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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8515798.stm

Well well well. What a surprise! Not even in power, and the Tories are already making stuff up. Apparently, a decimal point in the wrong place makes little difference. I big to differ. 5.4% and 54% are really rather different, no?

This is easily explainable. Missing out on a decimal place is careless not evil. we all make mistakes.

However completely lying through your teeth on immigration figures, Iraq invasion, regional assemblies and numerous other BIG LIES is quite ok so long as you are Nu Labour.

After all every nitwit knows scandals are for Tories and Lib Dems, the truth is the property of our master Gordon Brown.

Come on grots wakey wakey.

They put lord Archer and Hamilton in prison for telling porkies. Sure he was a purjuror and the law ran its course (though not to the doors of others of Labour MP's of course) but the actual deceptions were minor, it did not affect the state.

Geoff Hoon fiddles 300K in tax and is not charged. Prescott flatly refused to pay council tax on his second homes.

If someone in the John Major government went that far it would have been all over the press about 'yet more' Tory Sleeze. i am sure it would be exactly the same if the enquiries found senior Tories of this eitjher. Sure we didnt like the 2K duck house et all, but that peanuts compared to the felonies committed by the geovernment.

People seem to let this one slide. The put Lester Piggott behand bars and tried to slam up Ken Dodd. Tax evasion is serious, so long as you are not New Labour.

Be under no illusions if you are I defrauded the taxman of hundreds of thousands of pounds (chance to have so much would be nice) or refused to pay our council tax we would find our balls in a vice pretty quickly.

You worry about a decimal place out of place.

Here worry about this:

Should Geoff Hoon account for the 3.00000 GBP undeclared taxes he owes?

Heh, when I saw 'call me dave' I was thinking it was an old Mega City One robot.

And yes the Tory Party is out of touch and quietly prejudiced on a vast number of things.

And some of us still remember this...

In 1992, Peter Lilley (a capital witch), the social security secretary regaled the Conservative (Tory) conference with a plan to "close down the something for nothing society", delivered in the form of a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan's Lord High Executioner:

"I've got a little list
Of benefit offenders who I'll soon be rooting out
And who never would be missed
They never would be missed

There's those who make up bogus claims
In half a dozen names
And councillors who draw the dole
To run left-wing campaigns
They never would be missed
They never would be missed

Young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list
And dads who won't support the kids of ladies they have ... kissed
And I haven't even mentioned all those sponging socialists
I've got them on my list
And there's none of them be missed
There's none of them be missed.


I tried to find a clip of this but couldn't, it's really terrible.

Oh yes, the new caring and sharing Tories... Utter bollocks.

Nothing to do with Labour, who are of course a bunch of utter incompetent nicompoops, but more that the Tories are still a bunch of lying arseholes who are more concerned with grabbing headlines than any kind of accuracy.

Definitely voting Lib Dem this year. Could be a good election for them no?

Perhaps a hung parliament could be a good thing for us... might make the buggers play nice with each other for once

Is it bad that I read that understood every word but still don't know what you are talking about?

Wolfstan wrote:Perhaps a hung parliament could be a good thing for us... might make the buggers play nice with each other for once

Not with our system - hung parliaments and coalitions are a bad thing. The Israeli government, the Knesset I believe its called, is specifically designed so that coalitions must be formed in order to govern - this provides some natural checks and balances to a government. In the UK, however, coalition governments have traditionally been very weak, largely due to the lack of common ground between the three main parties. Idealogically speaking, Lib Dems are probably closest to Labour, so that may be an option if the majority is enough.


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sonofruss wrote: Is it bad that I read that understood every word but still don't know what you are talking about?

A hung parliament is where no one party has an overall majority of seats and is therefore unable to govern unless they form a coalition with another party and therefore have an overall majority combined. It's not an issue for you guys across the pond because you have a bi-partite system so one party will always get a majority.

As an old git I remember the last time the Tories were in power. Nu Lab came in and nicked all their policies so though the nation really wanted a change, nothing came of it. The Tories will be back in at the next election and it'll be more of the same.

All you need to know about politicians is that none of them give a toss about you or yours.

Well we do have difficulties like that some times with the new republican taking Ted Kennedy's old spot they scrapped the health care plan cause the dems lost the super majority and the republicans can now filibuster.

Yet just one more reason why I hate today's governments with such a passion.

Great job modern politics! You made me hate people even more!

@MGS - I don't don't think anyone is labouring under the misconception that the Tories will be 'caring and sharing'. That, however, is a good thing - you might have a soft-spot for benefit cheats, but I think they are scum that cost the country millions. I hope the boys in blue absolutely fething cane them.

Albatross wrote:@MGS - I don't don't think anyone is labouring under the misconception that the Tories will be 'caring and sharing'. That, however, is a good thing - you might have a soft-spot for benefit cheats, but I think they are scum that cost the country millions. I hope the boys in blue absolutely fething cane them.

Why then do the tories continue to court the puerile illusion of being 'caring and sharing' then? Could it be that their ongoing image as a pack of rich, effete pricks with no idea of how the average working class person deals with life and who blame all of society's ills on 'benefit cheating single mums' had finally pushed them beyond unelectable? That the likes of Michael Howerd and Norman Tebbitt and that simpering gakker Lilley had seen their 'image' pushed into that of a mix of vauderville villains and upper class twits.

I have considerably less patience and far less of a soft spot for the fraudulent rich than the 'cheating' poor. You do know and understand that tax evasion and financial crime committed by The City folks utterly dwarfs any benefit fraud committed by those on the poverty line.

