Do we expect too much as a right in Great Britain?

A long read about council housing in Hackney, for anyone who wants to read it.
www.theguardian.com/society/2014/may/18/-sp-truth-about-gentrification-how-woodberry-down-became-woodberry-park

POGS I could have written your post! My eyes were finally opened when I was the Union Rep. for NAEIAC and we were in dispute with the Local Authority about job cuts. The other union affected was a huge one one which represented the majority of local authority workers. I have never come across a more aggressive, bullying, self opinionated bunch of individuals as their so-called 'union reps' .. the only thing they were representing was themselves and their own self-interest. They had no interest in negotiation, rational discussion or trying to save jobs, it was just as you said 'Us against Them'.

I am not talking just of the trickle down effect, but of the need for money to go into the coffers as well as out. You can't tax income unless there is income to tax, whether it is large amounts of tax from high-flyers or modest amounts from ordinary people getting a decent wage. you can't collect VAT unless value has been added. you can't tax spending unless people spend.

I was trying to convince Ivan that there must be effort on all sides - looking after the vulnerable through welfare and raising the money to pay for that welfare. It takes statesmen to juggle legislation to do that, not career politicians of any hue. He prefers to concentrate on one side of the equation, and to condemn anyone who wants to see a wider picture.

I agree Elegran but i remember from years ago the 'trickle down effect' which never actually happened.

Ivanhoe does not even recognise when peole are agreeing with his main premise (must look after the vulnerable) but adding that it is also essential to look after the rest of the economy and infrastructure. No use sharing out the pie equitably if no-one can gather the ingredients and cook the pie.

Ivanhoe what you say is not wrong but if you say it with too much force you just alienate people and don't get your point across.

Er, is it the case that people who start threads have continuing control over the way they go then?

Ivanhoe seems to have left the building. I thought he might be a secret Tory weapon, sent to alienate the non-Tory voters, but apparently not. See the "What the country needs and why the Tory's won't deliver" thread.

https://fullfact.org/factchecks/council_house_building_margaret_thatcher_labour_government-29270

Smeone, can't remember who, asked about this a while back on this thread.

Ivanhoe you are doing a great job in alienating people and ensuring that you lose support

It was very common in the 80's (when I was a member) POGS It certainly made me think again !

They did exactly that to my Nan 'ONCE'. My father went ballistic as they had waited for her to eat her dinner and told her that as it was the Labour Party who picked her up she HAD TO vote Labour.

She was actually quite frightened by it all.

Sorry should have said I remain opened minded despite the fact that I was a member of the Labour party for years..........

I remain very open minded towards politics. I was a member of the Labour party for years until I had my eyes opened to what local politics is really about. Mainly people scratching each others backs, voting each other onto various commitees depending on the perks, claiming expenses for anything (and by god I mean anything). Bullying old people into voting for them by picking them up in their car and standing with them while they put their X in the "right box". I thought I had joined to change things, to make a difference.
I didn't have a snowballs chance in hell against that lot !

POGS, you could have been describing my father too. I was brought up on Labour and Trade Unionism, with DM occasionally piping up to say that she didn't care, she was going to vote Conservative anyway!

And my father lost faith at about the same time as yours and resigned from the Labour Party.

Carry on, Elegran, I enjoy your reasoned and informative posts.
Along with many others of course.
I just think that every thread with a political theme has suddenly been taken over by someone who obviously has strong views but cannot listen to anyone else's viewpoint. I cannot quite work out what is being said except a lot of negatives and not any pros for any party in particular. Perhaps all will be revealed before voting day.

In fact I have not learnt anything and have already sent in my postal vote.

Ivanhoe

If your intention is to belittle anybody who votes Conservative or does not agree with you then I have to tell you it is not working.

I can assure you and some other posters that it does in fact remind me why I stopped voting for Labour or the left of politics.

Your only purpose to joining a thread is to spout a diatribe of political hatred and that tells me that those who are to the far left have nothing more than it had years ago, the same old, same old vacuous ability to debate, engage in dialogue of any meaning and spout the same old clap trap of class warfare and desire to bring down the 'Establishment'

If you only make a statement then you are only inviting agreement or disagreement from those who can be bothered to respond. There is hardly anything clever in that.

Your rhetoric is the kind of language I remember oh so well whilst I was growing up. My father was a Union Shop Steward and then a Union Convenor. He had a change of heart many moons ago after a attending a Union Convention and he realised the movement back in the 70's had become nothing more than an aggressive, up it's ass movement who were intent on bringing down the establishment and to be frank did not give a s--t about the workers who by now had to toe the party line. They were men who were happy to allow families to go hungry to satisfy their desire for 'The Comrades' to dominate and overpower the 'Boss' and the 'Establishment'. There was no structure for rational discussion just pure bloody mindedness and it became the eventual downfall of what could and should have been a progressive party that genuinely did act for the good of the labour force.

Hatred of Margaret Thatcher, lack of progressive thought, historical rhetoric are all some people have who cannot accept life has moved on since the 80's. This is 2014 and the generations that followed us do not have the hang up's we have, THANK GOODNESS.

So would I, Gillybob.

gillybob, Our tax system has been with us since Thatcher, yes Thatcher, over 30 years ago.

Thatcher reduced income tax in the 80's for all UK workers.

I would just like to see a level playing field Elegran where all businesses and individuals are treat the same (taking into account percentages of tax obviously). What we have at the minute is individuals on low incomes paying tax and individuals such as Gary Barlow (another topic I know) avoiding tax. Huge corporations such as Boots, Amazon, Starbucks etc. avoiding tax and my little micro business paying up in full.

Sorry, Rosequartz My post took rather a while to write, and by the time I posted, you had drawn that line.

So concentrate on the policies. Raving about the woman does nothing to change those. In fact, raving does nothing to change anything. Logical argument from statistics and individual cases does that. Raving can even set people against the very things you want to happen, because you have alienated them.

All parties have picked a course between the welfare of their citizens and paying outside debts, ever since the first concept of public welfare - which was conceived as a safety net for those who had no other lifeline, not as a universal guarantee of an income in whatever circumstances. Sometimes the balance has swung one way, sometimes the other, and when a lot has been spent on supporting those who could have supported themselves, later decisions have been harsh.

The best route to full employment and no hardship is an economy where what is made here, and services offered here, are sold to people in other countries, bringing in more money than they cost to produce. Taxing those who have money (from business profits or as income tax from decent wages and salaries, or from the goods they buy with that money) would then pay for welfare for those who need it.

No-one could argue with that! But there are other countries out there trying to do exactly the same. They want to raise their own standards of living, or keep it up - of course they do, no-one is going to go without so that we live well - and there is a world-wide recession going on. No government has a magic wand to wave. There is a tightrope to walk between spending money to help businesses to succeed and spending money to look after those who have no work because businesses are not succeeding.

They re damned if they concentrate on one, damned if they concentrate on the other!

MY OP AND I WOULD LIKE TO

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IF CAPITALS MEANS I AM SHOUTING, YES I AM. Just in case anyone cannot hear me.

annodomini, "This dead woman" lives in in this coalitions ideological agenda to remove the welfare State and privatise the NHS, under cover of reducing the deficit.

Thatchrism plagues our country still, because it's all about greed and selfishness.

Gold star, Elegran. I abhorred MT and her policies. However, the present lot are doing more than she did to dismantle our welfare state to the extent that 'welfare' has become a dirty word in some mouths. Ivanhoe, you are living in the past by venting your spleen on a dead woman.

Well said, Elegran. Thank you.

I was beginning to think that, despite the efforts of Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. we were still in the midst of a Cold War.