So who do you vote for?

[cheddar-caveman]

I have always voted for the Conservatives, via our local MP Heathcoat-Amory. The recent expenses exposure has revealed that he is no better than the rest, even claiming for manure for his garden!

I wrote to him complaining that his actions were basically immoral when you considder his income and the huge estates he owns both here and in Scotland. His answer was more or less that he was "within the rules"!

So if I want to vote Conservative I have to vote for him, which kind of sticks in my throat!

So who do we vote for?

[John]

Is he standing again?

As previously stated every receipt from every expense of Conservative MP's
are now online and transparent at their main website.

This is more than Labour do or want.

They are more interested in selecting women only unless you want a male
relative in a safe seat...

[Hugh]

 Re: The next general election.
« Reply #91 on: March 03, 2010, 04:13:56 PM »   

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

New labour was very different from the old labour party so how different will the new tory party be against the old, we just don't know. To keep quoting M Thatcher she's long since gone along with the problems she had with the unions. Time have changed, and we have all got to make up our minds who is going to serve us best. Labour Tories or Libs the choice is ours to make.

This is my answer to both threads so I thought I may as well save time and paste

[Hugh]

It time to forget about expenses issue and decide who is going to serve you best. You want to be thankful you haven't got one like our labour MP, a waste of time and space. Its a wonder he hasn't got saws on his back side sat on the fence, and his seat as safe as houses.

[Papaumau]

I have traditionally voted Labour as I was brought up with the Labour ethics by my very active grandfather, ( a personal friend of Manny Shinwell ) but since Labour has lurched to the right and the big two have little to separate them any more I always look for a "third way". ( I have metioned this third way here before ).

After all of the scandals of the expenses row and the number of parliamentarians who have been caught taking cash for favours done for outside industry on BOTH sides of the house and in the upper chamber I have lost all respect for politicians if not politics in general.

I think that many Brits now feel the same about politics !

As I think that our political representatives should do what WE want and not what they want they should have their power restricted so that they are not so easily-able to push pet or party-political projects, ( hows that for alliteration  ). A hung parliament could do this and because of this I now vote Liberal Democrat at national elections and SNP in Scottish elections.

SO, you see, we are not all tied to our traditional or family political affiliations if we are brave enough to think for ourselves and NOT just go with the flow as our forefathers did !

[Hells Granny]

My family have traditionally voted Labour, but they wouldn't recognise the current incarnation of their Party.

I am a 'floating voter', I always vote, because my granny was a Suffragette and drilled it into me that she and her sisters had fought hard to get us that right, and we shouldn't abuse it.

But I do not like the voting alond Party lines, just because that's how the family did it.  Make up your own minds on the issues.

Cheers, HG

[Papaumau]

Got to agree with that one HG, but how many of us will actually do that I wonder ?

I do think that the great mass of the electorate are pig-sick of the machinations of the big two and I would hope that many of them would not just swing back again to the right out of habit or out of protest against New-Labour as they have done many times before.

If they just search their memories back a bit further than the past ten years they will see that by habitually swinging back to the right they will get just more of the same.

Time for a REAL change I think and not just the promised change of Diddy Dave !

[avalonmpk]

I have always voted against any and every form of Marxism, the worst kind of RED is those with the champagne tastes at the expense of ordinary mortals. At least we know that the aristocracy has always been corrupt and have never tried to hide it. Just keep others out of the club.

[Papaumau]

That term is so easily chucked about that many people who are against reasonably middle-ground socialist values usually use THAT term so as to chuck a blanket of blame about anything that is not Facist. ( See, I can do it too ).

The thing is that Communism in any shape or form is as dead as a Do-Do in modern politics and even the last remaining few states that use it are almost ready to collapse under Communism's heavy burden in a very Capitalist world.

Be sure, avalonmpk, that a vote for the middle ground in today's politics will NEVER be a vote for Communism or Marxism as neither of these political philosphies ever wanted to step into the middle ground.

In fact....Karl Marx once said that "The middle of the road is a dangerous place to be as that is where all the traffic exists" - or words to that effect.

[avalonmpk]

 Communism is not dead  My next door neighbour is an active member of the British Union of Socialists who sole aim is the expansion of Soviet style Socialism - He hails from Merseyside.

As for your knowledge of Marx and his comment   I suggest you read Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philososphicus - Basically  two persons may agree completely a third brings dissidence making socialism impossible to work in practise.

Socialism is the art of spending someone Else's and capitalism is the art of making money with someone Else's money

[cheddar-caveman]

Secretly an awful lot of people like the BNP manifesto - British jobs for British people, a kerb on or even end to immigration for the forseeable future and a clampdown on the expansion of extremist religions within the UK.

How many here would like to see these policies I wonder?

[Papaumau]

Communism is not dead  My next door neighbour is an active member of the British Union of Socialists who sole aim is the expansion of Soviet style Socialism - He hails from Merseyside.

As for your knowledge of Marx and his comment   I suggest you read Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philososphicus - Basically  two persons may agree completely a third brings dissidence making socialism impossible to work in practise.

Socialism is the art of spending someone Else's and capitalism is the art of making money with someone Else's money

While I agree that the principle of everybody sharing what everybody has is simply foolish to try do when the weakness of  the human condition is brought into play and that is why pure Communism will never work in a world driven my human nature. I do think that one can be "social" without being dogmatised into the hard-line stances of these extremists.

Communism IS dead even if a few hard-liners still cling on to the principle, as we all now know that true Communism cannot survive in a world driven by Capitalism or the globalisation of commerce. Even the Chinese Communists are having serious doubts about their ability to hold down their own people to Communism while trading freely in a Capitalist world. This is the worst kind of double-standards and they know it .

[Papaumau]

Secretly an awful lot of people like the BNP manifesto - British jobs for British people, a kerb on or even end to immigration for the forseeable future and a clampdown on the expansion of extremist religions within the UK.

How many here would like to see these policies I wonder?

CC.....

While it is true that a number of people have been dragged over to the extremist right because they are disenchanted with the middle-of-the-road politics of this country at the moment, I doubt if many of them are actually there because - unlike the hard core of the BNP - they are not in fact racist.

The BNP ARE a racist even Facist organisation and they are just as extreme as the people at the other end are in hard-line Communism - as I stated in my reply to avalonmpk and that is why even when some reasonable people might dally with them for a while they will not stay with them unless they are LIKE them.

[avalonmpk]

I was given to understand that Fascist was in fact National Socialism

[Papaumau]

I was given to understand that Fascist was in fact National Socialism

An interesting point avalonmpk !

The word "Socialism" has been used and abused by many hard and soft-edged organisations of the past and every time we see it being used we have to be prepared to read between the lines to see what it actually means in every context.

Historically "Social" means to act for all in the social group and that can have very positive connotations to it but when it is used to front any extreme group it immediately loses it's "social" tag.

People always put their own spin on the term simply because it HAS been used badly in the past and I always look at the term as if it says SOCIAL in fact rather than something else. If it does not stand for social behavior then I dismiss it as being hijacked for other dogmatic purposes.

Fascism is something else altogether and this term can not be misconstrued as anything other than what it is.

Here is the true if complex definition of Fascism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism