merse
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Post by merse on Oct 28, 2010 21:21:39 GMT
Mayor of London Boris Johnson has today accused his party boss of "Kosovo style social cleansing", I'd say it was another case of gerrymandering. "Dave" (the guiness swilling TV footie fan) and his new little pal Nick want to push those poorer members of London's society (an estimated 80,000 of the poorest people) out to the lower rental areas by cutting housing benefit ~ a bit like Paris then where they are banished to the banlieus. Now who was the last British politician to get convicted for doing just that? Oh yes that's right, their fellow party member Lady Shirley Porter and where is she now? Having fled abroad (to Israel) to avoid justice, she crept back into the country a few yars ago. Well she paid her dues as she saw it, stomping up £12.3 million instead of the £42 million she was ordered to pay originally. That thirty million shortfall could have paid for an awful lot of housing benefit couldn't it!
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Post by stuartB on Oct 28, 2010 22:18:08 GMT
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merse
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Post by merse on Oct 28, 2010 22:46:37 GMT
I think "Dave" * definitley learned to "smile as he kills"* Cameron that is before somebody else gets the wrong end of the stick again.
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Post by lambethgull on Oct 28, 2010 23:00:57 GMT
Boris is simply watching his backside ahead of the Mayoral Elections in 2012, but that's what happens in a democracy. Ken Livingston would never stoop to such levels would he? A shame Labour made such a shambles of the economy that they're unable to hold the Government to account.
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Post by stefano on Oct 29, 2010 6:33:07 GMT
...or is it tough decisions being made to try to sort out the unholy mess our former Chancellor (and later lame duck Prime Minister) and the rest of his socialist cronies got us into. Ducking the difficult issues may be the way for the Prime Minister to become popular but no good Prime Minister has been popular (even Churchill was kicked in the teeth as soon as he had won the War). Our last regime did duck the difficult issues except for maybe one and it could be argued that that was taking us into an illegal war to deflect attention from the problems on the domestic front. Discuss in less than 250 words. The winner will win a ticket to a Take That concert, the runner up will win two tickets!
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Rags
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Post by Rags on Oct 29, 2010 7:55:36 GMT
...or is it tough decisions being made to try to sort out the unholy mess our former Chancellor (and later lame duck Prime Minister) and the rest of his socialist cronies got us into. I have no wish to defend the last Government at all, but I'd be very interested if you could provide just one example of any of their policies that could be described as socialist - as far as I could tell they were all stolen from the Conservatives. And while you didn't define the unholy mess you refer to, I would point out that the current Economic situation is not unique to the UK and we weren't the first country to suffer from this particular recession. I'm not saying that New Labour made a great job of handling it - they didn't - but the effects of world economic contraction would have hit this country hard even had the Tories been in charge, and I don't believe they would have made a significantly better job of dealing with it. This country was, after, all mere hours from bankruptcy and that wasn't due to Government policy decision.
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merse
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Post by merse on Oct 29, 2010 12:56:29 GMT
................ and the rest of his socialist cronies got us into. I have no wish to defend the last Government at all, but I'd be very interested if you could provide just one example of any of their policies that could be described as socialist ...............the effects of world economic contraction would have hit this country hard even had the Tories been in charge, and I don't believe they would have made a significantly better job of dealing with it. This country was, after, all mere hours from bankruptcy and that wasn't due to Government policy decision. I agree with everything I have quoted you on Rags, not a sniff of socialism from Labour governments under either Brown or BLiar before him. My local MP Jeremy Corbin is a socialist and he wasn't been allowed anywhere near government under either leader, but carried on diligently representing ALL his constituents whether they voted for him or not. That as far as I'm concerned is what my vote stands for in any general election, because as many people have pointed out; those trusted with power within the Labour movement have merely expediently instigated policies that were designed to at first grab government and then hold on to it. They no more represent a person like me in Westminster than Boris Johnson does as mayor. The question I asked at the beginning of this thread, and which no-one has addressed; is whether people think that Johnson is highlighting yet another instance of gerrymandering through social cleansing? Remember this is a Tory drawing attention to another case of Tory jiggery pokery, and when alleging that this is "Johnson covering his backside" take note also that he was returned as mayor on the strength of the outer London vote, not the inner London vote.
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Post by lambethgull on Oct 29, 2010 13:29:23 GMT
I will respond more fully later on, but Johnson will have two things in mind:
1. A desire to avoid acting as Ken's recruiting sergeant (remember that he was elected on a turnout of 45%).
2. A desire to avoid losing his core vote in outer London boroughs who will fear a mass migration of HB claimants from inner London to their areas.
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merse
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Post by merse on Oct 29, 2010 13:48:03 GMT
A desire to avoid losing his core vote in outer London boroughs who will fear a mass migration of HB claimants from inner London to their areas. I'd laugh my bollocks off if twee Richmond On Thames turned Labour as a result, but looking at the cost of the private rented sector in those leafy outer boroughs; I think such displaced people will more than likely find themselves having to move to places like Dagenham, Feltham and West Hounslow where the very spirit of Vicky Pollard is alive and well in the day time cafes and supermarkets. Tory voting Southend On Sea might have a shock coming to it and remember it is the private rental sector that gobbles up most of the housing benefit in this country anyway by letting properties to local authorities who need to fulfil their statutory obligations without the housing stock they were denied through the Thatcher "Grab Yer Council House" pantomime that the gullible and the selfish were recruited as "True Blues" by when they should never have been anything of the sort. As ever, we reap what we sow.
