Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[Strontium]

Yes, questioning it was what you were doing wasn't it...

 

 

Well, that is a question mark at the end of my sentence. They did teach grammar in whatever institution you were educated in, didn't they?

 

Care to take back your ignorant and ill informed post yet?

 

 

I'm not taking back my question, it has been very helpfully answered, and most managed to avoid the nasty personal comments that are your stock in trade.

 

They're only claiming what they're entitled to. You had no problem with it when your mate was paying his boyfriend rent.

 

 

I have no problem with MPs claiming living expenses which they are entitled to. I continue to believe that it is ridiculous to arbitrarily bar those expenses based on whether or not someone is sleeping with their landlord.

[L19red]

Well, that is a question mark at the end of my sentence. They did teach grammar in whatever institution you were educated in, didn't they?

 

 

 

 

I'm not taking back my question, it has been very helpfully answered, and most managed to avoid the nasty personal comments that are your stock in trade.

 

 

 

 

I have no problem with MPs claiming living expenses which they are entitled to. I continue to believe that it is ridiculous to arbitrarily bar those expenses based on whether or not someone is sleeping with their landlord.

 

I think you need to recognise that when you refer to the benefits as bribes you will be perceived as passing judgement even if you frame it in a question.

[lifetime fan]

Well, that is a question mark at the end of my sentence. They did teach grammar in whatever institution you were educated in, didn't they?

 

 

 

 

I'm not taking back my question, it has been very helpfully answered, and most managed to avoid the nasty personal comments that are your stock in trade.

 

 

 

 

I have no problem with MPs claiming living expenses which they are entitled to. I continue to believe that it is ridiculous to arbitrarily bar those expenses based on whether or not someone is sleeping with their landlord.

 

A question mark yes. An ignorant ill informed know nothing bollocks statement? Fuck yes.

 

Whatever 'institute' I was educated in?

 

Our Lady of the Rosary primary school.

St. Bede's secondary school.

St. Brendan's sixth form.

 

Those are the 'institutes' I was educated at if that has anything to do with anything. Or are you attemting to insult my intelligence? Am I below you? Am I not worthy of you? Very fucking liberal.

 

 

Your 'question' showed you were talking out of your arse yet again on a subject you don't have a fucking clue about.

 

Personal insult? I highlighted the fact you had posted shite and called you a troll for attempting to demean a poster. I would do exactly the same to anyone else.

 

Lets get all primary school playground here shall we?! Who started the pathetic negs saying 'fucking prick', 'fucking troll' etc because you don't like what someone has to say.

 

You used the word troll, I repeated it. Tough shit.

 

Your ignorant, ill informed 'question' showed you have no fucking clue what you were talking about but still tried to criticise ILF/Individual budgets and the previous administration.

 

Unlike NN who has a far wider grasp of political discussions than I, this in particular is an area I have a vast working knowledge of, as does my partner. You know fuck all about it and are making a prick of yourself.

 

Please either address my whole post or fuck off.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

"Complaining" is a bit strong, "questioning" is more like it.

Whilst it still seems like a complaint, when put into context with other things you've said on the subject, I'll answer the question directly: No. It's much more complicated than that.

 

I don't have any gripe about them, that's why, they are reasonable arguments.

 

So have they made you change your mind and positions? They were directly contradicting your points, of course.

 

I see the sense of entitlement as something that grew under the Labour government.

 

It's pretty hard to quantify, isn't it? It seems like something you either want to buy into or not.

 

I believe in free education, but at the same time, I reserve the right to frown upon anyone who utilises violence to try to get it.

 

Right, so now it's not the sense of entitlement but the violence?

 

You're a taxpayer, I guess. When was the last time someone on benefits thanked you for sustaining their lifestyle?

 

Why would I ever need or require thanks? I'm sure their fathers and grandafathers paid into the system for many years, they may well have paid into it themselves, or will in the future. They don't need to thank me. From my perspective, that's a bizarre attitude to have. Would you like to be thanked?

