Ian-S

Yeah lol they're all too busy manning speed checks, throwing child abuse victims in jail to shut them up and helping bailifs turf bedroom tax victims out their homes, to stand under their oath. However once you have lost the ability to do something, it will be very had to get it back...

It's true along with proposals to limit our freedom of assembly (our right to protest). We are actually behind most other EU members in this regard. As my tin foil hat wearing friend says, we're sleepwalking into tyranny, and I guess we'll see how right he is over the next 5 years.

Just to play devils advocate, why is it OK to cut unemployment benefit and not disability benefits? (Not that I think that either should be cut). The cost of disability benefits is around 4x that of unemployment benefits if you exclude benefits that both parties would be entitled to (such as housing benefit, council tax etc.). Surely if it's a money issue, then all benefits should be cut equally, no?

Exit poll is suggesting hung parliament and thus probably a raindow coalition (3 parties). Conservatives + Libdems is the magic 326, but the speaker does not vote which looses that magic majority for them.

True lol

You're talking about a vote of no confidence or vote of dissolution, either can, in theory, happen at any time. The fixed term Parliament act kind of causes a bit of a problem if there is no clear majority or no coalition can be formed, Dave can continue a minority government as long as it passes a confidence vote in the house, but they'll never get any new legislation through and can be subject to a vonc at anytime. (Confidence Vote and Vote of No Confidence are two different things).

He's definitely a tit, if nothing else. Dirty deed done for another 5 years, unless of course we go back to the polls in September The voucher system is a great idea, but it wouldn't work because present direction is to give benefit claimants a pile of money and tell them to get on with it, whereas previously certain benefits would go directly to the supplier and the bit to live on to the claimant, it all now goes to the claimant, this will only end one way, badly, but we won't see the effect until universal credit is rolled out nationally.

^^ that's why access is free at the library.

I understand Josh's view, to apply for a job you have to have access to a phone, there are only so many free call cubicals in the jobshop and phone companies are not in the business of providing their services for free, so someone somewhere has go pay for it.

No you didn't, I just didn't make myself clear, I have a half decent smartphone and it costs me about a quid to run a month, but then I'm not on the phone all day every day - Internet is a little different, there are oftn hidden charges, like the need to rent a phone line at £15 a month on top, I guess you could say this is what library is for. But as you say, £40 a month contract phones are not necessary, it was those I was talking about. You highlight a good issue, money management, the number of people I come across that have no idea of their outgoings is astronomical, and a fair percentage of these are NOT unemployed, it should be taught in schools from a very young age IMHO.

Balls has said if he get's in he'll follow Osbourne's idea, whether he means that or not is another thing. Tax credits are complicated, but they're for everybody, working or not, infact some tax credits are not available to the unemployed. However I do agree with you, Sky, mobiles, internet, 42" TV's, iPads etc are not a necessity to live and it pisses he off no end to see people apparently spending their £70 a week on that, but there is often more to this than meets the eye, a person could have bought the TV long before becoming unemployed, or has bought t on credit (which is another conversation all together). We have a problem in this country where the jump between being unemployed and the benefit of being employed is not a big enough financial gap, so it is very often better for a person financially to sign on than it is work full time, this was made worse when the social housing cap was scrapped, meaning new tenants had to find 3x as much to rent their flat than their neighbour. I won't go into specifics either but I often work with people who are so near the bottom of the barrel they cannot see daylight, and I can assure you they don't have TV's, mobiles or sky and living on £70 a week is a struggle, especially if they get sanctioned for 3 months due to arriving 2 minutes late for their assessment thanks to the bus arriving late, IDS has done a very good job of painting a picture of the country being bought to it's knees and it's simply not true (but there are some bad apples as you say). IMHO the whole system needs scrapping and starting again, the Governement needs to stop privatising off everything and neglecting all the bits they are responsible for, and get out of Europe, not that we can, even if there was a 100% turnout and 99% voted to leave, we couldn't action it.

^^ This is what I meant....

Don't get me started on May and Smith, it's embarrassing enough to share the same initials as IDS. I don't believe all the spin about benefits and the unemployed bleeding the country dry, the unemployment benefits bill is tiny in comparison to what is spent on tax credits and other stuff such as oh, err, the 'war on terror'... and had the Conservatives not removed the rent cap on social housing associations when they came to power the housing benefits bill wouldn't have skyrocketed either.

The locals would complain about a multistory. What the locals need to take into account is how much the park contributes to their local economy, it is often far more than they realise.

Libdems get bad press because of the university fees, they actively targeted students with a specific promise to win their vote then at the first opportunity abandoned it in favour of the lure of government (not that I blame them as it was the only hope they ever have of getting into government). It didn't effect me but I know plenty friends who's kids were led up the garden path and got crapped on as a result, what they've done since will, in some people's eyes, never make up for that one broken promise.

Yes.

Spoiling the paper is the only way to 'make your vote count', it's what I'll be doing too.

