Wish list for Britain

vampirequeen , my blinkers have always been off, and there is a lot of truth in what you say.

* VQ* & Ivanhoe I am middle class but my core political beliefs are far more socialist than current Labour. Not sure if that is of any consequence!

I do believe that Thatcher's legacy is still a force and Cameron knows that and is playing on it. I understand the need to be pragmatic to become appealing to the electorate but to lose so many core principles I feel meant that Labour no longer put the needs of its traditional supporters at the heart of its manifesto.
All three main parties are centre moving right.

nanaej New Labour under Blair felt it needed to make itself electable to what they believe the middle classes wanted.

I know stacks of extremely well off people who are socialist.

And I agree 100 per cent with the following, -

""I do believe that Thatcher's legacy is still a force and Cameron knows that and is playing on it. I understand the need to be pragmatic to become appealing to the electorate but to lose so many core principles I feel meant that Labour no longer put the needs of its traditional supporters at the heart of its manifesto.
All three main parties are centre moving right.""

Bang on.

Glad to find a like minded thinker Ivanhoe

nanaej , It's my pleasure.

POGS - people thinking that immigrants come over here and have instant access to benefits, that do not understand we have rules about 'no recourse to public funds'.................

Susieb

Thank you for your reply. I thought you were relating the comment to the Stafford Hospital Report or something I had posted. I hadn't cottoned on to your comment being about immigration.

susieb755 , people believe what they want to believe, what they are lead to believe.

Eastern immigrants who come to this country arent allowed any benefits. They have to work for a full years before being allowed benefits, and then they only receive one third what British claimants receive.

Asylum seekers are'nt allowed to work by law. They get vouchers.

EU migrants however do have rights to benefits in this country. It is perhaps the increase in the numbers of migrants over the last few years that has caused some pressure on our benefits system.

nightowl, Maybe so, but they still have paid in while working.

Over the years unemployment caused by stringent free market monetarist policies since Thatcher created over 3 million unemployed is the reason.

Like some people keep saying on this site. Immigrants are a good target to blame for the ills of this country.

And like you keep saying - Thatcher is to blame for all the ills of this country. Move on - put forward some solutions!

I wouldn't dream of blaming immigrants for all the ills of this country Ivanhoe, nor am I sure that anyone is doing so, but there needs to be a distinction drawn between immigration and migration. The latter has brought many challenges to public services and the benefits system. Not all migrants will have worked before claiming benefits.

As for the 'no recourse to public funds' this can be quite misleading where families are concerned. They may not be entitled to benefits but they will be supported financially by the local Children's Department. Hence they do receive public money but from a different purse.

These are simple facts, I have no particular axe to grind.

Gosh what a debate

And wouldn't life have been different if John Smith hadn't died.....

I agree with Ivanhoe that new labour weren't traditionally working class, and regret some of their decisions, however we should not forget that they introduced the minimum wage, WFTC, and radically improved childcare and early years standards ( although i do not agree with the foundation stage learning per se )

The future jobs fund programme was working well - we had 12 FJF at one time, and only 1 didn't get a job, and frankly it was because she didn't want one !

However woolly new labour were, I am still reeling from the betrayal by the lib dems , and cannot believe anyone could take cameron seriously

susieb755 , I liked John Smith.

But there should have been a return to industry and manufacturing from a Labour Government following the dreadful short termism of the Thatcher/Major years.

Sadly this was not to be. We got more of the same free market ideology, but as you say, susieb, we got a minimum wage.

I wonder what Ed Milliband will do ?. What political direction he will go when Labour win the next general election ?

Ivanhoe

Isn't that the problem with Labour at the moment. "I wonder what Ed Milliband will do?". He hasn't put anything forward other than his 5 point plan which keeps getting dicredited economically.

He simply must put meat on the bone or he will go the way of a Findus lasagna. I would listen if he did, contrary to what you might have thought about me.

