I do hope you’re not relying solely on Private Eye for your research, owlstretchingtime.
Rather inconveniently for any Tory supporters amongst us, however, his policies read like a hit parade of previous Conservative Home Secretaries’ wet dreams, hence the rather muted opposition to any of his proposals emanating from the other side of the House. Even Howard, who sees fit to oppose just about anything no matter how natively Tory it might be (student fees, anyone?) couldn’t bring himself to pass up a chance to fingerprint everybody in the country.
Incidentally, it usually quietly pleases me that UK politics mostly lacks the partisan rancour that characterises many countries’ political debate. With that in mind, could you perhaps knock it off with calling people with whose votes you disagree “cunts”? For all your cutesy “two bob wanker” and “wrong 'uns” schtick, you seem unable to offer any more solid claims about the incumbents than that the economy is “fucked”, and that Brown “has an interesting past”. You see more incisive analysis on Newsround, for fuck’s sake.
And you’re a charming young man yourself.
As to your “point” about the economy; are you Rick from the Young Ones? Because other than him I really don’t know ANYONE who would agree with you. Right kids?
I am plenty old enough (and mature enough - don’t worry you’ll get there in the end) to remember Britain pre Thacher - it was fucking vile. Are you old enough, or are you still at polyversity being indoctrinated with lefty cods? if you are old enough - do please tell me in what way the apparently pre-lapsarian world of 1978 was better than now (or pehaps more accurately 1997). We can share anecdotes about power cuts and Austin Allegros.
And that rumour about jabba-the hut has been around for years.
Also - feel free to pick up my typing errors - you see we didn’t learn how to type at Winchester, as it was, correctly, assumed that we would have some product of the wonderful labour-dominated state system to do it for us. However I think it would be a bit much to ask my PA to type up my SDMB posts - so I hunt and peck my way through all on my own - with pretty dreadfull typos abounding.
I thoroughly agree. Please, if you want to use the word cunt in this thread, direct it at Blunkett. The other cunts can wait. 
Boris, is it really you?
Ah no, Boris went to Eton.
Owl, I often think your posts are some sort of elaborate joke, but I’m getting scarily convinced that you may actually be serious. :eek:
Fair enough - but they started it - Honest!
As a paid up Tory I do dispair of Howard - as I have said I really do believe that this governement is by far the worst around, and also certainly the least able and most corrupt (in many senses) in living memory. I will happily admit that my hatred of it has fully surpassed what would be rational - especially, as you say, there have been a few right decisons (such as Iraq) but usually reached in such a way as to render them credit-free.
Being leader of the opposition against this gang of wankers really should be an open goal, and yet Howard can’t land a glove on them. We made a serious mistake in picking him- we should have tried to get someone not so closely associated with what is perceived to be a failed administration. I came close to rage when I heard that he had agreed to support ID cards.
Maybe after the next election we can get a new leader who might give us a chance, after all it really isn’t good for the country to have a governement (of any stripe) absolutely unchallenged.
But as for me I am afraid that I feel about Blair as Homer feels about Flanders.
I did not go to Slough comprehensive! (but my mate did and he’s a very good friend of Boris)
There are times when my entire life feels like a rather elaborate joke - something like the Truman Show - but I’m not putting it on, I am actually quite nice and retiring in real life - but that other chap got my goat.
I think the single best thing they’ve done is make the Bank of England independent. Non-political interest rates is the biggest and most important economic reform since Thatcher, and there’s no taking it away from them. I also think student fees are the right thing to do (although I think targeting getting 50% through university is daft in the extreme). Economic liberalisation and free market reform? Should be bread and butter for conservatives, even if it did come from the wrong side.
Being a Tory opposition leader right now is far from a comfortable position. Between Blair’s Clintonesque third way economic liberalism, Brown’s more than competent economic handling and a succession of Home Secretaries’ authoritarian rampages, Labour have the Tory heartland thoroughly sewn up, frankly, with the exception of the prurient Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells types who still think gays are out to get them. It requires a liberal in the proper sense - a stronger Letwin, or a less slimy Yeo - to take Labour on. Like it or not, Labour represent an ideology at present, while the Conservatives do not. Should they ever choose to marry economic freedom with personal freedom, they’ll have something worth selling. I just don’t think the liberal wing of the party is large enough to achieve it.
Stupid sexy Flanders!
Dead Badger I’d agree with your first paragraph wholeheartedly - No Government is ever wholly wrong, and credit should be givemn when they get something right - as they did here.
On the second paragraph theough - this is where we diverge. Firstly I think Brown’s handling of the economy has been woeful. He has made us a much harder place to do busines in (I work in venture capital - and whilst it’s still perfectly possible to get a business up and running it’s all a lot harder and costlier than it needs to be. Thankfuly a lot of our direct competitors (eg France and Germany) are a lot worse, but we’re catching up.
It always makes me smile that there is an assumption that somehow all the racist, homophobic types are all tories or tory voters. A good friend of mine is a Labour MP in london and his stories about canvassing his core support would make you rethink that assumption.
I’m also intrigued by your idea that labour represent an ideaology. I think the most common criticism f this mob is that they don’t stand for anything. So what is this ideaology? (this is a genuine question).
Letwin would be good, and I wouldn’t completely t=rule ourt someone like Portillo or Norris coming back onto the scene.
I still hate that sanctimonious bob-monkhouse grinned, tandoori tanned, bald-spot covering cockchafer Blair though. Just in case you hadn’t realised
You’re an asshole, theres nothing wrong with the guy being forthright, and self serving, politicians aren’t infallible. I actually admire the guy, doing all this whilst being blind gotta give him some credit.
Bye Blunkett you’ll be missed. The guy got trampled on by the woman he was in love with, can’t help but feel sorry for him somewhat.
Yeah, annoying petty regulation seems to have increased, but I think we’ve ridden most of the world’s recent economic problems pretty well by comparison to most of the rest of Europe. Whether this is because of Brown or in spite of him is open to debate; certainly the interest rate decision has helped greatly, and it at least heartens me to see that there exist politicians who will voluntarily relinquish some of their power. The macroeconomic rules he imposed on himself also make good sense, while one might question how well he follows them. So while I’ll give you the “business environment” question, I still think that as a whole his management has been pretty competent.
I don’t assume that at all; however it is undoubtedly true that the Tory party is the one which of late has most confidently espoused policies to appeal to these people. Section 28 was an example of the basest pandering, and it took this Labour government to overturn it, the Tories opposing them to the end. Gay marriage would never have been countenanced under recent Tory governments, and indeed Tory peers are doing their best to derail it. I entirely believe you that large numbers of racists and homophobes vote Labour, but this doesn’t change the fact that it is the Tory party which has historically represented that section of views.
Heh, got me. I wasn’t very clear, and was trying more to make a point about public perception. Tony Blair still gives the impression of standing for something (much as you may scoff, and difficult as it may be to pin down), whereas the Tories simply don’t, unless you count “we’d like lower taxes”. It’s a perception game, and for all his travails Blair still looks like a man who has an agenda in which he believes. We can argue all day about the almost-forgotten “third way”, or whether his ideology is coherent, but it’s what it looks like to the public that matters.
IF he followed his so called Golden rules then you may have a point - but he doesn’t. Every stat, every accounting method is changed ad nauseum
until they apparently show that he’s kept to the rules. To take an example - look at the inflation index - everything that actually has gone up (house prices, council tax, public transport etc) has been pulled out of the index and replaced with things that have gone down (electrical goods, stuff from Poundstretchers etc). He’s not a awful Chancellor - we have most certainly had worse, but he ain’t that great, and his feud with Blair doesn’t help.
I think that both parties have their fair share of bigots, as they relect society. The point that I was trying to make is that the white working clasess - historically labour voters - are often a hotbed of prejudice.
This is more a reflection of how poor the tories have been - it should be easy to tear Blair to shreds - we haven’t done it.
Well I personally hate his fucking guts, and he deserves to go down in flames the fucking hypocrite that he is, what a total bastard arsehole, and thats all the good things I can say about him.
First look at his career, he was a deeply socialist, almost prosletysing, council leader from Sheffield and actually hung the Red Flag from the town hall, which caused deep offence to many Sheffield residents who saw it as an insult to the freedoms for which they and their parents had fought in WWII.
