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At least it is better than just throwing money at the problem.

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Whoever british people vote for, next year they will be complaining about how they are taking away their rights and destroying the country. And how corrupt and generally awful they are, and how ANYONE could of voted for such a moron.

I know, because its been happening ever since I remember. O, and the guy you elect will also be America's female dog....again.

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Should elect me, because I am different. The irony is, because I am different, I am unelectable.

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lol, true, but its part of the british condition to have little respect for the state, and possibly one of the reasons why we get worse results out of state spending than some continental countries.

brown is going to suffer on polling day for his remark, there are too many working class traditional labour voters for whom immigration is a 'problem', and to see their concerns so callously bad-mouthed by the man who is supposed to care for them is going to make the coming apocalypse even worse.

many of these labour voters probably are disaffected anyway, and might well have transitioned much of that vote to the lib-dems prior to this remark. that won't be happening now.

the ones that have no alternative to labour simply won't vote.
the ones looking elsewhere may well drift BNP now.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-john-prescott

No mate, you lot have been rumbled good and proper.

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all this waffle about the news of the world is entirely besides the point.

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I can't help laughing at someone who ask the PM a question on immigrants when there own name is Duffy bit of irony there.

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That Irish woman is a bit of a bigot. Who's paying for her pension if not those hardworking Poles she complains about?


Brown did manage to shoot himself in the foot. Both legs. All the way up to his knees. The impression already exists: 'Labour doesn't give a daisy about the British working class'. Neither do the other parties, but whereas they are quite open about that, Labour is the one party that is supposed to care.

Brown is part bumbling fool, and part exactly what the allegation says he is: he is ill-capable of understanding the world from the point of view of this woman. She is real, there are millions of her, and whether the elite likes it or not, these are her problems as she sees them, experiences them, not all of which exist only in her imagination.

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The next couple of days worth of polling will be interesting, if only to see where Labour voters flee to.

A new poll is out showing that the Lib Dems are getting a decent swing where they need it and are now polling remarkably well in their marginal seats (though their swing appears to be mostly in non-marginal seats), most markedly in the Labour-held ones. They are going to take seats from the Tories, but they are going to take even more from Labour if this poll is correct.

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apparently the best lay-mans break down of the IFS study into the parties fiscal plans:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance...al-knockabout/

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YOU'VE ALL BEEN HAD BY MURDOCH BROWN DID NOT SAY BIGOTED HE SAID DUFFY IS 'A BIGHEARTED WOMAN'



maybe not

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Apparently Labour are going to nail Mrs. Duffy to her front door with six inch nails should they win the election. Well following labours logic here, if they don't expressly rule it out, then they mean to do it.

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Go and look at the comparisons between foreign aid given to africa and debt repayment/cash crop/raw materials export. You'll see that the foreign aid is just the band-aid we slap on their neck after we've sucked them dry.

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That's horrible. If you've sucked them dry then there's no need for a bandage. What a waste of money.

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How did these nations get all the foreign debt? The same way we did - our leaders. Massive drain on GDP? Yup - just like ours. So why should theirs be cancelled? All that'll do is make the next lot of debt more expensive as the markets factor in the odds of default.
Export of raw materials? Rather like Australia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia... China and germany export manufactured goods. Is this wrong too?

These countries should be treated as equals. Show they're sorting things out and they will be able to get funding in the bond market. Get a decent credit rating and debt will decrease in cost. Embezzel / kill your own citizens and remain in the dark ages.

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Repeat ad infinitum.

The tories, the tories, the tories.

Now go back and do some medicalling or whatever they call it these days.

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anyone else going to join the election sweep-stakes:

and have i missed anyone out?

p.s. you can can change your vote, but the original will also be retained..........

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Rory:

Are you still confusing sensible economics with what governments do?

Most governments in the West would be sent to jail en masse for fraud and/or malfeasance if their national budgets were evaluated using the legal rubrics that are applied to their own citizens and corporate entities.

IA:

While it may be personally comforting to you to heap all of the blame upon previous Tory governments, I suspect you'd find that pretty much all of the governments from Atlee forward (and maybe many before then) had a hand in this debt game.

