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Post by medibot on Aug 6, 2008 17:38:18 GMT
Remember i'm 21. Remember i don't give a flying f**k about things that happened before i was born or while i was still in nappies. It's utterly irrelevant to the future and what has happened in my lifetime.
I don't care if the old tories started pushing through tuition fees and the like.
It was a Labour government that kept them moving through and passed through a system of grants and loans so utterly useless that only the very rich or the indescribably poor will come out without debt and not be forced to work through their time at uni inhibiting their studies and chances in life.
The idea that university is a right of passage and a three year piss up rather than something for the academically gifted and/or as a path through to a career is a result of the ease of which you can get into University now. Courses accepting three C's or lower is simply not University education.
It is a Labour government trying to get rid of the free selective Grammar school education anybody with a scrap of intelligence can benefit from for FREE.
Ten years on children still leave Primary School unable to read or write. They leave high school with no qualifications and the idea they are stupid because they are not academic rather than with the option and opportunity to pursue other careers.
Education, Education, Education anyone?
It was a Labour idea that 50% of people should get into uni, an idea totally ignoring the irrelevancy of many degrees and the entire point of a higher level of education.
It's under a Labour system of benefits that the chav culture so despised in this country has prospered.
The leader is unelected and yet this crime against democracy is simply accepted.
The cabinet lacks experience and any real coherence and the disasters of it's unelected leader and our Prime Minister are well documented.
That the man did not have the balls to go to an election should tell you something.
The duty on beer drank in pubs is taxing people away from the safest drinking environment available to them in attempt to scrabble a few extra pounds into the treasury and take a few more scraps of enjoyment from our lives.
Education. Beer. Living Costs. Chav Culture.
The four biggest impacts on my life, all fucked up by a Labour Government.
The Conservative ideal that you get what you work for and not what you think you should get appeals to me and should appeal to anybody with any self respect. To work hard and still get screwed over by a supposedly socialist party is unforgivable.
If you'd expect only one thing from a Labour government it would be that everybody would be able to have a job and a living wage.
Granted a Conservative government will just be moving onto another bunch of optimists and dreamers waiting to get corrupted by power and f**k it all up but if you took the time to go on their website and read the policies and tell me afterwards you'd prefer another four years of Labour government having seen what ten years of their power has done instead of the slight possibility some of those policies might actually become reality then you are an idiot.
And anyway, in the most part, the rich get richer cos they were smart enough to get rich in the first place. There will always be rich people but it doesn't mean there should always be poor, uneducated, forgotten people.
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Post by J Esaj PRA on Aug 6, 2008 19:02:28 GMT
This thread hijacked by... To work hard and still get screwed over by a supposedly socialist party is expected. Fixed. Get it off your chest youth (along with that pink gay pride t-shirt), as we're looking for something a little more up-beat at the GBBF!
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Post by Col ISIHAC. on Aug 6, 2008 19:43:35 GMT
Jase; classic! Nick - you are advised to go study political history and economic theory carefully before cramming successive administrations worth of carve ups on to the plate of one man. A manifesto; as has been proved - by this administration AND its predecessors, is simply a list of proposals. Nothing more, it is not contractually binding, but a wish-list. Whichever party site you visit will offer up pretty much teh same list; apart from possibly the Lib Dems, they have balls and brains, but can afford to be radical as their chances of election are slim to slimmer. If you are to consider yourself a responsible adult, then you are obliged to consider our political history in series, not as a snapshot. No party can implement everything in what is effectively a 4-year term; and it is only during the last two longer term administrations that any PM has had the chance to chance his or her arm on anything other than short-term economics. 1979 - 1997; prosperity and bust in equal measure, public services, utilities and resources sold - along with council houses. War with Argentina and Iraq; thr Irish "problem". 1997 - present; massive increase in public investment in an effort to redress the balance from capitalism to socialist in a rather watered down manner, true, but foolhardy none the less. a stable economy, part inherited, part down to Brown being a good chancellor. All economic cycles have a natural downturn; a restoring of balance. War with Irag, and in Afganistan - Croatia & feck knows where else! The ending of conflict in Northern Ireland. Ignore this at your peril. As for the view that this govt has tried to bully Oxbridge into taking chavs, so we could claim to have as high a proportion of 18+ youths in higher education; Do behave! Grades; my younger daughter is hoping to go into medicine - she needs at a minimum an A & two B's, ideally three A grades. Olde style red-bricks which offer outmoded or non-voctional degrees are now in competition. We have too many higher ed campuses with a Uni label. Too few to train young people in the sort of hands-on skills which would get us through a post-apocolyptic trauma - not gonna happen, but it's a valid ilustrative point. I have little respect for traditional age grads; personally, the one thing which many graduates leave college without, is a realistic view of their worth & prospects in the labour mrket, fuelled by a lack of common sense or reality. You, mate, are not doing a great deal to alter that view! Ironic. Industry, with few exceptions now views non-voc degrees with the same scepticism that it does GCSE pass rates, yet we see more graduates year on year.