Or do you buy into the thatcherite bs smoke and mirrors of focussing your rage and hate on the poor?

Depends on how naive you are I suppose. I choose to resent the bastards costing this country REAL money. The estimated cost of total benefit fraud for 2009 is £12 million (http://www.stopbenefitfraudni.gov.uk/cost.htm) vs tax evasion ALONE of £9 Billion. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7326911.stm) The amounts for fraud and laundering in the upper levels of business are monstrous.

The triumph of thatcherite ideology has the working class focussing it's hate on the underclass instead of targeting the real cost to their hard paid taxes, the already rich who commit massive financial crime.

"...you might have a soft-spot for benefit cheats, but I think they are scum that cost the country millions" - Seriously, what the feth is that? I expect that projectionist, reactionary bs from a Daily Mail hack or some spin doctor. I'm disappointed I've not garnered more respect from you than that demonstrated by that comment.

And, lest we forget, here's a choice case in point...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/5396199/MPs-expenses-Tory-MP-Sir-John-Butterfill-paid-no-tax-on-600000-house-profit.html

Well, you might be able to search google to present some figures for benefit fraud costs - I too have been known to use the 'google machine' from time to time:

The Department estimates that fraud fell from £2 billion in
2001–02 to £800 million in 2006–07. Some £700 million of this reduction happened when
the Department reclassified overpayments of Disability Living Allowance and its related
benefits as neither fraud nor error. This change was reported in the annual accounts.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.com/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmpubacc/323/323.pdf

Really? So they used some obfuscation to hide the real figures... surely not! Check the rest of the paper out - it's pretty interesting.

MGS wrote:I have considerably less patience and far less of a soft spot for the fraudulent rich than the 'cheating' poor. You do know and understand that tax evasion and financial crime committed by The City folks utterly dwarfs any benefit fraud committed by those on the poverty line.

Well, those same 'City folks' play a part in generating a large amount of this country's considerable wealth at least. Please explain to me what jobless benefit junkies raising another generation of jobless benefit junkies contribute to society (see, I'm not a Thatcherite - I believe in society!). Besides, please quote the part of my post where I wholeheartedly endorse whitecollar fraud.

MGS wrote:Or do you buy into the thatcherite bs smoke and mirrors of focussing your rage and hate on the poor?

Do I have to cite my working-class qualifications again? (sigh) Fine. Single-mother, council estate, Grandmother prominent labour councillor and Mayor of a town in the UKs industrial heartland...etc, etc.

Seriously, give it up - you and I know that you focus your hatred on the rich as much as you claim I do on the poor!
I grew in amongst the type of culture I'm railing against. Did you? The kids I grew up with had parents who didn't work, preferring instead to sit on their arses - those kids now have kids of their own and are making all the same moves as the previous generation. That is not to be encouraged, and dancing around the subject for fear of being accused of hating the poor by self-righteous parties is tantamount to the same thing in my eyes.

MGS wrote:"...you might have a soft-spot for benefit cheats, but I think they are scum that cost the country millions" - Seriously, what the feth is that? I expect that projectionist, reactionary bs from a Daily Mail hack or some spin doctor. I'm disappointed I've not garnered more respect from you than that demonstrated by that comment.

Well, they DO cost the country millions! And how is you accusing me of 'hating the poor' any better? You seem to be in favour of the 'man in the street' is all. There is a tendency to romanticise the 'noble working class' - a myth you appear to have bought into. If I've misread you, then I'm man enough to apologise - but you have to accept that you've got me wrong too. I believe that there is now absolutely no reason to be a member of Britain's underclass - everyone has access to free education, healthcare and equal opportunity for employment. That the underclass continues to exist is naturally of concern to me.

Remember, the man in the street if often a petty, small-minded bigot. As I hope I've proven.

The amount of money Benift cheats (or benfit claimants in general) cost the country is a pitance compared to the amount of money taken by bankers incomitance and corporate tax avoidance.

Benefit claimants are not even in the top 10 problems facing the counrty at the moment.

LuciusAR wrote:The amount of money Benift cheats (or benfit claimants in general) cost the country is a pitance compared to the amount of money taken by bankers incomitance and corporate tax avoidance.

Benefit claimants are not even in the top 10 problems facing the counrty at the moment.

That's all well & good but bear in mind that the profits enjoyed by bankers and white collar types are legitimised by the system within which they operate; immoral maybe, illegal no. Someone claiming benefits that they are not entitled to is illegal, is a drain on the system and is a growing problem - I don't think we can dispute that. And like it or not, it will be a hot topic at the forthcoming election. To be honest, both situations annoy me equally, however as a voter I can only potentially change one of those (assuming the Communist party isn't elected).

It's the Tax Loopholes people want tightened up. For instance, say I'm in a well paying job, where I earn £150,000 a year. Now at that rate, I'm in the higher tax band of roughly 50%. Obviously, that's an awful lot of my money going straight to the Taxman.

So what do I do? SIMPLE! I pay myself £99,999 as salary, neatly avoiding the higher Taxband by a measly £1, and claim the rest of the money (£50,001) as a bonus. I still pay tax on it, but Bonus money cannot be counted for upping your Taxband. It's absolutely fething rife in the business world, and to my mind just as dishonest as benefit cheats. Except they consistantly get away with it. Simply take away the lack of a Tax Band raise and BAM! Billions in extra tax every single year. Which is exactly what Britain needs right now no?