forum voting intentions

[Ned]

They know what each party's policies are so they should know now who they are most likely to support. Of course I am not naive. They won't care about policy and will go for whoever offers them the sweetest deal, hence they don't deserve my vote.

[Ned]

In Peterborough the Lib Dems have no chance. They have a solidish support of about 5000 - 6000 and Tory and Labour hover around 17 000 on a 60% turnout.

[David Johnson]

"egards the Mod budget being huge,granted, tho im sure we entered it in 2002 which is 8yrs and not 4 in real terms...unless my maths is as appalling as my grammar or perhaps your doing a "chilcott" on me?"

Hi,

What I am saying is that there were four individual years since the Labour party came to power in which the spend taking into account inflation was a reduction in real terms. 97-98, 99-2000 in these years we were not in Iraq/Afghanistan as you correctly state and years 04-5 and 06-07 when the deficit was -.7 and -.1.

In all other years there were increases in real terms which is why the overall average of real term increase between 97 and 09 is 2.7% per year

Hope this makes sense.

D

[Masie]

None of the above, i will be bothering to void my vote this year as really just none of the above. No one is offering anything thats not spin, they're all the same but with different ties oh and some want to fuck up the economy by pulling out of europe compleatly. Sigh - watching the debate at the moment its soooo painful, i've seen porn stars that deliver their one liners better than this lot.

Im swingign slightly Labour simply because there already doing what ever it is they do so hopfuly they will continue to not effect my day to day, the fear is that one of the other lot (god i hate camerons face) get in and start doing there brand of the same ideas differently and they start impacting on my life.

[David Johnson]

"If you are a company like Tescos for example, that ?15 per month per employee works out at several tens of millions in a year."

Agreed. The national insurance rise is a tax. What it is not, is a tax on jobs. When you decide to hire or fire someone, the vast majority of businesses have a business model which includes the costs and the yield in terms of sales/product manufactured etc. anticipated. Typically, for each employee you are looking for a yield which is many times the cost e.g. salary etc of employing that person. In that scenario, ?15 per month is not a decision-making factor in whether you hire or fire someone.

"As I understand it (and I may be wrong, so feel free to correct me), but the Lib Dems, amongst other things, will change the status of non-doms, so that after 7 years they will pay tax on offshore income, they will stop the use of offshore companies to avoid stamp duty on properties, and HMR&C will be given new powers that effectively "tax" companies (ie accountancy firms) who offer help to others in tax avoidance (I'm not sure on the minutiae but I understand that if XYZ Accountants save ABC plc ?500m by avoiding paying tax then XYZ Accountants get "taxed" on the savings they make their client, thus removing some of the incentive to come up with tax avoidance schemes)"

First, tax avoidance is legal. Therefore ,if something is going to be deemed illegal, I am not absolutely sure but I would be surprised if one day it was legal and then at midnight a tax avoidance scheme became tax evasion and was therefore illegal. THere would be a notice period which would allow companies to move to the Plan B which I mentioned in my original post. Given that tax avoidance is legal, I do not see how accountants can be "taxed" retrospectively for schemes that were legal at the time but have since become illegal. It would be something like me being fined for using a mobile phone in the car in 2000 because there is pictorial proof even though it was well before it became illegal.


"There is no reason why Barclays, for example, cannot be split into two separate entities; one being a traditional high street bank and the other an investment bank."

I'm no financier but given Barclays is a global bank I wonder how this could work with branches all over the world handling investment and retail banking when major countries do not agree to split banks up It is also worth pointing out that in a number of cases in the UK it was the retail side with dodgy mortgage lending (sub-prime) and business lending which got into trouble.

On the subject of no like for like replacement for Trident, which you point out is a Lib Dem commitment, it is worth pointing out that the LIb Dems intend to replace it with another nuclear system, not yet specified and therefore not costed. There may be huge savings or not. At the moment we don't know.

CHeers
D

[SpannerProductions]

Hi Ned,

I know - its pathetic isn't it so it really only comes down as always to a 2 horse race.
Mind you I suppose we should be greatful that given the very large number of different cultures in peterborough - anybody has to be better than BNP or somesuch - they fucking scare me to be honest, and i've jumped out of planes !grin!

[Deuce Bigolo]

Labour have clearly run out of steam

Conservatives are still on the nose after 25 years as the fear of what they might resort to is clear to see amongst comments


If I had a vote I'd do what i did in australia whwn the same scenrio reared its ugly head

Vote for the 3rd party simply so policies which are extreme can be thwarted

Curios that our 3rd party in Australia was the Democrats as well
They had a nice party motto..."keep the bastards honest"

[nasty]

As a Labour party member who lives in a Constituency that they'll never win, I'll be voting tactically for the Lim Dems to keep the Tories out.

[nikonman]

After reading all the replies on this subject I for one hope that a hung parliament will emerge after the election.
Why..
Because of our grave economic situation the worst since the end of WW2 requires a coalition goverment to try and get the country out of this mess.
Without this the parties will only carry on trying to score points off each other once again.
I dread to think what will happen if the IMF do downgrade our borrowing levels. Which could happen.

I notice that Nick Clegg has been the only one to mention that there could be civil unrest in this country this summer after the election.
Hopefully this will not happen, but a long hot summer with many kids coming out of school and uni. with no jobs on offer, and a strong possibility of benefit cutbacks could spark this as in Greece.
There are also many on both the far left and right who could encourge this for their own political gain.
Also a bad performance by England in the World Cup could start some off.

One more question
What are the readers views on scraping Trident and ID cards.
Could be a saving of over ?100 billion.

I also dread to think what the security costs are going to be to the country in 2012 with the Olympics taking place.

[SpannerProductions]

Nikonman asked:-

"One more question
What are the readers views on scraping Trident and ID cards.
Could be a saving of over ?100 billion."

IMO,

Trident - scrap it completely , we dont need more fucking missiles, The constant threat of long range conflicts never really seems to get off the ground, and we have enough ballistic armaments already - saying that however, if the powers that be decide to send ground troops into combat areas, might be an idea to spend money on decent equipment for the man in the field - if they have to be there by government decree, lets at least give them a fighting chance of coming home again.

ID Cards - strangely I have always thought that this was a fairly good idea....
unless you have something to hide .....there should be no issue - If (big if) it can be enforced properly and the cards themselves can not be faked!!! then maybe we might have a country with only people living here who are legally entitled to......it might also help reduce benefit fraud etc which would probably save more money in the long run.......perhaps!!