Whatever you wish for, make sure it is not the American dream. Here is a story of what life is like for those in the USA who lose their jobs, in a country with no welfare state, no safety net.

www.abc.net.au/iview/?series=2303988#/view/30857

Ivanhoe please explain to me how Labour could have restarted the lost industries without massive public spending. The steel mills were derelict, the mine shafts had been collapsed or were full of water, the dry docks were silting up and the trawlers had been scrapped.

This is a new experience for me. I've never been an apologist for Tony Blair before but much as we'd like to move back to when GB had a strong industrial base the infrastructure and to a great extent the skills had gone by the time he took over.

It is 2 years until an election pogs I think Milliband wise to keep his head down and let the coalition do the work for him
Yes quite, vampire and meanwhile in the far east, other countries had built more efficient, new facilities and were selling their products at highly competitive prices.
The UK car industry was, for instance badly managed (to put it mildly) and their plant was seriously out of date. It is only in the last few years with foreign ownership and investment that companies like Land Rover are being so successful. But it has taken 30 years to build a modern, competitive industry (instead of the truly awful one that existed in the 1970s).

vampirequeen, That's a very good question. I cant see this country of ours ever picking up again and moving forward and away from being market lead to being once again industry and manufuring lead with good pay and conditions can you ?

Being competition im sure you know, means workers have to work for less money so our goods are cheaper than anywhere else.

Yet we are the mortgage payers of Europe, our house prices are extremely high, our private rents equally so.

What Britain desperately needs is a national renewal as after the second World War, when we were bankrupt.

What say you ?

And how do you propose that this national renewal should take place?

vampirequeen , I think we should begin with a universal council house building programme to take people out of the means test trap of the higher rent private sector and naturally to provide low rented houses for people in general.

I live in a privately rented house and tbh my rent isn't exhorbitant. In fact it's very fair. When I was able to work it was never a problem and only is now because of the way the benefit system works.

Not all private landlords are Rachmanns. A lot are like mine. Someone who owns a couple of houses which they use to supplement their retirement income.

Where would you build these new council houses? On greenfield sites? I don't want to live on a sprawling estate. I lived on one for too many years. What will happen to the currently rented housing stock? If there are no tenants then the landlords will lose their income and the houses will fall into disrepair.

I agree there is a housing shortage in parts of this country. In a nearby city there are 4000 on the council waiting list but for some reason there is also part of an estate that has been mothballed. Surely it would be better to use up all the current housing stock before we build more.

vampirequeen , I think both should be done actually.

Across the EU and Scandinavia there is no stigma to renting and/or council houses like there is in Britain.

In the EU and Scandinavia, social housing and owned housing are built together, there are no class differences.

I believe this should be the way forward in Britain.

My wishes for Britain? More or less the ones expressed here with a slight alteration on the immigrant issue.
None of this countrys' ills can be blamed on immigrants. The ones I know work extremely hard, want their children to be educated well and live a better life then they have had. Of course there are those who use our Benefit system to fund certain lifestyles. However, those that are on Benefits want to work and do so as soon as possible. The so called Benefit abusers are not the norm, it's a theme much favoured by the Daily Mail to blame immigrants for everything. I wonder if all those that immigrated from here to Canada,Australia and New Zealand over the years were greeted the same way. BTW most Benefit abusers are British.
I would like our education system to teach English Language and Literature, also Geography, as we were taught. So many people have no idea about grammer, punctuation, writing a letter, even writing an essay correctly, it just seems to be acceptable to talk badly. I don't mean accents and dialect by the way. My DD left school at 17 years old in the 1990's. She can tell me about soil erosion but ask her the capital of Sweden and you receive a blank look.
As for the housing shortage. Our seaside town has loads of empty office blocks that have been empty for decades. I think if, after a certain level of time , a block remains empty, it should then revert onto cheaper rental properties.

That's a brilliant idea dorsetpennt. Would deal with housing shortage and not lead to building on green field sites.

Ivanhoe...I feel no stigma in renting. I've never owned a house. I've always been either a council or private tenant.

As a matter of interest do you rent or own your home? If rented, is it social housing? If you're a tenant can you give me some examples of when you've felt stigmatised for it?