General Election June 8th

Who will you vote for at the General Election?

  • Conservatives

    Votes: 189 28.8%

  • Labour

    Votes: 366 55.8%

  • Liberal Democrats

    Votes: 37 5.6%

  • SNP

    Votes: 8 1.2%

  • UKIP

    Votes: 23 3.5%

  • Other

    Votes: 33 5.0%
  • Total voters
    656
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I wonder how many people are confused by all these financial statistics like I am? Even with numbers there tends to be disagreement and two stories which don't meet in the middle. The remain camp for me tried to highbrow the electorate and caused confusion and many many people voted just on core incentives like they will in the upcoming GE.
Now I don't know what those core values are any more because the political parties change their colours it seems on every basic issue and I haven't got the capacity to look at numbers and go AHHH I don't agree with that because I can't formulate an argument based on educated reason. We employ politicians to give us that message and one side is being uneconomical with the truth (I don't know which) and I'm afraid spin has won the day again.
 
Chippy_boy said:
Because if (when) rates go up the interest burden would be crippling.
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UK government gilts aren't like a mortgage though. The interest rate is fixed and doesn't 'go up'. Now that would be a calamity and no mistake. The yield on these bonds have been as low as .52% in the last 9 months and there has been ample opportunity to borrow, at these rates, and invest heavily in rapid infrastructure projects. The Chinese have built 14000 miles of high speed rail lines in 10 years and this will be up to 24000 miles by 2025. HST-2 is looking to get from London to Birmingham by 2026! New schools, hospitals and prisons could be built at interest rates of less than 1.5%. Not doing it because of ideology borders on madness!
As for corporate tax, I got my figures from Trading Economics. Says it averaged 39.21% from 2000-2016 and was at a record low level in 2016 of 38.9%.
 
The Light Was Yellow Sir said:
UK government gilts aren't like a mortgage though. The interest rate is fixed and doesn't 'go up'. Now that would be a calamity and no mistake. The yield on these bonds have been as low as .52% in the last 9 months and there has been ample opportunity to borrow, at these rates, and invest heavily in rapid infrastructure projects. The Chinese have built 14000 miles of high speed rail lines in 10 years and this will be up to 24000 miles by 2025. HST-2 is looking to get from London to Birmingham by 2026! New schools, hospitals and prisons could be built at interest rates of less than 1.5%. Not doing it because of ideology borders on madness!
As for corporate tax, I got my figures from Trading Economics. Says it averaged 39.21% from 2000-2016 and was at a record low level in 2016 of 38.9%.
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You cannot suggest that because China has adopted a certain policy then it is right for the UK too, surely? The two economies are so wildly different as to make comparisons meaningless. They have come from a position of relatively incredible poverty and have experienced growth rates the west with its mature economies could only dream of, for night on 20 years. Their idea of a "recession" is 5 or 6 percent growth. The have a budget surplus of almost unimaginable proportions. Vast spending on infrastructure projects might very well be sensible for them, indeed it almost certainly is.

Regards US rates, who cares eh. 39%, 40%, whatever. Clearly your sources and mine disagree. It matters not.
 
Ricster said:
Almost 20 years of bombings.
Millions of innocent people dead as a result.
Iraq didn't work.
Afghanistan didn't work.
Libya really didn't work.
Syria isn't working
Yemen isn't working.
No WMD's still.
Millions of refugees.
A shift in Right wing politics.

And you say he's got it wrong?

Ok!
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The majority of what you've mentioned is down to the Labour Party of 97-2010.

Afghanistan has worked and worked extremely well. The Taliban are a fraction of what they were and have lost so much control.

Syria, unfortunately there's a murdering **** dictator who we're having to juggle stopping him killing innocent people and fighting ISIS - really not anything we could do better there without pissing the Russians off.

I will give you Iraq as if we were to go in, which I now believe we shouldn't have, we should have stayed for much longer and not left it to the fanatics.

