Cameron is playing a blinder

[Husty]

What Camoron is actualy doing is getting rid of his 'old gaurd'. The people of the party that are too far to the right, but are still concidered as Tory. They are being chucked out of the party and will most probably end up at UKIP.

What ever you think about the Tories, you have to admit that Dave is a very astute politician. IMO or course.

As a politician he isnt too bad, but even with all the clear outs i think too much of the old guard still remain

 

[drew]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/24/david-camerson-conservative-candidates

I've never voted for the Conservatives, and I lean much more to the centre than most of his party, but I have to say that David Cameron is playing a blinder during the expenses scandal, showing leadership and coming across as frank and open in a way Labour haven't for a long, long time.

Still no idea who I'm going to vote for on June 4th!

Leadership! You are having a laugh. He isn't leading, he is reacting to press disclosures. If he was leading (and the same goes for Brown and Clegg) they would have chucked out the crooks before their names were in the papers. They knew long ago that all this was going to come out but chose to do nothing and just hope they could ride out the storm.

It would be foolish for Brown to call a general election now because there would not be enough time for the crooks to be deselected and fresh faces put up for election in all the relevant constituencies. Cameron wants an election not to clear out the deadwood but as an opportunist who is ahead in the polls.

Too true, so often people criticise him for not standing up and putting forward proposals about the biggest issues but this time he has taken immediate action and imposed new restrictions on his own party immediately rather than waiting around for x and y report/committee to take donkeys to figure out an answer.

He is only reacting to the media and those MPs that have been 'outed'. How many MPs has he censured that have yet to be reported on by the Telegraph? None.

If people actually LISTEN to what Cameron has to say without prejudice and pre judged ideas they will find the bloke has a lot of good ideas and comes across as a decent bloke imo. Of course WHEN he wins the general election next year it may be a crock of shit but for now he is the one Man I would put my tick against.

Comments like " I hate everything he stands " for is BULLSHIT and comes from a 15 year old Boy who probably just said it to gain favour with all the NSC lefties without having ANY knowledge behind the sweeping statement he made.

Do you remember all the budgets Brown did banging on about " prudence " and " no more boom and bust " PAH. Total shit. He spunked away TRILLIONS of pounds on bureaucrats , civil servants and paperwork for EVERYONE trying to do a job from NHS Doctors to Police officers who could not do their jobs properly as they had to file a report first.

He also plundered literally tens of millions of pounds from people's pensions and sold our Gold reserve's at firesale prices.

And still people want to vote for him

Do you remember the Thatcher years, riots in the street, selling the family silver, closing down manufacturing, shutting hospital wards, introducing care in the community, defence cutbacks, greed is good etc etc. The trouble with US is DC can do no wrong in your book. You blame the world recession on one Gordon Brown and the subsequent effect that has had on your business. You are equally as poor a judge as those that worship the ground GB treads. It's depressing.

Cameron wouldn't need to claim expenses as he comes from a very affluent background. His wife's family are LOADED.

Check the facts, he has claimed for expenses that have nothing to do with his job as an MP. Will he deselect himself?

Not really the point is it? O you're rich so you should pay all your own expenses you incur from doing your job...what a ridiculous thing to say. Imagine if you turned up to an interview and then were told 'We know you are a millionaire so actually we aren't going to give you an expenses account'.

Moronic post as the the point is most of the expenses that have been highlighted by the Telegraph have nothing to do with doing your job as an MP.

So were my of the MP's who claim for Duck Ponds etc ( Tory ) who Cameron caned out of the party at the first opportunity. The lefties refusal to acknowledgde this fact shows their true colours.

He only kicked them out once the Telegraph had 'outed' them. Do you actually understand the difference between the words pre-emptive and reactive? I very much doubt you do.

The Tory Party has always stood for the redistribution of wealth

Unfortunately, it is usually in an upward direction

Very good point. Unfortunately too many people are blind to this. Inheritance tax is one of the best cases to highlight this. The Tories had this as one of their main aims trying to fool the public as they wanted to raise the threshold to £1m. However, you the current threshold is more than adequate and covers, I believe, over 95% of estates in the country. Unfortunately there seems to be a lot of dumb people who think that inheritance tax is paid from the ground up and are suckered in by the Tories. It's frightening.

