beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 35,844
because it was getting alot of coverage and wanted to find out more. a novel idea, i know.
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Timber ! A bad week for the ConDems
- Thread starter Dandyman
- Start date
because it was getting alot of coverage and wanted to find out more. a novel idea, i know.
ROSM
Well-known member
I think a lot of these challenges are coming about as the coalition has so much they want to say that they aren't really thinking before they say it. That's why niche policies like this are getting airtime because there's no real control on how new ideas are being communicated. This, I heard on the BBC news last night, is now going to be remedied - some hope that the Lib Dems could be reigned in!
The government has been embarassed by the health reforms ideas which weren't thought through (and I have heard second hand that cabinet were unhappy with), the child benefit changes, forests etc. Even the latest benefits policy, which at least was thought through (because IDS has been working on them for 4 years at least) are suffering because the timing is wrong and the national mood in times of the austerity cuts is bringing home the reality that whilst there are extremes of benefits claimants, for many this is necessity not choice.
Fraser Nelson (editor of the Spectator) wrote a good article on this (transcript below) where he comments that if the Government can be forced into U turns on prima faci sensible policies or indifferent ones by a high profile objectors, how are they going to feel when the unions start their public protests? Now I dont agree with everything he writes even in this article but there is some truth in this.
MAGGIE Thatcher famously declared that "the lady is not for turning". But David Cameron seems to have a very different motto.
It seems the laddie IS for turning. On school sports, school milk, prisoner voting, books, knife sentencing - with plenty more to come.
And worse, he's making U-turns. Not when he's wrong. Just when he gets a kicking. He'd best be careful, because this leads to disaster.
Without a clear message, he's being defined by his enemies.
Labour, resurgent in the opinion polls, will have great fun. Every time the government comes up with a plan they'll caricature it as a disaster.
And it's not just Labour. Anyone can have a go at forcing Cam to do a U-ey... from athletes like Denise Lewis to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Here's how it works. To try to get Britain back in the black, Cam is carrying out very mild cuts, of just over 1 per cent a year.
You'll never hear this figure mentioned because they've deployed a weird strategy of letting Labour make out the cuts are much deeper.
So they axe small schemes. Like Bookstart, a charity which mainly doled out free books to middle-class parents. It didn't need tax money.
Then you need a few celebs. In the case of Bookstart, just a few authors and a poet was enough to bring the British government into retreat.
With school sport funding, it was the Olympic javelin-thrower Tessa Sanderson who skewered Cam - and forced him to reverse the tiny cuts.
Now take the fiasco over the government's dull (but ineptly handled) plans to change who looks after forests. It has been brilliantly - and wrongly - portrayed as an evil plan to flog England's forests and enact some Avatar-style destruction plan.
Enter Annie Lennox, Judi Dench, Ranulph Fiennes and Rowan Williams - demanding that Cameron changes his mind.
Before you know it, the forest plan is being described as a "consultation". Yet again, that U-turn manoeuvre comes in very handy.
At least Labour got beaten up by the formidable Joanna Lumley. This lot look like Peter Andre could force them to rewrite the budget.
And this is dangerous. You can bet the unions are watching, thinking: "If Annie Lennox can force these guys into retreat, so can we."
Cam knows the problem is announcing policies that are not thought through. Then being hopelessly unable to defend them.
I'm reliably informed he's furious with Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's cack-handed handling of NHS reform.
But Cam says: Press on ahead. Britain needs boldness. He's right, but what it needs more is properly-organised boldness.
Ted Heath started off like Cam: A bold, reforming Tory PM. But he didn't prepare properly.
Cam should perhaps get Heath's portrait back in his No10 office. A reminder that enough U-turns finally leave you in the ditch.
The government has been embarassed by the health reforms ideas which weren't thought through (and I have heard second hand that cabinet were unhappy with), the child benefit changes, forests etc. Even the latest benefits policy, which at least was thought through (because IDS has been working on them for 4 years at least) are suffering because the timing is wrong and the national mood in times of the austerity cuts is bringing home the reality that whilst there are extremes of benefits claimants, for many this is necessity not choice.
Fraser Nelson (editor of the Spectator) wrote a good article on this (transcript below) where he comments that if the Government can be forced into U turns on prima faci sensible policies or indifferent ones by a high profile objectors, how are they going to feel when the unions start their public protests? Now I dont agree with everything he writes even in this article but there is some truth in this.
MAGGIE Thatcher famously declared that "the lady is not for turning". But David Cameron seems to have a very different motto.
It seems the laddie IS for turning. On school sports, school milk, prisoner voting, books, knife sentencing - with plenty more to come.