I will also give you Libya. Quite disgraceful how The West played games there.

Not all the refugees are our fault though, it's so easy to blame the west for every fault in the Middle East and North Africa, and you'd be right with some of it, but a lot of the fault also has to lie with Bronze Age religious beliefs and lunatic dictators.

Because you believe politics has shifted too far to the right, doesn't mean a communist who's lax on terrorism should be put in charge.
 
Chippy_boy said:
Far from cocksure on my part mate. A month ago, I would have bet my house on Corbyn not winning and now I wouldn't be more than a grand on it. That May has allowed such an unpopular opponent to catch up as she has done, is an endictment as to how utterly shite she has been. If she were to lose - which is indeed possible if not unlikely - it would be the biggest fuck up in the history of UK politics. And solely down to her incompetence.
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I'd say she was just helping foster a new Tory tradition of taking the electorate for granted..... Cameron almost fucked up Indyref1 , did fuck up on the EU Referendum ballot (from his perspective ) and they are showing little sings of having learned from their recent history. We are poles apart in our politics buddy and I still thing May will win but we agree that it will not in any way be the landslide they thought on the day of the announcement - and that is mostly down to the Tory campaign as any stellar performance by Jezza
 
The Light Was Yellow Sir said:
UK government gilts aren't like a mortgage though. The interest rate is fixed and doesn't 'go up'. Now that would be a calamity and no mistake. The yield on these bonds have been as low as .52% in the last 9 months and there has been ample opportunity to borrow, at these rates, and invest heavily in rapid infrastructure projects. The Chinese have built 14000 miles of high speed rail lines in 10 years and this will be up to 24000 miles by 2025. HST-2 is looking to get from London to Birmingham by 2026! New schools, hospitals and prisons could be built at interest rates of less than 1.5%. Not doing it because of ideology borders on madness!
As for corporate tax, I got my figures from Trading Economics. Says it averaged 39.21% from 2000-2016 and was at a record low level in 2016 of 38.9%.
Click to expand...
I wasn't trying to compare the UK with China economically, it was more about ambition. We've got Victorian infrastructure everywhere, tortoise speed broadband in some areas (none in other areas). We have a plethora of '30 year build' hospitals dating from the mid 70's, gridlocked roads, falling down schools and we are going to take TEN years to build 125 miles of train track!
 
Ban-jani said:
The majority of what you've mentioned is down to the Labour Party of 97-2010.

Afghanistan has worked and worked extremely well. The Taliban are a fraction of what they were and have lost so much control.

Syria, unfortunately there's a murdering **** dictator who we're having to juggle stopping him killing innocent people and fighting ISIS - really not anything we could do better there without pissing the Russians off.

I will give you Iraq as if we were to go in, which I now believe we shouldn't have, we should have stayed for much longer and not left it to the fanatics.

I will also give you Libya. Quite disgraceful how The West played games there.

Not all the refugees are our fault though, it's so easy to blame the west for every fault in the Middle East and North Africa, and you'd be right with some of it, but a lot of the fault also has to lie with Bronze Age religious beliefs and lunatic dictators.

Because you believe politics has shifted too far to the right, doesn't mean a communist who's lax on terrorism should be put in charge.
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we have a clown who is lax on terrorism in charge.
 
The Light Was Yellow Sir said:
I wasn't trying to compare the UK with China economically, it was more about ambition. We've got Victorian infrastructure everywhere, tortoise speed broadband in some areas (none in other areas). We have a plethora of '30 year build' hospitals dating from the mid 70's, gridlocked roads, falling down schools and we are going to take TEN years to build 125 miles of train track!
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To be fair the Chinese are building those links as a form of soft colonialism. Economics isn't their only consideration so the equation is different
 
Damocles said:
To be fair the Chinese are building those links as a form of soft colonialism. Economics isn't their only consideration so the equation is different
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Ok. The Japanese built the Tokyo to Shin-Osaka over 320 miles, in five years (1959-64). If this HST2 is so vital it cannot take twice as long, for a third the distance, in 2017, surely?
 