 

As for 'lifestyle', I can't see that it's much of a lifestyle for many people. I refuse to believe that, in the main, people don't want to get on in life. That, unless trapped, they don't want to improve themselves and their lives. I don't believe laziness or lack of work ethic is what keeps people on benefits.

 

I've seen you describe those on benefits as people who just spend their money on fags and scratchcards. I think you've got a bee in your bonnet about it, I really do. I think you've got a problem with these people because you're stereotyping them in your head.

 

Some people are more worthy than others, there's no getting away from that.

 

And what barometer do you use to determine this worth? Am I worth more than you because I pay more tax? Will I be worth less than you tomorrow if I'm hit by a car, break my back and have to claim benefits and have to have my sister around to do my washing a few times a week?

[taliesin08]

I read today that the ConDems will see the first rise in absolute child poverty for 15 years, with almost 200,000 children pushed into penury, according to an analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

[Cardie]

 

I have no problem with MPs claiming living expenses which they are entitled to. I continue to believe that it is ridiculous to arbitrarily bar those expenses based on whether or not someone is sleeping with their landlord.

 

Just the poor and disabled, they've been getting away with shit for too long, not like those rent boy hiring, lying, cheating, freeloading politicians.

[bossy]

SD, can you please answer my question about when the Con Dems said that the cuts were to stop our children being in debt to the Chinese?

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

They're only claiming what they're entitled to. You had no problem with it when your mate was paying his boyfriend rent.

 

I've got to say, I think that's a fair point you're making. SD doesn't like the fact that the tax-payer is paying for somebody to have their family come around and help them, but doesn't seem to mind that the taxpayer was paying in excess of £1000 a month to his long-term partner.

 

There's differences in the cases, of course. The main one for me is that David Laws was earning 60k a year, has a home in his constituency, another home in the south of France and was still paying money to his partner. I respect his right to privacy, bot I can't tally SD's two set of opinions here.

[Strontium]

SD, can you please answer my question about when the Con Dems said that the cuts were to stop our children being in debt to the Chinese?

 

 

It was a figure of speech. The Chinese and whoever else owns Britian's debt.

 

Fortunately, thanks the the prompt action of the coalition government, we kept our AAA credit rating.

[bossy]

It was a figure of speech. The Chinese and whoever else owns Britian's debt.

 

Fortunately, thanks the the prompt action of the coalition government, we kept our AAA credit rating.

 

Oh.

So our children will still be deeply in debt, but just not to the Chines, for example?

[Stu Monty]

It was a figure of speech. The Chinese and whoever else owns Britian's debt.

 

Fortunately, thanks the the prompt action of the coalition government, we kept our AAA credit rating.

 

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

 

Maybe if we tickle the bankers balls a little more they'll give us another A? What do you reckon? Maybe if we forget the fact the fucked the whole thing up in the first place we'll get five As? Maybe if we slash the NHS altogether and sell it off to the private sector they'll give us a sixth A for good behaviour.

 

And you wonder why you've become a laughing stock.

[lifetime fan]

I read today that the ConDems will see the first rise in absolute child poverty for 15 years, with almost 200,000 children pushed into penury, according to an analysis by the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

 

I hadn't seen this, very good point mate.

[Strontium]

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

 

Maybe if we tickle the bankers balls a little more they'll give us another A? What do you reckon? Maybe if we forget the fact the fucked the whole thing up in the first place we'll get five As? Maybe if we slash the NHS altogether and sell it off to the private sector they'll give us a sixth A for good behaviour.

 

And you wonder why you've become a laughing stock.

 

 

Stu, if you're denying the importance of maintaining a good credit rating, then it's not me who is the laughing stock. How do you think the UK would manage with rising gilt yields and soaring interest rates, huh?

[bossy]

Stu, if you're denying the importance of maintaining a good credit rating, then it's not me who is the laughing stock. How do you think the UK would manage with rising gilt yields and soaring interest rates, huh?

 

But our children/grandchildren are still in debt, thanks to the massive rise in tuition fees.

[dirk grout]

Did someone just claim that 'the chinese' is a figure of speech?

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

.

