Forum Topic

The stark choice.  GOOD  OR  EVIL

Come Thursday we will all have a simple choice.  Do we want to see a continuation of the distribution of wealth in favour of the rich, (vote Conservative) or do we want to see a more caring, humane and fairer society, (vote Labour.                                       The Conservatives have made great  play about halving ‘the deficit’  when their plan they told us 5 years ago was to eliminate it. It’s interesting to note that the deficit after World War II was greater than it was in 2010 and yet the then Labour government created the NHS and developed the welfare state. Here are some facts you won’t find in the Tory press.  This is the slowest recovery from recession in 100 years.House building is at it’s lowest since the 1920’sThere are fewer owner-occupiers  and homelessness is up by 33%Manufacturing and construction are operating below pre-recession levelsThere are 500,000 extra people working zero contract hoursMore than 900,000 people rely on food banks. 15 times more than in 2010We have witnessed the first fall in living standards over  a five year period, since records began.The Conservatives have been at their most disingenuous in claiming that Labour were the cause of the international crisis in 2008, when the reality was the greed and incompetence of their baker buddies.The  cutbacks in the public sector have still not been fully realised  by people.  Our hospitals,  (remember our local A&E’s) the police, the prison service, and local authority services are going to have a telling effect for the worse on so many people. For those of you still ‘on the fence’ I urge you to consider, do you really want to see the continuation of the decline of our society? Or do yo want something better? The choice is yours.

Tony Loftus ● 4144d15 Comments

Thank you so much Tony. I was afraid you'd notice.

Maire Lowe ● 4144d

Floating voters. Presumably they were face-down in the Thames when you met them.

Tony Loftus ● 4144d

Agree! Good vs evil, I mean how very stupid and crass

Gary Sinclair ● 4144d

Oh, that Ed. You had me confused. I thought you were talking about #Edstone Ed. Thank God it'll all be over tomorrow...

Peter Millman ● 4144d

I dunno if it would make any difference to Tony, but four 'floating voters' told me today they intended to vote for Angie tomorrow because of some of the sillier Labour postings on here. Keep it up chaps! You know not what good you do.

Maire Lowe ● 4144d

It looks like Ed has been reading too many Tory handouts to recognise what is really happening to our country. I admit I was wrong about zero hours, it's not 500,000 it's 697,000. Check with the Office of National Statistics if you don't believe that. You might also want to look at The  Trussell Trust on http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-figures-top-900000 to see how many people rely on food banks.Ed said he could go on and on. I'm sure he could, but it wouldn't make any more sense.  He deliberately ignores the issue of public sector cuts.  I actually worked in the prison service for 10 years during which time I witnessed huge cuts in the staffing levels since 2010. Cuts that have now made it much more dangerous to work there. I witnessed numerous assaults on staff, often by inmates who should have been in mental hospitals, but because of cuts to the NHS are placed in prisons. The police force is being decimated.  Hundreds of job cuts.  No doubt there will always be enough officers to protect the well to do areas. The madness of creating Free Schools is astounding.  In Scandinavia, where they originated they are seen to be a failed project and their policy is changing. Gove must have known this before he pushed this ideological policy through.My caption Good or Evil was obviously tongue in cheek. the last time I saw the expression in print was in one of my kid's religious studies books.  Admittedly there did follow a 'lefty diatribe' about loving your neighbour and being good. Perhaps  Right or Wrong might have been more appropriate.

Tony Loftus ● 4144d

Purple!

David Wright ● 4144d

You can always tell with subject lines like "good or evil" that want follows is most likely to be lefty diatribe based on deliberate misrepresentation of facts.To Tony's point, the reason you won't find his "facts" in the press is because they are made up.CLAIM: There are 500,000 extra people working zero contract hours#FACT: 1.9m new jobs have been created, of which around 2.5% of these are zero hours. Of these new 47,500 zero hours jobs 66% of the workers don't want any more / guaranteed hours. So that's 15,000 workers out of 1.9m that are in zero hours and don't have the hours they want.https://fullfact.org/factcheck/economy/zero_hour_contracts_facts-41165CLAIM: This is the slowest recovery from recession in 100 years.FACT: It was deeper than any other recession, so the comparison is not like for likeCLAIM: House building is at it’s lowest since the 1920’sFACT: 145,174 dwellings were built in 2014 - that's an increase on the 102,000 built in 2010 (remember that houses take c12 months to build so this reflects the houses where construction started under the last government.http://tomchance.org/2013/03/20/who-built-all-that-housing-in-england/CLAIM: More than 900,000 people rely on food banks. 15 times more than in 2010FACT: The Trussel Trust estimates they had 500K unique visitors in 2014, with an average of 2 visits per person. The number of people "reliant" on food banks in the UK is lower than comparable European countries, even Germany. To put the 500,000 visits into perspective (each with 3 days food), that's 3 million person days of food out of 23,7Bn person food days for the whole population. So food banks currently provide 0.000126449% of meals.CLAIM: Manufacturing and construction are operating below pre-recession levelsFACT: More manufacturing jobs were lost under the last Labour government than either the previous Tory one or the current Tory / Lib Dem coalition. Output from manufacturing is at a record high in many sectors including automotive - which has one the largest supply chains.I could go on but frankly you should do your own research before making stupid "good vs. evil" type arguments.