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merse
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Post by merse on Oct 29, 2010 14:57:08 GMT
It must be understood that what is being proposed by Cameron is bad for social cohesion, bad for families and certainly bad for the diverse and socially fraternal communities of Inner London where rich and poor live side by side as opposed to somewhere like Paris where the affluent and fortunate virtually have the centre of the city to themselves whilst the working classes and less fortunate are consigned to the outer ring. Anyone visiting the two cities can notice the vast difference in diversity and multi culturalism that exists in two very different societies. How can anyone justify the intention to charge 80% of the commercial rents to socially housed tenants having to use the private sector in the future AND to limit their security of tenure to a mere 5 years; even pretend that social housing as we are so familiar with and so proud of in this country is to be anything but discontinued? How can that be anything other than a policy of political doctrine as opposed to a realistic appraisal of the very real politic of life in a modern society? In the London Borough of Islington where I live, the local authority rent for a three bedroomed flat is £92 per week. Wherever the council are utilising privatly owned flats to fulfil their statutory obligations through non availability of their own stock, then that average rent rises to £450 a week and therefore huge amounts of Housing Benefit are required to line the pockets of the private sector. Now how does the argument for selling off housing stock and not replacing it (as doctrinated by the Conservatives since 1983) stack up in the face of that huge added expenditure to local authorities? No more than the decisions by Thatcher & Co to kill off our core industries of steel, coal; ship building and vehicle production and thus hugely increasing the balance of payments deficite through mass importation of basic needs does either I would contend. So who has really caused this "unholy mess" that Stefano so readily sees as the reasoning behind social cleansing? It's certainly not the future victims of "Dave's" "sorting out" as he describes it, is it!
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Post by stefano on Oct 29, 2010 15:47:50 GMT
Very disappointing! I gave enough of a prompt for a good healthy debate but despite 51 members logging on since I posted only 3 members have posted on the thread, and they all seem to be members of the same choir. Due to an obvious lack of interest the Take That tickets have been withdrawn (and no Rags I don't have to give examples of socialist policies as my post was clearly tongue in cheek)
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merse
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Post by merse on Oct 29, 2010 16:31:09 GMT
Well having driven Jason Orange and Gary Barlow (+ his mum!) Take That are no great attraction to me (although Rags and I could have gone to see them together) so I'll wait in no longer and go to football tongigt instead.............. it's safe to come out now boys and girls, and post your predictions to your heart's content!
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rjdgull
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Post by rjdgull on Oct 29, 2010 16:59:40 GMT
Very disappointing! I gave enough of a prompt for a good healthy debate but despite 51 members logging on since I posted only 3 members have posted on the thread, and they all seem to be members of the same choir. Due to an obvious lack of interest the Take That tickets have been withdrawn (and no Rags I don't have to give examples of socialist policies as my post was clearly tongue in cheek) Now that you have withdrawn your kind offer I feel able to post. A few things that spring to mind when I see the words unholy mess. An 8% structural deficit - i.e we were borrowing shed loads of money before and at the height of a boom. Changing RPI to CBI - No account taken of house price inflation and helping to sustain a credit boom. Taking Bank regulation away from the BoE and leaving an unsatisfactory structure in place. Selling much of the gold reserves at the bottom of the market and compounding this by telling the markets of this decision beforehand. The golden rule of not borrowing more than 40% of GDP has long gone with debt around double this limit meaning more money has to be spent on debt interest and less on things like housing benefit. It was certainly a global recession but I think the country was due for a fall regardless.....
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rjdgull
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Post by rjdgull on Oct 29, 2010 18:26:16 GMT
Well having driven Jason Orange and Gary Barlow (+ his mum!) Take That are no great attraction to me (although Rags and I could have gone to see them together) so I'll wait in no longer and go to football tongigt instead.............. it's safe to come out now boys and girls, and post your predictions to your heart's content! Interesting comment, maybe the time has come to do some social cleansing of my own.
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Post by lambethgull on Oct 29, 2010 20:22:09 GMT
...or is it tough decisions being made to try to sort out the unholy mess our former Chancellor (and later lame duck Prime Minister) and the rest of his socialist cronies got us into. Ducking the difficult issues may be the way for the Prime Minister to become popular but no good Prime Minister has been popular (even Churchill was kicked in the teeth as soon as he had won the War). Our last regime did duck the difficult issues except for maybe one and it could be argued that that was taking us into an illegal war to deflect attention from the problems on the domestic front. Discuss in less than 250 words. The winner will win a ticket to a Take That concert, the runner up will win two tickets! Gordon Brown famously claimed to have 'ended boom and bust' and was happy to rake in the proceeds from our (then) booming finance sector whilst at the same time borrowing to expand the public sector. This placed us in a particularly vulnerable situation when the banking and finance sector went tits up. New Labour could of course have been honest and set out a tax and spend programme with regulation for the finance sector, but (correctly) concluded that such a platform would have been impossible to win an election on.
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