# Which inept candidate  of " The Ruling Class" would you vote for?



## Elyzabeth (Mar 22, 2015)

Each one seems worse than the others..???



Cameron , inept ... but at least we would get o vote on the EU..

or would he decide that this is not a good time to do so???



I would prefer to vote Labour, however Ed Milliband , an embarrassment

(had it been David Milliband I would have voted for him in a millisecond!)



UKIP? ......Protest vote. wasted vote


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## Bee (Mar 22, 2015)

Can't do any worse than vote for this man.:bigwink:







or even someone from this party....

http://www.omrlp.com/


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## Ameriscot (Mar 22, 2015)

I would never ever vote Tory, especially not Cameron.  We need to stay in the EU.  I've always voted Labour but I'm not thrilled with Ed either.  Might just vote SNP.


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## Falcon (Mar 22, 2015)

Bee said:


> Can't do any worse than vote for this man.:bigwink:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



   :lol1:    Bee


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## Josiah (Mar 22, 2015)

Well thanks for some politics from the UK. I'll admit that most of what I know about politics in the UK I learned from reading Charles Dickens so I'm due for an update so keep it coming.


That being said I know I'm going to be for whomever Ameriscot recommends.


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## Warrigal (Mar 22, 2015)

Is it all about the personalities?

Please fill me in on the deeper issues, including foreign policies.
Did I hear something about clamping down on tax avoidance by multinationals?


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## Glinda (Mar 22, 2015)

Ameriscot said:


> I would never ever vote Tory, especially not Cameron.  We need to stay in the EU.  I've always voted Labour but I'm not thrilled with Ed either.  Might just vote SNP.



AS, which are worse - Tories :disgust: or Republicans :miserable:?


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## Elyzabeth (Mar 23, 2015)

About the same...
but the Tories promise to give a vote on the EU... 
which everyone desperately wants to vote on

and Ed Milliband is an embarrassment...


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## Ralphy1 (Mar 23, 2015)

We have an overflow of Repub candidates if you like some...


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## Ameriscot (Mar 23, 2015)

Glinda said:


> AS, which are worse - Tories :disgust: or Republicans :miserable:?



The Tories in power now are a bunch of posh boys who inherited or married money.  Born with silver spoons in their mouths and have no idea what it's like to struggle to pay the bills.  

My image of the current Repubs is many lack knowledge of science, biology, and they believe the country was founded on christianity which it wasn't. They are anti women, anti gay, anti abortion, anti minorities and want to eliminate separation of church and state.  

As least the Tories, although there is an official state church, leave religion out of things.


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## Ameriscot (Mar 23, 2015)

Ralphy1 said:


> We have an overflow of Repub candidates if you like some...



They would not be welcome here!!!!!


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## Ameriscot (Mar 23, 2015)

Josiah said:


> Well thanks for some politics from the UK. I'll admit that most of what I know about politics in the UK I learned from reading Charles Dickens so I'm due for an update so keep it coming.
> 
> 
> That being said I know I'm going to be for whomever Ameriscot recommends.



I completely trust my DH's judgement when it comes to politics.  He knows everything that is going on in politics and used to be active in the Labour party of which we both became members after the disastrous coalition came into power in 2010.  

The system is completely different from the US.  You don't vote directly for a prime minister.  You vote for you local candidates.  Most MP's of a party are in power.  We don't like our local Labour candidate and might vote SNP (Scottish National Party).  

Scotland never votes for the Tories.  I believe we have just one Tory MP. 

The lifelong British here can explain the system far better than I.  I'm still now positive how it all works.


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## Pam (Mar 23, 2015)

Ralphy1 said:


> We have an overflow of Repub candidates if you like some...



Very kind of you but... no thanks.


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## Ameriscot (Mar 23, 2015)

Dame Warrigal said:


> Is it all about the personalities?
> 
> Please fill me in on the deeper issues, including foreign policies.
> Did I hear something about clamping down on tax avoidance by multinationals?




Not about personalities for me. It has to do with their values and if they will do what is right and what is good for the country - not just the rich.


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## Don M. (Mar 23, 2015)

It sounds like the UK politics are about the same as here in the US...a bunch of wealthy candidates who only Pretend to care about the needs of the nation...and are little more than puppets being manipulated by the Wealthy special interests.


