Loro smells of poo Absolutely

As a Sree supporter defender, I totally understand.

Doesn't mean you're right Carry on.

I'm not sure this is the right thread to put this link in, but didn't feel it needed a thread of it's own. I actually found it shocking reading. It may be scare-mongering, well, it certainly worried me.

Link to Independent story http://www.independent.co.uk/o...on-land-1962318.html

I hate all the nepotism that goes on....  I think its disgusting.  

There was an article in our local paper recently about our Tory Councillor... Bernard Jenkins  it was reporting that his dad had repaid the money he owed from over-claimed expenses (he had claimed rent on a property owned by his sister in law)....  his father was justifying it as "we all like to help our kids out"... says his dad.. LORD Jenkins!

pfft!

I read a little Jenny, but tbh Johann Hari always has a number of axes grinding at the same time.

Sounds about right Jenny

me too

but he's defecting & says he's voting lib dem on Thurs..

I don't know the author suzy, and it is quite a long article. It was worrying though, if that is Cameron's idea of a council he is especially proud of.

me too 

but he's defecting & says he's voting lib dem on Thurs.....ref: ditty

Snap ditty!
Mine too! We do live in one of the safest Lib-Dem seats in the country though so he still thinks he has integrity. blahhhhhhh

hahaha!   I make that noise a lot when hubby clicks into his Tory boy mode!

I'm sure it is.

A vision of what could be truly the worst PM ever.

Big Society, Big Twunts!

I'm sure many of you won't agree with me but I feel it's right that I should put my two pennies worth in.  Anyone voting LD tomorrow is living in cloud cuckoo land (in my humble opinion anyway). 

It sounds very much like all the scaremongering that Labour has resorted to increasingly over the last few weeks.  The following is a quote from politics.co.uk which was following around the candidates there

Hammersmith and Shepherds' Bush: The candidates speak

Tuesday, 20, Apr 2010 06:04

By Kaye Wiggins

It isn't often that politicians have to hit the doorsteps and humble themselves in front of the voters, and I wanted to see them in action on the front line.

Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush, in west London is a good place to do so.

The seat has been redrawn, with some parts previously represented by Conservative Greg Hands, and others by Labour's Andy Slaughter. Had the new boundaries been in force in 2005, Labour would have taken the seat with 42% of the vote to the Tories' 34%. But this time around, it's a crucial marginal.

So I arranged to follow Andy Slaughter, who represents Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush and is fighting for the new Hammersmith seat, on the campaign trail on Saturday. Liberal Democrat candidate Merlene Emerson invited me to go canvassing with her on Sunday afternoon.

I wasn't able to follow Bailey (the Conservative candidate) on the doorsteps, but he let me interview him while he was canvassing near Shepherd's Bush tube station early one morning.

Bailey has a prominent role in the Conservatives' national campaign: a video of him was shown at the party's manifesto launch and there's a full-page picture of him in the manifesto itself.

And locally, he's fighting hard. He has been known to call Slaughter "an idiot" and warn that "if he wants a mud-slinging match he wants to be careful I don't join in."

As I stood with him on a residential street just opposite the station, most of the commuters who walked past seemed to like his approach: they came over to say hello, or shouted across the street that he had their vote. In the half hour while I was there, not one expressed disapproval of either Bailey or the Conservatives.

His responses - typically "what's happening bro" and "cool, cool yeah" - were not what you'd expect from a Tory politician, but they fitted neatly with the party's depiction of him as a new type of Conservative. And on the street, they went down well.

I asked him about his stance on local issues, chiefly Slaughter's claim that the Conservative-run council was planning to knock down social housing in Shepherd's Bush.

The claim was "one of the most hideously corrupt political manoeuvres I've seen in some time," he said.

"They [Labour campaigners] have been trading on a set of facts that are simply not true," he told me. "It's one of the things that I'm really, really excited about fighting them on."

I read that Independent article earlier, it makes for scary reading. Not quite as bad as the 'pray away the gay' stuff that's been well hidden by the Tories though...

As I said, could be scare-mongering, but if it IS true, that is truly worrying. Spin, and more spin. You just don't know what to believe. This has been the hardest election for me to vote in. I trust none of them anymore, so it's been a matter of a bit of tactical voting from me. And voting for the party that scares me the least.

No matter how many time Cameron stands amongst a bunch of hired tory supporters in his shirt sleeves, his pregnant wife by his side, will I believe a word he says. A leopard doesn't change it's spots. He mentioned society yesterday and all I could think of was that he's slipped up as the sainted Thatcher denied that there was any such thing.

I don't suppose it's any different than Cameron's bosses trying to blame Gordon for the economic meltdown, or the Volcano, or Chelsea winning the League etc etc.

Sorry you feel that way Cologne.  I would rather have David Cameron in office than any of the other teams out there.  You may not agree, but that's my opinion. 

I honestly have lost count of the number of times I have seen Gordon Brown himself telling out and out lies this week alone.  I think the way the people on the street were greeting the Conservative candidate says a lot.

squiggle, this is from a blog which seemed rather supportive of Cameron -

'Back into defending the Council again Mr Cameron was challenged by one elderly gentleman who charged Hammersmith Tories with having broken their election promise not to introduce charges to vital services for the most vulnerable. This he said had indeed happened, to the extent that some of the poorest in society were being charged upwards of £12 for services like Meals on Wheels while over a thousand other people had been arbitrarily disqualified from receiving the services altogether. The angry man said that this meant the poorest were paying more for less in Hammersmith and subsidising the much-trumpeted tax cuts that had benefited the more well-off. Cameron was having none of this and flatly disagreed with the man, repeating his pride in the Council and challenging critics to not only criticise but stand in the forthcoming elections.'

link - http://shepherdsbush.wordpress...-and-watching-polls/


Sounds like the Independent's article was fairly accurate.
What do you understand by the 'Big Society'?

