Comments on: Oh Christ! – Could Labour get back in?

By: jonesxxx

jonesxxx — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:57:28 +0000

Yeh, I think that is my main gripe. People who have no commitment to this country should not make policy.

But more than that I blame Labour as they were supposed to be sorting out the House of Lords.

Prior to Labour’s tampering we had Hereditary Peers and Life Peers. Though I don’t agree with having hereditary peers as they can’t be said to be representative at least they were independent.

Life Peers on the other hand are just people with money or toadies.
If you have a second house filled with such dross you must expect people like Ashcroft to get in.

Chuck them all out and do proportional representation for the second house with a long term of …say……ten years.

Or maybe have different bodies appoint their own people. Professional associations, trade unions, universities, the unemployed….a whole range of different groupings. Again, the term should be long.

Or how about they get chosen randomly like juries. You get a letter, “you have been chosen to represent the people for the next ten years”.

And while we’re about it let’s get rid of the monarchy.

By: smithxxx

smithxxx — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:52:10 +0000

Jonesie, you said he doesn’t pay much tax. He does, you know, quite a lot.
He just doesn’t pay on his overseas earnings. Which is fine, why should he?

It should be the same for everyone, that’s the thing.

And here’s another thing;
Non Domicile, from the HMRC website

Domicile is a general law concept; it refers to the country which is your ‘permanent home’. There are a range of factors that can affect where you are domiciled at any point in your life.

There are further details in HMRC website referring to where your main social and business interests are. If they are abroad, and you make the statement that they are, you are domiciled there.

Here’s the point. Why should someone who’s permanent primary home and whose main social
and business interests are in a different country, have any say at all on what goes
on in the UK?

By: jonesxxx

jonesxxx — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:19:06 +0000

I can’t go along with the idea that Gordon Brown “never did that much wrong as chancellor”

How about:

1. Taxing dividend payments and so screwing everyone’s pension.
2. Selling the nations gold when prices were low but telling everyone first so the price was driven lower
3. Setting up a new financial regulation system which effectively split and annulled responsibility
4. Failing to spot the housing bubble
5. Not driving a steak through Blair’s heart when he had the chance

By: Joe martinez

Joe martinez — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:17:33 +0000

Did you hear Mr winterton, the Tory who believes grabbing a woman’s bum just a laugh and his pronouncement that he has to travel in first class, because those in second class are noisy oiks. The majority of the people have to travel standard class, and haven’t forgotten the mess the tories made last time they were in.

By: Joe martinez

Joe martinez — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:08:07 +0000

I think you are stating tory policy as fact. I seem the remember when Labour got in 1997 their policy was no change from the Tories. Majors policy was no change from Thatcher. In fact the last pime Minister that actually did anything was margaret Thatcher, who destroyed manufacturing and created a huge recession.
My take is this: most British people want a moderately right of centre economy with a moderately left of centre social policy.
Cameron was very successful when he did hug a hoody etc; now as an election looms he is drifting towards the loony right, the same mistake both Hague and Howard want. For some reason the Tories tend to believe the hysterical nonsence in papers is actually what people believe. Can I point out that the most widely read paper in Britain is the Guardian Online—–by a whomping majority.
The tories are promoting “family” have the social changes of the past 30 years pass them by. Personally Gordon Brown never did that much wrong as chancellor, unlike the disastrous Lawson booms.
I think you are being far too American in your hysteria. Gordon Brown isn’t that bad at least not yet, He’s only been in charge a year. It took Maggie T until her second term before she really screwed the economy.