The one thing telling me not to vote Labour is her as home sec.:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/80...anifesto-Guru-Murthy-ariana-grande-manchester

"In 1984 you’ve been quoted as saying ‘every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us’...

“You also said you couldn’t identify as British, can you now tell the voters that you do identify as British?”

Ms Abbott replied: “I was elected as a British member of parliament in 1987, I was the first black woman ever elected and I’m proud to say I’m a British member of parliament."

-

To be fair to her, she's one of those politicians so used to skirting questions it's probably become her default response to.
 
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The Light Was Yellow Sir said:
Ok. The Japanese built the Tokyo to Shin-Osaka over 320 miles, in five years (1959-64). If this HST2 is so vital it cannot take twice as long, for a third the distance, in 2017, surely?
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I guess there's two reasons.

1. The UK is more densely populated, with lots of vested interests, nimbyism and other associated obstacles.

2. (More importantly) the government couldn't run a piss up in a brewery. Not just this government, all governments here in the UK at least. It's one of the main reasons I'm a Tory. I think the public sector is by and large useless, and that's why I like to see as little of it as possible. Look at the failed NHS patient record system project the pissed £10bn away on. Of the defence information infrastructure project that was supposed to have cost £2bn and ended up costing £7bn. Or the cancelled Nimrod replacement which we blew £4bn on.

It's endless incompetence.
 
I worked in the NHS as a nurse (trained at Hope / Salford Royal) then as a Manager, from 1975 to 2010. My wife is a hospital Consultant and and my best friend (Manchester born and bred and a lifelong Blue) is a GP. My GP friend is fairly high up in the RCGP and has a role in direct communication with the Department of Health. She has had enough (aged 48) and is looking for other things to do. She is smart and well connected. She is convinced that if the Tories are re-elected, GP services as we currently know them will cease to exist within 3 years. That will be the beginning, as soon as the principle is established, secondary care services (hospitals) will be next. Personally I am a socialist, but I do believe the Tories have some good policies and ideas, I cannot deny that. BUT, the NHS is the most important thing to me in the next election, and whilst I have misgivings about JC and his acolytes, there is only one vote for me, if the NHS is to be saved.
 
bluebaja said:
I worked in the NHS as a nurse (trained at Hope / Salford Royal) then as a Manager, from 1975 to 2010. My wife is a hospital Consultant and and my best friend (Manchester born and bred and a lifelong Blue) is a GP. My GP friend is fairly high up in the RCGP and has a role in direct communication with the Department of Health. She has had enough (aged 48) and is looking for other things to do. She is smart and well connected. She is convinced that if the Tories are re-elected, GP services as we currently know them will cease to exist within 3 years. That will be the beginning, as soon as the principle is established, secondary care services (hospitals) will be next. Personally I am a socialist, but I do believe the Tories have some good policies and ideas, I cannot deny that. BUT, the NHS is the most important thing to me in the next election, and whilst I have misgivings about JC and his acolytes, there is only one vote for me, if the NHS is to be saved.
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I think you've been misled. The Tories are unfortunately committed to spending ever more money on the NHS. What "GP services as we currently know them will cease to exist within 3 years" is supposed to mean, lord only knows. Maybe she thinks we're planning on turning them all into golf academies?
 
As much as people like to lord the NHS for it's high moral standing, it's piss poor when it comes to quality and throwing ever greater sums of money at it won't guarantee that will change. I don't have a solution but I guess if you look at those countries who have the highest positive outcomes you might get a clue.
 
Gelsons Dad said:
As much as people like to lord the NHS for it's high moral standing, it's piss poor when it comes to quality and throwing ever greater sums of money at it won't guarantee that will change. I don't have a solution but I guess if you look at those countries who have the highest positive outcomes you might get a clue.
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And which ones would those be?
 
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