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Sugar Ape
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I believe he wanted to apologise two years ago, but was overruled by his advisers. If it means he's started ignoring them, then things are looking up.

 

Unless his advisers have told him to apologise now, in which case he is still following orders. Either way, I think SM is right, or at least that is how the apology is being perceived by a lot of people.

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The Lib Dems are nothing but a bunch of opportunistic cock suckers. Their founders could achieve fuck all in the original Labour so formed a new party and now we have this moron wjo actually didn't apologise for raising the tuition fees but for being found out that they'd promise the earth when they usually wouldn't be in a position to deliver it. For one i'll be glad when most their deposits will be taken off them at the next election the bunch of fucking WormToungues.

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His 'sorry' is nothing but the frightened bleating of a school kid caught out by his parents. No, sorry is not enough. He has to put things right, that's how it works. And he can by dismantling this coalition but I'm not holding my breath, the sorry sack of shit.

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The people I feel sorry for in this are Lib Dem councilors. There were some excellent ones and they've been decimated at local level these last few years and they've got fuck all to do with the party machine. It annoys me to see the hubris of Labour at local level because of it too.

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Guest Numero Veinticinco
Gotta love millionaire musicians lecturing you about how wealthy people are evil.

 

Almost as much as you've got to love millionaire politicians pretending to give a fuck about the poor.

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The people I feel sorry for in this are Lib Dem councilors. There were some excellent ones and they've been decimated at local level these last few years and they've got fuck all to do with the party machine. It annoys me to see the hubris of Labour at local level because of it too.

 

 

We had some very good lib councillors round here that put the labour ones to shame.

 

All gone now.

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I don't think having money stops someone from having empathy.

 

No, it just apparently invalidates their opinions on inequality. It's that same old shit attack of champagne socialism that is used on anyone who has a few quid but still thinks the system is bent.

 

I'd venture Weller's use of his money is in line with his words and that he pays his tax.

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Cameron having money isn't what stops him having empathy it his breeding that does that.

 

He is descended from a long line of soulless calculating bastards.

 

It's life experience rather than breeding as such.

 

Had a fascinating chat once with a Probation officer after a case where a benefit fraudster who'd swindled more than 100k had not been given a custodial sentence by the judge, the judge said he felt sorry for her because she had a disabled kid and he did too.

 

She reckoned that judges were far more easy going on people in benefit cases than magistrates were, because even though they were from wealthier backgrounds, their time spent as barristers dealing with 'ordinary' people and seeing how they fell into crime has softended their view in a lot of cases. While magistrates, traditionally middle class busy body types, retired headmasters and the like, had no sympathy at all because they'd never seen that life up close.

 

Cameron and most of his system are an extreme example of this really, they've never wanted for anything, their kids never want for anything, they've had good educations in good schools and tutors on request, they've not spent most of their time at school trying to avoid getting smacked around. They tell themselves and anyone who'll listen that they've worked hard to get where they are, but they've also had people giving them a leg up their whole life.

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Cameron having money isn't what stops him having empathy it his breeding that does that.

 

He is descended from a long line of soulless calculating bastards.

 

I think that's probably valid, but perhaps a little simplistic. JFK was descended from a long line of wealthy, influential, "calculating" people, and famously never worked a day in his life in a "real job"

 

He had empathy. He won a presidency with it.

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  • 2 months later...

I get the feeling Clegg feels genuinely hard done by every time he opens his mouth. They haven't fucked up, it's just the rest of the country don't understand grown up politics. It'll be OUR fault when UKIP beat them at the next elections.

 

Nick Clegg defends Lib Dems' record as he marks five years as party leader | Politics | guardian.co.uk

 

Nick Clegg has used the fifth anniversary of his election as Liberal Democrat leader to claim his party has been on a journey to the centre ground, and used the example of the party's commitment to balanced welfare changes to show how it has matured in office.

 

He defended the three-year benefits squeeze set out in the autumn statement as a necessity, saying Labour had tied itself in knots over its defence of a rise in line with inflation. At the same time he claimed he had prevented the Tory right imposing draconian welfare cuts, pointing out that in the autumn statement he had agreed to only £3.8bn of the £10bn cuts sought by the siren voices on the Conservative right.

 

The overall tone of the speech at a time when the party is slipping to fourth in some polls behind Ukip, and some are questioning the viability of his leadership, was defiant, and less about his strategic relations with Conservatives than some of the advanced billing had suggested. In a speech delivered to the CentreForum thinktank in London, he said in office the party had turned from liberal dogmatists to liberal pragmatists.

 

He said: "The challenges of governing at a difficult time have given us a harder edge and a more practical outlook.

 

"We're not centre-ground tourists. The centre ground is our home. While the tribalists in other parties desert the centre ground under pressure, the Liberal Democrats have done the reverse. Under pressure, we've moved towards the centre."

 

The remark is designed to show the party has not moved to the right, but away from a leftwing oppositionalism.

 

He repeatedly used the example of welfare, including the introduction of welfare benefit caps, to illustrate his belief that the party combined the need for responsibility with the need for opportunity.

 

Embracing the reforms, he said: "Some of our critics believe either that the Liberal Democrats in government did not want to reform welfare or were powerless to stop the Conservatives from doing so. The truth is this: yes, welfare reform has been painful and controversial at times but it was in our manifesto and on our agenda right from the start."

 

In some of his toughest remarks on welfare he said Labour had bequeathed a system that was unaffordable and did not make work pay. He warned: "When two-thirds of people think the benefits system is too generous and discourages work then it has to be changed or we risk a total collapse in public support for welfare existing at all.