Point one is completely irrelevant. So what if he knows the financial situation of his shadow cabinet? That is not the issue, system and usage of that system is the issue and Cameron has taken immediate action to prevent any tory MP abusing it in future. Gordon Brown hasn't taken the action required, people forget that there's a bloody lot of rich people on all sides of the house not just the tories.

He's not trying to be a moral superman, merely taken the required action to prevent any further abuse of the system. Would you prefer he did nothing or do the thing any half decent opposition would do and put pressure on the government to take the action he has?

It's actually not very easy at all to sack a member of the shadow cabinet, they are the head of the opposition and the very people he appointed to run this country with him so probably a very, very difficult decision to take. Their position is neither here nor there, if an MP has abused the system they should be made to suffer the consequences.

Wrong, he is trying to be the moral superman but at the end of the day, if he had the integrity that so many of you DC arselickers claim, he would have acted long before any of this came out. He didn't and is therefore equally as bad as GB and the others. Probably could be said he is worse as he wants a General Election before any new expense rules are agreed.

Get the rules in place, deselect all the crooks whatever shade of the political spectrum then have a general election. An election now, which would be in 4 weeks if called today, would be an attempt to paper over the cracks.

In one word "bollocks"

I never had any time for Blair and thankfully never voted for him, in fact I have little respect for the current political class full stop.

Cameron is quite simply a product of the Tories having absolutely no idea of how to get back into power other than simply copying the style of the ex-Prime Minister.

Installing a windmill on his Notting Hill home and riding a bike to work doesn't fool me fortunately.

Neither does claiming ignorance of the self serving behaivour that he's been a part of for years. Reforming the "nasty party", what utter utter shit. Claiming to have your moat cleaned speaks volumes of what that party really thinks of the electorate.

If Dave was so worried about it, why didn't he do something about it before ?

And don't tell me he didn't know. They all knew - it was quite simply how things were.

F*ck the lot of them.

Agree wholeheartedly.

To a point I agree. The problem I have is that the main cases have come from the labour party and Gordon Brown has sat back and done bugger all about it. Cameron has taken action, if he had done nothing he would have been slaughtered whereas everyone seems to be so wound up in the problems to realise that the PM is doing NOTHING to sort it out.

Another muppet fooled by DC.

Ah, so many of you youmger posters cannot remember the evil of the Thatcher years! "Greed is good" and "There is no such thing as society" were the mantras; football fans were regarded as the scum of the earth, of course ("They're not people like us") and jobs were something that poor people had to do; they obviously didn't like working, so take their jobs away. In the Thatcher years more damage was done to British manufacturing industry than the Luftwaffe managed in the entire World War II.
Young Cameron might be trying to say all the right things (well, to be fair he is saying all the right things) but he can't rid himself and his party of the stench of Thathcherism - you've got to remember that as a youngster he was one of the people that would have been behind Thatcher all the way. You seriously think the present government is bad in comparison to that one? OK, they ain't very good, but they're better than what they replaced ten times over! Be very careful what you wish for!

And Labour have done such a wonderful job haven't they ?.

What would the Tories have done differently. Cut public spending so there would be no capital investment in schools, hospitals etc. Waiting times would be even longer than when they last left power. Their policies on less regulation would certainly not have prevented the current crisis. It was, if I recall, the Tories who allowed companies to take pension holidays so now very few people have final salary pension.

Probably the biggest achilles heel of the labour regime was the Iraq war and the Tories supported that at the time. It would also be hard to believe that they wouldn't have gone along with the Yanks even had they know the full facts at the time.

There have been criticism of the paperwork police and doctors need to complete. Well most of that if due to the litigious society we now live in. If you don't have the paperwork you don't have a defence.


