David Cameron PM in November?

[Lizard]

So Michael Barrymoor it is then.

[colonel]

warren zevon rip wrote:

> Lizard wrote:
>
> > Bring it on I say
>
> Unlike this Tory:
>
> >>On Monday, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former Conservative foreign
> secretary, said: "I think to contemplate a general election two
> years after the last general election when you have a healthy
> working majority in the House of Commons is a constitutional
> outrage."

What? A Tory hypocrite? Never!

[Sam Slater]

Free swimming lessons for all under 25's!

[Dickie Davies]

Author: mucho_matcho_man
Date: 10-03-07 23:37

In reality this country is run by civil servants, consultants and think tanks - so it doesn't actually matter who is PM or what party is in, they just act as the current mouthpiece. Anybody could be PM, the policies would be the same.

Mucho - I'm not sure you remember the Thatcher Government. She blasted her way through the Civil Service and you were either "one of us" or out of the game.

My view is that, however much people might be tired of Labour after ten years, a Labour Government is much better than any sort of Tory Government on offer at the moment or in the foreseeeable future.

If Brown goes to the Country next week, I think it will be less about his thouhts on the economy and more that he thinks he can get his own mandate and hopefully get the Tories to dump Cameron who is, despite everything, their best bet.

Even after all this time, memories of the last Tory Government are still far too raw for me. Whatever the papers say, we may still wake up with a Tory Government in four weeks time and that scares me stiff.

I fear all the warm words (never mind anything green) would quickly be thrown out of the window. Anyway, we will see.

As always, interesting times.

[keithphillips]

Unless you are rich it is maddness to vote for the Tories. I've probably said this before but in Mrs Thatchers time as PM the Tories took 8 billion pounds from welfare spending and at the same time gave 8 billion pounds in tax cuts to the rich. The same will happen under Cameron.

One of the first things a Cameron government will try to do is to get rid of the minimum wage because paying workers too much is bad for company directors profits. We will then be back into the 80s situation where companies were paying ?1 an hour!

Keith

[andy at handiwork]

You are probably not far from the truth there, but what is an old leftie like me to do? For all the social benefits and things over the past 10 years, (not overlooking the unforgiveable things) I consider ID cards to be the greatest threat to our privacy and liberty ever proposed by a government since 1945. A vote for Brown will ensure that a few years from now, under pain of a ?2500 fine and worse, you will have to attend an 'enrolement' interview at which you will give your fingerprints and by then probably your DNA as well, every address you have ever lived at, and a further wide range of private/personal info that will be accessable by a huge number of public and private bodies, but not you. And god help you if anything on the card is wrong due to official error. Every time you join a library, open a bank account, need to collect a parcel from the post office, have medical treatment for that nasty little infection, fill a prescription, report a crime, want a parking permit, act in someway to arouse plod's suspicion (very easy these days), make an enquiry at the town hall about rubbish collection or your council tax, want to attend the Olympic Games, in fact just about any time you are going about your private business, a record will be kept of that action and a picture of your life is there for misuse. Tied in with the total surveillance of our car journeys and no part of our lives will be our own property. How long before the police set up ID checking points of 'undesirables' ( all of us soon) in the High Street simply because they can? No administration can be trusted not to misuse this material, either by selling it to the highest bidder, or by perhaps sometime in the future using the cards as an internal exile system, or a means of precise social/political/sexual control. We already have a government and police force that treats us all as suspects, a vote for another New Labour term will make it even worse. When it sinks in how wrong and intrusive ID cards are, I can see it becoming Labour's 'Poll Tax'. With a bit of luck it will make them unelectable for years as a punishment.

[keithphillips]

Id cards don't bother me at all, I really can't see how they are a threat to liberty. And if it stops only one terrorist attack it is worth it.

Cameron is a much much bigger danger.


Keith

[keithphillips]

In reality this country is run by civil servants, consultants and think tanks - so it doesn't actually matter who is PM or what party is in, they just act as the current mouthpiece. Anybody could be PM, the policies would be the same.



Nothing could be further from the truth. A Cameron government would have policies for the rich. He is an old Etonian and would run the country for other old Etonians and big business.

The Tories have only one policy, they have only ever had one policy, and only ever will have one policy, and that is to make the rich richer. Every thing they do is with this objective in mind.


Keith

[andy at handiwork]

I said they are a threat to privacy, make suspects of us all, and are a potentially dangerous tool in the hands of a future authoritarian government. And do tell me how they might prevent a terrorist attack. If you are so concerned about public safety, limiting all motor vehicals to 20mph, totally banning alcohol and tobacco, make healthy diets mandatory, would all help, but the efforts would quite clearly be totally disproportionate to the benefits. So it is with ID cards. They are an waste of time for addressing any of the professed reasons for having them. I dont want there to be a central record of my legal private activities, nor do I want to be forced to continually show who I am to petty and not so petty officials.