How Much More Can You Take?

[Guest LB]

Prime Minister Tony Blair has said there is "evidence again of significant progress" on the domestic agenda over the summer. He highlighted successes in health, education and crime in his latest press conference.

The Prime Minister said that the recent A-level results, GCSE results, and results for 14-year olds were the best ever.

"Average waiting times in the NHS are sharply down, asylum applications have now halved since last October," he said.

He said that although it is true that certain aspects of crime are up, crime overall is down by 25 per cent since 1997, according to the British Crime Survey.

"The point I think is important for us to make is this, none of this progress has been achieved except by change and reform. What I do accept however is that it is important that people understand why we are reforming."

Measures on economic stability and employment are there to provide opportunity for all, he said.

Mr Blair said that investment in the Health Service and in schools is to ensure people have access to decent education and healthcare irrespective of their wealth, and legislation on crime and anti-social behaviour is to make the streets safer for the most vulnerable in society.

"...it's been a tough time for obvious reasons and what should the response of the Government be? I do not believe we should change our course, because we believe in it. I believe that what we did in Iraq was right.

"I believe that just as we have delivered low mortgages, low inflation and cut unemployment dramatically, so in time we will show the transformation in the National Health Service, in our school system that the country wants and that I want, and the action against crime that we desperately need to see."

Just how much more of this tosh can and will the british public swallow?

Isn't it about time that cheesey (to steal a phrase from tankus) bogged off and went and ruined someone elses country??

[Guest Nellie2]

Come back Maggie!!!...........all is forgiven!!!!! :o

[AlanHo]

Can you honestly say the alternative politicians are any better. The whole political structure is on the slide. Very few politicians are up to the job.

Its easy to criticise - but what alternative can you offer - I know I can't.

[peter e]

Very few politicians are up to the job.

No present day politicians are up to the job. They are in politics for one reason - to further and enrich themselves!

Time for another Oliver Cromwell, methinks.

[mark2]

I think all politicians believe in the mushroom method, keep you in the dark and **** on you.

Other than spending our money what use are they ?

Suppose they could replace foxes for hunting :rolleyes:

[mark2]

And I see even the virus writers love B'liar

Sophos

[andsome]

I honestly can't think of any politician who is a natural prime minister for the county, except perhaps Jasper Carrott, he is after all a Midlander.

[AlanHo]

My vote would go to the party brave enough to implemnt radical policies including :-

Bring experienced and proven senior managers from private industry and services into the government to run the main government departments.

Implement a strict no tolerance policy on crime and punishment - this will require more prisons, less cosseting of prisoners so that prison is a punishment and not a holiday camp and a return to hanging for the most heinous murders and offences against children. As an alternative - criminals sentenced to death to be given the option of volunteering for being used for medical experiments (instead of using other animals) as a way of paying back their debt to society. It will also require an overhaul of the judicial system and the sacking of the more liberal judges.

Streamline public services and get rid of the bureaucratic hangers on. Go into any hospital or government department and see all the people wandering about with a bit of paper in their hand and you will see what I mean.

Implement a major road and rail building programme to do something about congestion.

Expand the police force - give them financial incentives for solving real crimes - not motoring offences like speeding.

Withdraw from Europe and form close economic ties with the USA.

Implement strict controls on asylum seekers and immigration together with medical examinations and citizenship tests before they get a passport. Asylum seekers to be kept in camps for the maximum period of 6 weeks it should take to review their application.

Introduce in-depth citizenship lessons into all schools (for all children aged 10 to 18) to fill the vacuum being left by errant or absent parents.

Dismantle the nanny state and bring back family values and responsibilities. Make parents take responsibility for their children.

Make a major assault on state benefit fraud. Those on unemployment benefit should be required to attend a day training centre or carry out community services for which they would be paid their benefit as a function of the hours they attend. This will seriously dent the black labour market.

Do something about drugs. Either tackle the problem with total determination - or legalise it - to reduce the incidence of crime to fund the drug habit.

Make voting compulsory - extend internet and postal voting to facilitate this.

I could bang on about this all day - but I get fed up with people whinging on about Blair or Kennedy or whose the other guy - without offering an alternative. Only andsome has been brave enough to nominate a suitable Prime Minister.

[Redhat]

Here here Alan! Here here!

BTW just a little view from the people on the receiving end of this country's "education" system.

Basicaly the Government LOVE to play ball with the way things work. So, they don't work.

For instance, our year group started GCSE Art in year 9 instead of year 10 because we are an arts college. Great loada good that did, no one took it seriously and it's a failure. We are now the only year to do this, it's been stopped for next year.

Somehow we managed to spend £11,000 on painting ONE corridor!

The SAT's structure was completely changed for English last year, the year we took them. (I'm talking academic years - september to july) So they were marked differently.

I haven't got that English SATS result back yet, the school sent them back because they were not marked correctly. PATHETIC. How hard I worked for those exams you wont believe.

Oh, and they are changing alllllllllll the rules for GCSE for us now, it's a complete farce, you EXPECT things to go up the crapper. Everyone single one of us is pessimistic (spelling) day in day out, all based on past experience.

[Sir T Fireball]

Well said Alan :)

apart from

Withdraw from Europe and form close economic ties with the USA.

If you take that bit out of your manifesto I will vote for you ;)

VOTE ALAN1937 FOR PRIME MINISTER

[peter e]

It'll do for me, Alan!

Except for this...

Make voting compulsory

When there's no one worth voting for, I, like many others, abstain.

...and I thought I was the only one who thought that ministers should NOT be politicians but be experts in their particular field and appointed into office.

[andsome]

Well said Alan  :)

apart from

Withdraw from Europe and form close economic ties with the USA.