Whilst it still seems like a complaint, when put into context with other things you've said on the subject, I'll answer the question directly: No. It's much more complicated than that.

 

 

 

So have they made you change your mind and positions? They were directly contradicting your points, of course.

 

 

 

It's pretty hard to quantify, isn't it? It seems like something you either want to buy into or not.

 

 

 

Right, so now it's not the sense of entitlement but the violence?

 

 

 

Why would I ever need or require thanks? I'm sure their fathers and grandafathers paid into the system for many years, they may well have paid into it themselves, or will in the future. They don't need to thank me. From my perspective, that's a bizarre attitude to have. Would you like to be thanked?

 

As for 'lifestyle', I can't see that it's much of a lifestyle for many people. I refuse to believe that, in the main, people don't want to get on in life. That, unless trapped, they don't want to improve themselves and their lives. I don't believe laziness or lack of work ethic is what keeps people on benefits.

 

I've seen you describe those on benefits as people who just spend their money on fags and scratchcards. I think you've got a bee in your bonnet about it, I really do. I think you've got a problem with these people because you're stereotyping them in your head.

 

 

 

And what barometer do you use to determine this worth? Am I worth more than you because I pay more tax? Will I be worth less than you tomorrow if I'm hit by a car, break my back and have to claim benefits and have to have my sister around to do my washing a few times a week?

[L19red]

So have they made you change your mind and positions?

 

Strontium Dodger?

[Section_31]

The big hole in Tory/Lib Dem philosophy, to my mind, is that they see shrinking the state as a means of increasing personal freedom. But in our society, much like in the United States, you're only as free as your bank balance allows you to be.

 

Destroying state apparatus that will fund a child minder while a parent works, or fund a college course for an adult to retrain, or that will give him or her access to a lawyer to get custody of their kid, or fund a nurse to look after their sick mum - is not increasing personal freedom, it's tying their hands in financial bondage.

 

When these elites talk of freedom they mean the freedom of their own purse strings without having the tax man dip into their finances to fund the things that they can afford, but that other people can't.

 

In future, whenever a Tory or Lib Dem speaks of freedom, just replace the word in your head with 'money'.

[dennis tooth]

Editor's note: As protests over hikes in student fees rock the UK, Cambridge University's Dr. Charles Jones offers a personal take on the unrest and the issue at large.

 

My bladder, now in its seventh decade, was one of the unsung heroes of last week’s kettling in London’s parliament Square. It stayed the course for twelve hours! - Not bad.

 

Having to pee in public is a minor indignity that I was glad to be spared, but it was inflicted on hundreds if not thousands of young men and women quite indiscriminately last week, and it is hard to see the whole exercise as other than punitive, especially those that lasted several hours on Westminster Bridge, above the dark waters of the Thames, as the London winter temperature plummeted.

 

This recently adopted technique for suppressing public debate in Britain consists in luring marchers into a space that can be sealed off by the police before they reach their intended destination. Within the space there is no food, no water supply, no latrines, and no policing.

 

There was a rather touching impromptu carol concert in one corner of the square, but otherwise the only entertainment was watching the intermittent attempts to break out and move from one corner to another.

 

I worked for a while, reading a doctoral dissertation on South African foreign policy and reflecting that its author, an activist with the African National Congress - the movement which led the struggle against apartheid, was likely to face far worse problems than ours.

 

My request that the police intervene to deal with malicious damage was ignored for close to an hour; kids had started to break the windows of the Treasury, which is not easy! When the police finally did act it was with massive force; by that time, sadly, it needed to be.

 

They baton-charged the perpetrators and a minor battle ensued in which more than one bystander was hurt. Police too were injured, I don't deny it. They themselves are graduates, students, parents, and probably as fed up as the rest of us with the policy of tuition increases they were called upon to defend.

 

Yes. There were some hooligans intent from the outset on damaging property and attacking the police. Some idiot had foolishly screened off the centre of the square with metal fencing so that the marchers would not damage the grass. The metal fencing panels, about two metres by three, were ideal for the construction of wedges, like medieval siege battering rams, with which demonstrators tried unsuccessfully to break out of the trap.

