of what is going on.

The left wing is about control. They want to control

what you eat (fast food is bad...lets ban it!)
what you say (racial slurs)
how you measure things (let's force people to use metric!)
what kind of light bulb to use (you must use fluorescent, lets ban incandescent!)
what kind of car to drive (you must use a hybrid! let's ban gas cars!)
what kind of energy to use (you must use solar, let's ban fossil fuels!)
how much water you are allowed to consume (let's fine people for using more than their fair share!)
what kind of bags you can use (let's ban plastic bags and switch to paper! this is after 20 years ago when we banned paper bags to save the trees and forced everyone to switch to plastic!)
how to commute (let's force everyone onto mass transit!)

That is their mindset. Control the people. The left is Imperial

The right just says screw it, let people do what they want, its a free country.

That sounds completely impartial.

[Deleted]

The right just says screw it, let people do what they want, its a free country.

So long as you're rich, straight, male and white

[Kalis]

A more accurate terminology to describe left and right today is to refer to the left wing as imperial and the right wing as free market. That's basically the gist of what is going on.

The left wing is about control. They want to control

what you eat (fast food is bad...lets ban it!)
what you say (racial slurs)
how you measure things (let's force people to use metric!)
what kind of light bulb to use (you must use fluorescent, lets ban incandescent!)
what kind of car to drive (you must use a hybrid! let's ban gas cars!)
what kind of energy to use (you must use solar, let's ban fossil fuels!)
how much water you are allowed to consume (let's fine people for using more than their fair share!)
what kind of bags you can use (let's ban plastic bags and switch to paper! this is after 20 years ago when we banned paper bags to save the trees and forced everyone to switch to plastic!)
how to commute (let's force everyone onto mass transit!)

That is their mindset. Control the people. The left is Imperial

Every new idea a liberal has, its grounded in the idea that the people are stupid and need to be controlled.

The right just says screw it, let people do what they want, its a free country.

That's not how it works in UK politics.

For us, in simplified terms, the left is what the union leaders want, and the right is what heads of business want - Tony Blair screwed it up a bit by moving Labour into traditional Conservative territory and alienating the unions to some extent, but our right wing aren't averse to implementing measures that would be left/liberal in your classification.

[draykorinee]

The right just says screw it, let people do what they want, its a free country.

This whole spiel is total nonsense mind.