Bradburger,

Please don’t tell me you are another one who believes that the Labour government caused the financial crash, who somehow virtually bankrupted the country, Labour’s failing at that time was in not regulating more tightly the financial sector, in not scrapping the banking free for all originally launched by the Tories, but sadly they were also dazzled by the apparent profits and income from the banking sector.

Bradburger,

What are you on? it was under the Blair government that police numbers were increased, real spending in terms of GDP was increased, it was also under the Blair government that times between arrests and the accused appearing in court were cut dramatically, crime rates fell, in fact it was the falling crime rates which gave the Tories the bright idea that we no longer needed as many police officers.

The Blair government didn’t meet all their targets for the Criminal Justice System, but they went a long way towards it, the Tories have lived on the Labour government’s success using those figures as an excuse to cut police spending and numbers.

John Green
“prior to 1960 most people lived in private rented property” you are of course joking, large scale building of council housing started after WW1 in 1919, with a major boost after WW2 by 1960 the vast majority of rented property was council housing, anyone looking to rent a home went first to their local council, certainly not to the private sector, then along came Thatcher hoping to create a property owning democracy which would hopefully vote Tory, but of course the banning of councils from investing this income in more social housing was the forerunner to our housing shortage, of course immigration plays a part, but is far from being the cause of our current housing state.

Just a look at simple economics tells it’s own story, when we bought our first home our mortgage was greater than local rents, no problem because we were investing in our future, now it is far cheaper to pay a substantial mortgage than pay rent, which is the fact that permits the growth in the buy to rent sector, but too many renters can’t get the money together for the initial deposit due to low income.

Now retired, we could not afford to pay the rent for our house by a long way, fortunately we own it, or we would be dependent on housing subsidy to keep a roof over our heads.

As a country we stopped caring for our elderly when they became a cash stream for private providers, when funding was cut and cut again until even the private care providers can’t provide as they should and show a profit, plus of course there are providers were the sole aim is minimum service, maximum profit.

Wealth does not percolate down to all levels of society, in reality the very wealthy go to a great deal of effort to make sure of that, employers who use every trick in the book and some not in the book, to deny workers proper employment and income, the big multi corporations who shuffle their income through off shore “headquarters” to avoid contributing, the list could go on and on.

Incidentally in response to a previous post, in spite of the best efforts of the Tories, we do not live in a capitalist democracy, this country is and has been for a long time very much a mixed economy, with a mix of public sector and private sector, that mix must be preserved, to go wholly one side or the other is far too damaging for the majority, for me I have always firmly believed that essential services, the things we need, should be public sector and the things we want private sector.

Handing public services to the private sector does not reduce the bill, far from it, in most cases the bills are higher either through the taxpayer or direct charge, I personally can’t see one public sector privatisation which has benefited the taxpayer or general public.

John Green, I’m a million miles from being Marxist, Communist or indeed any form of totalitarian government from whichever “side”, for me this country is still run by an elite, whether inherited or by virtue of wealth and it is run to benefit that elite.

This country for all it’s problems is still a wealthy country, yet we see far too many social problems caused by poverty or certainly insufficient income.

Housing alone, handing so much of the rented sector to private landlords is disastrous for a large swathe of the population, exorbitant rents leave many unable to cope, before anyone starts harping on about subsidised social housing, how about the huge sums handed out in housing benefit? which then finds it’s way into private pockets.

The so called “gig” economy which capitalises on people desperate to work, yet these same people are denied any continuity or regular employment paying a living wage, looks like the cheapo taxi firm Uber has finally fallen foul of regulations.

I have no problem with companies making a profit, however when that profit is made at the expense of the workforce, backed up by taxpayers money, or operating as a cartel with no competition, then that company does not earn or deserve it’s profit.

I applaud any company or individual who does a better job, makes a better product, offers a better service, these companies or individuals are the ones who should succeed.

Does that make things clearer for you?

John Green, Did you or anyone else for that matter, imagine that a month or two after the original referendum we would/could just pack our bags and leave. This was always going to be a lengthy process, as to just how long is down to our own government and the EU coming to a settlement of affairs ON BOTH SIDES.

Tony T, you’re barking up the wrong tree, the argument about continuing payments to the EU are about this country fulfilling obligations and commitments already made, plus while still within the EU we are still bound by contractual agreements.

I don’t believe that anyone is discussing or even thinking about continuing to pump money in to the EU as a matter of course after exit.

As far as should we pay or not, rather than leaving a job, (which we aren’t) think more in terms of paying a club membership, your mortgage or car finance, stop paying them and the club doors will close, your house or car will go and your chances of going elsewhere are slim to zero, however give notice on your club, pay dues to date then other clubs will make you welcome, sell your house or car pay off the finance and of course you will readily get a new mortgage and/or car finance.

Farage’s achievement was to frighten Cameron to call the ill judged referendum in the way he did, which incidentally was more to placate the swivel eyed mob in the Tory camp.

Suppose you could call that a success, but now he has the popularity of scurvy or some other deficiency disease, unfortunately he is very much a promoter of deficiency, not particularly attached to the truth and with the charisma of last weeks salad, never liked the man, always struck me as a mouthy git more concerned with self promotion than anything else.

Incidentally would have felt the same about the guy if he had been just as rabid pro-EU, pushing for greater union and more EU control, never had the slightest trust in the man.

John, I would agree with you to a point, only in that this old planet of ours has gone through some pretty dramatic climatic changes without the help of humans, BUT it is also clear that we (ie humans) have not been the best thing to happen on this world, we have only fairly recently accepted that we couldn’t just continue dumping our rubbish in rivers and streams and believing that the oceans would somehow deal with it, in fact many of our oceans have serious problems with plastics which are contaminating and killing life in the seas, pushing more and more pollutants into the atmosphere is far from a good alternative, do we really want to poison ourselves?.

For me whether you believe or go along with human effects on climate change is immaterial, but cleaning up our polluting ways should be important to all of us/