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votp
Steaming Bovril
Posts: 328
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Post by votp on Aug 6, 2008 20:31:27 GMT
Well said ISIHAC, would have written it myself had I only been to Uni. Actually I did go (under a Labour government) and then worked in the NHS under Thatcher's (*) regime and it was not a pretty sight. Medibot, I'll put it down to the idealism, enthusiasm but inexperience of youth. The cold hand of 80's policies run through this rather insipid centralist government, it may be a long while before we can rid ourselves of it (and if you detect inexperience in this lot, wait to see what happens if the buffoon Cameron gets in!).
(*) Not many people I'd say this about but the buntings ready.
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Post by coops on Aug 6, 2008 22:49:33 GMT
We have by far the best PM to lead us through the global (i.e. not just us!) economic crisis, of course the selfish bastards will vote him out and we'll end up with Cameron. Oh f**k, and I really mean, oh f**k.
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Post by ambersalamander on Aug 9, 2008 0:54:37 GMT
Remember i'm 21. Remember i don't give a flying f**k about things that happened before i was born or while i was still in nappies. It's utterly irrelevant to the future and what has happened in my lifetime. I don't want to be argumentative, but I was slightly alarmed by this point of view. I mean- really? When I was 21 I cared deeply about history, especially things that had had a direct influence on the way things were as I grew up. Personally, I disagree that things that happened before we were born are irrelevant to the future, and I would say that is a rather narrow approach to take, not to mention naive. Did the entire world burst into being fully formed the moment you were born, or did it exist beforehand? Of course it bloody did; of course every day, week, month, year, decade and century influences the next in huge ways whether you were there or not and surely learning about where things lead is ESSENTIAL if we want to avoid making the mistakes our predecessors made. One of my clients, a man in his 30s with a learning disability, was recently asked some concept-testing questions as part of a psychometric assessment. One of the questions was "why do people study history?" His answer was something like, "Because you can change the future, but you can't change the past. If you study history then you can learn from other people's mistakes." Now, Mr Medibot- if a man with an IQ of about 65 can understand this, then I am sure that you, an exceptionally intelligent man, can do likewise!
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Post by medibot on Aug 9, 2008 4:24:08 GMT
meh. ALL of you have missed my point about being 21.
Maggie Thatcher is not the leader of the opposition and she is not going to stand at the next election.
Therefore why the f**k should i care what people perceived she did to them. It has little relevance to who i choose to vote for now and why.
I do not choose not to buy a Vauxhall because i once had a Viva that broke down every week because a Vauxhall now would be a completely different car.
It is a different world now and i have different concerns and a little more wit, originality and vision than to simply churn out the same old anti-conservative tosh because everybody else does.
I just feel if people could get over Tory Bashing and mocking the Liberal Democrats and so on we would be in a far better state then we are now.
As a political party the Conservatives WERE outdated, heads stuck in the sand and ignorant. I do not doubt that and you won't find me attempting to defend their last few years.
Now though, in my opinion they have finally woken up a little and are looking forward to the future and considering what will matter then.
Yes, WebCameron is a little cringe worthy but policy papers on Energy and Skills and Training and so on show they have considered what a 21st century political manifesto should consider and they are attempting to move forward and offer what people might want now and in the future.
If the ignorant people from Guardian-land (the stereotype one, obviously, some parts of the Guardian are excellent and their website is brilliant. I still think a lot of their journalists and readers are ignorant and lazy but since i've bothered to read it i don't make catch all sweeping judgements...) were to be believed London should have imploded by now under the "Tory Buffoon" Boris Johnson.
As it is he's turned out to be quite competent, sourcing good advice from people who know more about certain things than he does, keeping himself out of the newspapers when it's merely unnecessary ego boosting and not related to policy or change and generally not screwing anything up.
I have a fair amount of faith the same will be true if the Conservative Party came to power.
In fact if a certain unelected Prime Minister had any balls they may already have been in power.
Yes, there will still be the odd mad old thatcherites kicking around and cloud cuckoo land Liberals fluffing around with unworkable ideas but if people BOTHERED to research the alternatives a little more and give those parties and candidates some respect and to take them at face value rather than just get their news from the pub and odd news bulletin then there might be a little more respect for the various opposition and little more realisation of the utter joke our current government has become.
I'm not saying VOTE CONSERVATIVE in a little blue rosette, i'm saying please at least objectively consider them and the Lib Dems and The Greens and Plaid Cymru and Labour and the SNP and so on rather than assuming stereotypes and reverting to dull snidey comments.
Nothing saddens me more than people voting because they hate somebody or "could never vote so and so" with such tunnel vision lack of consideration for the possibility they MIGHT find more of what they want somewhere else.
This coming from a 21 year old who has never been able to vote (too young for the last general election, officially a Brighton resident for the London Elections) and is not going to waste his first with an uneducated and badly researched vote.
