Forum Topic

Bet your glad you voted Labour

I can't believe dear old Ruth Cadbury, one day after stabbing the old age pensioners in the back, has the gall to post how delighted she is to be appointed chair of the transport committee. Her reward, no doubt, for being a good little lap dog and towing the party line while her boss and the rest of his sponging parasites fill their coffers with freebees and huge salaries and while all the time the Labour faithful in her constituency are shafted. Worse still, Labour commissioned a report into what the impact that cutting the winter fuel payment to the old and vulnerable would be, but Keir blocked it being published as maybe the true cost in lives would be exposed.PS and I thought Boris was bad!

Robert Ayres ● 180d27 Comments

Problem is people want stuff, and more and more of it all the time. It’s got to be made somewhere although not in the UK. Even James Dyson farmed out his production to the far East as soon as he could.What should be worrying people is who controls the access to the minerals we will be increasingly relying on for our renewable energy and other battery powered items. China and Russia, with the latter’s main interest in Ukraine being that country’s huge mineral resources waiting to be plundered. All that history guff was just a smokescreen.

Simon Hayes ● 174d

Very true even that G Tech company that sponsor’s the Bees manufactures its goods in China. I would imagine back in the 70s that would have all be made in Brentford.

David Cook ● 174d

The irony of the bulk of ‘British’ goods manufactured overseas is that it helps governments pretend they are pursuing green policies. No need for nasty carbon emitting, fossil fueled factories here!Like many things in the UK the unions started off as a good idea until corrupted by certain vested interests. Labour still ignores the unions when it suits (as shown by the current winter fuel payment row), yet claims to be the party of the people when handing out generous pay settlements with not even basic no strike conditions being incorporated into those agreements. Little wonder people come back for more.

Simon Hayes ● 174d

Well Brexit probably happened because many voters assumed it would control our Borders. When I started work at 17 locally you could not join the company unless you agreed to join a Union! It was a closed shop in other words. It was one of the best paid jobs locally.I paid my checkoff for 44 years however the Labour Party stopped representing us or were not interested in us Engineers through the 90s.Pay and conditions dropped over the years along with the apprenticeships and thats when more students went to Uni. Education education education we were told.When I see what unskilled train drivers earn, who would want to be a Bricklayer Plumber or learn a skill. Large manufacturing has largely off shored from the UK. You only have to look at the French and German Aviation industries to see what could have been.

David Cook ● 174d

“It is without doubt the biggest self inflicted harm any country ever managed.”It is without doubt that Brexit has been devastating for the UK and it will be regretted for years to come but it is quite ludicrous to assert that it’s the biggest self inflicted harm ANY country ever managed. What about Nazi Germany, Bosnia, South Africa’s Apartheid?  Closer to real time, what about Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Gaza?

Steve Taylor ● 175d

Perhaps that's  because your community and city have not been ignored and had no investment over decades.I suppose selling Labour membership cards on the cheap a few years ago has also attracted the fickle as well as the skint to it.Still,if you can get a huge majority on so few votes...

Keith Iddon ● 175d

I can't agree with everything you say, but I do think one of the problems the Labour party has is the many middle class people who joined, which has caused this disenchantment of the working class, but it started before Tony Blair. For a lot of us who were staunch members and activists for many years this is now a problem, because we have seen so many jumping on a bandwagon simply because where they live Labour are the majority party, the suspicion is that were that to change, so would they. We have to have some belief that under Keir Starmer things will get better - and where education is involved the number of students studying vocational courses rather than trying to get into university is increasing. A lot of these school leavers do not want the colossal debt that goes with a degree, they want to start earning and learn a trade that will mean they can always earn a living. This country needs to value those real skills as much as a degree qualification, after all where would be without them? As for Brexit - I have no words, and cannot fathom why anyone believed all that baloney from Farage, Johnson et al, it is without doubt the biggest self inflicted harm any country ever managed.

Vanessa Smith ● 175d

Well if you know the age of the 'culprit' and can work it out, good luck!

Anne England ● 175d

It's too late,Vanessa.The supposed party of the working classes sold them down the river in the nineties and noughties.The knock on effects have been increased levels of joblessness and poverty and all the things you might associate with that,like Brexit(yes,it was a surprise to you southerners,wasn't it?)It's partly why the north and west has needed 'levelling up'(that's a laugh!),because people have had no money and no prospects and no investment to speak of for 30years or so.They are now trying to put a sticking plaster over a gaping wound.It will take a hell of a lot for me to vote for them ever again since Blair's second term,and before that I had voted for no-one else.

Keith Iddon ● 175d

I think the drive to get so many people to go to University was misguided. It rather overlooked the point that not everyone is academically inclined. Proper indentured apprenticeships have all but disappeared, just as daylight has started to dawn that highly practical skilled people are needed for the sake of the economy. We need builders, bricklayers, electricians, engineers and on and on, so they have to be able to access training. Another daft idea is that even they are expected in many cases to have attained  GCSEs in specific subjects, just because they may not be able to do that does not mean that they lack the practical skills to be good at their chosen profession, we lose so many aspiring qualified tradespeople like this and for what? Lots of things can be learned on the job, including the way maths for example fits, and how to use it, so that it makes sense for them. We also lost our Technical Colleges that provided the back-up knowledge and preparation for the qualification exams. We need to reverse this and treat vocational education with the same importance we attach to University entrants.