 

But most of us had been there in order to rally and listen to speeches putting the arguments against the government proposals being debated that very afternoon in parliament. We simply waited, and waited, and waited, untill between ten and eleven we slowly filed out past the video camera that will doubtless have captioned us "trouble-makers".

 

The effect of all this was that the British press over the next two days was dominated by reports of violence at the heart of the capital. There was no conspiracy here, but it did rather nicely distract from the disarray of the coalition government, which only narrowly won the commons vote approving a threefold rise in tuition fees at British universities. Both the ruling parties split on this issue, the first major legislative test of the coalition.

 

This is unfortunate, because the long-term consequences of the current changes in the funding of education and higher education seem likely to have profound effects, damaging Britain’s universities, restricting access to higher education and exacerbating inequality in a country that has already been polarising for more than a decade.

 

The government claims that transferring the costs of higher education to students and their families will permit a valuable reduction in public spending at a time of austerity without deterring students from poorer households from going to university. No one has to pay up-front; the costs are covered by loans. But this neglects the psychological impediment of indebtedness.

 

Many will not believe it’s ever going to be possible for them to repay the debt; and they may be right, since it is unlikely that the government projection of the average income of today’s graduates will materialise, based as it is on the income trajectory of the much smaller cohort that graduated a generation ago.

 

So the effect on public finances will very likely be negative in the long run. And what will the bank manager say to the young couple who come along in ten years time to buy their first house, already burdened with close to £100,000 of debt? This sort of ill-considered social engineering has consequences.

 

In the meantime, a valuable principle has been lost. This is that the gain from widespread university education is not retained by those who receive it; it spills out into society, at home and abroad. As a form of soft power, it complements British foreign policy. And to the extent that it does these things it should be paid for from general taxation.

 

But so long as public order and the safety of the heir to the throne command the headlines, that debate we’d hoped to engage in on Victoria Embankment will remain - Oh! - That bladder again! - Just so much pissing in the wind.

[lifetime fan]

So have they made you change your mind and positions?

 

You expext a reply?

 

A disappearing act is the closest you'll get to an acknowledgement he was talking shite.

[lifetime fan]

Editor's note: As protests over hikes in student fees rock the UK, Cambridge University's Dr. Charles Jones offers a personal take on the unrest and the issue at large.

 

My bladder, now in its seventh decade, was one of the unsung heroes of last week’s kettling in London’s parliament Square. It stayed the course for twelve hours! - Not bad.

 

Having to pee in public is a minor indignity that I was glad to be spared, but it was inflicted on hundreds if not thousands of young men and women quite indiscriminately last week, and it is hard to see the whole exercise as other than punitive, especially those that lasted several hours on Westminster Bridge, above the dark waters of the Thames, as the London winter temperature plummeted.

 

This recently adopted technique for suppressing public debate in Britain consists in luring marchers into a space that can be sealed off by the police before they reach their intended destination. Within the space there is no food, no water supply, no latrines, and no policing.

 

There was a rather touching impromptu carol concert in one corner of the square, but otherwise the only entertainment was watching the intermittent attempts to break out and move from one corner to another.

 

I worked for a while, reading a doctoral dissertation on South African foreign policy and reflecting that its author, an activist with the African National Congress - the movement which led the struggle against apartheid, was likely to face far worse problems than ours.

 

My request that the police intervene to deal with malicious damage was ignored for close to an hour; kids had started to break the windows of the Treasury, which is not easy! When the police finally did act it was with massive force; by that time, sadly, it needed to be.

 

They baton-charged the perpetrators and a minor battle ensued in which more than one bystander was hurt. Police too were injured, I don't deny it. They themselves are graduates, students, parents, and probably as fed up as the rest of us with the policy of tuition increases they were called upon to defend.

 

Yes. There were some hooligans intent from the outset on damaging property and attacking the police. Some idiot had foolishly screened off the centre of the square with metal fencing so that the marchers would not damage the grass. The metal fencing panels, about two metres by three, were ideal for the construction of wedges, like medieval siege battering rams, with which demonstrators tried unsuccessfully to break out of the trap.

