Will you / Should we vote on Thursday?

[louisiana]

I went to my polling station and they seemed to think my road didn't exist :-S I know it was only adopted by the council a few decades ago, but even so...

Looks like not many polling cards have been delivered down my way. Very quiet down at the polling station.

[Keef]

Can confirm that. Moved recently, and not yet registered, so they said just turn up at polling station for previous address.

[LuLu Too]

25 minutes left...

[louisiana]

A pity no results until Sunday night. Ah well, will watch the council results from elsewhere with interest.

[PinkyB]

I know, I didn't realise there were no results til Sunday either. I usually stay up to watch results come in, but on a Sunday evening I'm usually tucked up in bed not long after Countryfile. Bah.

Has anyone seen any local campaigning going on at all? The first I've seen was tonight, coming out of Honor Oak station, a man handing out leaflets and just saying "European Elections!" No party badge, signs, any other paraphernalia, just one anonymous well-dressed bloke handing out leaflets. Anyway, I took one, and it wasn't until I was halfway down the road that I realised it was for the Tories. If I hadn't been loaded down with shopping I might have gone and given it back to him:

"Thanks for the leaflet, but I'm old enough to remember the total effing mess you lot made of the country last time, how you took us into two wars, two recessions, how you sold off council houses, decimated manufacturing and heavy industry, and oh yeah, let's not forget how you privatised a load of building societies that had been built up for over a century on the hard-earned money of ordinary people, and let them be driven into the ground by money-grubbing public school bastards. Labour may have royally pissed on the hopes of everyone who voted for them in 1997 actually believing that "things can only get better", but hell will freeze over before I can ever bring myself to vote Conservative."

I have to say, thank Christ this wasn't a general election, because the question of who we DO actually vote for now is a nearly impossible one to answer.

[louisiana]

PinkyB Wrote:

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> I know, I didn't realise there were no results til

> Sunday either. I usually stay up to watch results

> come in, but on a Sunday evening I'm usually

> tucked up in bed not long after Countryfile. Bah.

I shall be tucked up in a tent, and far from a newsagent! Will need to take my trusty mini radio.

[louisiana]

PinkyB, I think I had three leaflets, and no polling card, and saw no local campaigning at all. Was surprised to find around 17 candidates on the ballot paper. Who are these people?

[????]

er.......the building societies demutalised in accorance with their members wishes.....

[PinkyB]

Wingnuts and chancers, mostly!

[PinkyB]

the building societies demutalised in accorance with their members wishes.....

On the promise of a large cash handout if they demutualised, and giving plenty of time for carpetbaggers to set up accounts purely in order to make a fast buck. Basically taking a short-term personal gain over the long-term benefit of the company and the members as a whole. And didn't they do well? Not a single one of those privatised companies is still going, at leastr, without being propped up by the state.

[????]

......still not privatised by the tories

[PinkyB]

No, just sold off by them.

[????]

er ......no they weren't.......but you look like someone who doesn't wan,t to listen

[Ted Max]

I had a Labour bod do an exit-poll door knock this evening. She looked so sad and tired. So very sad, and so very tired.

She walked off down my expansive driveway like an old ewe, whose lambs have just been loaded into the abattoir lorry, returning to pasture. She's seen it all before but it still makes her sad, and she knows she'll be doing it all again next year.

[Marmora Man]

I tramped the streets leafleting and talking - this Labour gov't was voted in on a wave of goodwill which it has totally squandered. The NHS has not ben transformed and now cost three times as much, ditto for education with a poi tless expansion of tertiary education.

PinkyB has said that the Tories took us into two wars - the Falklands and the first Iraq war were both justified and proportionate. This government has involved the country in more wars, using fudged evidence and reducing, in real terms, the Defence budget.

It is time for a change - and the only viable alternative is a Tory government

[Ted Max]

the only viable alternative is a Tory government

What a rousing slogan that is, and what a triumph for a two party, FPTP system. Vote for us. You know in your hearts we are a shower of self-entitled, over-privileged cockstands, but we are the only viable alternative.