 

"Politicians of the centre ground, who believe in a benefit safety net, have an absolute duty to be tough on those few who abuse, or try to abuse, the generosity of taxpayers and exploit our benefits system. And an absolute duty to make sure the system as a whole is and appears to be fair."

 

He added: "Let's be honest. Some people do need tough sanctions to get them active."

 

Defending the three-year benefits squeeze for those in and out of work he said: "There is absolute moral equivalence between working hard in a job and working hard to find a job. Out-of-work benefits should rise at the same rate as in-work benefits because they should only go to people who genuinely can't find work or are too sick to work."

 

He said: "The enabling state pays for childcare so you can get out to work; it doesn't pay you to stay at home for 20 years. The enabling state offers a benefit back stop for those who need it but ensures that work is always the better option.

 

"We should not delude ourselves that it is an act of compassion to tell someone that because of ill health they should spend the rest of their lives dependent on benefits. It belittles their potential and ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is time for politicians and the benefits system to recognise that people with health conditions have just as much potential as everyone else if only they are given the help they need to get on.

 

"Labour left us with a benefit system in which work didn't always pay, but sometimes playing the system did. A benefit system that trapped millions on out-of-work benefits with no hope or aspiration for a better life. A benefit system that took money off people in tax and then gave them some of it back if they filled out a series of government forms instead of letting them keep the money in the first place. And a benefit system which meant in some parts of the country families who didn't work were able to live in far better homes than families on low or average wages. The benefit system was so badly designed we had a social duty to reform it."

 

Those in the party that attacked the compromises of coalition were being derelict in their duty, he said. In times of economic distress he said, "politics quickly becomes polarised as the homing instincts of ideologues to the right and the left kick in".

 

He also issued carefully calibrated attacks on the anti-centrist factions in both main parties that will keep open the option of working with either party after the next election. He said the Tory right "dreamed of a fantasy world where we can walk away from the EU, but magically keep our economy strong; where we can pretend the world hasn't moved on, and stand opposed to equal marriage; where we can refuse to accept the verdict of the British people and pretend the Conservatives won a majority of their own".

 

At the same, he said, "the Labour left lives in a different, but no less destructive, fantasy world where their irresponsible borrowing in government can be remedied by borrowing more; where every budget reduction can be opposed without explaining where the money should come from; where games can be played with political reform and EU budget policy without long-term damage to their credibility".

 

"We know from experience now: if you protect the health and schools budgets, as we correctly did, you cannot oppose every reduction in the welfare budget. If you want to protect welfare as well, you've got to accept that you will end up gutting the crime budget, or the BIS [business, Innovation and Skills] budget, or local government. We get that now. We've learned to live with a host of invidious choices."

 

He also defended the overall economic strategy, saying: "We have to cut expenditure to bring down the deficit. Otherwise we put ourselves in hock to the bond markets, drive up interest rates and impoverish future generations." But he insisted the government had taken steps to drive demand, such as "putting money back in the pockets of the low- and middle-income families we know are most likely to spend it with our income tax cut".

 

"We have resisted the false choice between a state that steps in and assumes control, and a state that backs off and washes its hands," he said.

 

He ended by saying: "Both the Conservatives and Labour try to occupy the centre ground. Both get pushed off it by their tribal politics. But the Liberal Democrats are not for shifting. We know that the centre ground is what the people of Britain want their government to occupy."

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"When two-thirds of people think the benefits system is too generous and discourages work then it has to be changed or we risk a total collapse in public support for welfare existing at all"

 

Or two thirds of people need to be informed better. Most people on benefits are working poor if I'm not mistaken. Also, the suggestion that this government has protected health is a scandalous deceit.

 

We no longer have leaders, we have poll followers. The country doesn't want centrist policy, it wants varied things from nationalisation of the rail service to capital punishment. Swing voters in swing marginals and the "hard working middle class families" we so often hear about probably want centrist policy and it's their voices that are heard loudest in the focus groups.

Edited by Stu Monty
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"When two-thirds of people think the benefits system is too generous and discourages work then it has to be changed or we risk a total collapse in public support for welfare existing at all"

 

Or two thirds of people need to be informed better. Most people on benefits are working poor if I'm not mistaken. Also, the suggestion that this government has protected health is a scandalous deceit.

 

We no longer have leaders, we have poll followers. The country doesn't want centrist policy, it wants varied things from nationalisation of the rail service to capital punishment. Swing voters in swing marginals and the "hard working middle class families" we so often hear about probably want centrist policy and it's their voices that are heard loudest in the focus groups.

 

Its amazing how quickly the unpaid corporation tax and tax cuts for the wealthy are forgotten before kicking the weakest in society again isnt it?

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I honestly don't understand how people keep going on about it being better to stay on benefits then work, maybe if some of these business paid a fairer wage to the cleaners of their buildings then people might be more willing to get a job instead of them being forced off benefits and forced to take a job with poor wages thereby pushing them further into poverty.

 

Most businesses are using the 'recession' to drive wages down because they know people are desperate for the work, it's great the way the people at the top are continuing with their huge wage increases year on year but wages for the general plebs have hardly moved, costs to live continue to outstrip wages by miles, at what point do the alarm bells start ringing, if the population has no money to spend then that's the end for everyone's business.

 

A companies size should determine its minimum wage structure, might not be easy to implement but if they done away with all these bastard agencies (which bleed money out the workers pocket and remove employment rights) then it would be a start and make it easier.

 

I hate that no one out there throws all this in the face of these politicians.

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