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## Bee (Mar 23, 2015)

Why does Labour need more low-income candidates? Does anyone really care what their MP was doing before they were elected? Well, a BBC poll last year showed that almost 60% of white working-class people felt unrepresented in parliament. Labour, the traditional home for that social group, saw their share of the lower income DE demographic at the last election fall by a third to 40% according to recent analysis. This cannot be mere coincidence.The total proportion of MPs who were previously manual workers was 8% in 1997. This figure had fallen to 6% by 2005. Now in 2010 the current crop of MPs from manual-working backgrounds is a mere 4%. Among Labour MPs the figures are not much more encouraging either. In 1998 13% percent of the 418 Labour MPs were from a manual working background, but only 9% of the current 256 Labour MPs are.
It has not always been this way in the Labour party. After the 1951 election, when Labour polled its highest ever number of votes and the highest for any political party – 14 million – 37% of the PLP came from working-class backgrounds. By 1966 this figure was 30% and it has slowly fallen since then along with Labour's share of the vote; with the exception of course of 1997 – after 18 years of Conservative government.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jun/13/labour-working-class-candidates


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## Bee (Mar 23, 2015)

In my opinion for a truly Labour MP to represent his constituency and the working class, then he should come from a working class background himself so that he really understands his electorate, unfortunately the majority of Labour MP's today come from privileged or professional backgrounds.

My nephew was a Labour MP for my constituancy from 1997 to 2005, he came from a truly working class background, hardly went to school and left at aged 16 semi-illiterate, he worked on the local docks after he left school and joined the Labour Party, it was his ex-wife that helped him to be able to read and write properly and on that background he was elected as MP...............it doesn't matter what party a candidate is representing he should be able to connect with his electorate who has a similar background to themselves.


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## Ameriscot (Mar 23, 2015)

Bee said:


> In my opinion for a truly Labour MP to represent his constituency and the working class, then he should come from a working class background himself so that he really understands his electorate, unfortunately the majority of Labour MP's today come from privileged or professional backgrounds.
> 
> My nephew was a Labour MP for my constituancy from 1997 to 2005, he came from a truly working class background, hardly went to school and left at aged 16 semi-illiterate, he worked on the local docks after he left school and joined the Labour Party, it was his ex-wife that helped him to be able to read and write properly and on that background he was elected as MP...............it doesn't matter what party a candidate is representing he should be able to connect with his electorate who has a similar background to themselves.



Agree they should be able to connect with the working class and understand their needs.  My DH always said he was born with Labour genes. His family and everyone he knew was Labour.  His family worked in the shipyards until Thatcher destroyed them.  She was hated in Scotland, so much so that there were actually celebrations when she died.


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## Bee (Mar 23, 2015)

Ameriscot said:


> Agree they should be able to connect with the working class and understand their needs.  My DH always said he was born with Labour genes. His family and everyone he knew was Labour.  His family worked in the shipyards until Thatcher destroyed them._*  She was hated in Scotland, so much so that there were actually celebrations when she died*_.



That also happened in the North of England where in a lot of areas, they are still suffering because of her policies and as regards selling off council houses that was also one of her worse policies.


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## Ameriscot (Mar 23, 2015)

Bee said:


> That also happened in the North of England where in a lot of areas, they are still suffering because of her policies and as regards selling off council houses that was also one of her worse policies.



Yes.  North England and Scotland are very much alike in many ways.  She put so many people out of work!


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## Glinda (Mar 23, 2015)

Ameriscot said:


> Agree they should be able to connect with the working class and understand their needs.  My DH always said he was born with Labour genes. His family and everyone he knew was Labour.  His family worked in the shipyards until Thatcher destroyed them.  She was hated in Scotland, so much so that there were actually celebrations when she died.



Your comment about Scotland hating Thatcher just brought me a flashback of my visit to Scotland way back in the late 70s.  We were in a self service laundry in Edinburgh.  A  Scottish lady came in and, when she realized we were Americans, immediately wanted to talk about Ronald Reagan.  After we expressed our disdain for Reagan and his failed "trickle down" economics, she launched into Thatcher with a vengeance.  She passionately hated the woman.  It got a little scarey.  But I had to agree with her about Thatcher.


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## Ameriscot (Mar 23, 2015)

Glinda said:


> Your comment about Scotland hating Thatcher just brought me a flashback of my visit to Scotland way back in the late 70s.  We were in a self service laundry in Edinburgh.  A  Scottish lady came in and, when she realized we were Americans, immediately wanted to talk about Ronald Reagan.  After we expressed our disdain for Reagan and his failed "trickle down" economics, she launched into Thatcher with a vengeance.  She passionately hated the woman.  It got a little scarey.  But I had to agree with her about Thatcher.



Not a Reagan fan either.  My DH won't even watch the movie about Thatcher.  

As I mentioned there were celebrations in Scotland and in some places in England when she died.  Not in good taste but I could understand it.


