Gordon Brown

[Racingdude009]

Up in Manchester in business quite surprised by talking to people how popular Gordon Brown is.

[Zod]

[catso]

It's grim oop North.......

[Horse_Apple]

They must be 'mad for (sh)it'

[marvelharvey]

I'm just watching last week's Question Time on the BBC iPlayer and a member of the audience said "Gordon Brown is a man of substance and he's a man that I trust, I support him", followed by a round of applause.

There are some frighteningly crazy people in this country.

[Parrot of Doom]

Manchester is hardly a hotbed of conservatism. The centre of Manchester is very much pro-labour, as are Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Salford, all traditionally working class areas.

You wouldn't find the same responses in Cheshire.

[Einion Yrth]

Parrot of Doom said:

Manchester is hardly a hotbed of conservatism. The centre of Manchester is very much pro-labour, as are Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Salford, all traditionally working class areas.

You wouldn't find the same responses in Cheshire.

I'm sorry, but being working class does not excuse anybody being a f*cking idiot, it just doesn't.

[215cu]

Parrot of Doom said:

Manchester is hardly a hotbed of conservatism. The centre of Manchester is very much pro-labour, as are Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Salford, all traditionally working class areas.

You wouldn't find the same responses in Cheshire.

Having lived in Salford and surrounding areas for three years, Labour have really done a lot of the denizens of that fine city. You could get a tramp off a park bench, stick a Labour rosette on it and he'd soon be off to Westminster to do a 'fine job'.

About as well as the current incumbents.

And they aren't 'working class', there is still very high levels of unemployment/incapacity in these areas, sometimes as high as 30%.

And the contrast between the Labour areas and Tory ones in Greater Manchester is stark.

Labour is Manchester, is like a circled wagon-train. The enemy has you surrounded and you might hold them off, but you are going to get one righteous scalping.

Edited by 215cu on Monday 22 September 10:26

[Welshbeef]

Einion Yrth said:

Parrot of Doom said:

Manchester is hardly a hotbed of conservatism. The centre of Manchester is very much pro-labour, as are Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Salford, all traditionally working class areas.

You wouldn't find the same responses in Cheshire.

I'm sorry, but being working class does not excuse anybody being a f*cking idiot, it just doesn't.

100% correct.

Look at South Wales Valleys and they are 100% Labour due to the fact of the mines closing, however they have such short memories as to what happened in the 70's.

So they forget the 70's, hardly recall any of the "Great Britain" of the 80's and only focus on the closure of the mines - which was the unions fault.
Still if I was in their shoes I guess I'd feel the same - but I would question why after 11 years in power this beloved Labour which I cannot fault still hasnt done anything to create real jobs in the area. They have of course paidd for me my son and my grandson to be on income support all our lives - this in itself creates no ambition as the salary they would need to earn to better the income support by any significant margin is way above what any jobs in the area have.

I am not sure what the answer is for those poor villages who's whole existance was due to a local Mine. They cannot do tourism and mainly its in the national park so you cannot start building factory units.
I'd say the only ssolution is to train them up in say payroll/call centre working where they can work from home - give them internet and a business line and they might make a go of it.

[Simpo Two]

Racingdude009 said:

Up in Manchester in business quite surprised by talking to people how popular Gordon Brown is.

Tell us why Gordon Brown is popular.

Reason 1)
2)
3)
4)

etc.

We'll be interested to know, because nobody else can think of any.

(Serious question)

[Simpo Two]

Welshbeef said:

They have of course paidd for me my son and my grandson to be on income support all our lives - this in itself creates no ambition as the salary they would need to earn to better the income support by any significant margin is way above what any jobs in the area have.

Indeed - one way to create ambition is to cut benefits so that you CAN'T live on them. I recently the read the autobiography of Eddie Rickenbacker and the only reason he ended up being President of Eastern Airlines was because his father died when he was 13 and he had to go out and earn money to keep his mother and brothers and sisters in food. Had he been handed money to do nothing, I expect three generations of his family would have ended up doing nothing as well.

Problem is - we're all too damn comfortable and lazy really.

[Parrot of Doom]

Einion Yrth said:

Parrot of Doom said:

Manchester is hardly a hotbed of conservatism. The centre of Manchester is very much pro-labour, as are Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Salford, all traditionally working class areas.

You wouldn't find the same responses in Cheshire.

I'm sorry, but being working class does not excuse anybody being a f*cking idiot, it just doesn't.

Just because people have a different set of politics than yourself doesn't really make them an idiot, does it? I wasn't excusing anyone by the way, not that they need excusing.

[Yertis]

Welshbeef said:

I'd say the only solution is to train them up....

I wondered where that was going for a moment...

