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ratty Wrote:

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

> People have such short memories. If you think the

> county is in trouble now it is nothing compared to

> what the tories will do to it. It'll be a sad day

> when that bunch of bastards get back into power!

> :(


Agree! That disgusting smug rodent-faced organic champagne-swilling creature Cameron and his toff pals will make this country even worse. I pray they do not win the election.

Marmora Man, I think the problem with this kind of letter is that its weaker points, some of which seem a bit bizarre and edge towards the green ink, detract from the central accusation, which is that as the FSA is Brown's baby, and the FSA's failure is Brown's failure - which makes Brown wholly responsibile for the economic situation.


That's as may be, but the problem for the Tories is that it just doesn't wash with people to hint they would have been for tougher regulation, for telling the bankers to rein it in. If Brown had tried any of that who do you think would have been accusing him of stifling creativity and wealth creation with red tape - and making our financial sector less competitive.


Also, people are aware that we are not the only country in the schtuck. Sure, we are heavily exposed, due to a reliance on the financial and services sector. People are also aware why we are so reliant on these sectors, it is the flipside for many (no doubt you would disagree) of the collapse in our manufacturing sector. Making it stick as Brown's crisis takes more than a dislike of the man and tribal partisanship.


It's politics, so people are going to play these tricks. But you don't have to believe in it, surely, as an advocate, in the recent past on the EDF, of serious debate.

The thought that this awful, incompetent, lying, corrupt, liberty removing shower MIGHT even get back in....will, I think, mean that, with no great faith, I'll be voting Tory for the first time in my life....my dad will spin in his grave....but there's no way they deserve any longer in office...


I might just turn back to anarchy

Have you seen how useless Harriet Harman is? i wouldn't put her in charge of my Sunday lunch....if Brown got assasintaed (please god please) she'd be stepping in....


Talk about champagne swilling tories.....That twat Milliband from a family of middleclass Hampstead 'socialists'.....got into Oxford with crap A levels...on a scheme for deprived inner city kids!!!!....lecturing us on equality and opportinity for the deprived, and talked about being a future PM.....fuck off you thick twat


Mandleson...I mean... bunged out of cabinet twice for unethical behaviour, slease bag beyond belief, false mortgage, dodgy friends....another 'socialist' whith family links to the Labour party...still sitting on a ?1m euro-pension, nice work if you've never done a proper job


Tony Blair...where do we start...if we can get him out of his Buckinghamshire mansion, Bayswater townhouse or ?million pound lecture tour, I'd like to ask him about those WMDs...still, a good catholic he can confess all that guilt away



Gordon Brown - no proper job ever, hubristic, no vision, a dour, scottish socialist bully of a twat,with no proper intellect, who has well and truly fucked us up and whose egoism means he won't even show a slither of contrition for this


Labour are a bunch of awful hypocritical slimebags ...I'm gonna give the posh, champagne swilling twats arun at it

But Quids, in 10 years time you'll be saying the same things about another Tory Gov't, have you already forgotten the Major sleaze years?...there's a huge vacuum in British politics waiting to be filled, and Cameron ain't the man...

*dusts down old copy of The Jam's Eton Rifles and reminisces about the good old days*

I'm no fan of the Tories, but the Major sleaze was mostly of the Secretary shagging sort coupled with a misguided sense of arrogance and invulnerability. Labour sleaze, almost from day one with the Ecclestone F1 bribe has been much more insidious and much more corrupt. They've single handedly dragged Britain a few slots down in the world corruption index.


Scum, utter scum the lot of them. Agree about Harman, though would put Blears at the top of the hideous, self-serving, unprincipled scumbag list.

What do you think, Marmora Man?


I think the charge sheet as laid out by Steven Katarai is valid as a set of allegations (despite the spelling errors). I don't think Gordon Brown is single handedly responsible for every ill set out in the letter but he did have a hand in all of them to a greater or lesser extent; he and the Labour Party should answer the charges or give way to another political party. Of course they will do neither. Brown is a formidable political operator (not the same as a formidable politician and he is certainly no statesman) who has marched rough shod over his rivals in Labour - resulting in him being the biggest shark in a murky pool of minnows. At the same he has used weasel words and actions to avoid taking any responsibility for any of the issues - the standing of politicians is now lower than it was in 1997, quite an achievement for the supposedly moral party.


His apparent inability to admit that he has ever been wrong or in error is actually doing him more political harm than such an admittedly damaging admission would be. Somehow he can't see this.


The knee jerk reaction by some posters against the Tories is small minded. Politics and political decisions should not be tribal affairs but a rational argument - I would argue that the current government has:


a. Run out of steam

b. Achieved very little in its 12 years of power. Particularly so given the enthusiasm that greeted its arrival - it had both the opportunity and the political good will to make a real difference to many - to reform the NHS, reform education, transform relations with our European neighbours - but it has squandered all this. The only piece of New Labour legislation that I can wholeheartedly support if the anti smoking bill.

c. Become little more than a squabbling group of small minded individuals rather than a party in power; it is more reminiscent of student debating society during Freshers week.


The Tory opposition is still weak on too many key areas - I would wish it was more positive, was publicising the true cost of New Labour's errors and proposing costed solutions to the problem(s). The Conservative party has not taken the real lead it should have as an opposition given the poverty of the government's arguments but it is beginning to work out a coherent set of policies on the economy and in other areas.


I would recommend anyone interested in social justice to look at the output of Ian Duncan Smith's Council for Social Justice think tank. Many of their emerging policies and thinking are based in reality and developed in conjunction with people who have lived with and through the actuality of poverty.

I would totally agree with pretty much every word of that MM, with exception to the penultimate paragraph.


I'd suggest their opposition isn't so much 'too weak' as that it hasn't come up with a cogent set of alternative policies and are reduced to point scoring.


As usual I think the liberals are performing the best here (I didn't say anyone was really running with it, but best of a mediocre bunch) but as usual they will never receive a political mandate to give it a go. We're a pretty unimaginative and conservative (small c!!) electorate when it comes down to it.

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