General Election June 8th 2017

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

VillageGreen wrote:

Tony Blair has been commenting on the election and calling for voters not to give May a Brexit blank cheque.

he is supporting a campaign to fund candidates who would like another final vote on the exit deal.

Which is not quite funding a campaign to support candidates!

How very Labour. Unsurpassed at spending other people's money.

He still has his supporters though, I was pondering a Labour Party split after a heavy election defeat. One party under Jeremy Corbyn and pushing his socialist policies, the other under a resurgent Tony Blair and re-pushing early Blairism.

I could envisage a scenario where Labour split and Blair making a comeback grandeur, head of a new opposition party.

Unlikely to happen, but with all the crazy politics of late, you never know.

Homeslice wrote:

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

VillageGreen wrote:

Tony Blair has been commenting on the election and calling for voters not to give May a Brexit blank cheque.

he is supporting a campaign to fund candidates who would like another final vote on the exit deal.

Which is not quite funding a campaign to support candidates!

How very Labour. Unsurpassed at spending other people's money.

Well done on sticking to the Tory li(n)e, but the current Government has created more debt than every previous Labour government combined.

They don't want to know. All about looking hard, even when the person you're punching in the face is actually yourself. Still take back control and all that

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

Homeslice wrote:

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

VillageGreen wrote:

Tony Blair has been commenting on the election and calling for voters not to give May a Brexit blank cheque.

he is supporting a campaign to fund candidates who would like another final vote on the exit deal.

Which is not quite funding a campaign to support candidates!

How very Labour. Unsurpassed at spending other people's money.

Well done on sticking to the Tory li(n)e, but the current Government has created more debt than every previous Labour government combined.

Wouldn't surprise me in the least. Although Osborne did inherit a debt repayment interest rate of £500 per second. Bit difficult to cope with I would imagine.

Every Labour Government leaves office with higher unemployment than it begins with.

Why is this?

Osborne said he was going to eradicate the deficit by 2015, then it was 2018. Now it's 2022 but the deficit is yesterday's news. The state has been shrunk, more and more people rely and food banks, schools are ap egging parents for money for books and 20 NHS trusts are on black alert. So I e pact we won't be hearing about that anymore.

Possibly because the conservatives have this habit of redefining statistics which prove they are incompetent, like child poverty. At least it's not just the badgers that move the goalposts though.

"Every Labour Government leaves office with higher unemployment than it begins with."

(I have no idea whether the above is true or not.)

Because the population has risen in nearly every year since the year dot?

International comparison of average real wage growth since the financial crisis.

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Among OECD countries only Greece has seen real wages falls greater than the UK.

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Sir Francis Drake wrote:

"Every Labour Government leaves office with higher unemployment than it begins with."

(I have no idea whether the above is true or not.)

Because the population has risen in nearly every year since the year dot?

Isn't it normally measured as a percentage?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

"Every Labour Government leaves office with higher unemployment than it begins with."

(I have no idea whether the above is true or not.)

Because the population has risen in nearly every year since the year dot?

I was quoting a reply given by David Cameron during PMQ's three years ago.

Doubtless Hansards will provide proof.

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

"Every Labour Government leaves office with higher unemployment than it begins with."

(I have no idea whether the above is true or not.)

Because the population has risen in nearly every year since the year dot?

I was quoting a reply given by David Cameron during PMQ's three years ago.

Doubtless Hansards will provide proof.

So if David Cameron says it, it must be true. Cool story bro

Homeslice wrote:

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

"Every Labour Government leaves office with higher unemployment than it begins with."

(I have no idea whether the above is true or not.)

Because the population has risen in nearly every year since the year dot?

I was quoting a reply given by David Cameron during PMQ's three years ago.

Doubtless Hansards will provide proof.

So if David Cameron says it, it must be true. Cool story bro

It was in answer to an open goal question by a Tory designed to gain maximum effect.

It's rare for a PM to lie/mislead the house on such matters. They're not all like Blair.

Or is it an uncomfortable truth that you and others won't acknowledge?

Its a pretty rubbish argument when viewed in a wider context.

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The rate of unemployment was 0.7% higher in 2010 than 1997 that much is true. The level of unemployment fell quite steadily under Labour right up until the recession which followed the 2008 banking crisis.

Also worth pointing out that Labour left office in 1979 with unemployment slightly lower than when it arrived in Government in 1975. Unemployment under the Conservatives then balooned to a record high of 12% in 1983-84.

Your wrong.

What's more your graph proves you're wrong.

Unemployment rose from 970,000 to 1.4 million.

It's not my graph and it doesn't prove I'm wrong at all you don't even bother to say where I'm wrong or why, let alone provide a counter assessment.

Plus its 'you're' not your by the way.

It does show the out of work Thatcher years clearly.....the scourge of British industry,when the rise of none union firms slashed wages dramatically....complaining about your lot could have you on the dole, being replaced by semi or none-skilled labour meaning those years of an apprenticeship meant nothing in the end.....and she got a state funeral for it....and we got dregs instead of decent wages for our years of experience and skill.

