I can't tell you how much I hope the Conservatives win the election.

EXPATINSCOTLAND Whoever gets into power will have to make massive cuts! I suggest you think about leaving the country, because you'll probably have a better time ina Banana Republic, which is what we will have become, but at least you'll have the sunshine in a real Banana Republic!.

The poll tax actually was a fairer tax. Paying per person in a property still makes sense to me. Why should an elderly person living alone in their house, where they have possibly lived for 20 years and have seen the value skyrocket, pay as much as a young family living in the same house?? The rates had to go up, people were protesting mainly the fact they had to pay more, not the system of how they had to pay it

In the 12 years I have been a single parent, I am much more worse off. My wages have gone up but my basic outgoings have spiralled. I used to be able to save, I have spent every penny of my savings and can no longer afford to put anything away. I want to see someone else in power as right now, my life sucks.

Where the fuck does this "Tories don't care about the most vulnerable members of society" come from? Seriously - wtf? Do your really think people in your community who "vote blue" will be piling their old folk on to a bonfire come May 7th?

And once again, I have to ask - where exactly do the Labour supporters think the money is going to come from to carry on with this game of cash for all?

I see that you all want to carry on with your hands out - but not ONE of you has been able to say "the money can come from x because y". Gordon has run out of other's people's money to spend. I don't know how more simple it can be made to comprehend!

This Labour administration has killed more manufacturing than the Conservatives did in the 80s. That is a fact.

We have more more than 3 million unemployed right now today - why the fuck aren't people rioting in the streets? I'm as confused as any of you on this point - why the complacency?

Scaryteacher, I realise I didn't have to pay the lodgers Poll tax but out of the household expenses pot my then DP and I had to find £800 opposed to £200.

Magenta, you had to find £400 for your CC, as it was based on the individual, so it was not comparable with the rates. The problem was that the Rateable Values hadn't been uprated since 1973, the last general domestic uprating, so whichever way you cut it, what you paid was going to increase substantially, either by increasing the RVs, or the rate poundage.

The only reason IMO and IME that CC was scrapped was that it is easier to slap a tax on a property that doesn't move and for whom ownership/tenancy agreements can be provided, than an individual. Having worked in both CC and CTAX, I know.

Bruffin when you talk of the Poll tax riots fuelled by the Militant tendency are you thinking of the Trafalgar Sq riot which started due to a bunch of anarchists setting fire to then appartehid ridden South Africsn embassay? Or where you thinking of encoursgement to not pay the damn thing? The protests outside of courts and not letting the ballifs into houses to steal the assests of non payers? I'm rather glad that people stood up and took on Maggie. My rates at the time where £200 prior to the poll tax then my household of 3 adults had to find £1200 A YEAR. My council tax bill in 2010 isstill lower then what my then household was asked to pay that first year of the Poll Tax.

Exactly Bruffin - I was a bit younger than a teen but I remember Red Robbo at British Leyland and the constant strikes.

Yes they did, they were that powerful. I was a teenager in the 70's. I remember the 3 day week. Car strikes, miners strikes they were constantly on strike. They made themselves unemployable. England had one of the lowest productivity levels in the world at the time.

From the telegraph;

"Crime, we are told by the Home Office, is going down. Maybe. But violent crime, according to the Centre for Crime and Justice, has been going up."

And yes, to echo previous posters, I am so happy to be losing tax credits, access to surestart schemes (mainly because I don't live in a 'deprived' area, see free nursery hours cut. Yes it will be great.

Whatever fiqures you use - violent crime has fallen.

So unions were sooooooooo powerful that they closed down car making, coal mining, ship building, steel works etc etc etc. I don't think so.

(BTW - shame on them for trying to maintain decent standards of safety, conditions and payscales for their members.)

Still.........we have nice coffee shops and telephone call centres now instead.

Unions were ther problemn not the conservatives fifitot, they held the country to ransom all the way through the 70's and companies moved abroad because of it.

Viloent crime less under labour - only in yourt imagination and the labour party cooking the figures. Most violent crime is not even reported nowadays.

BTW violent crime has actually fallen under the Labour party.

So Labour messed up the country in the 70s and in the 80s the Tory's built it up again. LMFAO. Anyone who was an adult in the 80s who doesn't remember it as a living hell unless you were pretty well off and lived in the South, must me mad!

4 million unemployed and it was comfortable for the Tory's to keep them like that. Talk about creating a benefits culture - one we have never recovered from.

The North was decimated by the closure of all major industries which then went abroad because there was no commitment to sustain them by the goverment, despite it meaning jobs and communities would disappear.

