I appreciate that response was not in relation to any of my comments but I rarely if ever resort to calling other posters contributions 'utter rubbish.' A bit aggressive although perhaps not for a right winger (there you go back to rugby.)

"If you're not a liberal when you're in your twenties you haven't got a heart; if you're not a conservative by the time you're 40 you haven't got a brain."

I guess I'm still waiting to grow up but there again, like you, I've now lived under long periods of both centre right and centre left administrations and I know which one I prefer and which one best fits my outlook.



But why choose to fill the gap between the two off the backs of hard working men (and especially women), the poor, the disabled, the old and the young. In a country of great wealth (only it's concentrated in the hands of the few) surely there's a fairer way? This coalition has set themselves a test of fairness. It's a test they will fail as long as their cuts harm the public services ordinary people (young and old) rely on and their tax policies are regressive.

As for the notion that the Tories are the party of economic competence I think that myth was blown apart on the 16th September 1992.

Well I'm ecstatic with the Tories – my eldest is just completing her UCAS form and choosing a Uni. I can’t tell you how happy I am that our beloved PM has decided to lift the cap on uni tuition fees and I might have to end up paying up to £7k a year.

The year after my youngest will be hitting Uni - £14K a year, can’t wait.

Success after the disappointment of last Friday's weather cancellation. 'Local bear' in attendance with the Blade pilots grounded by the conditions.


Farewell for now ..... hope to see you next season.

You see there you go again. Another put down attempt. Your'e now saying I have a "complete lack of humour" because I didn't find your name calling funny, which it wasn't (nothing about Norman Tebbitt is funny) I actually do have a good sense of humour as many of my previous postings (and choice of name) will hint at. If your remarks had actually been funny I would have been the first to laugh.

By the way neither am I one-eyed or unable to change my opinion when presented with a convincing and better argument than my own. (so don't give up so easily) In fact I welcomed in the New Labour Government after the mediocrity of the Major era whose performance I also "kicked into touch". I am just very disappointed with their overall performance after so many years in power. So you can hardly say this is the usual "score" for a right winger!

Make no mistake the last election was a huge defeat for Labour. The voters while not giving an overall majority to the Tories (due largely to a good TV debate by Clegg) nevertheless clearly rejected Labour. The other two parties have formed a coalition which by definition means both partners will have to compromise on some long cherished policies, in the interests of the big picture, which is to reduce the huge national debt and bring back some financial confidence in UK plc. This is in line with the verdict of the voters which we should respect until the next election.

The voters made the Tories the major player in this coalition and so they have the mandate to decide on the majority of issues. It is a credit to both the Tories and LibDems that they are mature enough to make some difficult compromises. Of course they are going to make mistakes and of course there will be fall outs along the way and I will be ready to point out these errors too. I can understand why Labour activists are looking forward and hoping for these fall outs which is to be expected from two parties working together. What was their excuse when Blair and Brown were at war in the same party!

I also don't understand those deficit deny-ers who are so quick to have a go at this new government yet strangely keep so quiet about the many failings of the last Labour Government. It is all so one-eyed and out of balance with reality.

I am sorry, but to state that Brown led the world out of the financial disaster was IMO so inaccurrate that my comment of "utter rubbish" was made out of bewilderment and not said with any aggression. You should remember that all good right wingers swerve to both the left and the right when confronted by opposition left wingers but nearly always leave them grasping at thin air with mud on their faces!



I know that I have been let down by both the left and the right and so don't side with either but please don't think I'm a LibDem that worse than being called a right winger.



I say give them a fair try before you dismiss them. I do not condone cuts in public services that are essential to the less well off. But the Labour government threw vast amounts of borrowed money at public services that was not all essential or improved anything so there will be savings to be made which do not effect essential services

Diddums

How can there possibly be any rise in student fees?

Nick Clegg has pledged otherwise....

Yes I agree. I have vivid memories of some of the memorable tries he scored for Leeds helped by that under rated centre Derek Hallas.