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Thanks for that article Furunculus, this is the sort of material that the Telegraph should be putting on it's front page! (ok, maybe not front page, but you get my drift)

The taxation policies of all three parties worry me. I find it very hard to believe that the current proposed policies will do very much to relieve the deficit. Each party seems to be searching for something to entice the electorate with "We'll stop the 1% rise of NI" "We'll raise the threshold for income tax". Each of these little promises come with a hefty price tag, and no proposals to fund these concessions other than cutting public spending and reducing waste. The problem is that it's not even as if the parties can say "We know where the money is going to come from, we just don't want to talk about it", their manifestos seem fairly firm on every possible source of income, and the numbers don't add up. I predict a lot of broken promises by whoever gets into power, or a worsening deficit.

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I was under the influence of recreational drugs! Now that I've regained my sanity, I predict: a hung parliament, Brown out, Cameron PM, etc

Yeah, I too am getting a bit annoyed with IA blaming all of Britain's ills on the Tories. Cheeky socialist.

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anyone else going to join the election sweep-stakes:

and have i missed anyone out?

p.s. you can can change your vote, but the original will also be retained..........

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Beskar, you playing?

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Just for variety's sake, let me change to my view now (since even I'm surprised by the extent of Brown's implosion): To wit, a Conservative minority government, supported by but not in coalition with, the Liberal Democrats, with a new election in nine months.

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You missed me out, Conservative hung led-parliament with Lib-dem popular vote, I believe I said.

But with the talk of coalition. if there is one, I believe Conservative-Libdem coalition would be most likely.

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No you're right. I must try to do better. I will do my utmost to keep my socialists tendencies in check.

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Indeed, however Western leaders are (believe it or not) held on a tighter leash. They can not (usually) go to the nepotistic & embezzeling lengths afforded to leaders of many developing countries.

Why are leaders of developing countries able to be so shamelessly self serving? They are not held to account by either the countries' inadequate governance systems, or they have corrupted these systems through patronage.

Why should the west write-off swathes of third world debt? Because that debt is a burden on the country and its people, not the old rulers who took the loans and profited from them. If there is one thing the west can do to help developing countries "help themselves", it is to reduce or remove the shackle of debt.

Indeed, export of raw materials is great, providing its all set up fairly and resources are not being irresponsably extracted with no benefit to the state or its population. Resource extraction (Lumber, diamonds, oil) provide juicy incomes for cash starved countries (almost money for nothing) which can also have some awful effects, from driving wars (the wars in DRC have been famously funded by diamonds and lumber) to reducing the incentives for economic and labour reform that would foster economic growth through industry/services.

As to manufacturing, not every country can become a manufacturing powerhouse. Opportunities exist but a country must be able to exploit them at the right moment. E.g. The UK itself became an industrial giant through its adaptation of technology (driven by relatively high UK labour costs) which (after years of refinement) made production cheaper than manual labour and increased productivity. China is the current world factory because of its rock bottom labour costs, good infrastructure and permissible (sort of anyway) political environment. Not many countries can rival China for these conditions.


They aren't equals though. Most developing countries (by definition, you might say) do not have the same capacity for governance and administration as western countries. Even if they have the structures, there are a multitude of factors impeding their full use for the country's development e.g. lack of civil society pressure for openness and reform.

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just to clarify; that is a Conservative minority government?

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anyone else going to join the election sweep-stakes:

and have i missed anyone out?

p.s. you can can change your vote, but the original will also be retained..........

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I think so...

Conservatives with the most seats, Libdems with the biggest popular vote. If that is a 'Conservative minority government', then sure.

It is based mainly on the fact Libdems are gaining a lot of ground mostly against Labour and a tiny amount against Conservative. This should put Labour 3rd place popular vote-wise. Based on the popular vote, Libdems do look to be in the lead, I would put Conservative 2nd place vote wise, and Libdem most votes. However, I doubt Lib dems would have the most seats, which means Conservative will have the most seats, Labour possibly still getting 2nd, and leaving Libdems 3rd.

I am hoping for STV by next election though.

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I have to agree with you Beskar, this looks like the way things are going atm.

Furunculus, please put me down for some of what this chap is having :D

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