The Budget

[Workingman]

Ah well, roll on the next one.

[Rodo]

Good about the petrol I thought.

[Aggers]

Cheaper beer won't interest me. What's the point of that?

The super rich will be laughing all the way to the bank.

What we want is Old Labour - before Blair cocked it all up.

[cromwell]

Unfortunately Aggers I think Old Labour has gone forever. When I first started voting all the MP's around here were working class people, representing working class constituencies. Now, they are generally 'parachutes' from outside the area. Mostly they are middle or upper middle class, privately educated Oxbridge graduates or former councillors from London.
The leadership of the Labour party is much the same. Miliband, Balls, Cooper, Harman, Hodge - they are all the children of priviledge, sometimes the exceptionally priviledged.
Mostly they have never done a thing in their lives apart from talk.
OK, the conservatives may be much the same; but the change from Old to New Labour is very marked, especially around here.

[Kaz]

Exactly what you said, Frank. They are all cut from the same cloth, none of them have come from ordinary backgrounds or ordinary jobs. I find it very depressing, but it is what is happening with many of the professions, notably journalism......Those running the country, and those commentating on it, will have no idea of what life is like for the majority of people in this country - only the view from their ivory towers

[Aggers]

Those running the country, and those commentating on it, will have no idea of what life
is like for the majority of people in this country - only the view from their ivory towers

I find it very depressing, too.

Very few prominent politicians are truly representative of ordinary people now.
I seriously think that at some time in the future democracy will go out of fashion,
and a bloody revolution is on the cards.

Then what ?

[Workingman]

I seriously think that at some time in the future democracy will go out of fashion,
and a bloody revolution is on the cards.

I am tempted to believe that organisations such as the EDL, and others, are tolerated in order to avoid such a revolution. They help to deflect anger away from government and the elite and on to society itself - classic divide and rule.

If all of those disaffected parties ever unite no government, of whatever colour, will survive. And you can bet your pension that any attempt(s) to organise will be ruthlessly put down.

[Suff]

Hmmm, Yes, Old Labour….

Clement Atlee

Early life and education
Attlee was born in Putney, London, the seventh of eight children. His father was Henry Attlee (1841–1908), a solicitor, and his mother was Ellen Bravery Watson (1847–1920). He was educated at Northaw School, a boys' preparatory school near Pluckley in Kent. He then attended Haileybury College, and University College, Oxford

Hugh Dalton

Early life
Born in Neath, in Wales, his father, John Neale Dalton, was chaplain to Queen Victoria and tutor to the future King.
Dalton was educated at Summer Fields School in Summertown, a suburb of Oxford, and then at Eton College, in the small town of Eton in Berkshire, where he was head of his house, but was disappointed not to be elected to "Pop". After leaving school he went up to King's College, Cambridge

Stafford Cripps

Early life
Cripps was born in London. His father was a Conservative member of the House of Commons who, late in life, as Lord Parmoor, joined the Labour Party. His mother, the former Theresa Potter, was the sister of Beatrice Webb. Cripps grew up in a wealthy family and was educated at Winchester College and at University College London


In fact of the key 5 members of the first Old Labour government, only Bevin and Morrison were really “men of the people”.

I’d just love to hear that 1947 budget speech now. Condescending? Taxation mad? Out of touch with the common voter? Absolutely. In fact Old Labour has never had a large number of leaders in the “common voter” bracket at the top of the party. Old Labour, the real labour (who nationalised the Bank of England, nationalised the trains, ran the country completely out of money and then expected the people to pay for it), would have less chance of getting voted in than the BNP.

In fact if you want to see how well Old Labour is received in the UK nowadays, you just have to look here. That 1983 party manifesto and the response to it, led directly to the current modern Labour party.

Let’s face it, the society of the UK has changed out of all recognition since 1946. Class divisions have been destroyed. I mean REAL class divisions like a working man with the money to pay being turned away from an establishment, for no other reason than he was a working man and not of the correct “class”. Not the soft and woolly “class” BS we see today where patently middle class people identify themselves with working class to create an illusion of class divide.

The common voter has absolutely no link with the Bin Man turned PM (OK it never, never happened but it was the story). They don’t want people who can’t string 3 words together without a “yknow” or “like” or some other filler to allow them time to add a few more words. Just listen to the MSP’s in the Scottish “Government”. It’s enough to make you cringe when you realise that people who have difficulty putting a sentence together are actually running the country. Granted public speaking is not the mainstay, but basic intelligence (available to almost everyone), is.

Personally I’d LOVE to see Labour turn into Old Labour. They would be out of the running so fast you wouldn’t be able to say “Old Who” fast enough.

Our country has changed. Ordinary people live a life considered to be “rich” at the beginning of the last century. Where the common working man, or woman, could expect to work 5 or more days a week for enough money to buy food, clothes, accommodation, a very few small luxuries and have one two week holiday a year at some local destination, if that.

The thought of the unemployed expecting to jet off to Spain or Turkey for Holidays would have horrified them in the first instance and flabbergasted them in the second. These working people would have seen so clearly what we are unable to see today. They would have been paying for it.

I fully believe that Old Labour and Old Conservatism will never play a part in British politics again until the economy and society finally comes completely apart at the seams.

You can’t please all the people all the time. But you can keep them in homes (mainly), money and luxuries enough to keep the voting for you…..

[KateLMead]

Cheaper beer won't interest me. What's the point of that?

The super rich will be laughing all the way to the bank.

What we want is Old Labour - before Blair cocked it all up.

God Forbid John.....I see the nuclear plant to be built has been approved, am wondering whether it is the contract the Yvette Coopers father scooped for a company that he represents..

[Workingman]

A penny off a pint that just went up 5p.... he's having a laugh.

And he's promised to guarantee house loans on new build houses up to £600,000 if the buyer can stump up 5%.

Sorry gov', but if people want to buy houses then they need to have the money, or the wherewithal to borrow it. Sort out the reasons that is not the case. And, if anything, new builds should be taxed to the nth, and then some more.