[PeckhamRose]

I voted.

My great great aunt was a suffragette.

I'd have voted even if that was not the case!

[louisiana]

I say we storm Westminster and demand constitutional reform. The only way to knock some sense into the two main parties. TINA and business as usual is not on my agenda.

[dc]

Marmora Man Wrote:

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> The NHS has not been transformed

Absolutely true.

In 1997 the maximum waiting time was '18' months (and the rest for cataract and hip replacements) from when you actually made it onto a hospital waiting list to when you received treatment. Today the maximum waiting time from the day you first see your GP to receiving appropriate hospital treatment is '18' weeks.

The '18' has not been transformed at all. Yib yib, gurgle gurgle, I'm a banana.

[dc]

Marmora Man Wrote:

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> ditto for education

Again - spot on.

My post from last year:

Here's a like-for-like GCSE comparison 1995 to 2007 (remember these have a comprehensive intake):

Dulwich High School for Boys (previously William Penn)

1995 11% of pupils attained 5 A* to C

Now The Charter School

2007 61% of pupils attained 5 A* to C

Kingsdale

1995 6% of pupils attained 5 A* to C

2007 59% of pupils attained 5 A* to C

All that money on the NHS and Education wasted and nothing has improved at all since 1997 - certainly not MM's rather selective memory at any rate.

[Marmora Man]

DC - do you really believe those statistics?

I work in healthcare - the waiting list time in '95 was significantly less than 18 months, the real waiting list nowadays is far more than 18 weeks. The despair in the NHS at the last 12 years obsession with targets and the current centralist, Stalinist, control from the Department of Health is palpable. With a few, very few, exceptions the majority of NHS hospitals are under pressure and struggling to finance services and staffing.

The existing model of care and funding in the NHS has pertained for 60 years. It was in need of serious thought and overhaul in '97 but the Tory government did not have the mandate to do so, although its earlier reforms were successful in developing a degree of independence and improved quality of services. The incoming Labour government did have a mandate and, as the self proclaimed champions of the NHS, the goodwill of NHS staff and its stakeholders. It fudged the opportunity, overturning and then re-inventing Tory NHS policies, increasing staff costs without reform of structure or process and setting a ridiculous micro-managed target setting culture.

On Education - again the statistics are skewed and do not represent reality. Talk to any parent - it is almost impossible to get a place in a decent primary school around here - and the ambition to get to a "good" school is a measure of how very poor the vast range of primary schools are. The same applies to secondary schools but with the added problem that few, if any, of the local state schools are up to snuff.

Since '97 the Labour government has been riven with internal leadership battles - mostly behind the scenes until 2001, but there - draining energy and focus from the task of government. This current administration - which still has a majority of over 100 - is unable to demonstrate credible leadership or even, it seems, bring together a half way decent Cabinet.

I will not comment on Labour's failed stewardship of the economy with the destruction of UK's pensions, the increase in taxes by stealth or the financial illiteracy of claiming and end to boom and bust.

Anyone who seeks to defend this government on its performance or claim that there is not a crying need for change is guilty of selective memory. The only Labour policy of the last 12 years I can wholeheartedly (and selfishly) support is the banning of smoking in public places (and the Libertarian conscience in me is still not entirely happy with government control of individual choice)

[Marmora Man]

Ted Max Wrote:

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> the only viable alternative is a Tory government

>

> What a rousing slogan that is, and what a triumph

> for a two party, FPTP system. Vote for us. You

> know in your hearts we are a shower of

> self-entitled, over-privileged cockstands, but we

> are the only viable alternative.

Ted Max - how about a real debate rather than student union leftish debating points?

Your characterisation of the Tories is about 12 years out date. Which of their policies do you reject? Which of the current Labour policies do you support? Why is staying with this current administration better than switching to a Tory government? Which Labour politician stands out as a selfless and capable leader?

