I don't think even Cameron actually believes anything he says nowadays..... His austerity policy lost all credibility quite a while back, and it only continues because he hasn't the balls to stop it running out of control and totally fooking this nation up.

This government is truly the worst in my living memory and there have been some poor ones.

To get away from Dally's pretence at understanding that about which he pontificates - he lost any credibility in that field a long time ago -and to get back to the subject of the politics of the country.

I'm 48. I started voting during the early 80s when the Conservative party were in power and have voted in every single election, at whatever level, since. I believe it to be a fundamental plank of the British society.
I've never voted Conservative and never will. I see that despite their protestations they only truly represent a small part of the population, those with land and money.
I've been a swing voter between the other two all my life, alternating between Labour and Liberal/LibDem depending on which I felt reflected my views most honestly.
In recent years - probably since about 1990 - I've consistently voted LibDem as I felt i couldn't trust Blair, or laterly Brown as I didn't see them as representing anything other then a very small area of interest to them.
Now I can't see myself voting in the next election. Tories? No, they've dragged us to the bottom of the gutter than the Labour party dropped us into. LibDem? Nope, they've destroyed any credibility they had. Labour? See first comment. UKIP? Hahahahahahahahah.... A joke party that will implode after the next election, or when Farange walks away. Whichever comes first.

I honestly don't see a viable party in British politics any more.

Sounds like you should set up a party to reflect your views.

I think we should brace ourselves for some serious cuts in public spending: www.cityam.com/article/loss-uk-s ... e-sterling and, Cameron's response to the ratings downgrade: www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpoo ... -32891961/

I think we should brace ourselves for some serious cuts in public spending: www.cityam.com/article/loss-uk-s ... e-sterling and, Cameron's response to the ratings downgrade: www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpoo ... -32891961/

Your experience is remarkably similar to mine over almost the exact same period of time (I'm 50). I can't currently see myself voting for any of the three main parties and most of the fringe parties are either deeply unpleasant or pointless. Often both.

I'm going to have to find one somewhere though. I can't bring myself to abstain in a General Election.

In which case vote for a minority party whose key message is something you believe in (eg Green if you are concerned with the natural world / environment, UKIP if you are anti-EU, etc). Do not consider it a wasted vote.

I'm going to be voting Labour, probably. I have only ever voted Labour or Lib Dem, and the Lib Dems will never get another vote from me at any level.

I don't think Labour did too much wrong domestically during the Blair/Brown years, if you conveniently forget about the whole Iraq kerfuffle. The [uglobal[/u financial collapse caught most people/governments with their pants down, and it'd have been just as severe for the people of this country under any colour of government. I do think the Labour party would have been far less inclined to use the disaster to drive through an unpleasant ideological agenda of raping the poor, though. So, on that basis alone, I'll probably vote for them.

They did nothing to halt the privatisation and deregulation agenda of the Conservative years, though. They did, as many have pointed out, effectively build the bridge that is now allowing the current government to dismantle the NHS.

They didn't start these processes, but they continued them.

So for instance, we now have the government intending to close down the A&E and maternity departments at a massive hospital like Lewisham – because three PFI hospitals in a different hospital trust area are in massive, massive financial trouble almost entirely because of PFI.

On a wider level, we have a mainstream political class that, if not ideologically wedded to neo-liberal extremism, is terrified of upsetting big business and the bulk of a media that supports the supranational corporatocracy and its agenda, and hysterically spreads lies and knee-jerking myth to back that up.

And thus, unfortunately, to larges swathes of the population that swallow this, hook, line and sinker.

Perhaps I ought to have started that sentence with, "Compared to the current government..."

I agree with your comments regarding the political class as a whole, but on balance, I still think Labour are the best of a bad bunch.

The touble is the more people who have the same view as yourself the more likely we are to get another Tory government. My Grandad was a local Labour councilor and one time Mayor in Hindley near Wigan and despite the area being a staunch Labour area he never took the Labour vote for granted. His view was that Tories always vote. There is a core of Tory support that always turns out and this in my opinion is true.

from what you have said I am pretty sure you don't believe the Labour party would continue the thinly disguised assault on the welfare state that has been undertaken under the guise of necessary austerity cuts. If we get another five years of the Tories, especially in a majority government the NHS will be well and truly a thing of the past.

Andy Burnham and his views on what he would do with the NHS is therefore in my view reason enough alone to vote Labour for anyone. The party is far from perfect and as has been pointed out "new labour" was as wedded to neocon politics as any of them but the alternative is even worse IMO.

With the first past the post system we have voting for fringe parties IS a wasted vote. We are stuck with a poor choice but I would have thought the blatant and deliberate dismantling of the welfare state undertaken by the Tories while the Lib Dems sit meekly by is enough to vote them out and the only way to do that us vote Labour.

I've likewise only ever voted Labour or LibDem. My problem is that Labour started the processes which have lead to ridiculous fees for higher education and creeping privatisation of the NHS. They lost my vote when they introduced student fees and they've done nothing since to incline me to reverse that decision. The LibDems are off the agenda for obvious reasons. At the moment I'm left with the Greens as the only palatable alternative and the last time I read one of their manifestos it was a joke.

I look at it this way:

There are two parties that have a realistic shout of securing a majority. If I don't vote for one of these parties, I'm effectively wasting my vote (given that I won't ever vote Lib Dem again). Out of the two, I'll be voting for the one that is less likely to shaft the average man in the street in a bid to make things better for the richest few per cent.

Labour are far, far from perfect, but they're the best choice available if you don't want to see a Tory majority.