It would just be nice if i could trust others not to waste theirs.
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Post by amberaleman on Aug 9, 2008 9:30:49 GMT
Poor Nickster! The thread that bears her name has developed into a platform for heated political arguments. If this debate is to be continued, could it please resume somewhere else?
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Post by ewelldon on Aug 18, 2008 16:43:17 GMT
There are some disused railway sidings in Crewe....that would be a good place!
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Post by ojiveojive on Sept 6, 2008 22:38:07 GMT
Having been away for a while sunning myself in Tuscany I seem to have missed this discussion so intend to stick my oar in and add my two pennorth. As a fifty eight year old life long socialist I can cynically say that anyone with the misconception that any of those canvassing for our support to elect them to govern us is doing it for any reason other than to get their nose into the trough is living in cloud cuckoo land and is as crazy as I was when I thought that Tony Blair's New Labour would bring in radical policies to genuinely effect change for the better for all of society. Power corrupts, there's no need for the rest of the cliche. The irony for our contributor who thinks that it is his life experience is all that matters ignores the fact, as someone else has pointed out, that politics happens in a continuum and that Cameron is espousing many Old Labour policies dressed up in new clothes, in order to create distance between himself and Blue Labour, who stole all the Tories' clothes. The concept of 'you get what you work for' ignores those less able, unable or uncapable of following that doctrine. It also harks back to the doctrine of 'crumbs from the table feeding the poor' rather than catering for their needs whilst those with the resources are allowed to ignore the less well off around them (think gated communities). If government doesn't take care of those unable to take care of themselves then we revert back to the Victorian model of charity whereby decisions are made that affect peoples lives by people that, driven by the best of motives, believe that they know best what is good for other people and as these benefactors will have different ideas and resource streams it becomes impossible for them not to bring their prejudices and the prejudices of their benefactors into play and those that did not conform to the norm would find themselves excluded further from taking any part in societal life. There is no 'one party fits all' solution to our problems and whoever you vote for, the government will win.
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Post by Sultan of Cannock- SRFC on Sept 7, 2008 23:56:15 GMT
I haven't missed voting since i was first allowed to in 1978, champing at the bit as i was politically aware back when i was at primary school. It was especially galling not to be able o vote NO at the Common Market referendum back in 75.
I was a red-hot Socialist back in my younger days but realised before the Saatchis' did that "Labour doesn't work". They seem to have had a personal vendetta against me and my family over the years. After 25 years service, My Dad lost his job in '74 when the Labour government with the connivance of the EEC paid his company a subsidy to relocate in Cwmbran. I was on the dole for 6 months under the Callaghan government after leaving school. I couldn't get to uni because my parents earned the minimum at which parental contributions kicked in and they couldn't afford to pay it. As my mother put it "We can't afford to keep you in idleness."
Much of the shocks that occured in the 1980s were just down to our own uncompetitiveness as we'd paid ourselves top dollar for crap productivity and went on strike at the drop of a hat in the 60's and 70's. I became so conditioned to it that when i heard on the traffic news last week that "the cones were out" on the A38 I was having difficulty in getting my head around the concept of traffic cones going out on strike!
When i finally got a job in November '78 my first pay rise was 20%. Unfortunately, inflation was 23%. Maggie didn't cause the mass unemployment of the 80s - our customers ( or rather our former customers) did by not putting up with our expensive prices, poor quality and unreliable delivery.
I held down a job and was doing ok thank you very much for 19 years, only to end up back on the dole within weeks of Blair getting in as my company was hounded out of Wednesfield by the Labour council and the Local Labour MP. I lost two more jobs before having to start again, right at the bottom of the ladder in the Toyota press shop. I've only ever been unemployed under a Labour government. So much for "things can only get better!"
At election times, i have usually ended up voting Conservative though i always like to look at the candidates and see if they're any good. Ironically, in the "Election That Never Was" last year i was actually going to vote for my local Labour MP Dr Tony Wright. However, Brown bottled it and now Dr Wright will be stepping down.
Looking at life through a Buddhist perspective, you can see that all problems that humankind faces, from global warming down to the credit crunch, are down to human greed. We wreck the planet to make money. The housing market goes crazy because people see a house as a piggy bank rather than a place to live. As i believe, you have three purposes in life. 1) make an honest living so that you don't burden others, 2) try to help others less fortunate when you can, 3) Meditate and try to be a better person in preparation yourself for the next life, if, indeed such a thing exists.
On leaving the house every day, i attempt to keep to 5 basic precepts. 1) Don't Kill, 2) Don't steal, 3) Don't tell lies 4) Don't commit adultery 5) Don't take any kind of addictive substances. In this way, ( New Labour's 3000+ newly created criminal offences notwithstanding) even if i don't get a better deal in any next life that may or may not exist, at least i can stay out of gaol in this life!
I
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