He was always provocative with his policies, such as free public transport, and seemed proud that Sheffield was often referred to as the ‘Peoples Republic of South Yorkshire’.
Next to Ken Livingstone he was probably the most disliked person that the Thatcher administration could name, and he was exactly the sort of council leader that turned voters away from Labour for so many years, thus inflicting us with more years of Tory misrule.
Nowadays of course, he is even more right wing than most of the previous Tory administration, which did float the idea of ID cards but even those fascist bastards baulked that the idea of Joe Public’s reaction to such a scheme.
He was one of those who came out against the idea back in those days, and the threat of terrorism was far more real back in the '80’s than it is now.
He has seen himself as a man on a mission whilst home secretary, he keeps on banging on about ‘personal responsibility’ and being accountable and accepting consequencies, well now he might just understand what that means.
He is authoritarian in the personality sense too, rather than just the policy sense of the word, his style is abrasive and confrontaional, and actually has not changed since he was at Sheffield City council, instead he has simply moved far off to the right, convinced that he is right, and those who may have misgivings are wrong, incompetant, strategically unaware, or any other excuse he can make up for those who do not follow his ideas with the same evangelical zealousness as himself.
He commisioned a report into the management of convicted criminals, which made varoious recommendations, such as merging the Prison Service with the National Probation service.
The idea seems nice enough, provide a seamless method of managing a sentenced person from conviction, to release and into their licence terms.
However, we are talking of merging two organisations with a total of around 150k employees, which have differant HR policies, promotion policies, pensions systems, and a whole host of other things.
This is not something that can happen overnight, in fact, without even piloting such a major change, within a year of completion of this report, he has crammed both organisations together, its hoplessly muddled, there are many incomers who have absolutely no idea whatsoever of the realities of prisoners, and their abilities to learn, and at the same time he has alienated the most crucial people in the whole of his scheme.
The scheme depends completely on being able to deliver relevant work related training and education to prisoners so that they arein a position to take up employments and not reoffend.
Those who deliver such training are prison instructors, of which I’m one.
The whole scheme cannot work as it has been implemented, there is no strategic thinking, only a very vague idea of where they want to go, and not the slightest knowledge of how to achieve the result they think they want.
In the meantime they have threatened instructors with privatisation which would cost around two thirds more to deliver the same service, twice. Next they have imposed terms and conditions along with cuts in pay for those who chose not to take up extra duties, they have consistantly awarded lower pay rises than for other staff within the prison service, and now they are trying to compel us to deliver inappropriate training to people whose abilities fall very far short of the requirements needed to actually succesfully undertake the coursework.
This organisation simply does not understand the need to match candidates to training, instead it tries to compel the barely literate to learn skills such as tv repair,(trust me, putting prisoners around high voltage and live working is, A Very Bad Idea) which in itself is a dying trade anyway, and seems only to want numbers of certificates issued as a marker of performance, and doesn’t seem too concerned either with the relevance of skills learned, nor the quality of the qualification to be delivered.
All this has happened on Blunketts watch, and he can fuck off!!
Coming into the thread ignoring aall posts after owlbloke started posting…
Good riddance to the complete tosser Blunkett. Just becaues you want a totalitarian police state doesn’t mean the rest of us do you arrogant dipshit.
There is a very inappropriate joke I could say here but I feel I shouldn’t (it starts with 'I bet he didn’t…)
:eek:
You are so going to hell!
And I’ll be right there with you for laughing out loud.
It’s hard to watch a father talking about the son he’s denied access to, and remember how much you hated him when he wasn’t vulnerable.
But yeah, wanker, or cunt, as this thread is going for the award of highest ‘cunt’:post ratio.
Damn smileys.
Um…who’s the alleged paedophile tory?
Yeah we’ve had several threads about how the Brits and us Paddies use cunt in a much more generalised way than our American friends who really only use it in it’s strongest and most offensive way ie. against a woman who is acting the cunt 
For us a cunt can be male, female, Christian, Jew, Muslim, white, black or whatever, a cunt is a cunt and Blunkett was a blind one.