Until I moved down here, I'd only ever voted Labour, even when living in Cottingham (staunch tory) but I soon realised that a Labour vote down here really is a wasted vote, so switched to LibDem. The incumbent has managed to scrape through at each of the last three elections and much as I hate the Quisling, bearded, fat bastad that is David Heath, the alternative to him would've been Rees-Mogg's sibling Anunziata and that was unthinkable. So come 2015, Heath will probably get my vote again.

I also imagine there will be increasing numbers in the nation who will vote ABC - Anyone But Cameron

Huge amount of truth in this.

Although at present, I live in one of those areas where you could pin a red/blue/yellow rosette on a monkey and it would get in. So in a way, I have the luxury of being able to vote in a way that does not demand tactical voting. Makes bugger-all difference, though.

Oh aye - I'm aware of the pragmatic position. It might be that come election time I'll put my principles to one side, hold my nose, and vote Labour for the very reasons you outline. I won't be happy about it though. Labour may do less damage in general but by introducing charges for higher education they enabled the current Government to blight an entire generation with a lifetime of debt. Since that includes both of my kids you'll have to forgive me if I take it rather personally.

Likewise in my constituency although we did once have a Labour MP, just for one term, other than that its been a Tory one for the whole of my life until the last two elections when we've had LibDem, at the moment he'll get my vote next time for two reasons, he keeps a Tory MP out, and he loves a beer and fights for small breweries and against large brewery tied leases.

I see your point about Labour having 'started the ball rolling', but it was the Tories/Lib Dems who raised the fees to such a ludicrous level. One could argue that the fees were manageable under the Labour system (though I am very much of the opinion that higher education should be entirely state funded), and that it's unfair to blame them for the Tories tripling the levels of debt most students are likely to leave university with. And I reckon the Tories would have found a way to introduce the fees without Labour having laid the groundwork.

Labour broke with the principle of free higher education. It was entirely predictable that fees were only ever going to rise. Moreover, in order to do so they started the stereotyping of privileged students being funded by the underprivileged masses. If they had done neither of these things it would have been hugely more difficult for the coalition to have introduced fees, let alone at the current ridiculous levels. It also made it impossible for them to mount an effective counter-campaign when the fees were increased, as they had started the ball rolling themselves.

I don't think people realise the long-term damage that the current system is doing to this country. And Labour started it.

It was, but I don't think it's reasonable to say that the rise the Tories introduced could have been foreseen at the time Labour introduced fees. The Tories have opportunistically utilised the financial crash as justification for the rise (and for most of their other abhorrent policies), and, since few people predicted the crash, even fewer could have predicted the tuition fee rises that were later blamed upon it.



They did, but there's only so much blame they can take for that. If the Tories abolished the 22p tax rate, would you blame Labour for having abolished the 10p rate first?

The biggest damage is that the huge increase in school leavers going onto university has lead to large gaps at the bottom end of the employment market, and also a steep rise in youth unemployment due to over qualified people leaving university with totally inappropriate qualifications for the modern day jobs market.

There is nothing wrong with encouraging youngsters to make the best of themselves, but logic tells you that not everybody can be a highly paid doctor or executive.

Also, the huge increase in university numbers could never have been funded 100% by the taxpayer.....30 or 40 years ago when only the cream went there, then maybe, but in these days of every Tom, Dick and Harry going there, then it made common sense to bring in some sort of fees system.

It's easy........... Honest!
At 47 I can still bare to look at my face in the mirror after declining to vote for either Kinnock or Blair.

No the rise in youth unemployment is due to there not being enough jobs.

Its not like there are loads of vacancies going unfilled because they can't get the staff.

If there had been a steady increase in youth unemployment in line with the increase in school leavers going to university then I would have agreed with you, but youth unemployment was lower during most of the 2000s (the period of large increase in university uptake) than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. It has only gone back up (and still not to the levels seen under Thatcher and Major) in the past three years since the financial crisis.

I'd go a bit further, maybe the take- up in university places, despite the cost in future debt, is because a degree and debt is more attractive than being unemployed.
If more jobs were available, more would be thinking that they might as well be earning.

I agree. A mate of mine is going to university after a year of being unemployed. It's not for a specific degree in a particular field. He simply doesn't know what else to do.

The quality of HE is dependent on the money that goes in, and quality was going to suffer without fees of some kind, or a vast increase in taxpayer input. Labour made the call that more University places should be available and offset some of the cost with fees. These were noble sentiments but there were two crucial factors they overlooked IMO. 1. economic slow down (recession anyone?) that would result in less public money and potentially more students trying to get an advantage in a dwindling youth employment market. This has resulted in the absolutely inevitable increase in fees - and it's going to get worse.
2. Fees will eventually result in a two tier system where only the rich can get the best education and the rest end up with a uselss piece of paper from a converted sixth form college and a debt that crushes them until middle age. This could have been avoided. When fees were introduced there should have been a scolarship scheme introduced that guaranteed the top performing students (5-10%) were exempt from fees and received some form of maintanance grant. The object of HE (again IMO) is a chance for the country to invest in it's resources (people), and higher fees will lead to large numbers of talented, bright kids from less well off backgrounds (even the middle classes must look at fees and uni debt with horror - I know I do) will be lost to the system. What a waste. Exactly what grants and free HE was intended to put right - just like it did for me.

The system is f*****d now. Un-fixable IMO, debts are here to stay. When/if my kids go to Uni they will have to go to the right one, do the right degree or not bother.