Actually that's not technically true (the school bit) the Academies Act 2010 (I just read it) states all new schools must be free schools or academies, Local Authorities cannot run these types of schools and if they have to open one due to demand, they have to put the running of the school out to tender. I did a little more research, this happened round here with the new school that opened last year, I never took any notice of it until now, but they are very proud to be the first 'primary academy' in the area and it's run by a private company according to their website, this company was given the building free as well. So the LEA can open a new school if they want, but they're not allowed to run/operate it and it can only be an academy or free school, that's like saying you can build a house but must sleep in a tent on the front lawn. As for the Greens, my dad takes a probably unhealthly interest in how Brighton is run and has told me before about everything you mentioned, they really are slightly too crazy for my liking personally. He said their latest hair brain scam was on 'rain' days they were going to reduce parking costs on Maidera Drive to encourage tourism - seriously? I've also never understood this theory that lowering speed limits reduces emissions, it's double dutch because the car takes longer to complete it's journey, thus putting more pollution out, the only place there should be strict slow speed restrictions is outside schools.

Is it right local authorities are no longer allowed to setup/build/start new schools and all new ones must be academy or free schools?

Skynet FTW. It started with RFID chips, now it's internet confusion, but it won't be long until the machines have completely enslaved us, bugger.

Oh fudge, I didn't even see that post, my tablet jumped straight to page 2 after I posted that lol.

I didn't say you were taking inaccurate rubbish. You said are you seriously saying labour didn't make the recession worse, I merely pointed out they didn't cause it. I also said wages had outstripped inflation in the last two months too, but wasn't sure if it would continue. Are we both talking the same language? LOL

The inflation/wage rises figures might be government ones, but the independent ones say the same too, those are not the kind of figures you can lie about, the figures speak for themselves tbh. We don't know what the conservatives would have done when the banks crashed, that's my point, they could have done the same, or the situation could have been even worse had they got their way in the previous years and let them off the lead, or it could have been better handled. Conservatives just continued to increase spending as Labour did, they didn't start the spending increases. Zero hour contracts have skyrocketed in the last few years, I'm working off memory here but it's been something like 20-30% increase a year, my neighbour has just been sacked and re-employed on a zero hour contract, something made possible by the conservatives changing the employment laws when they came to power, under the previous laws, her employer wouldn't have been able to do this. We may get to see how the conservatives react to another banking crash as many economists are predicting one soon because lending in other countries, is back at pre-crash levels, we may have tightened up our lending criteria here but many countries haven't. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Labour will do a better job, by christ I wouldn't trust the two Ed's to organise a pissup in a brewery, but on the flip side I think the age old favourite conservative party line of blame everything on labour is as deep routed in bull**** as my local dump, labour did a lot wrong, but they did not create the financial crash and it's unfair to blame all our problems on labour when they were stuck between a rock and a hard place over what to do, something I still say the conservatives would have done no differently.

Osborne said he would wipe out the deficit by 2015 when he came to office, thankfully the Lib Dems stopped him, although he blames the EU for it. Labour did increase spending (on public services like the NHS and Schools) but the £4 for £1 figure also takes into account the £500 billion they used to bail out the banks, as I said before, had the Conservatives been in power at the time, they would have had to bail out the banks too. Having said that, Labour did do some seriously dumb stuff during their tenure. Labour didn't cause the recession or make it worse, the banks did that all by themselves. Also don't forget that in the mid-2000's when Labour wanted to loosen up the Banking Regulations, the Conservatives wanted much looser regs, essentially making the Banking Industry be self policing. Imagine how bad the recession would have been had the Conservatives got their way... That figure from Dave is based on 14 month old data, a lot has changed since 2013, another Government Dept (can't remember the name of it) estimates it to be more like 1 in every 19. No they're not, this is a myth. Wages only rise (in real terms) if the % level they increase is greater than inflation. From Jan 2009 to Dec 2014 inflation increased at a higher rate than wages, in "real terms" most people had wage reductions during this period: Inflation: 2014 1.5% 2013 2.5% 2012 2.8% 2011 4.5% 2010 3.3% 2009 2.2% Average: 2.8% The average wage rise over the same period is 1.4% according to the ONS. This means that in "real terms" we've all suffered at least a 1.4% pay cut since 2009. Wages only increased more than inflation in March and April of this year and given that was mostly thanks to Sanctions against Russia reducing the cost of Oil, there's no guarantee it will continue. Only if they earn enough to take advantage of the cut. Increasing the tax threshold from £10k to £12k, doesn't make anybody earning less than £10k any better off. Agreed, but we won't be any better off under the Conservatives either. Matt Creek Party, now that's a manifesto....

Yes they did waltz us into it, but only to save us from a worse fate, all the banks were bankrupt, there would have been a run, and society would have collapsed as a result, this isn't an overstatement, Dave has done the same thing since by continuing to bail out the banks. As a percentage of GDP, we are worse off now than when Dave took over, I'm not saying either is better, or worse, but had conservatives been in power in 2008, they'd have done the same thing, it's easy to forget that the problem was caused by irresponsible lending by banks, not out of control public spending.