Compare Andy Stranack with Harriet Harman and ask yourself which is likely to better represent the issues and concerns of an inner city constituency?

You might also like to take a look at Centre for Social Justice to see the sort of policies that are being developed by the Conservative Party to tackle some really pressing issues for London and UK.

Edited for spelling

[Keef]

the only viable alternative is a Tory government

What a rousing slogan that is, and what a triumph for a two party, FPTP system. Vote for us. You know in your hearts we are a shower of self-entitled, over-privileged cockstands, but we are the only viable alternative.

Post of the month.

Your characterisation of the Tories is about 12 years out date.

Not when it comes to their front bench it's not!

With regards public services, I agree that Labour haven't really improved anything, if you scrape away the false image given by their performance indicators.

The problem is, the tories have said nothing to suggest they'd do better.

Whether you agree with it or not MM, Ted Max makes a good point, in fact, it's THE point. The problem is that people basically have the realistic choice of one or the other, so if one is at rock bottom like Labour are, they only have one other "viable" choice. Viable really doesn't mean good.

I mean, tell me, what will the tories do for the overworked social workers, teachers, and nurses? All labour have done is make their lives harder, and made a huge part of their jobs in to form filling and box ticking. How are the tories going to make people actually want to do these jobs again?

[Ted Max]

Ted Max - how about a real debate rather than student union leftish debating points?

Your characterisation of the Tories is about 12 years out date. Which of their policies do you reject? Which of the current Labour policies do you support? Why is staying with this current administration better than switching to a Tory government? Which Labour politician stands out as a selfless and capable leader?

Compare Andy Stranack with Harriet Harman and ask yourself which is likely to better represent the issues and concerns of an inner city constituency?

You might also like to take a look at Centre for Social Justice to see the sort of policies that are being developed by the Conservative Party to tackle some really pressing issues for London and UK.

Forgive me if I leaven the po-faced seriousness of the debate with a little light arsing about. 12 years out of date, eh? Even so, my point was not really about the social background, just the utter sterility of a campaign based on "the only viable alternative".

I'm not a Labour supporter so can't really answer the rest of your questions. I quite liked the extra funding to schools though, for one, and know that many in education know it has made a difference, even to something as core as having buildings fit for purpose. Your language about primary schools is untypically disingenuous. "How very poor the vast range of primary schools are" ... what a load of tosh. Using a spike in local demographics to paint the sector as failing? Poor. Especially when the vast majority of local parents would accept a place in any of the local schools and the stated objections on this board to other schools has been about travelling 45 minutes in the morning - not their quality.

You've done the Stranack v Harman background thing before (at least twice). Perhaps using the very fact of his background as a debating point might reduce you to student union debating level. I'm not sure, but you seem to be the best judge of that.

You've also done the CfSJ thing before and they are not a Conservative Party organisation. Many of their policies have been adopted by Labour, and quite a few more by the Tories. Some of them are wrong-headed.

[Marmora Man]

Keef - as you probably know I'm more of a Libertarian than strict Tory, but the Conservative party is closer to my thinking than any other. They are committed to reducing centralisation, target setting and unnecessary bureaucracy - all of which would help teachers, social workers and nurses. I know most about healthcare and next about education - but expect social workers would benefit from this simplification and loss of target setting culture.

The Conservatives also believe in tackling many of current social ills from first principles - and, if these policies work (a big "if" but the ideas do have merit) this should feed thru' as reduced need for social services. See the centre for Social Justice site above.

I agree that the two party system has problems - but could never support the alternative of proportional representation. Do you know who your MEP is - elected by PR?

On the current front bench - yes there is a % of Eton educated people, but plenty of others from a less privileged background. But why does a good education preclude them from deploying common sense and effective politics? There are many others ? Michael Gove, Caroline Spelman, Jeremy Hunt, Liam Fox, Greg Barker, Nick Herbert and so on from perfectly ordinary backgrounds.