Who should take tony's job?

Discussion in 'News & Current Affairs' started by Yosef Ha'Kohain, Sep 26, 2006.

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next labour leader?

  1. Gordon Brown

    8 vote(s)
    47.1%
  2. John Reid

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  3. Alan Johnson

    1 vote(s)
    5.9%
  4. Alan Milburn

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  5. John McDonnell

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  6. David Milliband

    4 vote(s)
    23.5%
  7. Other...

    4 vote(s)
    23.5%
  1. French William

    French William _________________

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    Why do you distance yourself from it by saying 'you'? Aren't you British?
  2. Yosef Ha'Kohain

    Yosef Ha'Kohain Registered User

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    9 years of prosperity outshines 52 vicitims of terror attacks.

    Any British prime minister would of been likely to to take us to war:

    Albania
    Armenia
    Australia
    Azerbaijan
    Bosnia and Herzegovina
    Bulgaria
    Canada
    Czech Republic
    Denmark
    Dominican Republic
    El Salvador
    Estonia
    Fiji
    Georgia
    Honduras
    Hungary
    Iceland
    Italy
    Japan
    Kazakhstan
    Latvia
    Lithuania
    Moldova
    Mongolia
    Netherlands
    New Zealand
    Nicaragua
    Norway
    Philippines
    Poland
    Portugal
    Republic of Macedonia
    Romania
    Singapore
    Slovakia
    South Korea
    Spain
    Thailand
    Tonga
    Ukraine

    All joined the coalition, are you seriously suggesting a British prime minister would alienate themselves from some of our closest allies at a time when the west had just witnessed one of the most brutal attacks of modern history?
  3. BRID

    BRID Has name in red. Staff

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    Labour will lose the next election - 1 or 2 years of brown being at the head of a ship slowly sinking, and him being unable to weather it like phoney blair did with Iraq and all the other rubbish he has been in the middle of.

    This government was more about a change that people felt they needed after nearly 20 years of the tories, than it has been about anything they have actually DONE that has made much of a difference. Sorry but as far as ive seen, the past 10 years have been a lot of mortgaging of our futures by tony and gordon on the basis that everything will be peaches and cream with no downturns to ever happen. Wishful thinking.

    Im sure some of the more intelligent posters know that i reckon a return to the days of Maggie Thatcher are needed. The UK needs stripping back a bit and some solid foundations rebuilt again to give us a chance over the next 10-20 years .... without any kind of credible manufacturing industry, or social change to bring people down to earth a bit - we are going to lose out big style.

    So .... long answer - but labour obviously will get Gordon Brown as leader ... but it will be a very short premiership.

    Labour is on their way out - Sorry Reds ;)
  4. Yosef Ha'Kohain

    Yosef Ha'Kohain Registered User

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    But the Tories aren't talking about reverting back to thatcherism, this country couldn't survive the 5 million unemployed that thatcher brought with her.

    We are no longer in the 80's, we cannot borrow money like America (as we haven't resources to escape such debts), nor can we employ similar monetary tactics to thatcher... instead we must move with the times and David Cameron hasn't shown any sign of doing this.

    It was margret thatcher that ended our manufacturing industries?
  5. andy_rocks

    andy_rocks Registered User

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    George Osborne was talking some sense yesterday about the explosion in seriously skilled jobs in India/China etc.

    He's right to say we need to massively expand and invest in our science and maths education.

    I'd like to see tuition fees slashed for degrees in things like this - subsidise it by increasing media studies et al imo.
  6. BRID

    BRID Has name in red. Staff

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    We have the same 5 million unemployed these days - only today the figures are fudged .... what was the figure again - 2 million on incapacity benefit or something silly. Then all those kids pushed into mickey mouse degree courses running up silly debts.

    Her monetary policy tactics were pretty darn extreme - yep, massive swings in interest rates must have felt like a rollercoaster ride at the time ... but it at least felt more transparent than the lies we have to put up with today.

    This government believes inflation is 2.5% and keeps rates low on the back of that ... the reality is that inflation is more like 10-15% only the true figures are hidden. With that in mind i honestly think a return to Thatcherism and a fear from living the kind of bling bling "ill pay it all off some day" lifestyle that our generation (me included) seem to think we are entitled to .... needs to be put back in us.
  7. Yosef Ha'Kohain

    Yosef Ha'Kohain Registered User

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    china and india are in direct competition.

    eventually china will take the skilled economies where as India will take less skilled industries (with the exception of IT).

    neither threaten the British ecnomy.
  8. Yosef Ha'Kohain

    Yosef Ha'Kohain Registered User

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    unfortunatly I have a meeting, but when I get back I'm going to pull apart your statistics ;) :p
  9. BRID

    BRID Has name in red. Staff

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    No - she took a country run by inefficient and lazy workers and companies (british leyland etc) and turned us back into a country where we attracted investment from the rest of the world.

    Now all those industries are sending work offshore again since we have lost our edge due to the high cost of employing workers and productivity/innovation dropping.
  10. BRID

    BRID Has name in red. Staff

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  11. andy_rocks

    andy_rocks Registered User

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    Explain why you believe china will take skilled economies but not India? :confused:

    So much could be outsourced.....I'm loth to pursue a career in interventional radiology, as I can see all the diagnostic X-ray work being exported in 20 years time....