Finally, one poster suggested that the worse cases were all Labour. How blinkered is that. Derek Conway paid his son thousands for doing no work and it now appears he has been claiming an allowance for a house 300 miles from his constituency. Mr and Mrs Winterton have been claiming an allowance for rent on a property the already own! McKay and his wife have claimed allowances for both their house, each citing the other property as their main residence.

They are all in it together and until the shit is removed from parliament by their relevant parties and new rules introduced, then we can never trust politicians again, whether they claimed only £600 or £60,000.

 

[Stoo82]

Drew. You make it sound like the Torys dont want to spend money on anything. Why?
They would most probably cut spending but, in the thier opinion would spend it wisely. Labour has wasted billions and we have got very little in return. Are the hospitals and school and all other public servies really that much better than in 1997? Waiting times have had there spin on it. They are no real changes to waiting times since 1997.

Yes they dont spend as much as Labour. They dont need too.

 

[sir danny cullip]

He is only reacting to the media and those MPs that have been 'outed'. How many MPs has he censured that have yet to be reported on by the Telegraph? None.

Moronic post as the the point is most of the expenses that have been highlighted by the Telegraph have nothing to do with doing your job as an MP.

First point - every single MP is being reactive. In that sense they're all as bad as each other, what makes Browns dealing of this issue worse than Cameron's is that he isn't even being reactive which for me is unforgivable!

The point I was responding to when you quoted the second issue was a post that seemed to imply that because Conservative politicians were generally richer they shouldn't claim expenses at all. No one should claim the expenses they have been doing but all should have equal right to expenses connected with their jobs.

O and one question, I'm 'another muppet fooled by DC'...so what exactly has Brown done to address this issue? Any direct action against his MP's? Any new rules imposed on his party?

 

[drew]

First point - every single MP is being reactive. In that sense they're all as bad as each other, what makes Browns dealing of this issue worse than Cameron's is that he isn't even being reactive which for me is unforgivable!

The point I was responding to when you quoted the second issue was a post that seemed to imply that because Conservative politicians were generally richer they shouldn't claim expenses at all. No one should claim the expenses they have been doing but all should have equal right to expenses connected with their jobs.

O and one question, I'm 'another muppet fooled by DC'...so what exactly has Brown done to address this issue? Any direct action against his MP's? Any new rules imposed on his party?

Brown being the one in charge has to make changes to the rules that are workable. Now, are you suggesting that Brown/Clegg and Cameron should be the ones who draw up the new rules when they have been part of the problem or should there be an independent review of all the rules on expenses and, just as importantly, second incomes.

As for Brown doing nothing, Chaytor and Morley are being subject to an independent examination of their abuse of expenses and presuming they will be found guilty, will be deselected as Labour candidates. They are also undertaking an independent audit of all Labour MPs expense claims over the last 4 years and anyone found guilty of abuse of the system can face deselection. He is also pressing labour MEPs to publish their expenses on their websites. So, he is not doing nothing.

I note that the Wintertons are not to stand for re-election. If DC is so great, why did he not withdraw the party whip when their shenanigans were reported over a year ago?

 

[drew]

First point - every single MP is being reactive. In that sense they're all as bad as each other, what makes Browns dealing of this issue worse than Cameron's is that he isn't even being reactive which for me is unforgivable!

The point I was responding to when you quoted the second issue was a post that seemed to imply that because Conservative politicians were generally richer they shouldn't claim expenses at all. No one should claim the expenses they have been doing but all should have equal right to expenses connected with their jobs.

O and one question, I'm 'another muppet fooled by DC'...so what exactly has Brown done to address this issue? Any direct action against his MP's? Any new rules imposed on his party?

Wrong, not every MP is being reactive. There have been a handful on both sides of the house who have not abused the system and some, I can't remember which, were arguing for change a long long time ago. I do agree with your second paragraph although the important point is that the expense must be incurred and that it must solely be related to performing their role as an MP.

Think I have already posted a reply re your last para.

Drew. You make it sound like the Torys dont want to spend money on anything. Why? History, thats why.
They would most probably cut spending but, in the thier opinion would spend it wisely. Labour has wasted billions and we have got very little in return. Are the hospitals and school and all other public servies really that much better than in 1997? Waiting times have had there spin on it. They are no real changes to waiting times since 1997.