Vanessa Smith ● 175d

Gosh, Keith, your punctuation, grammar, spacing and articulation is atrocious. I can't, in all sincerity, indulge you any further. You fail to make any sense. You are a waste of time. 

Steve Taylor ● 175d

I am also a believer in Gordon Brown's all too short lived soundbite 'British jobs for British people'although it was beyond obvious that no one in New Labour ever believed init.Blair and all the others were much happier to open up the borders to workers,many of whom were unqualified and unskilled,and encourage our children to go to college and uni.to do media studies,psychology etc. and other hobby degrees.All this whilst bringing in tuition fees in 1998.It's called 'the economics of the madhouse'in my mind,whilst at the same time making a whole generation of British youth feel useless unless thay had been to uni.to study nonsense half the time instead of gaining an apprenticeship and meaningful employment.

Keith Iddon ● 175d

Haven't seen the Conference or any interviews yet. According to the paper though, the idea is to reform 'Job Centres' to actually help people into work. Why these places are even called Job Centres is a mystery to me, from what I can understand they do not have jobs on display anymore, and everything has been farmed out to agencies. They only want to sign people up and most of them haven't a clue about helping people find work. So much on offer is zero hours contracts, and rarely does anyone get feedback or proper advice. I think the last government used them as sanction centres to deprive people of benefits for petty little infringements. Many employers do not get back to interviewees after seeing them, let alone give them feedback, and many do not even acknowledge job applications.  What is needed apart from reform are specific skills training courses that lead to permanent employment, with any costs paid, instead of using people just for temporary, low paid labour.

Vanessa Smith ● 175d

PS.A badly informed barrack room lawyer,btw.

Keith Iddon ● 175d

You never written anything that I have read that is difficult to comprehend,Steve.If you are implying that the op has had a poor education for making a simple typo and that I have too,it may be news to you but I would be surprised,nay shocked, if anyone perceived you to be anything other than a barrack room lawyer who no matter how long or where you were educated,that time and money spent on your schooling was obviously completely wasted.I think you may have been educated far beyond your level of intelligence,which to me appears just about what one might expect from an older schoolboy.

Keith Iddon ● 175d

Mmmmm. I’m guessing you are a product of a Labour education too because you don’t seem to understand the meaning of the ‘saying’!

Steve Taylor ● 175d

People in glass houses etc.

Keith Iddon ● 175d

“ 'you're' as in 'you are'”I guess he’s a product of a Labour education back in the day!

Steve Taylor ● 175d

Indeed so Vanessa.Different snouts are at the trough and are head down ignoring any reasonable suggestions from lifelong Labourites like yourself.They are going after people on benefits nlater today apparently according to a  BBC news interviewee right now.

Keith Iddon ● 175d

What I think should happen - is that the famous (infamous?) rules that govern all this sort of thing for MPs need a root and branch review. As with the fuss over duck houses and what have you with the Tories, none of those bizarre payments were illegal - ill advised and a bloody cheek maybe - but against 'the rules'? No. Angela Rayner with Kuenssberg yesterday said there weren't plans to change them - that's just daft. It's not enough to just say we won't do that anymore - you have to be seen to be trying to rectify the whole shoddy mess.

Vanessa Smith ● 176d

I worked for 20 years for a DTI agency which helped exporters. I never got offered any freebies other than the occasional meal. The most memorable was going to a good restaurant in Brussels with an IT contractor with the EU. He made it clear at the start that he'd pick up the bill. It turned out what he wanted was to become an agent for one of our software packages. But as the evenig wore on I liked him less and less, especially when he orderd eau de vie shots in little glasses. As you drained them, the domed floor of the glass revealed a picture of a naked lady! I thanked him for a good meal then went back to London and wrote a memo recommending that we never have any dealings with such a shady character. We didn't. My brother in law was a food buyer, mainly cheese and cured meats. He always accepted all the considerable freebies but said it didn't influence his buying decisions. But it did alter his girth.

Eric Baker ● 179d

I worked in public service for 37 years and was offered gifts,usually a small amount of money,£5 or £10,many times bit I always declined to accept on the basis that I was already being paid by tax payers.I agree with Vanessa,event tickets are a different matter to clothing and glasses and gifts for wives and relations.I would expect him to buy his own clobber.

Keith Iddon ● 179d

I do get the business regarding the box at Arsenal - but suits, dresses for his wife and glasses really should have been a no-no. Whether it's a usual thing for people in those positions or not, we all know there's no such thing as a free lunch, and it's perception that counts.

Vanessa Smith ● 179d

Also it's 'toeing', not 'towing'.

Susan Kelly ● 179d

'you're' as in 'you are'

Anne England ● 180d

The Who.

Anne England ● 180d

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Who says we won’t get fooled again?

Simon Hayes ● 180d