Blair or Howard, is there any opinions not based on a slag match?

So this election has turned out like the one in America! Both major parties just insult the other parties leader, no policies are discussed or anything! I was just wondering what people thought of the two main candidates

slag match... that like foxy boxing?

welcome to politics. you get used to it, or you have some fun and incite a few revolutions. just keep em legal, k?

Blair and howard, what a pair of a-holes.

Listen. The Lib Dems in britain would probably do a much better job than either of the other 2. If you aren't planning on voting in this election, or if you dunno who to vote for I seriously reckomend taking a look at what the lib dems are all about. They just aren't tied up in the same levels of dirty money as teh other 2 parties. They have a lot of very sensible ideas and lets face it, they couldn't do any worse than blair. Plus they don't staand around slagging the others off nearly as much as red and blue.

It amazes me that people who used to vote old labour still vote new labour. The labour party was destroyed people. New labour, neo-labour is just a bunch of tory ideals. Anyhoo, I know very little about all this stuff. I do know that privatisation by thatcher was increadibly cruel, i know that blair has turned the government meetings into more of a corporate think tank and I know that lib dems want to redestribute wealth, so the poor get richer and the rich get poorer.

Anyways, just don't vote labour for christs sake. Anyone but labour.

m

John howard is the worst thing to happen to this country in a long time

His blind leg humping of george bush (satan) is going to get this country into a lot of trouble.

family first is the devil

I too agree with the Lib Dems.

If everyone who didn't like Labour and Conservative voted for Lib Dems, they would win with a landslide.

Alas too many people waste their vote by not voting at all!!

i have no idea why, but these two seem so alike...

Imagine my suprise seeing a man have a ship eating torpedo drill shoved into his stomach on an itv movie, and flicking to the news to see him standing there, still seeking a world based around facism...and not an agent in sight...or a torpedo....dang

Sometimes it seems the elections are less about real policy than about who can sling the most mud. If you discount the two main contenders, then at least vote for the LibDems if you've no other choice. Please don't waste your vote by not using it!

sin

yep - listen to charles kennedy.
he talks about the issues, not about how sh!t the others parties/party leaders are.

higher taxes, but a better run country - sounds fair to me.

check out the lib dem manifesto and compare it to the ones that the other two parties have put out and they seem severely lacking in several areas.

ignore slur tactics, get informed, use your vote


cole. x

in Australia Labour didn't have that gooda policies
except for saving tassies forests
so i made my parents vote greens
if only we were communists

I've been trying to think of ways i could help the lib dems get into power. But like everyone else i think, what difference can i make? But perhaps there is something we could all do to help?

I think something like 25% of the population voted for blair. Now that doesn't sound like a democracy to me. But we are fooled into thinking that we can't do anything about it.

Just imagine the look on blairs face if the lib dems got in, and howard if he came third!!! That would be hilarious.

I tihink the look on the faces of the LibDem MPs would be the best...

they totally deserve it. they seem to be the only ones who actually give a toss about the state of the country and not just about getting into power and slagging everyone else off.

What amazes me is that if the labour government were the government of a country like say korea. Then blair would be on trial in an international court for war crimes (it's illegal to invade a country that poses no threat), genocide (killing sh1t loads of inocent civilians) and an illegal nuclear weapons program (which costs us tax payers an obsene amount of money). But because we're british and we've got a good deal going with america ~ blair gets to do as he pleases. So of course you get some geezer in korea thinking, well if they can do it then so will I. But of course they are terrorists, we are ????

It's more like, we are Terrorists, they are Reactionaries.

Ive never even thought of LibDems, Ive always tgouht that they were a joke, and they would never get anywhere, but according to you guys they are fair game! Thats news to me, and good news at that, because I dont like the slag match politics that happens between the other two!

btw Fine_Rabid_Dog those 2 images are hilarious, very scary similarity

stainless munchkin - i recommend that you get copies of the thre main parties' manifestos, read them and then make up your mind.

here are links with matching colour-coded smilies for your subliminal message absorbing pleasure

liberal democrats

labour

conservative


cole. x

Cheers for those links Cole. LibDems are the only ones so far who have bothered to post literature to our house about their policies and local candidate.