Yes they dont spend as much as Labour. They dont need too.

'In their opinion' is the crucial phrase you use. Are you saying the Tories in their last 19 year spell didn't close hospital wards, spent millions on education, didn't introduce the management tiers in the NHS, didn't sell the Council house stock and then not reinvest the income in more council homes. Did they sell of the family silver in the utilities, railways, BT etc and are we not all paying the price. Did they invest heavily in the railway infrastructure?

What exactly is the spin on waiting times then? In the 80s, I had surgery on my knee and was waited over 6 months before I even saw a consultant and then a further 8 months for the surgery. Last year I had surgery on my knee within 3 months of speaking to my GP. My experience is that waiting times are far better than they were but maybe your experience is different.

 

[User removed 4]

How long before we see another poster like this trotted out by the Tories?

It seems the global recession will do for Labour and the Tories will get into power by default

Cameron probably can't believe his luck

This recession isn't the only reason people are pissed off with labour, the tories were in the lead long before this recession started.

 

[User removed 4]

Ah, so many of you youmger posters cannot remember the evil of the Thatcher years! "Greed is good" and "There is no such thing as society" were the mantras; football fans were regarded as the scum of the earth, of course ("They're not people like us") and jobs were something that poor people had to do; they obviously didn't like working, so take their jobs away. In the Thyatcher years more damange was done to British manufacturing industry than the Luftwaffe managed in the entire World War II.
Young Cameron might be trying to say all the right things (well, to be fair he is saying all the right things) but he can't rid himself and his party of the stench of Thathcherism - you've got to remember that as a youngster he was one of the people that would have been behind Thatcher all the way. You seriously think the present government is bad in comparison to that one? OK, they ain't very good, but they're better than what they replaced ten times over! Be very careful what you wish for!

How would you have gone about solving all the problems the country faced in 1979 ??you say you remember the "evil" of the thatcher years , so you must remember the winter of discontent, what would you have done to tackle the numerous crisis we faced? Yet again a labour government has led the country to virtual collapse, brown and labour cannot be blamed for the recession,but they can be blamed for spunking billions of pounds of OUR money that would have left us in far better shape to weather the storm.

 

[sir danny cullip]

Wrong, not every MP is being reactive. There have been a handful on both sides of the house who have not abused the system and some, I can't remember which, were arguing for change a long long time ago. I do agree with your second paragraph although the important point is that the expense must be incurred and that it must solely be related to performing their role as an MP.

There was a labour MP who was blabbing on about this 'some of us have been in disagreement for a long time' the other night on question time (name escapes me). That's all well and good absolute none of them did anything of any substance to sort it out. Any one of them could have come up with something similar to what the Telegraph has, maybe even submit ridiculous expense claims themselves to expose the whole thing? Did they? No.

This puts them all in the same boat by my book but what persuades me that Cameron will take action is that he has taken immediate action without these time consuming inquiries.

 

[Stoo82]

'In their opinion' is the crucial phrase you use. Are you saying the Tories in their last 19 year spell didn't close hospital wards, spent millions on education, didn't introduce the management tiers in the NHS, didn't sell the Council house stock and then not reinvest the income in more council homes. Did they sell of the family silver in the utilities, railways, BT etc and are we not all paying the price. Did they invest heavily in the railway infrastructure?QUOTE]

Because a Labour Government ALWAYS bankrupts the country. Everytime.
So in come the Torys, sort the mess out, have to cut back on everything to live with our means as a country. Then Labour spout on about Tory cuts and such and such.

 

[User removed 4]

Fair enough but where do you think the economic stimulus should come from? Every government in the G20 is committed to expanding public spending as an answer to the global recession. To be fair the Conservatives did say they would not join in, but did not say what they would do to address the problem.

unfortunately there is no bottomless pit of money for this "economic stimulus", we have to face facts that there are tough times ahead and belts need to be tightened, the majority of the money has been wasted and we cannot borrow any more ,fitch has even placed us on credit watch, what more information do you need to realise this ?