[Stuart]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

Are we electing bankers now, I knew we elected something sounding like banker but this new revelation is brilliant, let's see how they like working for the little man rather than their bonuses

No, we are electing those who change the rules of the banking system (in favour of the bankers usually).

Originally Posted by spreadsheet

I find it incredible that anyone is considering Labour at all

So do I.

how come they didn't do any of the things they are banging on about now - when they had thirteen years to give it a go

That's politics. When you are fighting for power, you promise anything that might sound interesting to the voters (lower costs, fighting the utility companies for consumer rights, big business bad, small business good etc) in the hope you'll get into power.

When you get into power, you realise that you can't actually (be bothered to ) do a lot of what you promised, so quietly forget it and hope everyone else does. In the mean time, where something does go wrong, you blame the previous government no matter how far into your term you are.

Then, the next guy does exactly the same. Sadly, this is how politics works.

I sometimes like to wonder what would happen if somehow (maybe a change in constitution), politicians ended up with a legal responsibility to carry out their promises. I suspect we wouldn't have many politicians left.

I also thought I remember someone saying they "wanted to see an end to Punch & Judy politics" - but it's more so than ever - playing to the gallery etc

See above.

It disgusts me when things get "put off till the next election" and the whole country just lurches from one disaster to another

The problem is that a lot of the problems the country faces are not going to be solved within a single (or even 2 or 3) term of government. For instance, the state of our railways. This is gradually improving, but we have had nearly half a century of underfunding. It's going to take decades to correct the problems caused by that. Politicians like to take credit for things, so they might be tempted to stay away from something that's going to cost hundreds of millions a year to do and not going to show any positive outcome for 15 to 20 years (which may be long after they've retired or died).

Similarly, there are problems with society. David Cameron identified a section of society where families have been on benefits for generations, and a *lot* of these people do think that life owes them something, and they shouldn't need to work.

If I had any say in anything - I'd get shot of all the microsoft liceneces - use open office or similar opensource software -that would save a stack

The problem with OpenSource software is that in any medium or large deployment, the cost of licencing is only a small percentage of the costs of deployment and maintenance. Support is the primary cost (it's easier, and cheaper, to find support staff who are able to support Windows and Office purely because they are two of the most widely used programs available).

Also, there's the problem that if there is some sort of problem with the software, who do you go to? Most companies (the one I work for included) like someone they can hold responsible and ultimately take action against if the product fails. Buying a product gives you both someone you can hold responsible (the manufacturer) and several tools you can use against them, including the Sale of Goods act. Don't get me wrong. I like Open Source software and, if it weren't for Outlook (which I have to use because of Work), I'd ditch MS Office totally and go for Libre or Neo Office (I use a Mac).

I'd nationalize the power industries back to where they belong and stop this nonsense about having to 'shop around' for power

Personally, so would I. However, you might want to watch Panorama from last Monday. It seems a major reason for both our current high energy prices and future brown outs (which they are predicting for next winter) is a major lack of investment in the power infrastructure in (you guessed it) the last 50 years or so. I hold both Government and Private industry responsible for this.

I'd put a stop to that high speed rail folly and use the money to improve the things that already exist or replace the infrastructure that Beeching short sightedly axed

Not sure I agree here.. While it's nice to think that we'd end up with a state of the art rail network that's going to serve every single area of England, Wales and Scotland with a good service, the fact is, we don't have the money to do that, so choices have to be made. So you have £10 million to invest in a railway project. You have two. One is to improve the rail connections between 2 towns and will benefit a couple of thousand people a day and one is to re-open some of the old Beeching lines and (obviously) repair and improve them to bring them up to modern signalling, power and safety standards. They would benefit a few people, but nowhere near 2 thousand a day. Which would you do?

In fact I'd probably nationalize most of the public transport systems - it's the working people that need the free travel - not the people on sickness and benefits - that need the help most

I will say that when the then Labour government fired Connex and re-nationalised the South Eastern railway franchise it became a hell of a lot more reliable, consistently reaching standards of reliability that the current operator Southeastern Railway frequently fails to meet.