 

But most of us had been there in order to rally and listen to speeches putting the arguments against the government proposals being debated that very afternoon in parliament. We simply waited, and waited, and waited, untill between ten and eleven we slowly filed out past the video camera that will doubtless have captioned us "trouble-makers".

 

The effect of all this was that the British press over the next two days was dominated by reports of violence at the heart of the capital. There was no conspiracy here, but it did rather nicely distract from the disarray of the coalition government, which only narrowly won the commons vote approving a threefold rise in tuition fees at British universities. Both the ruling parties split on this issue, the first major legislative test of the coalition.

 

This is unfortunate, because the long-term consequences of the current changes in the funding of education and higher education seem likely to have profound effects, damaging Britain’s universities, restricting access to higher education and exacerbating inequality in a country that has already been polarising for more than a decade.

 

The government claims that transferring the costs of higher education to students and their families will permit a valuable reduction in public spending at a time of austerity without deterring students from poorer households from going to university. No one has to pay up-front; the costs are covered by loans. But this neglects the psychological impediment of indebtedness.

 

Many will not believe it’s ever going to be possible for them to repay the debt; and they may be right, since it is unlikely that the government projection of the average income of today’s graduates will materialise, based as it is on the income trajectory of the much smaller cohort that graduated a generation ago.

 

So the effect on public finances will very likely be negative in the long run. And what will the bank manager say to the young couple who come along in ten years time to buy their first house, already burdened with close to £100,000 of debt? This sort of ill-considered social engineering has consequences.

 

In the meantime, a valuable principle has been lost. This is that the gain from widespread university education is not retained by those who receive it; it spills out into society, at home and abroad. As a form of soft power, it complements British foreign policy. And to the extent that it does these things it should be paid for from general taxation.

 

But so long as public order and the safety of the heir to the throne command the headlines, that debate we’d hoped to engage in on Victoria Embankment will remain - Oh! - That bladder again! - Just so much pissing in the wind.

 

Excellent article.

[Strontium]

I didn't have a mind to change, so the question is of the "when did you stop beating your wife?" variety.

[lifetime fan]

I didn't have a mind to change, so the question is of the "when did you stop beating your wife?" variety.

 

So you still see fit to criticise a subject you obviously know fuck all about?

 

I gave you an example of a person giving back ten thousand pound whilst employing his brother.

 

Su-fucking-prise you ignored that.

[dennis tooth]

I didn't have a mind to change, so the question is of the "when did you stop beating your wife?" variety.

 

I have no idea but I hope you are severly injured in a car crash and have to claim benefits from a wheelchair and have to spend your days beating up whole battalions of policemen while claiming money on behalf of your gay partner landlord mincery arrangments and get interviewed by the BBC. Hope this helps.

[dennis tooth]

Coalition? This is a Tory government

Lib Dems have little say in a cabinet weighted in the Conservative Party's favour.

 

 

Those of us who write about politics have been struggling with our terminology since Britain's first coalition government in 65 years was formed in May. Is it a Con-Lib coalition, a Lib-Con coalition or, in the words of the Daily Mirror, a Con-Dem coalition? As the dust settles on a tumultuous political year and the coalition prepares to enter its ninth month in office, I propose a rather simple solution. Call it a Conservative government - for that is what it has proved to be.

 

The recent debacle over higher education funding, in which only eight Lib Dem backbenchers voted with the coalition to increase tuition fees, is just the latest evidence suggesting that the party of Prime Minister - or should that be "President"? - David Cameron is calling the shots in this government.

 

Consider the personnel. Of the 29 coalition ministers who attend cabinet, five are Liberal Democrats. That might initially have seemed like a fair and proportionate allocation of jobs, given that more than five times as many Conservative MPs (307) were elected to the Commons as Liberal Democrats (57). But the distribution of portfolios and responsibilities inside the cabinet suggests that the Lib Dems secured ministerial salaries and chauffeurs at the expense of influence over key policy areas.

