after what gordon brown did its 10 years minimum!

plus i heard today that they have found out jack straw used to commute in to work with old rebeccah!

Hanging out the back of her like Call Me?

What did Gordon Brown do that has left the UK in such a sorry state?

he fucked europe too
good old gord
nu tory hero

Do you really think an employer gives a fuck what nationality their employee is? Do they bollocks!

I have worked minimum wage jobs since leaving the Army because I didn't want to sign. I'm not scared of hard graft and I'm not ashamed of menial work so I did them and whilst doing them I looked for other jobs. When I was made redundant I applied for all number of shite jobs with shite pay because I'm not a lazy, scrounging cunt. Did I want to do them? Not really but I was prepared to.

What? I don't even...oh I get it now

*adjusts tie*

Well I'm off to get that managers job at Cardiff airport.


Don't fly out of Cardiff airport.

I was young
I was foolish
I was duped
I learnt the hard way

Dear Rebekka,

I was young
I was foolish
I was duped
I learnt the hard way

lol
Dave

The clue was in the note the labour bod left at the treasury

'sorry - there is no money left'

oh how we all laughed

Some of the lefties on here , what did Gordo do? Ran the longest and now the largest deficit in british history!

"No more boom and bust"

Wonderful

with these tories there's just bust, no boom, just bust

So what did they do with all the money?

they trusted the banks with it

not after the mess labour left no - when people say it will take 10 years to put right Im afraid you will have to start to believe they meant exactly that, they wernt joking - it will take 10 years to put right

the most disgraceful thing is that labour kept on with the massive spending and even more massive borrowing in the couple of years before the last election putting off what they knew needed doing in the hope of getting re-elected

very shabby

the money they got by trebling the national debt and leaving us with £40b a year in debt repayments and a trillion in hock?

you tell me

and a generation of tories took us further into europe, even the old bat thatcher, despite her protesting to the contrary.
very hypocritical

A thread where Bill isn't the dumbest on it !

QED

Hi jerpy, you still google searching the role of the cps? How you doing with that ?

he did more damage economically as chancellor, than as PM

selling off the gold at record low prices, and announcing it before hand - cost more per person than bank bailouts, something like 2k versus £750 iirc
getting rid of the 10% tax break on pension divis' - buggered up everyones pension growth, rich & poor alike

these 2 things were catastrophic.....

This is what I dislike about PR people throwing the term stupid and dumb around willy nilly when they have a differing opinion.

I'd forgotten he sold off the gold cheap, advertised it as some sort of amazing deal as well didn't he? Reminds me why I don't vote Labour.

its not the actual decision that really irks me (although selling at v low prices is pretty obviously not a fab idea), but the advertising the fact beforehand, thus further depressing the market. on wiki the stats are he raised 3.5 bill, which would have been worth 19 bill today (or whenever it was updated).

he didn't just sell it and spunk the cash, it was largely uses iirc for buying eur denominated debt, one way of getting Euro politacl and economic muscel, without being in the Euro itself. that idea is dumb with hindsight.
but announcing the fact beforehand.... sheesh. I used to work in the Bank Of England s treasury, on the bullion auctions, and it could have all been done so, so better.

alas, the gold fire sale, and the pensions stealth tax, is almost never mentioned by lefties. it wasn't even that long ago, and punished rich and poor alike.

dumb post.

this is pr, stupid.

Anyone who thinks Blair and Brown are lefties is a dribbling horse felator, they both sucked the cock of the right wing media and the City.

yeah, but lefties still almost never mention these two massive cock ups the hurt the working man, because they were made by 'their team'

most righties admit when tories have made errors, they usually are far smaller in financial terms though !

is this a joke or what ?
like thatcher, major taking us deeper into europe?

(thanks to gord we didnt ditch the pound- he got that spot on)

I love the morons who display the wonders of hindsight with the gold sale and if they think the pension tax relief withdrawal was the reason for the pension value decline then I have a bridge them might like to buy. The dot com crash had a far bigger impact on pensions.

I'm sure many have seen that Poundland have opened in old Peacock's stores as a competitor to Poundland.
I've heard some T&Cs for the new employees. 70 hours p/w @ min wages, 7 days a week.

Is it time for max working hours to be instated.

Sorry but referring to a a period of recession as a recovery is by any measure the dumbest post in this thread.

Nobody plummets the depths of intellectual depravity as Bill does.

Don't we have the EU time directive?

I said we have already made the recovery now?

have you been on the sauce sefton?

Page 3.

given the economy is in recovery mode at the next election - you have to read what we were talking about - you must have missed this

""The economy will be recovering come the next election and the tories have a trick up their sleeve - negotiate with ukip then promise a referendum on europe in exchange for ukip not standing

tories win - and win big if milliband is still in charge of the other side""

a few posts earlier on page 2

Why let facts get in the way of a good story?

The fact is, if that was real, the brave souls working these monster hours would be earning a not too shabby amount and would be among the richest workers in retail.

But apparently you are happy to use terms like '....the tax avoiding Rich detritus' to describe people who have worked hard all their lives to earn a decent income, and who hand over a higher proportion of their income in tax than anyone else.