If you take that bit out of your manifesto I will vote for you ;)

VOTE ALAN1937 FOR PRIME MINISTER

Sir T Fireball, you are suggesting removing the BEST part of Alans posting. The sooner we stop being bossed about by a load of left wing Europeans the better. Just look at the time wasted in Brussels. It has taken British chocolate manufacturers years to once and for all squash the STUPID European idea of calling British chocolate by some other stupid name, (I forget what at the moment), because it contains less cocoa fat than theirs. The Germans and Belgians wanted to stop us calling our beer BEER, because it contains a percentage of brewing sugar. Just about every peice of legislation brought in causes more problems than it solves. I like visiting Europe and eating different food, and drinking different drinks, but it's always nice to come back home to familiar things, WE DON'T ALL WANT EVERYTHING TO BE THE SAME IN EVERY COUNTRY. Lets keep the £, and get out of this vast expensive autocratic botch up once and for all.

[Sir T Fireball]

andsome, sorry if my post wasn't very clear :unsure: I do not want to get any closer to Europe and I certainly do not want to get any closer to the USA. Blair has already dragged our country screaming in the direction of GWB's poop tube that the smell of his cacker is filling my nostrils.

I dislike both lots equally :D

[monkeyhanger]

Cracking post LB

Glad you have sorted out her indoors

I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

Takes some of us 20 years to get to that stage. :D

alan1937

If we had a politician with the spherical scrotum :P to implement your suggestions, they would certainly get my vote. The problem is who can name 5 members of ID Smiths shadow cabinet or for that matter who is currently leading the liberal party or is it the sdp or what ever? :o

[andsome]

This could well provide an answer to all our problems with politicians

The very wise bunch

[Rete]

Who is ID Smith ?

[Guest Shirley_Crabtree]

Who is ID Smith ?

Iain Duncan Smith.

Leader of the opposition party in the UK government.

Cheers.

Shirl

[Guest spikeychris]

Seems that Alan has struck a cord with on or two people here.

1: Bring experienced and proven senior managers from private industry and services into the government to run the main government departments.

Fair enough I can live with that.

2: Implement a strict no tolerance policy on crime and punishment - this will require more prisons, less cosseting of prisoners so that prison is a punishment and not a holiday camp

Yeah with him so far.

3: A return to hanging for the most heinous murders and offences against children.

What happens if you hang the wrong person? Look at America it has capital punishment in some states and where else is there more murders in the civilised world than the states? Someone once said you can judge a people by the way they treat there prisoners...

4: The sacking of the more liberal judges.

Very fighting thing to even think of. What is liberal? makes me shudder to contemplate such a thing..

5: Expand the police force - give them financial incentives for solving real crimes

Don't understand that one, expand them yeah, get hundreds more but give them financial incentives for solving real crimes? if they need extra money to do what they are already paid for they are in the wong job and should be sacked. Imagine the scene a policeman knows he will get a bonus if he finds a child killer, he thinks he has the man (not certain but he thinks he has) he goes ahead and adds the odd bit of evidence. The man is charged, convicted and hanged.

6: Withdraw from Europe and form close economic ties with the USA.

Why? I am English and proud to be so. What would America offer Britain? if you think €urope is full of bureaucracy then take a good look at the states.

7: Dismantle the nanny state

In what way?

8: Those on unemployment benefit should be required to attend a day training centre or carry out community services for which they would be paid their benefit as a function of the hours they attend.

Thats been going on for a few years already.

9: Do something about drugs. Either tackle the problem with total determination - or legalise it

World wide problem. Not a British political problem.

10: Make voting compulsory.

Why would you want to force someone who hasn't a clue about politics to vote?? if anything this would cause far more harm then good. Do you really want the drug addicts you and I despise to go and vote for a government that will run our country? yeah everyone should vote but they should know what they are voting for and understand the polices and promises of the people they are voting into power.

[Guest moon]

Voting has been compulsory in Oz for many years. It doesn't mean that every druggie and low-brow drags himself to a booth and slams a cross anywhere there's a space. It forces a lot of peeps to think and it forces governments to take education seriously. You can get away with all sorts of crap if only 40% of the pops turn out but it's a lot harder with 100%.

That said, there will be no meaningful change in politics until there are regular electronic referenda. Until then, personality politics will continue in its main roles- selling newspapers and otherwise wasting our time.

[Tankus]

Maybe Osama will drop a plane on them during a full sitting .....then this country can have a fresh start.......

Isn't it about time that cheesey  bogged off and went and ruined someone else's country??

Um...... hes already done that ,....... plus cheesy seems to have spent so much time in other peoples countrys telling them how they should be running it (rather than face ours ) hes probably eligible for overseas earnings tax relief.....

[Tankus]

This a bit of a long read , but

Michael Meacher

Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for d*** Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

· Michael Meacher MP was environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003

Read in full here at the Guardian

[Tankus]

One thing cheesy should make 100% sure ...Is that when Bush declares the Iraq campaign an unqualified success. (just before the next run up to the US elections)

And removes all the US troops ................... ! (Apart from a permanent base in the new Kurdistan (Northern Iraq))

................All the British troops should be totally removed at least a month before the US,s are......

Just like he declared that the war was "won" 2 months ago , what relevance to the Iraqi situation ,his speeches and decisions will have , will depend on the political landscape of his homeland .........

More British troops going in today.....

[Guest moon]

The Americans can't leave the Gulf and neither can we ( the Brits and Aussies) Our governments can survive bombs in their homelands while we're actively at war but if one goes off after a withdrawal they're stuffed.

[Tankus]

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[Tankus]

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