I like the way they get their messages across, they only slag off labour briefly because of Iraq, the rest is about how they want to make taxes more fair, tackle crime and anti-social behaviour, improve transport and scrap tuition fees. They didn't promise to achieve all these things, they promised to fight and campaign for them. Their approach seems much more in touch with reality to me.

I think the manifestos should be a legally binding document.

I mean how much that they promise do they actually deliver?

If they promise stuff and dont deliver once elected they should forfit their election, because they got elected to do things which they didn't do.

Obviously no elected party is ever going to bring in a law like that ~ because they would lose the power they have gained.

That's why IMO our democracy doesn't work.

Also a vote for nobody should count as a vote. ie I vote that none of these muppets is fit to run the country. Then if the majority vote for no one they should all have to rethink their manifestos and put forward new leaders. Or have a hung parliament, where i think each party has equal say in governmentweighted by vote numbers (but i could be wrong on that)

Cole, even the smilies know who's best

m

to quote one of the lib dems top ten reasons to vote for them

"WE OPPOSE:
Bush & Blair on Iraq
WE PROPOSE:
Never again
It's time to restore trust in government"

good stuff matt.

i was wandering about after reading your post looking up what exactly a hung parliamnet would mean (thats right confusing it turns out!), and i found this lovely article on proportional representation.

controversially (i.e. an alternative stand to labour and tory policy) the lib dems propose to implement the stv (single transferable vote) version of pr for all local and national uk elections.

is it becoming obvious that i'm just another one of those 'bleeding heart liberals'?
i think nowdays, liberal is the only option that offers policies that are fundamentally different to labour (and hence by association, tory) policy.


cole. x

Im interested in this stuff, but it doesnt matter because I cant vote!!! 2 more ears

u have to have four ears to vote?

i cant vote either, which makes it more infuriating when hundreds of people waste their votes...

maybe they wernt out for the youth vote... or maybe they were morons

...or maybe they realised the young ones aren't that dumb

SO many people i know think libs dems have no chance but think their policies are great.

Very odd. But they just don't get the kind of press and "air time" that the other 2 get.

I saw today that the Sun (british tabloid with fingers in lots of pies) are voting for labour, which will swing the vote massively.

The Sun's a Rupert Murdoch paper isn't it, same guy who owns Fox in america which strongly favours Bush.

Written by:

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if nothing else they could get in to opposition and that would make me a very happy bunny.

at least that would be a step in the right direction.

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That would rock. But even if they do come third, the more people who vote for them, the more power they have ~ well that's kinda how it works.

The way I see it a vote for the lib dems is a step in the right direction whatever the outcome, because it is a tendacy towards a more positive outcome.

m

yes, there are un-slag match opinions, just nobody knows them!

Part of the problem is media bias and media sensationalism...

To illustrate the first point;

Before deciding to back Labour News International (Murdoch media... not just the Sun, also The Times and bSkyb) said they looked long and hard at the two parties, and while Labour aren't perfect they would be way out of touch with their readers if they backed the tories. The lib dems dont even get considered. When the media says that a party isn't worth considering and represents a wasted vote a lot of people listen... People get their news from the media, so the media has a massive influence on the public perception of a political party.

Journalists work to sell papers. The cost of a paper doesn't cover all the expense (journalists, editors, photographers, graphic designers, printers, the paper itself, etc) of the outgoings on an issue, what does is advertising. The higher the circulation of the paper the higher the cost of advertising within it. As advertising keeps the papers in buisness, you're not going to see many anti buisness or radical left-wing political discussions in the mainstream media. Advertisers would leave as the paper doesn't serve their interests, so a form of self censorship based on the papers self-intreset comes into play. While Fox/The Sun/ Murdoch media have been seen as leading proponents of this right wing bias don't be fooled into thinking thats as far as it goes.

For a much better and more detailed explanation read Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky, its a real eye opener.

The other point is about sensationalism. Big catchy headlines with little substance have become the mainstay of tabloid media (Read Hidden Agendas by John Pilger for a tabloid history and the shift from education to entertainment in media). Insults sell papers, articles which explore policies and manifestos in depth are seen as boring and so you wont be seeing much in the way of informed critical debate in the tabloids. It sucks, but thats the way it is at the moment.

So for fucks sake lets change it