I have two part time jobs and I don't even have opposable thumbs.

A good TV debate by Clegg reduced the Tory vote? Really?

Given the circumstances at the time of the election the public were clearly not in love with the Tories either and the Lib Dems also lost seats in what was a very disappointing result for all three major parties. A plague on all your houses. The look on Clegg's face at his declaration said it all ...... game over.

As the parties were aligned prior to the election I doubt many Liberal voters were contemplating providing a fig leaf to the inevitable and ideologically driven slash and burn Tory policies to come. The politically left of centre electorate (the actual majority at the general election) are not represented by this coalition.



The Lib Dems have done Cameron a massive favour in controlling his own right wing who would have been all over him like a rash had they chosen to run as a minority government.

I didn't vote for a coalition (I doubt many of the electorate did) and neither did Cameron who even had a party election broadcast describing how it would be a disaster for the country. Mind you he also described Clegg as his favourite political joke.



What are the conservative compromises so far? It appears like business as usual with ideologically driven cuts, targetting the weak and tax changes that are regressive.




Depends if they were at war over personalities or over policy. Every party has and needs a divergence of opinion within it.

But that can be difficult to reconcile within a coalition from the left and right. The Tories want a free market University system with probably minimal or no public funding/support outside of the core subjects. The Lib Dems don't only believe in tuition fees being capped at the present levels and not increased as they pledged but they went much further than that in their manifesto which IIRC stated that fees should be removed altogether within 6 years.



Like who? There's a large deficit which is hardly surprising after a lengthy world recession - brought about by the failure of regulation and while you'll happily lay the blame at the then government's door you're happy to ignore the then opposition's calls for an even lighter regulatory touch. Only Vince Cable warned of the property and debt bubble.

The question is how to deal with it (and the accumulated debt) and over what length of time. If that is the major issue of the day, both the Lib Dems and Labour went to the electorate on a platform of no cuts until the recovery was established and funnily enough that is what the majority of the electorate voted for. However it's not the policy of the coalition - democracy in action?

Damo is sticking pins into an effigy of you as I type this......

tvoc you like using stats so...
The swing from Labour to Conservative was 5% and greater than the 4% swing to Mrs Thatcher and there have been only 2 other swings greater since 1950.
The overall swing to the Conservatives was 3.6% the largest swing since the 1918 election while Labour have a swing aginst them of 6.2%
The Conservatives gained 100 seats and lost 3. Labour gained 3 seats and lost 91.
The Conservative popular vote was 10.7 million (306 seats) with Labour on 8.6 million (258 seats) and poor old LibDems on 6.8 million (with only 51 seats)
Of the 532 seats in England the Conservatives had an absolute majority of 61 more seats than all the other parties combined with an average swing of 5.6% from Labour. This last stat is important because Scotland has its own Parliament and is not fair many that they can vote for the English and Welsh Parliament when we cannot vote for theirs!

Which ever way you look at it the country dramatically rejected Labour. If you take note of the way England voted then the Tory's had an absolute majority. So unless you change the rules you have to accept the result as a good democrat.






Although a coalition was not one of the choices available on the ballot paper, in reality the country did vote for a coalition as under the present rules they did not give any party an overall majority. So the alterrnative was a minority government (which was not an option given the circumstances) or a coalition. This was made clear to all when polling was close before the election.



What are the conservative compromises so far? It appears like business as usual with ideologically driven cuts, targetting the weak and tax changes that are regressive.






Of course is will be difficult for two parties to work together but at least they are having a good go. The LibDems policies and manifesto were made without ever thinking they would be in power. Now they have a share of power and have seen "the books" they now realise the mess they have inherited from Labour which means they have to change policies to solve the problems.





If you blamed the last opposition for everthing before May 2010 then why are you not blaming the current opposition for the soon to be announced cuts? For that is what you are saying. The last Labour Government has to accept the responibility for leaving office with so much debt. It has nothing to do with the opposition parties as they do not have site of "the books" or the power to make decisions. You can sumise all you like about what the Torys would have done had they been in power but that is not the point and is just a smoke screen to avoid admitting responsibility.