Bloody riots on the street because people had sod all and their lives and communities were disintegrating around them. And if you think the Iraq war is madness - please tell me what the flaming Falklands war achieved, apart from giving old Maggie something to crow about.

Ah yes - happy times in the 1980s.

I look forward to coming back to this thread in 6-12 months time to see if everyone is so happy then.

electra - the don't appear to care about the most vulnerable in society because they don't

People who are Tory think that everyone has the power to 'make something of themselves'.

They don't. Our society has lots of prejudices, still ("even after 13 years of Labour govt' etc etc blah blah blah) - gender prejudice, racial prejudice, prejudice based on class, prejudice based on wealth.............and the argument that people should be able to take control of their lives and become a success is pathetic and proven rubbish. Individualism works to a certain extent but not to the extent that Tories think. It is a special human thing that if we are very successful at something we attribute this success to ourselves and something we personally did 'brilliantly' as opposed to the opportunities or privileges we were given ........and this phenomenon is known as the Fundamental Attribution Error. Please note the ERROR part. It is an error for Tories and privileged people to think that they personally, themselves are responsible for their 'success' - it is luck and opportunity. This is the problem 'lefties' have with Tory philosophy.

That is absolutely true MintHumbug - and if the Conservatives had been arguing for these changes (greater regulation, promoting the manufacturing base more strongly, warning of the dangers of relying on financial services) then I would feel far more optimistic about the idea of a Conservative government.

I probably still wouldn't vote for them, because I have fundamentally different beliefs about the importance of equality of outcome in society - but I would have greater optimism about their ability to predict and manage the economy more effectively than Labour.

In practice, what I see (though others may disagree) is that the two parties were pretty much in agreement about deregulation/financial services etc - and that both have had a Damascene conversion following the international crunch.

MintHumbug - you make a lot of fair points - particularly the war (although the Cons supported that) and the gold reserves (a total fuck-up, although I believe that the advice was mixed at the time).
But my problem is that so many of the fundamental underpinnings to the crisis date right back to the Big Bang & 1986, and the massive deregulation of the City. Unfortunately, I don't see any signs that Brown changed direction in any fundamental way from the previous Cons govt, other than giving independence to the Bank of England (which was generally considered A Good Thing at the time). Nor do I see looking back any evidence that the Conservatives were arguing against deregulation & promotion of the City - rather the opposite.
So, whilst both parties are now clearly aware of the problems, I don't think that the Cons. would have done anything different in the past 10 years or so on the bank/City front.

Don't tell me what I know. How rude.

I think we will have to agree to differ because you are being deliberately adversarial. What I believe about the tories is that they don't appear to care about the most vulnerable members of society and I consider many of those (though not all) in the party to be unprincipled people. It has nothing to do with 'handing out 20s' - it has to do with their ideals. Which kind of amount to fuck em.

I hate seeing people posting that they don't want the Tories to get in 'cos of their bad mamories of the 80s. Regardess of whetehr the 80s were bad or not its a totally different party now, different people and different policies.

It would be like saying well I remember the 70s and the Winter of Discontent and therefore Labour are crap.

You have to judge them on how they are now, not 20 or 30 years ago.

To Op - you are a loser

Sorry, there are rather too many percentages in that post

With regard to the 'stop spending money you don't have', it is worth bearing in mind that on a global (or more to the point Western European) scale, government expenditure in the UK is not particularly high as a percentage of GDP.
You have to do a bit of calculation to find the figures, & I can't link to a table of Europe only, but this link here has done the calculations based on information from the CIA World Factbook (Govt expenditure here and GDP here ). The UK is certainly not near the top of European nations, it is a little above Germany, but behind France, Austria & Denmark amongst others.

The point being, I suppose, that there is no automatic reason why we should cut government spending in order to balance the budget, rather than increase taxes. From a purely economic (rather than social) point of view, there are some sound arguments for taxing the higher income members of society and redistributing to the poorer when you need a boost to the economy and are at risk of recession - because poorer citizens are more likely to spend a higher percentage of their income on basic goods & services, where a higher proportion are produced in the UK.

"I remember the 80s as being very violent times."

Electra,the violence was caused by left wingers who were throwing their bottle out of the pram because they couldn't get their own way ie the unions realising their gravy train was coming to the end.
The Poll Tax riots were fueled by the Millitant Tendancy the forerunner of the Socialist party.

Now this week my 14 year old has been mugged for the 2nd time in his life. Every few weeks another teenager is murdered in london. The violence against children today is sickening!