Look at it this way in 1977 we had 2 working pits churning out coal at record levels, 2 main engineering plants, a large electrical wiring works, 2 mills, all together employing collectivelly about 6500 people, in 1997 all the above had gone, replaced by???? a couple of underused run down job 'parks'.
Its not got much better since but its hard to stop the rot once its set in.

Yes Labour under Brown doesnt look good but Cameron.... come on he's a typical no chin Conservative hardly a dynamic alternative and his backroom team will be... well theres...well.... all faceless little grey men busy filling in Expenses slips.

I will never ever vote Tory but to be honest Labour isnt actually grabbing my imagination for a vote either. It always seems that once a government seems to go downhill it takes the 'lot' following it 10 years to sort the other lots mess out.

Politics and religious arguments dont you just love em....

I worked down Parkside colliery for 15 years before it shut and we were making and had been making a profit for years, most of the coal we produced went to Fiddlers ferry power station when our pit shut they had to bring coal from yorkshire because the coal from abroad wasnt good enough on its own so they had to mix it costing them in transport. now on the topic of coal from abroad we could import it cheaper but when we have no pits left the price of said coal will rise as we have none of our own.

Relief under MIRAS for home loans was withdrawn with effect from 6 April 2000, the same year the married persons allowance was too. Unless you're about 200 years old.

the sun has ditched labour because Murdoch likes to back only winners thats why he has changed his allegiance 3 times murdoch knows labour wont win next time murdoch isn't daft murdoch is an Australian sh*th*use

MIRAS went about 1990ish I think?

The country now needs a Tory government to balance the books.

Massive cuts are needed in benefits/Work dodgers, immigration, local/national government costs and minority spending, eg Gay jugglers grants etc

Incentives are needed for business to locate in GB and encourage entrepreneurs.

We need to scrap the legal aid scheme and withdraw from the Human Rights Charter as it currently stands.

Cant see Labour having the balls to do most of those.

Biggest issue that we have to face is the inequalities in pensions for the Private Sector and Public Sector,and Brown more than anyone is too blame for this.

His decision to tax pension funds has cost millions of hard workers thousands of pounds of their pension fund,virtually getting rid of final salary pension schemes in the private sector.

I'm prety sure many on here work in the public sector and may have another view on this,but until something is done about this Britain will become a very bitter and divided Country over the next decades.

Another inequality is how can it be right that Scotland and Wales heavily subsidised by English tax payers have so many free benefits that we in England have to pay for,that really does wind me up.

By the way I hate the Tories,used to work in the public service and my wife still does.

Like Gordon and Darling did propping up RBS not too long ago?

Gordon cost our economy £5 billion by selling 395 tonnes of gold when the price was at the lowest it had been for a long time.



Agreed. It was that young fella in Citibank that caused this. If he hadn't messed up, we may have been blissfully unaware anything was wrong for a little while longer.


Gordon famously said, "No more return to boom and bust." What a load of bullocks.

You've got to fix the roof when the sun shines, not when the monsoon has already arrived.

You can only fix the roof when you still own the house,if the UK economy was an individual its house would of been repossesed ages ago.

So very very true.

We had a discussion during A-Levels about whether it would ever be possible for the Conservatives to return to power after the way the country felt after the 97 election. The consensus was no. How wrong we were!

We had the same discussusion at college around 1969 and came to the same conclussion, and boy where we wrong

Let us not forget the tax cuts given to the rich in 1979/80.
to pay for them the tories sold the gas, electricity, water and railways.
would we still have the high prices faced today if these industries were state owned?
Also lets remember that the tories under thatcher turned the police on the miners whilst churchill used the troops, putting the working classes in their place.
As for Miras it was a tory chancellor who announced its abolotion in stages over about 4 years by reducing it gradually to basic rate, 20% 10% and 0%. The excuse was interest rates had come down from 15% to less than 10% during the previous year. A similiar excuse was given by them for aboloshing the married couples allowance! Interst rates at 15% - vote tory to se them again!!

Will I be the only one having a party when a certain lincolnshire woman dies?

No I will too. How can anyone even consider putting up statue of her anywhere, when the only things she can be credited for is ruining a countires industry, taking us to war and partly responsible for Mr Whippy ice cream.

This has been a high quality and very interesting debate ( for a rugby forum). But to go back to the original subject-respected research has shown that newspapers do not influence election results that much anyway!

Go on, explain that to me!

I blame her for Colin Moynahan but thats another issue.