Well, big Sturgers in Scottleland has echoed Ser Franny D's musings in this thread, with regard to the old electoral fraud charges...

The similarities are striking.

And this time I ain't joking.

Hugh Watt wrote:

It's not my graph and it doesn't prove I'm wrong at all you don't even bother to say where I'm wrong or why, let alone provide a counter assessment.

Plus its 'you're' not your by the way.

My reply, two hours ago, has gone missing. Spooky.

It does prove you're wrong. From Labour being elected in 1974 until being voted out in 1979 unemployment rose from 974,000 to 1.4 million.

The graph actually shows this, albeit in percentage terms.

Oh, by the way, you're missing a full stop in the first line.

I'm not sure that unemployment figures are at all reliable. In Maggie's era it is now widely acknowledged that there was more than 4m unemployed people but the official count never got anywhere near that.

There's been so many revisions to it that it is more or less meaningless. These days, I think, it measures those claiming Job Seekers' Allowance meaning that anybody on a zero hours contract , there's about 1m of them - who knows how many are working?, those forced into "self-employment" who are in effect self-unemployed, people working part-time because they can't find a full-time job, youngsters not in education, employment or training etc aren't in the figure.

It's a deeply flawed metric and has been, regardless of the party in power, for decades.

Lord Melbury wrote:

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Made me larf.

Big Tone has been popping up a lot recently. A cynic might suggest the meeja are keen to smoke him from his cave knowing he's not exactly the biggest fan of big Corbs. Fore shorely though, he is so tainted by his war mongering legacy that it can only boost the Corbmeister's appeal? Does anyone like Tony Blair still?

Lord Melbury wrote:

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[sigh] once again, the Conservatives have added to the national debt, than every Labour Government combined, the decision to go I war was wrong but it was supported by the Consevatives and the gap between rich and poor has continued to widen under the Conersatives. I'll be happy to be a twat if it means the NHS, schools and other public services stop being decimated.

It is 9 years since the global crash.

GDP per capita is still lower now than it was then.

George Osborne's economic miracle is, in fact, the slowest economic recovery in history and wage levels are still lower than they were pre-global crash despite adding more to the national debt than every single previous government in combination.

The latest economic indicators suggest that Brexit's Project Fear is becoming ever closer to Brexit's Project Fact as each new one is released.

After 6 years with Teresa May as Home Secretary we are now seeing the worst crime figures for years.

After promising repeatedly that there will be no snap general election there is going to be a snap general election.

The U turn on National Insurance means there is an unfilled black hole in the most recent budget which inevitably means yet more borrowing.

The NHS is collapsing and is missing every target it has - even my local GP surgery has recently closed because it could not recruit a permanent partner GP and could not reliably source locums (loca?) to fill the gap.

We have recently actually considered going to war with Spain over Gibraltar!

The people of Gibraltar have been sold down the river.

We unilaterally leave a club of 28 nations and then complain the 27 are ganging up on us when in reality they are just doing exactly what we have done for decades.

We unilaterally decide to leave the EU and then demand that we don't lose any of the benefits of being in the EU.

We are seeing our social care system, such as it is, collapse leaving the elderly and disabled vulnerable to loneliness and neglect.

The very existence of the Union is under threat with Indy Ref 2 looming and no sense at all being spoken regarding the New Irish Problem.

Our schools are desperately underfunded.

University tuition fees are through the roof.

Our younger people haven't a hope in hell of ever being able to afford a mortgage.

We grovel to Trump for what few economic morsels might fall our way and pledge unwavering millitary support for him no matter what.

Theresa May is actually willing to use nuclear weapons on a First Strike basis and this is seen as less dangerous and more stable than Corbyn who is not.

Theresa May's government has been adjudged, twice, to be behaving illegally regarding parliamentary process re Brexit by British judges in British courts applying British law which is in effect the exact same "sovereignty" that we are leaving EU to protect and wish she wished to disregard.

We have a Health Secretary who has co-authored a book calling for the abolition of the NHS

We have a Foreign Secretary who is, quite frankly, an embarrassment who can't open his mouth without making a fool of himself.

We have a PM who doesn't appear to believe anything at all and just follows unwaveringly whatever the most extreme Media Barons demand and who will eventually deliver the very worst form of Brexit available as a result.

The Government is only a Government because its majority was sealed by winning 30 seats in circumstances which have resulted in a fraud enquiry.

We are only having a general election now to get it over and done with before the election expenses scandal is resolved which may see the majority collapse anyway.

Everywhere you look there is disaster either in progress or looming around every corner but at least it isn't a coalition of chaos and if we repeat "strong and stable" often enough people will believe it to be true because it barely gets challenged by journalists anywhere.

I agree with SFD. Everything was great with Gordon in charge, and no foodbanks with Labour either.