No problem at all joyron, but in my case I remember it all too well. She was elected the year I came to Britain and I lived through times in Scotland and down here in Devon that have no resemblens to the last 13 years.

I've just seen Cameron attack Brown for not supporting the thrifty. Utter, utter, bolleaux. There has never been such a good time to be thrifty. It's people in debt who have had to watch out.

Blizzie obviously I have no local knowledge of Hammersmith but I quote again from my (neutral) article that I quoted before, and this is a view from the people who live in the borough.   This still seems like scaremongering to me.

Cologne can I suggest that you go to page 1 of this thread and read the situation that the Conservatives inherited from the Callaghan government?  It helps to put into perspective the times we were living through then.

What lies exactly? Do you want to be more specific? And ................how do you see your life improving under Tory rule ....................has it been so bad under Labour ....not being provocative - just interested.

Unfortunately the extremely low interest rates at the moment are proving disastrous for many thrifty people, pensioners in particular.  Their earnings have nosedived as the little additions to their pensions which came from savings have just disappeared.

The little additions are more than made up for (in the needy) with heating allowance, cold weather payments, free TV licence and a state pension that keeps rate with inflation. Not all pensioners have savings ......it's fairer this way as I see it.

I think that's an Urban Myth isn't it? Our generation have never had it so good.

I have seen him many times this week saying about how child tax credit will be withdrawn from poor people.  Just not true.  The Conservatives intend to withdraw it from people earning over £50,000.  Incidentally I believe the Lib Dems intend to withdraw it from people earning over £25,500.  That may or may not be so, I have not studied their manifesto in detail.

I would like to see the Conservative Party taking positive steps to immediately reduce the huge deficit we have at the moment.  David Cameron has promised that if his party is elected they will roll up their sleeves and get on with the job.  Drop the really ridiculous ID Card scheme, and stop wasting so much money on politically correct schemes as we have at the moment.  I know this country needs job creation, to get our schools back into some form of discipline so we will never again have to hear stories like that teacher tried last week, pushed beyond his limit by pupils who know that teachers like him are powerless to stop them behaving like thugs.

In short we have become mired in debt and hopelessness.  We need change.  And we need change now.

I am speechless at that.  Do you know how impossible it is now to get a return on your savings?

Well I seem to have managed it, as have my Mum and Dad. It's not all putting it on Number seven in the 3:25 at Newton Abbot either.

The blog was by a man who lives in the borough, attended the meeting and was supportive of Cameron's performance at the meeting.

And yet you still think it is scaremongering, so maybe the truth is quite scary?

And maybe those who live in the borough and are mentioned in what I quoted were also worth taking note of?  They seemed quite at ease and not scared at all.

Squiggle, I always followed politics here in Britain because of my husband mainly and because we were planning to come and live here. I remember watching the television when she won and thinking that the only way was down. The family silver was sold straight away, the mining industry and the steel industry was distroyed, the Scottish oil was used for her politics down south and the legacy we have from all that can not be sorted out in 13 years. If not everything had been privatised to gain her some pennies, we'd have a competitive industry. Now we have nothing. She believed in laiiser fair economics, which surely we all know are draining the life blood out of a country.

Cologne if you followed British politics from Germany then you no doubt saw the mess that Margaret Thatcher inherited. Unions totally out of control etc.  We are now in massive debt, we have the unions flexing their muscles again etc.  I can see that some people are very happy under Labour but many are not. It is the future of my country that I am so worried about,  I totally believe that Labour have lost their way and we are probably heading right back to where we were.

The union was too strong and that was a mistake. I remember thinking back home that it shouldn't be a problem because the German government had a good relationship with the Unions and it worked the way it should be working. What I don't see this time round is the thread to the Labour government by the unions the way it was 30 years ago and my instictive gut feeling has always been that the party who cares for everybody in the country rather that just the ones who can prop it up financially is the one for me. The tories will never be helping me, even though I am at rock bottom health wise, Labour has and still are. We are all bringing up different examples from years gone by, but all that shows is that politics are an up and down game, that it's always down to the rich people who make or brake any country. We have a global problem in the moment, but I bet you everything I own, the people who 'matter' don't have our problems or worries and it doesn't matter if the country is led by a labour or a tory government. The only difference is that the underdogs are looked after a liitle bit better by labour.

Really? How do they propose to do that exactly? TBH .................the huge deficit that 'we' have at the moment isn't impacting on me ..................how on earth raising the threshold on inheritance tax will do this is quite beyond me ........is that not a case of robbing the poor to pay the rich?

Just as the blog writer was, but he was reporting how the meeting went, how some of the residents questioned Cameron and the responses he gave them.

I agree. Basically short of just taking all our income none of them can do anything about the debt. We didn't create it, but we are going to pay for it. I don't blame the Greeks for going on the barricades. They didn't make the finacial decisions, but they have to suffer for it now. It's all a complete joke.

That makes everything alright then. You're very easily pleased if it's simply a case of rolling up your sleeves. His policies simply don't add up.