Quids Said - would you do it?

[Marmora Man]

???? said in the Gordon Brown thread:

I'll be voting Tory for the first time in my life....my dad will spin in his grave....but there's no way this government*deserve any longer in office...

* edited to make sense of the quote

Would you also be voting Tory at the next election?

If so - why?

If not - why?

[mockney piers]

Umming and aahing.

This government *must* be taken out of power. Can't bring myself to mandate the Tories however, just can't.

People will vote with their pockets and will blame Brown for the recession (not entirely without justification) and the Tories will get in without my vote.

[charliecharlie]

no... how ever much it might make sense (if it does, that is) I just could not do it, no... never!!!!

hhhmmm.... perhaps it's something about the female role models in the party....

the Labour lot below...

http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/images/articles/786.jpg

which would you choose(?)

[Mikecg]

I will not be voting for either idiot from the current main parties.

[mockney piers]

Is it just me or does the top photo look like a bunch of cardboard cutouts have been photographed?

[DaveR]

"Would you also be voting Tory at the next election?"

Yes. Like you, MM, I'm a libertarian at heart, and the Tories are the closest we've got to a libertarian party. The fact that they appear to be less socially conservative now than before makes it an easier choice, and the disaster that is Gordon Brown makes it easier still.

[Mikecg]

Reminds me of a photo which was taken of a politician at a launch or opening event who wasnt actually there and they added him later, can't for the life of me remember who it was tho....

[SeanMacGabhann]

What mockney said basically - any party which has behaved as Labour has done and does not get punished at the polls would send a dreadful message to any future elected parties

But no I won't be voting Tory. I will never say never (although this comes close) but Cameron and co? They will probably get in anyway but I can't play a part

Given that they will probably get in I will end up voting for the most benign candidate I can find and effectively waste my vote

[Mikecg]

James Purnell British Culture secretary far right lol, Digitally inserted.

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/purnell.jpg

[Brendan]

I?m relatively new to the British political landscape but I have made a few deductions so far.

- Voting for a party that has a clear mandate to look after the interest of a select few at the expense of society in general and completely disregards social conscience, and community would be irresponsible for any free thinking individual.

- Voting for a party whose only argument against the bad guys is based on fundamentally flawed and outdated ideology even though they are happy to adopt their policies is also irresponsible.

- There is no valid option but to vote for some kind of opposition to this whole mess.

- Somewhere in the upper echelons of financial and political power there are people who are very chuffed about the fact that the voting British public essentially have no democratic say what so ever but rather spend their time bickering about invalid, outdated and unhelpful arguments like, left v right, liberal v conservative, blue v red.

[Jah Lush]

Never again.

[Asset]

no, totally against my grain.

I don't know what the answer is. Any administration after 10 years is going to be tired and lackadaisical but as Huge put it more eloquently than I could, the last 10 years has seen a lot of positive change.

I agree with Sean that the Tories will get in at the next election (oh the short memories) so will probably also vote for, say, the Greens.

[Ted Max]

All Vince all the time. If he was leader he'd be worth 5 points in the polls to the Lib Dems. Clegg, though, is a void.

Trying to keep the tribalism and "remember what they were like last time" out of it, I'm not sure the New Tories have made any sort of case for what they are about this time around. Their biggest policy success has been the inheritance tax, which was a smart piece of politicking, playing to people's inflated sense of personal worth at the height of the property bubble. And hardly evidence of a new conservatism. Apart from that, it's all mood music.

[Jah Lush]

NO MATTER WHO YOU VOTE FOR THE GOVERNMENT ALWAYS GETS IN

Preside!.....Order!.....Order!

Noises on the radio, megaphones on cars

Sermons from the street of shame, know-it-alls in bars

Posters in suburbia, experts on TV

Don't let them disturb-i-ya

They're just the powers that be

Hey-Ho!

Don't worry! Nobody can win! (Hey-Ho! Hey-Ho!)

No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in

Hey-Ho!

Oh great, great slumbering nation

Awake! Set yourself free

Oh! Smell the comforting bacon, taste the bromide tea

And give a little chirrup as I ladle on the syrup

Promises are cheap

Let me bear your crosses, make me boss of bosses

Then you go back to sleep (Ha ha ha)

Hey-Ho!

Don't worry! Pop your cross in the bin (Hey-Ho! Hey-Ho!)

No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in

Hey-Ho!

Hey-Ho!

Hey-Ho!

Hey-Ho!

Memories of a finer place in comfortable Shangri-La

Then they too have their Shangri-Las

Shangri-La La La!

See them in the public eye, oozing oily charm

Hear them all personify, down on Animal Farm

Dog eat dog, but cock and bull isms are the game

Ism this and ism that

Isn't it a shame!

Hey-Ho!

Don't worry! Nobody can win! (Hey-Ho! Hey-Ho!)

No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.

Hey-Ho!

Don't worry! Pop your cross in the bin (Hey-Ho! Hey-Ho!)

No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.

Don't worry! You know you can't win! (Hey-Ho! Hey-Ho!)

