Cameron's bloody awful too, isn't he?

[porcupine11]

Just saying.

& a bottle of rum

I find Cameron neither charming nor charismatic - more patronising & self-satisfied

The peasants never have any power and their supposed champions tell the peasants not to strike. They aren't our betters, they want to create a meritocratic society with social mobility so that anyone can rise up the ladder. They don't want to hold the peasants back, because they believe in wealth creation and prosperity. They know that wealth is generated by the ingenuity of the people, not by a handful of bankers in the City.

What civil liberties do you miss the most, Claig?

They support small businesses not just the huge conglomerates, because they know that small business employs the majority of the public and is the engine of growth. They believe in wealth and growth not stagnation and sustainability, like some of their opponents do.

We won't miss any civil liberties because we have the party of the people in charge, the great LibDem party with their great British liberal tradition of freedom and the great Conservative party who believe in the same things. There'll be no no Stasi DNA database and ID cards for every British citizen.

Which small business do you know who are being supported, Claig?
Which peasants do you know whose interest are being furthered?

Yes, but which of all the myriad civil liberties you lost 1997-2010 do you miss the most?

I don't miss any of them because Clegg told us he would tear up teh infringements on our civil liberties. He has stopped their plans and reversed them.

Have you read what CHarles Moore wrote in the Telegraph? (It's on another thread)
'It has taken me more than 30 years as a journalist to ask myself this question, but this week I find that I must: is the Left right after all? You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls ?the free market? is actually a set-up.

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.'

He's a conservative, btw.

Most small business owners support the Tories and always have done, due to their business-freindly policies, lower taxation and less regulation and red-tape.
Those small business people are also peasants compared to the Murdochs and teh Blairs on their huge salaries. Those small business people employ other working people if their businesses are allowed and encouraged to thrive.

But, Claig, I feel I summonsed you up like a genie out of a bottle - and you are brave to come and be fired.

Fired? Flamed, I think I mean. Do I?

So when we were losing all the civil liberties, which one was the most annoying?

I have read it and I have commented on it. I agree with most of what he says. But I think he is being disingenuous. At the end he says the left's remedies are useless and he prays for conservatism otherwise we are lost. If you read it carefully, you will see that he only uses the left to knock the right, but says the left are useless. So you have to ask what is he really saying?

Malcontent, do you remember when we could walk down the road without being filmed on CCTV? Didn't you rather like not having to show yourself in your naked glory to some customs officer every time you went abroad? And do you feel safer now?

Yes - a rather selective quote, but I agree with that part of the article.

I've never shown myself in my naked glory to a customs officer under any government!

If you mean the scanners at airports, I just generally felt a bit better than I knew no-one on the plane would have a secret pistol up their arse, to be honest!

I think I walk down most roads without being CCTV'd. But if I walk into town and there is one, at least I know if I was mugged they'd have a better chance of finding out who did it.

Malcontentinthemiddle, there was the DNA database and ID cards which would have cost billions, but which Labour were determined to introduce even in our dire financial climate, and there was double jeopardy. I can't remember all of Labour's nightmare policies, but Henry Porter in the Guardian and Observer has written lots about it. If you want to know all of Labour's harmful civil liberties policies, just ask Nick Clegg because he is scrapping them one by one.

Even Miliband said that Labour were too draconian on civil liberties

www.politics.co.uk/news/2010/7/7/ed-miliband-labour-overstepped-the-mark-on-ci

Here's Henry Porter in teh Guardian discussing how we were saved by the elction result from more of Labour's attacks on teh civil liberties of teh British people.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/16/henry-porter-civil-liberties-coalition

As far as I know, Porter is left wing, but he has certainly got their "progressive" trick sussed

'This is a palpable benefit of the new coalition government, which should go some way to changing the minds of all those who protest that Labour was qualified to retain power by forming a "progressive alliance" with Liberal Democrats. Seems to me these people are still in the slow lane; or they haven't come to terms with the way Labour savaged liberty, while claiming support from progressives as its moral entitlement.'

Oh, I remember it well. They came round our house and they took all our DNA without so much as a by-your-leave.....

What did they do, when they were in power, that made you particularly feel that your civil liberties were in danger? As opposed to things you like to feverishly imagine they might have done one day?

I think you are wasting your time & talents, Malcontent - it's taken 6 posts for you to get to this point (& I bet you still won't get a straight answer )

The biggest attack on civil liberties comes from the lack of true democracy, surely? The fact that you don't know what you're voting for because people break their promises. The fact that the politicians and the media are hand-in-glove to trick the electorate into keeping them in power. The corruption in the government and police. Etc.

I just read those great papers, the Guardian and the Observer, and that great journalist, Hugh Porter, who spends a lot of time looking into such matters. I think he knows what he is talking about. And I also think that Clegg and Cameron know what they are talking about, which is why they made it a priority to go against Labour's plans.

Hugh or Henry, claig?