question for anyone planning on voting labour or tory in the election

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Originally Posted by steakbake

Guess who works for The Party? Or are you Iain Gray? Did you have to tear out one or two pages so you could rip the SNP manifesto apart?

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You don't need to work for any party to be able to contrast and compare the legislation enacted by the different regimes.

Always thought the Land Reform Act was massively unheralded and the legislation around mental health and capacity offered a genuine step forward in the way we treat some of the most vulnerable and marginalised in our society.

There's a sincere thread of social justice running through those Acts which isn't there to any great degree with the SNP or the Tories.

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Originally Posted by steakbake

Guess who works for The Party? Or are you Iain Gray? Did you have to tear out one or two pages so you could rip the SNP manifesto apart?

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I don't work for the Labour Party and I acknowledged that there is plenty to criticise on its record in both governments. What's your problem - can't handle the truth?:notworthy:

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Originally Posted by One Day Soon

I don't work for the Labour Party and I acknowledged that there is plenty to criticise on its record in both governments. What's your problem - can't handle the truth?:notworthy:

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So you're just an average Joe who happens to be able to provide a list of the Labour Party's achievements, such as they are... And your not a member of the party nor have an active interest in the party at all?

I find that very hard to believe.

I have no problem at all because as I have stated elsewhere, I'm not a member of any particular party, nor a follower of any particular party. I'm probably going to vote LibDems in my own contribution to get rid of Gordon Brown and the Labour Party.

What I don't like, though, is the way politicians and people with interests in politics - like you - rewriting history. My issue with you and people like you is that somehow Thatcher was the SNP's "fault". It is as much the Liberal's fault as the SNP, given the Liberals abandoned the government the year before.

What you seem totally incapable of understanding, which is possibly understandable if you are as dyed in the wool Labour and as blind as you seem, is that Labour lost the election against Thatcher because like now, their time was up, they'd run out of idea and they do not have a divine right to govern.

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Originally Posted by steakbake

So you're just an average Joe who happens to be able to provide a list of the Labour Party's achievements, such as they are... And your not a member of the party nor have an active interest in the party at all?

I find that very hard to believe.

I have no problem at all because as I have stated elsewhere, I'm not a member of any particular party, nor a follower of any particular party. I'm probably going to vote LibDems in my own contribution to get rid of Gordon Brown and the Labour Party.

What I don't like, though, is the way politicians and people with interests in politics - like you - rewriting history. My issue with you and people like you is that somehow Thatcher was the SNP's "fault". It is as much the Liberal's fault as the SNP, given the Liberals abandoned the government the year before.

What you seem totally incapable of understanding, which is possibly understandable if you are as dyed in the wool Labour and as blind as you seem, is that Labour lost the election against Thatcher because like now, their time was up, they'd run out of idea and they do not have a divine right to govern.

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Tackling the effects of the recession obviously informs everything, for all the parties.

I would nevertheless disagree that the present Government has run out of policy ideas. Whether you agree with them or not is another thing.

Electoral and constitutional reform

A national care service to address one of the biggest issues facing our society - how we care for a massively-increasing older population

Creating a people's bank to end the financial exclusion that the most disadvantaged in our society face.

Expanding council housebuilding, again helping those who probably need it the most

Targeting 18-24 year olds for employment, education or training through the Young Person's Guarantee in order to avoid what we went through with Thatcher where a whole generation were written off in many parts of the country, with their whole adult lives in front of them.

That's not running out of ideas. That's offering a response to the issues that are impacting most on our society.

And it's offering a response that includes those who need our support most rather than consigning them to their fate, disadvantaged and disempowered in difficult times.

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Originally Posted by Mibbes Aye

Electoral and constitutional reform

A referendum on the voting system - first promised in the 1997 Labour manifesto.

A national care service to address one of the biggest issues facing our society - how we care for a massively-increasing older population

All three parties have proposals. Labour have been promising a solution to care of the elderly since 1997 and not delivered. They only recently dropped their plan for a £20,000 'Death Tax' because it was a complete vote loser.

