On 29 Sep 2014 at 10:32pm Spotlight of Guilt wrote:
What a flipping nerve!Osborne flips houses and owes the taxpayer £55.000 !
Check it out here »
On 29 Sep 2014 at 11:10pm voter wrote:
wants to freeze benefits........but not MP's wages.
On 30 Sep 2014 at 12:59am Karma wrote:
The Conservatives are nothing better than Utter Scum!
They swindle the Country's wealth into their own back pockets!
Talk about scroungers the Tory's have already taken the biscuit.
Hope they Reap what they Sow!
They deserve an ISIL Court hearing all to themselves!
On 30 Sep 2014 at 6:29am Mark wrote:
The Evan Davis/David Cameron interview on Newsnight last night was quite entertaining. I'm looking forward to an interesting general election. The Sunday Times this week had Ed Milliband on pg 1 going on about his mansion tax and Mr Cameron on pg 3 promising to "end youth unemployment" by eliminating benefits for under 21s. We haven't seen such clear water between the two parties since John Smith died.
On 30 Sep 2014 at 6:30am Mark wrote:
The Evan Davis/David Cameron interview on Newsnight last night was quite entertaining. I'm looking forward to an interesting general election. The Sunday Times this week had Ed Milliband on pg 1 going on about his mansion tax and Mr Cameron on pg 3 promising to "end youth unemployment" by eliminating benefits for under 21s. We haven't seen such clear water between the two parties since John Smith died.
On 30 Sep 2014 at 6:54am Sword of Truth wrote:
My interest in News Night has been somewhat less since they appointed Duncan Weldon as Economics Correspondent.He was at that time working for the TUC and had been an adviser to Harriet Harman. That is not the main problem though , I was a regular reader of his blog and his views are vehemently anti Conservative. His suggestions included Nationalizing the Banks.
It was an extraordinary appointment that makes all Newsnight coverage of politics worthless.
It is, of course, typical of the way the BBC propagandizes for its cause ,well aware f the importance of setting the agenda on debt to their own income.
Cameron is being dragged right by UKIP and Ed was put there by the Unions to be their mouthpiece. If Labour get in at the next election the disaster which will hit all those not in their client groups (Public Sector Unions ) will be terrifying. A Maniosn tax is a gesture but sadly , so too is Ed Balls endorsement of Osbornes spending record .
Labour`s backers always crawl out into the light after the election and they will be coming for every working family in the country. Addot that we will have immigration up to a million per annum and roll over for every new EU power grab coming
I wonder if theere will be a country left , I know they don`t care
On 30 Sep 2014 at 9:01am tom wrote:
I'm not a fan of Osborne but he's better than Ed Balls.
The prospect of Ed Balls in the Treasury looking after our very fragile economy is worrying.
If the polls look like Labour are going to win then sell any assets. Buy gold because we'll be in for a nightmare - worse than France, Spain, Greece.
Long-term, it will be the economy that pays for better NHS, schools, etc - Ed Balls ideas are well intentioned but half baked.
On 30 Sep 2014 at 9:53am Dangerfield wrote:
Janan Ganesh is spot on in the FT today -- I think he may know our very own Sword of Truth.
"What makes the Tories the most consistently unmanageable major party in the western world are not the views of its rebels, which are neither base nor unusual, but the certainty with which they hold them. They believe there is one Truth, which is knowable to humans. They are affronted when their world view is not made real in its entirety by the prime minister, David Cameron. They think of politics as a total war between ideologies with a decisive outcome, not the endless haggle it has always been. For people who like to invoke nationhood, they possess little of what defines the British: doubt."
On 30 Sep 2014 at 12:47pm Ex Labour Voter wrote:
This Labour Party is not a Labour Party.
They masquerade as a Labour Party and all those wonderful men and women who were the foundation of the Labour movement will be turning in their graves at what it has become.
This lot have betrayed the working classes for years but I'm sure some of you will be happy when they've given it all away
On 30 Sep 2014 at 1:47pm Unmask UKIP. wrote:
Ex Labour Voter = UKIP public relations monkey.
On 30 Sep 2014 at 2:27pm Stig of the Dump wrote:
The Biggest Threat to Humanity Today isn't ISIL or Al Qaeda Pandemic Diseases or Nuclear War..
It's the Conservative Party and their belief that they have Super-Intelligence that is the Imminent Threat!
They will Sh!t on Everybody to get their own Twisted Views made Law!
On 30 Sep 2014 at 5:40pm Stig of the TV programme wrote:
Whoever lowers the price of petrol gets my vote
On 30 Sep 2014 at 7:16pm Ex Labour Voter wrote:
@Unmask UKIP - I'd thank you not to refer to me as a monkey and I really feel you need to watch your language.
Very blinkered, rather thick and arrogant assumption that I am a UKIP voter
On 30 Sep 2014 at 8:12pm Sword of Truth wrote:
They believe there is one Truth, which is knowable to humans.
This is a bizarre description of conservatism which is sceptical of all claims to the truth and not interested in the whole subject. I suspect that the writer is concerned that they are unable to see the obvious eternal verity of whatever it is that he thinks.
I tend to have such feelings about Liberals whose smug certainties take some beating
On 30 Sep 2014 at 8:42pm Annette Curtin-Twitcher wrote:
The Osborne tax avoidance is the best bit of Tory hypocrisy I've read about since Ian Duncan Smith claimed £39 in expenses for breakfast, while expecting an ill or out-of-work under 25 year old to live on £57.95 a week.
Mind you, that was only yesterday.
On 30 Sep 2014 at 9:18pm Unmask UKIP. wrote:
Ex Labour Voter = UKIP public relations chimp.