No doubt you are equally scathing about those on lower incomes who avoid tax. Funnily enough, one of the items of evidence Dave Hartnett presented to the Select Committee that was totally ignored by the press, was that large corporates, contrary to popular belief, are the organisations most likely to pay the correct tax, as are their employees at all levels. Those most likely to evade tax are SMEs and the self employed, especially those dealing in cash.

Right. A Breakdown of why people vote UKIP and why this vote will not go to the Tory party in the main come a GE in 5 easy steps:

1. UKIP's vote in a GE is stand-alone. That is it's support perceive it to be beyond "get out of Europe" - indeed, UKIP would not hold a referendum on getting out - they will just give notice. The Conservative party will not stomach this. They will hold a referendum which of course will result in a no. (Possibly).

2. The three "main" parties will offer an IN/OUT referendum after the next GE. This now seems certain (and is apparently causing ructions in Bruxelles). This does not satisfy UKIPPERS.

3. No deals will be struck by the Tories for UKIP to stand aside. Possibly because if the Tories espouse UKIP's policies they, in their heart of hearts, know it is electoral suicide.

4. As a result, for UKIP - the Conservative Party is not right wing enough (or indeed left wing enough). The hang em and flog em brigade is prevalent on both the Left and Right of the political spectrum.

5. Finally, for the benefit of Bill. UKIP's vote outside of a GE (especially in Euro elections) is made up of an awful amount of switchers from non Tory voters. These voters will not vote Tory in a GE. So simply surmising that if UKIP stood aside and let the Tories stand alone will result in a TORY victory in various seats is frankly fatuous nonsense.

That saying, there is an element of UKIP which will vote Conservative if no other palatable option is on the table. There is also a large element which will stay at home, in some seats where personality plays a part and the sitting MP is known as a non Tory eurosceptic there is an element which will vote for that MP (see David Heath's multiple defences in Somerton and Frome).

Please refer to Rallings and Thrasher plus various other authors who discuss UKIP and their voting patterns in learned publications.

Philip Lynch and Richard Whitaker

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) emerged from its Spring Conference in Scarborough with talk of replacing the Liberal Democrats as the third party in British politics. An ambitious aim perhaps, but UKIP’s second place finish in the Barnsley Central by-election indicated it is capable of taking votes from each of the three main political parties with its potent mix of anti-establishment, Eurosceptic and anti-immigration messages. University of Leicester research shows that UKIP is largely a party of the centre right and that, in the medium-term, it is well-placed to pick up votes from disgruntled supporters of David Cameron’s Conservatives.

Using the first academic survey of UKIP’s general election candidates alongside responses from over 2,000 UKIP general election voters, taken from a YouGov survey, our study shows that UKIP candidates mainly see their party as being on the centre right, as distinctive in terms of its ‘hard’ Euroscepticism, and as taking a tougher line on immigration than the main parties but not than the British National Party (BNP). This fits with UKIP’s attempts to position itself as distinctive from the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats, not only on Europe but also on the salient issue of immigration, while shunning the extremism of the BNP.

Many UKIP supporters do not see the BNP in a positive light. At the 2009 elections 62 percent of UKIP supporters held a ‘fairly negative’ or ‘very negative’ view of the BNP. And when looking at UKIP’s 2010 voters’ views of other parties, the Conservatives were the most favoured. UKIP should resist the temptation to follow in the footsteps of the radical right as this would contaminate the UKIP brand by associating it with extremism, undermine its efforts to improve the party image, and repel those voters on the centre right who might be attracted to UKIP at a time when the Conservatives are not delivering what some of their supporters had hoped for.

Evidence from the 2009 European and 2010 general election suggests the party has more to gain from Conservative supporters than others. Roughly half of its voters at the 2009 European elections (in which UKIP finished second) went on to vote Conservative in 2010, indicating that some Tory supporters took up Nigel Farage’s invitation to ‘lend us your vote’. Information on tactical voting at the general election also suggests UKIP could gain from the Conservatives.

Of those who said they voted Conservative but either really preferred another party or had voted tactically, one-third said they preferred UKIP, the largest proportion for any party. In 2010, UKIP also won support from former Labour voters unhappy about the Labour government’s policies on immigration, Europe and crime. But only 7 percent of those who claimed to have voted tactically for Labour at the general election, and 5 percent of tactical Liberal Democrat supporters, said that UKIP was their preferred option.

The 2014 European elections will give Eurosceptic Conservatives the chance to express dissatisfaction with the Tories for ditching their manifesto commitment to repatriate policies from Brussels and any perceived failure to oppose EU economic governance and rulings by the European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights. But the advent of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition also gives UKIP the opportunity, in domestic elections, to exploit popular concerns about immigration and crime, as it appears to have done successfully in Barnsley Central and in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, where UKIP finished fourth.

The party ran well-funded campaigns in both these cases, neither of them constituencies with a solid base which UKIP could build upon. In both elections, polling evidence indicates that, among those switching from the main parties, UKIP made gains primarily from Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters. As a party that attracts protest votes, UKIP is well-positioned to benefit from those who might have given such a vote to the Lib Dems in the past but who no longer want to since the party has been in government. Those who dislike the BNP but are unhappy with the three biggest parties may also see UKIP as worthy of their protest vote.

While replacing the Lib Dems under first-past-the-post is rather a tall order, in the shorter term gaining support in European and general elections from Eurosceptic Conservatives disappointed with the coalition looks much more feasible.