Ed Yelland ● 4144d

Blimey!Sounds like its time to rev-up the Starfighter, pop R2D2 in the back and get out my light sabre.Red or blue? What dya think?

Richard Grange ● 4144d

Wasn't it Rupa Huq who made  so many statements condemning Tony Blair and at one of her first hustings said if she saw Tony Blair she  would be compelled to perform a citizens arrest. Wasn't it Rupa Huq who then took the £1000 Blair money, citing elections cost money.Wasn't it Rupa Huq who called herself a Muslim with humanist tendencys. What the heck is that.Wasn't it  Rupa Huq who when asked at the last hustling about how and by whom she was financed. Chose gloss over the subject and start haranguing other candidates in some cases being quite personal.

Jan Gayle-Farlow ● 4144d

The anti-austerity argument which suggests we don't need to cut borrowing because we set up the NHS when we were just as much in debt after the war doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.Most of our debt after the war was domestic at the time other than funds coming through the Marshall Plan from the US. Perhaps more importantly we didn't have the future liabilities that we have today above and beyond the debt most particularly in terms of future pension payments. These will absorb an increasing proportion of available tax revenue and it is just fantasy to claim that any Government can avoid the task of reducing first  the deficit and then the debt. Ealing borough alone has a pension deficit of close to half a billion and this is not included in the debt figures you see.Ed Miliband has said categorically there will be cuts and with education and health spending guaranteed it is inevitable that the most needy in our society will face further hardship whoever is elected.On the NHS there also isn't a clear good and evil argument either. Labour under Blair did a relatively good job with the NHS and I would agree that you would normally expect them to have the more genuine commitment to the service. This time around it might be worth rethinking that. The Conservatives seem to be promising slightly more in terms of funds and Labour will almost certainly be more generous to the public sector health workers. If the overall budget is more or less fixed and if more goes on staff costs then standards of care must fall.In addition the rhetoric about saving the NHS from privatisation suggests Labour will restrict the amount of contracting out that the NHS can do. Given that they introduced more private sector participation into the NHS themselves and lauded its success, it is hard to see this change of view as anything other than for the benefit of the service provider rather than service users. If the door is being closed to costs being cut by introducing a cheaper alternative then once again you should expect services to decline.Assuming that you mean bankers rather than bakers the ultimately responsibility for the financial crash lies with regulators rather than banks. Countries that were well regulated suffered little direct financial fallout. Labour substantially deregulated banking rules, with the Conservatives saying they hadn't gone far enough, so nobody wins this particular argument.Neither party deserves much credit on housebuilding and homelessness either. We have not been building enough homes for decades. Ultimately only more liberal planning laws will deliver more housing but, as you can see from other threads, this won't be popular.I find it hard to get worked up about zero-hours contracts as a relatively small proportion of the work force are on them - some of whom are employed by the Labour party. If it is a choice between poorly paid occasional work and no work (which sadly it is) then zero hours contracts are the lesser of two evils. The two people I know personally who are on them are quite happy with their working arrangements.The fall in home ownership is not really the fault of the current government. Regulation of banks has gone from too light to too heavy and it has become laughably difficult to get a mortgage now unless you fit exact criteria. Relatively well off people are being forced to rent when previously they would have had no problem buying.Overall I don't see a great difference in moral terms or in practical terms between the two main parties. Economic policy is largely dictated now by international markets as we owe so much money. A loss in confidence in the UK would lead to an immediate spike in interest rates so even if you don't believe Ed actually wants to make cuts he almost certainly will have to.That, for me makes the decision largely about the quality of the prospective MP. I think Angie Bray has been a good constituency MP but, from what I have seen, Rupa Huq would do an excellent job as well. It is a tricky choice - certainly not one between good and evil!

Andy Jones ● 4144d

Thanks for taking the trouble to identify the missing 'n' in bankers. My typo could have been much worse (and funnier). However I'm sure they won't mind too much losing an 'n'. Last time they lost £850bn

Tony Loftus ● 4144d

Speaking as a baker, I take great offence to this slur on my profession.

Bob Little ● 4144d

well said Tony.  I have seen no evidence at all of a recovery (do house prices count?).

Gail Peters ● 4144d

Seems a bit harsh to blame bakers for the financial crisis - I know some of them overcharge for pastries but we have a free choice not to go over our heads in debt to buy them.

Andy Jones ● 4144d