You have stated what you think the Torys would have done yet still have not admmitted just for once the errors that Labour made. The problem you are not addressing is that when the bank crisis came followed by the world recession we had no money in the kitty. We had already a large national debt because Labour had borrowed the huge sums that it spent on public services over 14 years. Much of this money was wasted and many of these services and jobs we simply couldn't afford. Most of the other leading nations were hit just as badly in their banking systems but did not have this large national debt hanging around their necks. So this is why we are next on the sick list after Greece, Ireland, Portugul and Spain.



I think you will find that Brown committed Labour to half the debt in 4 years (estimated by the Institute if Fiscal Studies to be 44.40Bn in cuts) While the LibDems committed to 34.4Bn. Se there would have been severe cuts anyway. The Tories are proposing some 62Bn so it is this difference and the timing that is the real discusion.

The USA is heading for a second round of quantititive easing (QE2) which may well harm any UK recovery so my guess is that the Tory's will have to react to this with hold back on some of the cuts.

Anyway having said all this I should declare I am not a Tory Boy and I do have some real misgivings regarding the fairness aspect of the proposed cuts and as they unfold I will be there to voice some opposition. What I object to is a one sided argument

Contains some factual inaccuracies as far as I can see but I take the point that Labour lost the general election just disagree (under the parliamentary system we have) that the Conservatives won it, indeed under the constitution Labour still had first dibs at forming the next government but the numbers didn't allow it without forming the mythical rainbow coalition. Still Funny how the Lib-Dems plain lied to the Tories about what Labour had offered them though in order to get the referendum on the alternative vote.



One third of the voting population rejected all politicians. It's a UK parliament made up of 650 constituencies in four home nations. If there was an England parliament then the Tories would always be in power, thankfully there isn't and until such time as there is (which should be never under the Conservative and Unionist party) it's a moot point you appear to be making.



The country clearly couldn't and didn't vote for a coalition as it wasn't on the ballot paper. They voted in 650 local MP's, for who knows what reasons but the co-ordination required to ensure a balanced parliament is way beyond the electorate. Of course the Tories, as the biggest party, could have gone it alone as a minority government but that would have been a disaster for them with the tail wagging the dog.



The Lib Dems need to be careful that they don't forget what they stand for and what their supporters voted for. It's an incredibly weak argument they make that they didn't know the state of the public finances prior to taking office, it's all laid out in black and white in the red book at the time of the budget, which was about 6 weeks before the election. The only thing that has changed since then is growth has been stronger (thanks to Labour's support of the economy), unemployment has been lower (thanks to Labour's support of the economy) and the borrowing requirement has been less than forecast (thanks to Labour's support of the economy.)



I'm not blaming the Tories at all for Labour's actions in office (I think you are mis-representing me there) I am merely saying with regard to the regulation of the financial services that the Tories in opposition were calling for even less regulation not more. Therefore if you think Labour made a mistake it's also incredulous to think it would have been any different under the Tories much the same as when Blair took us into Iraq (against some notable Labour voices) it was with the unanimous front bench support of the official opposition. Afterall who was it that said

I'm trying to look forward, not back. I'm concerned at the coalition's choice (not Labours) of how much to cut and how quickly and whether the recovery will falter (returning us to recession or like Japan experienced years of flatlining growth) and in addition which sections will bear the brunt of the cuts. I simply don't accept the UK economy is comparable to the ones you are highlighting.



OK so finally you've found something we can agree on, as I've been trying to do all along. It is the timing and the degree of removing the structural deficit. Nobody is denying Labour would also be making cuts indeed Darling said something like 'even worse than those under Thatcher' (although it's a fallacy that Thatcher's governments actually made any cuts in the year on year total of public spending - but it's a comparison that appears to resonate with the general public.)



Why should what the USA does effect what we do? I thought it was all Brown's fault earlier, funny how world events seem to matter more now since the election. 45.7470703125:10