And worse, he's making U-turns. Not when he's wrong. Just when he gets a kicking. He'd best be careful, because this leads to disaster.
Without a clear message, he's being defined by his enemies.
Labour, resurgent in the opinion polls, will have great fun. Every time the government comes up with a plan they'll caricature it as a disaster.
And it's not just Labour. Anyone can have a go at forcing Cam to do a U-ey... from athletes like Denise Lewis to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Here's how it works. To try to get Britain back in the black, Cam is carrying out very mild cuts, of just over 1 per cent a year.
You'll never hear this figure mentioned because they've deployed a weird strategy of letting Labour make out the cuts are much deeper.
So they axe small schemes. Like Bookstart, a charity which mainly doled out free books to middle-class parents. It didn't need tax money.
Then you need a few celebs. In the case of Bookstart, just a few authors and a poet was enough to bring the British government into retreat.
With school sport funding, it was the Olympic javelin-thrower Tessa Sanderson who skewered Cam - and forced him to reverse the tiny cuts.
Now take the fiasco over the government's dull (but ineptly handled) plans to change who looks after forests. It has been brilliantly - and wrongly - portrayed as an evil plan to flog England's forests and enact some Avatar-style destruction plan.
Enter Annie Lennox, Judi Dench, Ranulph Fiennes and Rowan Williams - demanding that Cameron changes his mind.
Before you know it, the forest plan is being described as a "consultation". Yet again, that U-turn manoeuvre comes in very handy.
At least Labour got beaten up by the formidable Joanna Lumley. This lot look like Peter Andre could force them to rewrite the budget.
And this is dangerous. You can bet the unions are watching, thinking: "If Annie Lennox can force these guys into retreat, so can we."
Cam knows the problem is announcing policies that are not thought through. Then being hopelessly unable to defend them.
I'm reliably informed he's furious with Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's cack-handed handling of NHS reform.
But Cam says: Press on ahead. Britain needs boldness. He's right, but what it needs more is properly-organised boldness.
Ted Heath started off like Cam: A bold, reforming Tory PM. But he didn't prepare properly.
Cam should perhaps get Heath's portrait back in his No10 office. A reminder that enough U-turns finally leave you in the ditch.
That is not a good article, that is a biased and fairly crap article. For every "BookStart" case, there is a case where 550 people are losing their jobs from a teaching hospital. There's nothing minor about that. The ideas that are forcing u-turns are forcing u-turns because they are bollocks. Not surprising seeing as the tories had no policies going into the election beyond "we must get the debt down". And they are going about it, by savagely cutting everything, which is the equivalent of a bloke who loses his job trying to make up the shortfall in his household budget by selling his unwanted household tat on ebay.
ROSM
Well-known member
As I said, I dont agree with everything in it and the comment about bookstart is just one example, another being his view that the forest plans were just a change of administration. However this is a neo conservative journalist expressing his view on the weakness of the current administration and also describing some of the flagship policies as not thought through. Something I would think you and I and gradually the wider country will be in agreement on
glasfryn
cleaning up cat sick
very clever if you are a moron
but not so clever if you are an OAP
next year you will be living on pot noodles but be careful cut them up first
Pavilionaire
Well-known member
- Jul 7, 2003
- 31,099
Who the f*** are YOU? I don't read the Daily Mail, I don't vote Conservative and I happen to believe that, like them or not, the Tories left the country in a pretty reasonable state when Blair took over in 1997, especially in light of the nightmare we now find ourselves in.
As for the economic meltdown, we have proportionally the biggest deficit of any developed country because Labour instructed the regulators to apply "a light touch" to banking and also encouraged a "credit card" culture. What good years there were under Labour were, firstly, a result of the internet boom then, latterly, the credit boom and the smokescreen that was house price growth.
"We will abolish boom and bust" - what a bunch of thundercunts!
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 35,844
you're not wrong, but have to point out the deficit is mainly from the Labour government spanking thier (our) credit card to the max. people forget too easily the crash after the dot com boom and 9/11 and how recession was avoided only by a policy of rampant spending and fortuitously low inflation due to China manufacturing everything for a pittence.
Pot noodles for everyone
New member
None of them have done anything about this problem - neither Tory or Labour administrations. Our economy is now too reliant on an insufficiently regulated business which amounts to nothing more than risking and investing large amounts of money for clients and charging a commission for doing so.
I thought Labour would do something about this, and they didn't. I don't trust the Tories to EVER worry about this. The trouble is who do you turn to now?
drew
Drew
If only the Labour party cold govern us forever, they're the best. One party state, that’s what I want.
Anyone who disagrees with the Labour party point of view is uneducated or just bloody well wrong.
Go Labour.
Are, sarcasm. Excellent post!!!!