[Einion Yrth]

Parrot of Doom said:

Einion Yrth said:

Parrot of Doom said:

Manchester is hardly a hotbed of conservatism. The centre of Manchester is very much pro-labour, as are Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Salford, all traditionally working class areas.

You wouldn't find the same responses in Cheshire.

I'm sorry, but being working class does not excuse anybody being a f*cking idiot, it just doesn't.

Just because people have a different set of politics than yourself doesn't really make them an idiot, does it?

Perhaps not, although most of the indoctrinated rubbish I hear from the mouths of the left tends to make me wonder, but support for Gordon Brown certainly does.

[Welshbeef]

The thing is when you ask people who are staunch labour why they will not vote tory they always say to me interest rates of 15%. GB hasnt given us that its only 5%.

My std reply is - back in the late 80's/early 90's ave house price was £50-60k 15% on 60k is £9k.
Today interest rates from banks due to "external issues"... are mid 6's so say 6.5% ave UK house price is £170k. 6.5% on 170k is £11k.

Next is that they say house prices dropped by 25%... ok 25% off 60k is £15k, so far in a little over a year the ave house has lost £15k with some extreme views that it may loose another 20% which would mean a total "loss" of £49k

Ave sal is now £25k ave sal in 1990 was £17k.
It doesnt take a genious to see the impacts were seeing today are vastly worse.

Next employment they bang on about how high it was back then... ok I say well firstly the method of counting unemployment has changed & they have not restated historic data so using these two numbers is not like for like. They always disagree... but its factually not the same data.

I keep saying shouldnt we focus on the active workforce as a % of the population or as a % of those 16 to 65y.o. (incase they argue that ave age has shifted upwards).

Next is hosptials & schools - well hospitals all I know currently vs before is that after they injected cash into them they gave massive pay rises to all the staff now the cash is being cut and therefore staff are being cut. Been lucky enough not to have needed to use the facilities personally or anyone close so cannot comment.
Schools & Uni's well under tory it was free - now everyone pays. Clearly for those who now pay they are worse off & you could argue that those studing in Uni are our future so its a countries investment in itself.

Armed forces.. cut after cut after cut.

Police - too much red tape means that even though there are more heads they are tied up with paper work than on the street policing.
Road police presence - frankly is dire. I go to Bulgaria a lot and out there the cops are on the roads all the time ad they dont have speed cameras not fixed ones but instead they actually hide behind bushes/signs and then zap you ... and your fined. Is the hiding a good thing to do? I guess the drivers here who brake hard for the speed cameras then speed up will disagree - I for one think its very good.

VED CO2 - totally ill thought being back dated.

Selling our gold reserves at record lows
Giving away our £6 billion EU rebate on the hope that France would change their mind on the way the Farmers subsidy is delt with - result lost £6 billion.
GB stealing £80 billion from our pension schemes by taxing them.
GB's stealth taxes.

The state of the employment sector 19% manufacturing 40% Govt 41% Service sector... 40% - dont generate any GDP for the UK!!!!

Welsh Assembly - total waste of money ditto scotland.
BoE - giving them the interest rate setting but then change the goal posts from RPI to CPI

Shouting end of boom and bust for the last 11 years, then all of a sudden I have not heard that from labour for some time....

In fact the only good thing I can think of is finalising the NI issue. Not sure how much of that can be down to TB but I'll give them that.

Violent crime highest ever, number of Guns highest ever, organised crime - worringly getting much worse.
Drugs - everywhere how hard is it to stop FFS.

I think you can tell Im not a labour fan.

Oh one thing to say Im not for any govt being in power for more than 2 terms - they get lazy and out of ideas. I think following this stint its going to be 4 or maybe 5 elections where labour are just totally out the running.

[Tuna]

The trouble is, a lot of people just think about what their income is, and how nice their house is. It doesn't matter if the government have thrown your pension away because you're not a pensioner, it doesn't matter if your local hospital is struggling because you're not ill, it doesn't matter that Brown wasted money in the years of boom, because the bust is all the banks' fault. etc. etc. etc.

Most of the things talked about on PH are long term and systemic problems that make no sense to the man on the street. If you don't understand that there are some pretty big problems, there's nothing to fault the government for.

[BigLepton]

Simpo Two said:

Racingdude009 said:

Up in Manchester in business quite surprised by talking to people how popular Gordon Brown is.

Tell us why Gordon Brown is popular.

Reason 1)
2)
3)
4)

etc.

We'll be interested to know, because nobody else can think of any.

(Serious question)

Easy:

1) He's not a tory.
2) He's not a tory.
3) He's not a tory.
4) He's not a tory.

There are many people in this country for whom class hatred and the politics of jealousy are preferable to cogent thought. These people would support a joint Bin Laden/Beelzebub candidate over an educated, successful and self-made man standing for the Conservative party.