Creating a people's bank to end the financial exclusion that the most disadvantaged in our society face.

Expanding council housebuilding, again helping those who probably need it the most

This was promised in the 2005 manifesto (if not earlier) and, again, Labour's own targets were missed by miles.

Targeting 18-24 year olds for employment, education or training through the Young Person's Guarantee in order to avoid what we went through with Thatcher where a whole generation were written off in many parts of the country, with their whole adult lives in front of them.

A select committee reported that Labour had fallen well short of its own targets on young people not in education, employment and training. It's not surprising that they're still promising to do something about it.

That's not running out of ideas. That's offering a response to the issues that are impacting most on our society.

And it's offering a response that includes those who need our support most rather than consigning them to their fate, disadvantaged and disempowered in difficult times.

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Seems more like "Give us more time to sort out the stuff we promised you years ago" rather than "a response to the issues".

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Originally Posted by One Day Soon

Good for you buddy. That's 2 grand less available to educate someone else now.

Whereas if you were paying that back as a loan then the £2,000 loan you had could have been used to help educate someone else and the cost to you of repaying it after you get a job would be so minimal you'd barely notice. And if the the loans and grants were distributed on an income related basis then people who REALLY need grants instead of loans would get them while still allowing more people to be well educated. Maybe you would be one of the people who would qualify for a grant.

But what the hell, everyone gets their beer money now so that's a great investment.

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:faf: Students already run up a massive amount of debt purely from having to take out a student loan. Scrapping the graduate endownment was a great move. A lot of people who graduated before it was scrapped had refused to pay it anyway if you look at the figures, but Labour of course implemented it so they could tell us higher education was free in Scotland.

A better approach would have been reducing uni fees to say £500 per year to ensure they collected that money, but then they wouldn't be able to trot out their "free education" line.

£2000 is a lot less than is currently dished out to the workshy and girls that open their legs to pop out kids and get a free house. Graduates will repay their debt to society by earning more over their working lives (on average) and hence being taxed more than non graduates.

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Originally Posted by Beefster

Seems more like "Give us more time to sort out the stuff we promised you years ago" rather than "a response to the issues".

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I think you're right in that progress hasn't been at the pace people would want or expect a lot of the time. The policy areas I highlighted illustrate that the response or the perceived solution is one that is far more inclusive, far more rooted in trying to effect social justice, than those of the other main parties, either side of the border.

I think expectations are far too high though (much like supporting Hibs :greengrin). To take care for the elderly, it's impossible to effect a solution even on a timescale of three Parliaments (unless someone's advocating a "Logan's Run"-style remedy).

The demographic rise and the accompanying increase in levels of need and the raft of structural and societal changes needed to deal with that, while dealing with already increasing demands in the face of static or diminishing resources, all accompanied by a massive increase in people's expectations?........

Managing it is going to be an ongoing affair, over decades. There's no magic bullet. But there are policy decisions to be made that can and will shape the outcome.

There's a point about targets and timescales. IIRC the government has consistently fallen short on their targets for reduction in child poverty. They've successfully moved hundreds of thousands out of child poverty but not to the levels they had targeted.

But surely it's far better that a major party were prepared to say child poverty is a social wrong, a social evil, and set public targets for reducing it, and reduce it considerably, even if ultimately they fall short of the target in the attempt?

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Originally Posted by [LEFT

Mibbes[/LEFT] Aye;2432608]

But surely it's far better that a major party were prepared to say child poverty is a social wrong, a social evil, and set public targets for reducing it, and reduce it considerably, even if ultimately they fall short of the target in the attempt?

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Depends how you define poverty. Nobody in this country needs to starve or be homeless. Compared to half the countries in the world our levels of poverty are unrecognisable as such.

If you are talking about the gap between rich and poor, that gap has grown bigger under this govt, which proves it's no good having your heart in the right place if your brains are in your **** ****.