Gordon Brown's make or break speech

Arcade22 said:
So whats so bad about them? "Tories" are conservatives right?
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To be fair and reasonable we don't know what this lot of tories will be like. mainly because they won't even tell us what promises they will be looking to break if they get elected.

(But past performance doesn't really hold out much luck unless you are a white middle or upper class English man living in the South East or married (not civil partnered) to one. Sorry can't help it.)
 
Francesca R said:
Apparently they are much worse than this lot
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Your attempt to deflect (or defend) is fatally flawed.

This is about how the Tories treat the citizens in the UK. Not the migrant workers who would generally have a much worse life if they did not move across to places like Dubai. As much as I feel for those guys when I am over there, it is irrelevant to this discussion. Many prefer to live in those conditions because it allows them to send more money home. Better accomodation is provided and available for them if they want. I prefer the Singapore attitudes towards their migrant workers. I was pleasantly surprised by the govt treatment and protections given to them compare to the likes of Saudi or Dubai.

I have lived and suffered under a govt who my country did not vote for and who would deny my countrymen a free vote on independance.
 
Debaser said:
I have lived under a government which has such contempt for my country that either the very idea of independance is laughed at, or the spectre of us being the 'New Serbs' is raised.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/596703.stm
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Mr Straw will describe the English as "potentially very aggressive, very violent" and will "increasingly articulate their Englishness following devolution."

Also appearing on the programme is Conservative leader William Hague.

Mr Hague will say: "English nationalism is the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism that can arise within the United Kingdom, because England is five-sixths of the population of the UK."
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Did either of them actually say that stuff (as opposed to leak it to the Beeb)? That's grossly offensive.

It was nearly 10 years ago though.

Rolfe.
 
Darat said:
Same part of the UK as Gordon Brown.....?
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:confused:

As in, Gordon Brown lives in Kirkcaldy?

Just to clarify, in my view anyone who is permanently resident in Scotland and eligible to vote in Scotland should be able to participate fully in the democratic process of an independent Scotland, irrespective of place of birth or ethnic origin.

Rolfe.
 
funk de fino said:
This is about how the Tories treat the citizens in the UK.
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Cudda fooled me. I thought it was about Brown's chances. You and some others want to make it about Scottish independence. Forgive me for not being interested.

Not the migrant workers who would generally have a much worse life if they did not move across to places like Dubai. As much as I feel for those guys when I am over there, it is irrelevant to this discussion. Many prefer to live in those conditions because it allows them to send more money home.
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Ah gotcha. Your criteria for good government is how it treats you, not society in toto? That's what it looked like :)
 
Francesca R said:
Cudda fooled me. I thought it was about Brown's chances. You and some others want to make it about Scottish independence. Forgive me for not being interested.
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Chances against who?

Ah gotcha. Your criteria for good government is how it treats you, not society in toto? That's what it looked like :)
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You lie. Cowardly snipping.
 
Oh sure, you'd leave the UK on a point of principle about how the government treats its subjects, . . . to go to Dubai. That's a larf mate. :D
 
When's the election due, anyway? Late as possible I assume on the "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas" principle. Can't wait! :)
 
I for one am planning to get the hell out of here ASAP. Though mostly because I much prefer Australia to here, it having much more space, much better weather, and a market that my "Big Idea"TM will do much better in than over here.

I'm one of these odd people that votes for the Yellow Party even though I know they have a snowflakes chance of forming a government simply because their policies more closely match my ideas than any of the others.

The idea of Cameron getting his hands on things doesn't fill me with confidence. Browns "make or break" speech was the one he should of made not long after Tony exit stage left. The one that included the words "I am calling an election" in it somewhere.

He didn't make it, thus he is broken.
 
Seismosaurus said:
When's the election due, anyway? Late as possible I assume on the "Turkeys don't vote for Christmas" principle. Can't wait! :)
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Since they know they are going to lose and given Cameron's jibes about being scared to go to the polls - if I was Gordon I'd nip to the see the Queen just as Cameron starts his leader's speech. :)
 
Rolfe said:
Did either of them actually say that stuff (as opposed to leak it to the Beeb)? That's grossly offensive.

It was nearly 10 years ago though.

Rolfe.
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I'm not sure, as you say, it was 10 years ago. However, I can believe they (along with too many other Westminster politicians) share that same conviction, that the English are somehow dangerous.

As far as the British Left are concerned, I have always felt 'of it' but not wholly accepted by it. There's always seemed to be too much an element of looking outwards, over the horizon, far more than looking within. Fine as far as it goes, but an easy way to breed resentment in those who actually voted for you. Though when they do look 'within', the contempt in which they seem to hold us just becomes more evident.

As someone who believes in the concept of English Liberty, tempered with an equally old fashioned belief that the poor are not people we step over on the way to the theatre but are all of us, should we make a couple of bad decisions, I look at where Labour has got itself and despair.
 
Well I saw it and it worried me. I lived (at a age to fully "appreciate" it) through the period of Thatcher and it was miserable. Not the miserable that passes these days, the "oh I can't get a new DVD player this week" miserable, but the gut wrenching misery of schools falling to bits, people begging for work, waiting a long time for some of the most basic hospital treatment.

Don't get me wrong, my politics have changed over the years. At school (in a completely Tory area) I was a member of the Labour party. I stayed one until Thatcher went. My Disquiet at Blair made me cancel my membership early in his premiership. I hoped when Brown took over there would be a shift, not back to 70's style socialism but to some "third" ground, some place between Blair and the more traditional Labour standpoint.

I've been disappointed with Brown. Really i should have seen that coming, the PFI scandal (and it is a scandal, the full cost of this neatly left "off the books") was something Brown was in the most part responsible for actioning.

The lack of regulation, indeed the active courting of the get rich bankers by Brown should have been a tell-tale too.

The laissez-faire attitude towards tax evasion (sorry that should be avoidance, only people evade it seems, companies avoid) that has been symptomatic of the last 12 years really shows the biggest problem with Brown. How he suddenly says he's completely against something without doing a thing to stop it.

The speech was the kind of speech that a party coming into power might make, will will stop waste, we will stop intimidating behaviour , we will stop this and we will start that.......

All the time he was speaking, it was going through my mind "But you started it, or let it get that way, you and your party...not some other government, you".


The opportunity to put things right is missed, his stubborn insistence that nothing he does is wrong will be his downfall.

I don't know what I want from politics any more, this party watch me all the time, they pass laws that rain from above like confetti, they ignore tax avoiders and punish the genuinely mistaken, but I know that the fear of another Tory government scares me half silly, because despite what Cameron says, (and he himself may be different), it seems to me that the people standing behind him are just the same, gagging to put things back the way they were 20 years ago.
 
funk de fino said:
England has turned against him. He is out.....

Most of the UK boards I frequent always seem to mention his dourness, that he is a Scot and not pleasing on the eye....
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Down on him for being dour at times and not pleasing to the eye? Good thing Churchill isn't running these days huh?
 
Modern Tory- Keep everything that you initially opposed but now seems to be popular with the public (Minimum Wage, Gay Rights, Lords reform, Climate Change Legislation, Devolution) and add a sprinkle of anti-EU rhetoric.
 
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richardm said:
You mean it was The Sun wot wrote it?
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I don't know if the Sun was the first to run that joke in the UK but it has had currency in Australia since at least the 1980s. When there was a large influx of New Zealanders into Australia the joke was that there was a sign at Auckland airport asking the last person out to please turn off the lights.

geni said:
Not if you want to running anything aproaching a european style civilisation.
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Uh huh. Obviously you have never visited Australia.
 
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