I loathe NuLab with a passion, I have never and will never vote for them. They are hypocrites who promised change (and people fell for it) and have spent the last 11 years achieving bugger all, except making peoples' lives more difficult, increasingly regulated and much harder, with increased state intrusion into all aspects of our lives. They have changed things for changes' sake, as opposed to trying to keep what worked, and much did. They have set up enormously expensive and largely ineffective think tanks and quangos that are all talk and no action.
For those of you earlier on the thread who said Mrs T backed down over Community Charge - it was only changed because it is easier to charge a property (fixed and doesn't move) than a person who can slip under the radar. CC was an attempt to sort out local government finance with the principle of paying for the amount you use. Why should a lone person living in a property pay the same amount as 4 people living next door? Those in the larger household surely use more of the services provided and should therefore pay? You also have to remember that there had not been a general domestic uprating since 1974 I think, so whatever happened, people were going have to pay more.
It's Labour, not the Tories who have got rid of the 10% rate of tax, and therefore hit the poorest in society and the pensioners, and who have not increased the income tax thresholds in line with inflation. The Tories introduced independent taxation of married women, and it now looks as if the Treasury would like to rescind that....and who has been Chancellor since 1997 until recently? Not Nigel Lawson, Geoffrey Howe, Norman Lamont or John Major, but Gordon Brown. I had hopes of a state pension under the Tories, not under this lot...and as for private pensions...Mr Brown has destroyed the pension s in the UK, and has not had the decency to repay them or help those willingly whose schemes collapsed after his raid on their funds.
And what was wrong with fighting the Falklands anyway?