On 30 Sep 2014 at 11:08pm Stig of the Dump wrote:
Newsnight say the Conservatives are looking happy and up beat even though it looks likely that they will lose the Election.
Of course they're happy they've just got away with bleeding murder!
They've successfully stitched up the Country in a right financial mess and have passed loads of laws to get the poor to pay for it.
Meanwhile the rich Dave Camerons of this Country are laughing all the way to their Swiss Banks!
On 1 Oct 2014 at 6:54am Phfellow2004 wrote:
Labour always leave the country broke!
On 1 Oct 2014 at 9:34am Edmund wrote:
"This is a bizarre description of conservatism which is sceptical of all claims to the truth and not interested in the whole subject."
If you say so, it must be true. Doubtlessly you think the GDR was democratic as well.
I can't see any similarity between the classically conservative scepticism of Burke - his distrust of 'big ideas' and utopian thinking - and most current Conservative MPs who seem to think that the world would be perfect if everything were just left to the market.
Those moderate centrist pragmatic Tories, who I have a certain admiration for, are a dying breed, if not dead already. Once we had Conservative politicians who would look for the solution that worked, and did not always choose the so-called 'free market' and their private equity / hedge fund mates. It's the Conservative Party that is now the party of ideologues, those who believe Hayek and Rand have all the answers.
On 1 Oct 2014 at 11:05am Merlin Milner wrote:
Well said Edmund. Good article from our Polly.
Check it out here »
On 1 Oct 2014 at 1:28pm Humbert wrote:
The Tory / Lib Dem pact is the first Government since 1945 that leaves office with people poorer than they were when they entered office. (Our pay packets go much less far than they did.) Quite an achievement eh?
On 1 Oct 2014 at 8:18pm Sword of Truth wrote:
nd most current Conservative MPs who seem to think that the world would be perfect if everything were just left to the market.
Is that really the sad fantasy world you live in? I have sometimes wondered what the world looks like to people who only read the Guardian and this must be it. No-one in the Uk thinks you can leave everything to the market. Unfortunately there is a creed that religiously believes that public ownership is a "moral" good and talk about it in just those terms. There are also many who financially benefit form this sort of guff, the public service suppliers, who like to pretend that money spent on their salaries and pensions is moral duty. Any Conservative would resist such irrational thinking .
Pragmatism is not necessarily something of the center. Margaret Thatcher was pragmatic above all things but in the climate of the time appeared a new sort of politician . No serious politician would deny the rightness of her union reforms now
But I daresay you would because you are probably think the fact that almost no-one agrees with your extreme views makes you a prophet not a loon which, I suspect, is what you are
On 1 Oct 2014 at 8:47pm Finger of Doom. wrote:
Thatcher was an ideologue of the first order.The Left will rise again.Free market neo liberal economics is NOT working for the majority.Tory Tory Tory Out,Out Out!
On 1 Oct 2014 at 9:01pm Testicle of truth wrote:
I just can`t decide which way to vote - I`ve got varicoceles 
On 2 Oct 2014 at 10:38am Edmund wrote:
The interesting thing about Sword of Truth is how he has just (unconsciously?) confirmed the quote from above. "They think of politics as a total war between ideologies". He is utterly partisan in his thinking, politics is divided between those who rely on Labour's 'client state' and those who do not. If he argues enough of these forums this 'one truth' will become apparent and everyone will cleave to where their interests truly are, the 'socialists' will vanish and we will end up with the low-tax, anti-immigration, low-regulation utopian island that Britain truly is.
It's clear in all his discussions his basic need to pigeonhole everyone. in fact on here rather than presenting the argument he draws up a straw man stereotype and attacks that instead. So people are 'Labour stooges' if they disagree with him, or they read nothing but the Guardian (I don't, I read from a wide variety of sources). Thus, for example, his comment about union reforms, which in the context of me claiming the tory party is full of ideologues these days, seems rather bizarre. He assumes that because I am arguing with him, I must be on the other side of the struggle, old labour through and through, and must be some sort of pro-union dinosaur who reads nothing but the Guardian. He's still fighting the battles of the 80s which is quite endearing in a way but perhaps explains why the Conservatives are still basically incapable of winning a majority.
He's right on one thing: Thatcher did govern more pragmatically than many today believe. I am not talking just to the left; to those on the right too who celebrate the image of her rather than what she actually did. She wasn't actually as 'thatcherite' as many tatcherites.
Whatever you think, there are plenty of market fundamentalists around. I've spent time at conservative conference fringe meetings as part of my job, or been at events with members of tory think tanks. There are reasonable people too, of course, but plenty who think the state should be reduced just to defence and policing and everything else should be privately run; and plenty of business people prepared to give them money to propagate those views.
I am sceptical, by the way, of the self-interest of many in the public sector. I am equally aware of the role government can play in supporting and enriching those in the private sector; not least through the outsourcing of public services, or the selling off of state goods, or the movement of key staff between major consultancies and banks and the civil service. You seem to have a blind spot on that one.
On 2 Oct 2014 at 1:58pm Time for Action. wrote:
Aha ,the voice of the soggy lib dem middle.Don`t you realise that your "can`t everybody be nice to each other" mantra in this unregulated turbo capitalist world is completely irrelevant?
This is class war and the new working classes are the vast majorityof us who are being screwed by an ever more rapacious and powerful minority. Not content with destroying the lives of their fellow human beings they are now busy destroying our environment at an alarming rate.Wake up and get a grip for heaven`s sake. If you think that being cuddly is going to stop this assault on all of us you are I am afraid very much mistaken.this is war. From Hong Kong to New York,from Iraq to the Ukraine wake up and smell the tear gas and hear the bombs falling.