 

The three great offices of state - HM Treasury, the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - are held by Conservatives. So, too, is the Ministry of Defence.

Little voice

 

How can the little-known Lib Dem Michael Moore at the Scotland Office or George Osborne's red-headed, red-faced bag carrier at the Treasury, Danny Alexander, be expected to compete with Theresa May or Liam Fox? Lib Dem ministers have been conspicuously denied control of the big-spending departments.

 

Chris Huhne, a former candidate for the Lib Dem leadership, is in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), one of the smallest ministries in government. In contrast, the former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith was airlifted from the back benches and parachuted into the Department for Work and Pensions, as Secretary of State, where he administers the biggest budget in Whitehall. Health and education are in the control of the Tories Andrew Lansley and Michael Gove, who have, respectively, embarked on a massive restructuring of the NHS and the schools system, both at breakneck speeds. Where, I wonder, is the Lib Dem influence over free schools or GP commissioning?

 

Consider, too, the range of core Conservative policies that the Liberal Democrats in government have had to accept. Much was made of Cameron's "big, open and comprehensive offer" to the Liberal Democrats on 7 May, the day after the general election; less comment passes on the "red lines" that the Tory leader imposed from the start around non-negotiable issues such as spending cuts, the immigration cap, the renewal of Trident and European integration.

 

Where were Nick Clegg's red or, for that matter, yellow lines? To abandon a pledge to scrap tuition fees is one thing; to vote for a trebling of those fees is quite another. Lib Dem ministers claim to have won concessions from their Conservative coalition partners but, on closer inspection, these tend to be exaggerated.

 

Was swapping one tax cut (inheritance tax) for another (raising the threshold to £10,000) the Tory equivalent of the Lib Dems' dropping of their historic support for PR or their iconic opposition to student fees? It is often forgotten that the Tories backed the idea of a pupil premium in their manifesto.

 

And the coalition's liberal approach to law and order has come from the Conservative Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, and the Tory prisons minister Crispin Blunt rather than Lib Dems.

 

Meanwhile, Vince Cable, as Business Secretary, had to push through higher tuition fees in early December; Huhne, the once-vocal opponent of nuclear power, has unveiled plans for the next generation of nuclear power plants in his role as Energy Secretary; and Clegg, in charge of constitutional reform, has secured a promise from the Tories only for a referendum on the Alternative Vote (AV) - which he had described as a "miserable little compromise" as recently as April of this year - rather than the Lib Dem holy grail of proportional representation.

 

Can anyone point me in the direction of a Conservative cabinet minister who has had to push through a policy or proposal to which he or she had been personally, vocally and ideologically against in opposition?

 

There might be more humiliation to come for the Lib Dems. In the new year, a Home Office review of counterterrorism laws is likely to back the retention of control orders, which impose severe restrictions on terror suspects who have not been charged, posing serious difficulties for the junior partners in this coalition. Clegg has described the orders as a "fundamental" breach of human rights; Huhne has said that they undermine British "values". Will their views trump those of Theresa May, who is said to be in favour?

Common ground

 

Consider the view of Lib Dem voters. A recent poll of 2,000 people who voted for the Liberal Democrats in the general election, conducted by the former Tory deputy chairman, Lord Ashcroft, revealed that just 54 per cent would back the Lib Dems again in 2015 and that 44 per cent of them say that their view of Clegg's party has "got worse" since 6 May.

 

On the same day the polling was published - 11 December - Richard Grayson, former director of policy for the Liberal Democrats, described his party's leadership as "exceptionally close to the Conservative leadership" while noting: "Most Liberal Democrat members realise that we have more in common with members of the Labour Party and the Greens than we do with our own leadership."

 

And consider the history. Conservative-Liberal coalitions in Britain tend to end up being dominated by the Tories. As the constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor wrote on these pages in May: "The Liberal Unionists of 1886 and Liberal Nationals of 1931 were swallowed whole by the Conservatives, while the independent Liberals left the Conservative-dominated national government after just one year in 1932, in protest at an imperial tariff." Why should it be different this time around?

 

If it isn't, the Liberal Democrats could be finished for good. l