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Originally Posted by Gogogo
Clarify this, give examples.
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Dover is a specific example raised frequently and specifically. A Labour peer (Hattersley IIRC) conceded on Today last week that in constituencies such as that, where there is a strong, local impact due to asylum and immigration, Labour is going to have a hard time at the polls. This is the central point I have been driving at. Strife caused by asylum seeking is localised - which will be why you don't encounter it during your canvssing - but requires a national policy solution.
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Disagree there that's not a fair comment, my charge is you didn't read a page from a channel 4 web site. My reading is independent, I reach conclusions for myself.
May I spell this one out:
"Independent financial experts at The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has another concern.
It says there is nothing to stop high tax payers changing their earning behaviour in light of higher taxes. And, it asserts, most changes in behaviour will have an adverse affect on the party's ability to raise the predicted sums.
High earners could reduce their taxable incomes knowing the financial penalty from doing so is diminished. For example, they could decide to work fewer hours, retire earlier or, most drastically of all, leave the country and work elsewhere.
High-income foreigners, meanwhile, might choose not to come to the UK in the same numbers as today. "
Above from Factfile page previously quoted. So IFS do have concerns about the Lib dem proposals and not what you think at all. Still it doesn't matter as the Lib dems will not be in office.
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If you read what I have been saying all afternoon, you will find that nowhere have I suggested the IFS does not have concerns about the Lib Dem policy. What I have been suggesting is that the nature of those concerns is nothing out of the ordinary. The Lib Dems have mapped out a scenario which includes certain assumptions about future events. If you accuse them of being 'vague' on that basis, then you are duty bound to consider Gordon Brown 'vague' when he does exactly the same thing with his own economic forecasts. This is a point you have completely ignored, though I have now made it three times.
It does matter, by the way, not because it is highly unlikely that the Lib Dems will win power, but because double-standards like this do nothing for the standard of debate.
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Nowhere have I suggested this. The governments under Harold Wilson though, the first Premier with a degree in economics nearly made it possible. Wilson's government was hit by crisis on the pound about which he unfortunately made the wrong decisions.
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'unfortunately made the wrong decisions'? Tell me, did you manage to keep a straight face while you typed that? So even an economics graduate couldn't make Old Labour dogma work. But a shopkeeper's daughter from Grantham turned this country around. Truly I'm starting to think the old ideas of left and right, working class and middle class, were a bit of a myth all along.
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The New Labour project which led to a thorough internal reform of the Labour Party has enabled new skills of presentation and has indeed made it possible for labour to look forward to a Third term ofgovernment.
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Well at least we agree that New Labour is about spin and presentation rather than anything of substance.
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That's not a fair comment. The New Labour government was prepared to allow matters to remain as they are. It would have been a bizarre act to suddenly re-nationalise companies sold off cheaply, though clearly public opinion did seem to swing in favour of re-nationalising the railway industry due to the incompetence of the companies resposible and the massive public investment they enjoy.
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It's an entirely fair comment and one you'll find broad support for among politicos and commentators of all persuasions. You migth even find tacit support among your own ranks if you look hard enough. If Labour truly considered Thatcher's reforms the anathema they said they were at the time, they have had 8 years to do something about it. I don't believe for a minute that Blair would have entertained renationalising anything, even if he thought he could afford it. And I think it is totally bogus of you to look at the public mood towards Railtrack and infer wider public support for a programme of renationalisation of the Utilities.