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## Josiah (Mar 23, 2015)

This Snookered Isle
Britain's Terrible, No-Good Economic Discourse
MARCH 23, 2015
 Paul Krugman


The 2016 election is still 19 mind-numbing, soul-killing months away. There is, however, another important election in just six weeks, as Britain goes to the polls. And many of the same issues are on the table.


Unfortunately, economic discourse in Britain is dominated by a misleading fixation on budget deficits. Worse, this bogus narrative has infected supposedly objective reporting; media organizations routinely present as fact propositions that are contentious if not just plain wrong.


Needless to say, Britain isn’t the only place where things like this happen. A few years ago, at the height of our own deficit fetishism, the American news media showed some of the same vices. Allegedly factual articles would declare that debt fears were driving up interest rates with zero evidence to support such claims. Reporters would drop all pretense of neutrality and cheer on proposals for entitlement cuts.


In the United States, however, we seem to have gotten past that. Britain hasn’t.


The narrative I’m talking about goes like this: In the years before the financial crisis, the British government borrowed irresponsibly, so that the country was living far beyond its means. As a result, by 2010 Britain was at imminent risk of a Greek-style crisis; austerity policies, slashing spending in particular, were essential. And this turn to austerity is vindicated by Britain’s low borrowing costs, coupled with the fact that the economy, after several rough years, is now growing quite quickly.


Simon Wren-Lewis of Oxford University has dubbed this narrative “mediamacro.” As his coinage suggests, this is what you hear all the time on TV and read in British newspapers, presented not as the view of one side of the political debate but as simple fact.


Yet none of it is true.


Was the Labour government that ruled Britain before the crisis profligate? Nobody thought so at the time. In 2007, government debt as a percentage of G.D.P. was close to its lowest level in a century (and well below the level in the United States), while the budget deficit was quite small. The only way to make those numbers look bad is to claim that the British economy in 2007 was operating far above capacity, inflating tax receipts. But if that had been true, Britain should have been experiencing high inflation, which it wasn’t.


Still, wasn’t Britain at risk of a Greek-style crisis, in which investors could lose confidence in its bonds and send interest rates soaring? There’s no reason to think so. Unlike Greece, Britain has retained its own currency and borrows in that currency — and no country fitting this description has experienced that kind of crisis. Consider the case of Japan, which has far bigger debt and deficits than Britain ever did yet can currently borrow long-term at an interest rate of just 0.32 percent.


Which brings me to claims that austerity has been vindicated. Yes, British interest rates have stayed low. So have almost everyone else’s. For example, French borrowing costs are at their lowest level in history. Even debt-crisis countries like Italy and Spain can borrow at lower rates than Britain pays.


What about growth? When the current British government came to power in 2010, it imposed harsh austerity — and the British economy, which had been recovering from the 2008 slump, soon began slumping again. In response, Prime Minister David Cameron’s government backed off, putting plans for further austerity on hold (but without admitting that it was doing any such thing). And growth resumed.


If this counts as a policy success, why not try repeatedly hitting yourself in the face for a few minutes? After all, it will feel great when you stop.


Given all this, you might wonder how mediamacro gained such a hold on British discourse. Don’t blame economists. As Mr. Wren-Lewis points out, very few British academics (as opposed to economists employed by the financial industry) accept the proposition that austerity has been vindicated. This media orthodoxy has become entrenched despite, not because of, what serious economists had to say.


Still, you can say the same of Bowles-Simpsonism in the United States, and we know how that doctrine temporarily came to hold so much sway. It was all about posturing, about influential people believing that pontificating about the need to make sacrifices — or, actually, for other people to make sacrifices — is how you sound wise and serious. Hence the preference for a narrative prioritizing tough talk about deficits, not hard thinking about job creation.


As I said, in the United States we have mainly gotten past that, for a variety of reasons — among them, I suspect, the rise of analytical journalism, in places like The Times’s The Upshot. But Britain hasn’t; an election that should be about real problems will, all too likely, be dominated by mediamacro fantasies.


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## oakapple (Mar 23, 2015)

All politicians cannot know what it is to struggle in life, as they are on pretty good salaries. that doesn't worry me though, all I want them to do is run things well for the country, and I don't care if they have well off backgrounds or not.


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## Elyzabeth (Mar 29, 2015)

pretty close..the Republicans are a tad worse.. And most Brits think American elections are about personality, because we actually choose the person want ,and don't voter for a political club to choose for us, as in the U.K


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## Bee (Mar 29, 2015)

..and you know most people in the U.K.:yawning:

By the way you are not forced to vote, if you don't like our system, simple, don't vote.


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## Davey Jones (Mar 29, 2015)

Any guy with a red telephone on his desk has got to be.....oh never mind.


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