No matter who you vote for, the government always gets in

[Mikecg]

Yeah we dont need Dangerous Dave and Milliband the trainee warmonger I don't trust either of those two Mr F*ckit ups.

[Mikecg]

Alastair Darling what a James Hunt.

[Brendan]

I seriously can?t grasp the mentality behind voting for a party that has a track record of fascist style control and exploitation just because the other lot are too crap to run a country properly.

Vote both of them out. Take to the streets! Demand better.

[Mikecg]

H Harperson, god when you look at them they all have bits missing I only like Jack Straw.

[Huguenot]

You get it twice you bast@rds, because Asset liked it and it got no airing....

Oh, I don't know it's so black and white.

I can't disagree that the government has utterly lost it's way of late, just as MM and Mockney Piers observe.

I've always argued that a government can actually 'do' very little. The majority of the budget is tied up in social services, health, education and defence. None of these respond to short term (i.e 10 year) improvements because they're crippled by the unions and by bureaucracy. Nurses and Teachers got paid more, and a few more got employed.

You could argue that deregulation in financial services wasn't well thought out, but that would be to ignore the larger picture. Globalisation, protectionist employment demands, and a lack of national resource put paid to manufacturing. There was nothing left but financial services. Any government would have come to the same conclusion. Financial restrictions would have brought the country to its knees ten years earlier, and the City could never have funded the nation.

Other 'goverment' legislation was progressive - devolution and London's Mayor have all delivered more power back to the people.

In the workplace, the national minimum wage was inspired, paternity leave was generous and you now get 24 days paid leave in full time employment.

Environmental policy means we're now scoring better on rivers and beaches since pre-Industrial revolution, and fox hunting was banned. They saw the end of fur farming and greater restrictions on the testing of cosmetics on animals.

Socially we saw the end of clause 28, a horrendous piece of fascist legislation which the Tories tried to enforce in the Lords. We saw the introduction of the equality and human rights commissions.

Internationally we saw cancellation of penal levels of debt for poverty stricken countries, and a doubling of the international aid budget.

Finally the ramifications of the Iraq war are impossible to discuss reasonably, because the majority of the nation is in denial about how utterly dependent we are on oil and how critical it was to alter the landscape of the Middle East to secure the viability of the UK. It is anathema to discuss the possibility that the UK went to war over resources for fear of inflaming global sentiment.

In the end it was an exercise that had no realistic alternative outcome. If oil had hit $300 or $400 per barrel because of the posturing of dictators in the Middle East then the country could have become an industrial wasteland with no possible resolution in sight.

We live in the UK at the expense of poverty in the rest of the world, because there simply isn't enough of everything to go round. They don't like it, and the UK will eventually pay the price.

So who knows?

But at the moment, yes Labour are prats, and so are the Tories. The whole lot of them are blundering around in the poverty of their own initiatives.

So there...

[Huguenot]

Yeah, sorry, never done that before. But still...

[mockney piers]

Gives me an excuse to finally refute a few of your points (not to mention straw men), but have a train to catch, so watch this space ;-P

[Huguenot]

You booger, I'm waiting...

[Siduhe]

I'm currently undecided, but my personal election driver will be not to vote for a party which supports the introduction of ID cards. I have no significant objection to the cards themselves but do object to the proposed database which will sit behind them, the fact that it can be accessed by multiple departments who would not ordinarily have access to the information contained on it and most of all to the fact that the current proposals suggest that at some point in the future the government will allow selected third party access to the database by commercial companies such as insurers.

More practically, as David Blunkett himself said at the end of Feb, all of the data which is necessary for the ID card scheme is already being received via the new style passport applications anyway, and in order to do this the government didn't need the ID cards Act in the first place, so I genuinely query why we're spending ?5.1bn on the program over the next ten years.

It's my particular bugbear, and will have a disproportionate effect on the way I'm planning to vote as a result.

[????]

Quids also said "Do Osana in the Champion Hurdle" :'(

[Tony.London Suburbs]

Any Party that will continue our proud Benefits Culture and removes as much freedom from the individualas possible is fine by me, as I believe "The Government knows best"...

Oh! and can we please have more CCTV-I advocate one for every room for every house to negate and destroy the likelihood of private Domestic abuse. A CCTV Camera for every 20 yards in every street would be deirable too.(providing funds are available)..

As for the Parties:

Lib Dems: I would have offered massive odds that they would not be so out of touch with the electorate to have voted Menzies Campbell as their Leader, but I was wrong, as they did.

Now if Charles Kennedy was their leader again, THAT would add 5 points to their vote, imo.

The electorate's memory is only so long. Few thought Labour would ever get in again after their disastrous Administrations, culminating in the "Winter Of Discontent" but they did...

Basically I'd vote for any Party that finally removes all power from our little Government and hands it, in its entireity, to those nice people in Strasbourg and Brussels.

We also need more Human Rights and more rights for anyone caught committing any crime.

Abolish all prisons, as well.

Lets have a free-for-all with the last Man standing....