    We've got no future in manufacturing surely. We need to be working now to train a science and technology focussed workforce that capitalises on existing experience and our traditional ingenuity to create a modern research and development biased economy - even if the final products are made abroad.
  12. Yosef Ha'Kohain

    Yosef Ha'Kohain Registered User

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    on the china tip its first hand experience... i have factories out there....

    but I'll go into it when I get back :D
  13. SeniorChem Si

    SeniorChem Si Registered User

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    you can so tell that you weren't around to experience the 80's 1st hand Brid, if you think things were worse now than they were then.... and where the fuck do you get your figures from?? 15% inflation, 5m unemployed :eek: you're just wrong... you just can't have interest aroudn 5% and inflation at 15%.

    even I'll admit we're reaping the benefits now of some of what maggie did, but if you weren't around in the 80's you've got no idea how fucking horrific it was, and I'll tell you it's been a fucking lot better the last 10 years than it was then.

    You've got a bad case of rose tinted specs when it comes to Thatcher, even the tories these days have turned away from those crazy monaterist policies. We've got some problems to sort out these days... like 1st time buyers being unable to buy houses, and massive personal debt, but thatcherism isn't gonna sort out.

    Here's my prediction, Brown will be next leader, and probably win the next election. Cameron might but only if he can adopt policies to the left of where the labour party is now, and that will schism the tories
  14. BRID

    BRID Has name in red. Staff

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    I cant see how brown will win the next election when the tories would win a general election today on the back of current polls.

    Labour got into power thanks to Tony Blair, and not the labour party itself, how is an uncharismatic leader going to recover their losses and push them through a new election.

    My comments about inflation ... well its hard to see how prices are rising by only 2.5% per year when energy costs, transport costs ... in fact MOST COSTS are going up at worrying double digit amounts. Council tax and house prices are going up at hyper inflationary rates, yet the government ignores these and bases their calculations on things like ipods and chinese dvd players.

    If you took the REAL things that people spend their money on and measure inflation on that, you would see figures of 10-15% and thats even with the economy slowing down in the past year. The situation is out of hand and rather than have a government that isnt afraid to nip it in the bud like thatchers government (at the expense of popularity of course), we have one that tells us we have never had it so good instead .... and the masses believe it.

    Everyone knows that their money isnt going as far as it used to, but we've been conditioned to think that owning a mobile phone or a plasma telly on tick means we havent got a right to argue about it.

    I lived in the north east for 22 years, and with parents who had to put up with near bankruptsy due to changes in the economy, and with the effects of interest rates.... as well as all the social problems that came with unemployment in the north. True i wasnt a bread winner at that point but i dont get all dewy eyed when i read about it - it just sounds like a far more honest day and age than what we have right now.
  15. Yosef Ha'Kohain

    Yosef Ha'Kohain Registered User

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  16. SeniorChem Si

    SeniorChem Si Registered User

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    you're wrong on pretty much all of that.

    Cameron's still in his honeymoon while labour have had their worst 12 months for a long time. 4-6% behind mid term is fuck all... your beloved maggie came back from a lot more than that regularly

    Brown would have won just as easily in '97 as Blair did, and would probably have been the better prime minister as well, and I don't reckon his lack of charisma is going to be much of a problem given his track record. Take out the last 6 months, which have been extraordinary to say the least, and his aproval ratings have been pretty solid. I can't think of a single senior politician in living memory who's been as well liked as brown and for as long!

    All cameron has shown at the minute is charisma, all he's offering is "not labour" but he's being a complete blair clone about it :spangled: I think in the next 2 years brown will easily show him up as a bit of a lightweight, with a fairly light shadow cabinet behind him. brown's got a lot of substance but fuck all style, cameron's the exact opposite, but these days I think ppl will prefer the former.

    fact is blair is a massive electoral liability, he only won last time cos the tories and libdems were so shit, take blair out and give brown 2 or 3 years to get over it and he's got a much better chance than most ppl reckon of beating cameron.

    All you gotta do is check out how much the right wing media is laying into him... cos they know he's the only one in the labour party who can keep the tories out next time. simple as
  17. andy_rocks

    andy_rocks Registered User

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    This is a point a lot of people seem to be making, and I'm a little unclear why.

    How can we already be talking about not voting for Cameron on a lack of 'substance', by which I assume we mean policies, when he hasn't seriously announced them yet?

    Charisma is definitely a positive characteristic in a leader - but I'll be waiting to see detailed policies from Labour, the Conservatives, and, indeed, the Lib Dems before making any decisions about the next election.

    I could honestly end up voting for any of them.
  18. forks

    forks still not dead

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    I agree with Si about the 80's but Campbell scares me. I can see people falling for it (him)
    oppositions don't win they say, governments lose.
    Loads of people hate Tony Blair for Iraq and brown hasn't distanced himself from that.
    All Cameron has to do is keep mouthing platitudes and let the government keep making mistakes (ID cards) (NHS privatisation) (Afghanistan) and he could get in.
    Anyone under 25 is not going to know what the Tories are really about. All they have known is Labour
  19. SeniorChem Si

    SeniorChem Si Registered User

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    cos all he's doing is talking the talk at the minute, he's just pushing all the right butons, which is a piece of piss for any half decent politician. When he comes to having to come up with hard policies he could turn into the emporer with no clothes, specially as they'll be policies that the right of his party won't like much, and the tory right has got a lot more bite than the labour left.

    example, he was on Today a while ago saying it was crazy we still make cars that do 12mph, which it is, but when he was asked if he'd outlaw it he had nothing to say. I just don't think he's gonna be able to come up with the hard policies to backup all the nice sounding mood music he's been happy to spew for the last 12 months.

    On Iraq I've only ever heard brown say once publicly that he supported the war, and though he did support it he's kept as far from it as possible. ID cards have died for at least this parliament, but basically a lot of the fundamentals are still right, specially the economics which brown gets credit for. there still seems to be a lot of prosperity floating around,and we all know people vote with their pockets.

    Cameron's doing all the right things now, but opposition's a piece of piss and he's still a long way from No 10 imho
  20. forks

    forks still not dead

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    as far as I know Tony still says ID cards are on for this parliament?

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