Does it? Cutting some of the United Kingdom’s considerable foreign aid budget would probably have ‘fixed’ the food-bank problem; and the government would certainly have been pushing against an open door as far as most of the electorate were concerned. ‘Charity starts at home!’

Let me get this straight. You believe that if we were not maintaining a foreign aid package – as agreed by all (both?) the major parties – the government would have put the money into sorting out food banks at home?
Charity does indeed start at home; most food banks are run by charities or the church with food mainly donated by the public or community-spirited shops, little political involvement other than the occasional visit from an MP trying to boost their standing with a PR stunt (Cookery writer Jack Monroe observed: “When David Cameron visited a food bank in his affluent constituency he reportedly turned up empty-handed, posed for photographs, and helped himself to a free lunch. Perhaps this is what Lord Freud and Edwina Currie were referring to with their comments about people taking advantage of the service.”). In some cases the people using food banks are not even unemployed, just very poorly paid. There are places that will do short term or top-up loans but, as they say, payback is a bitch so you go hungry.
In 2013 around 500,000 Britons reportedly used food banks regularly. In April 2014 the Trussell Trust (the only nation wide food bank network) said that they had handed out 913,138 food parcels over the last 12 months, which was up from 347,000 in the previous year.

How much has the government put into the food bank system in the UK? Nothing.
How much would the government put into the food bank system if they cut their foreign aid budget? Nothing. They wouldn’t need to, it is all covered by donations and volunteers displaying a wonderful example of community spirit.

Would that make the Conservatives a ‘better’ government or is it just better political management of the apparent situation given that almost all other economic measures of the handling of the economy, in very difficult times, under the Conservative (and Liberal) government were good (and better than almost any other developed nation in a similar position?)

Couldn’t say – except to assume that if we are better off “than almost any other developed nation in a similar position” then how badly off are other countries?
Germany apparently has a problem, to the point that 1.5 million people a week used food banks there (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30470120) and there are twice as many food banks in France as in the UK. In Greece, where unemployment is at 28% and rising, officially about 40% of the population use food banks or their equivalent but the actual number is thought to be very much higher – should you count homeless shelters which reportedly feed and house tens of thousands across the country, or the bakery in Athens that gives away ten thousand loaves a day?

But to cut the foreign aid budget, as you are seemingly proposing, would incur the wrath of all the red top trash press and other tabloids who are all claiming that it was them ‘wot’ changed Cameron mind about letting in refugees – see today’s front pages.

Erm, yeah.

Living in a dreamworld…?

Yes, in the analogy of voting in a democracy; the winning ‘team’ would be decided by a democratic vote of all the fans. That way it would be impossible for anybody to say that the ‘wrong’ team had won! Surely you understand this?

Just because one ‘side’ won does not mean that the opposition has to rejoice in it.

But not to the point where you would have to make any sacrifices to your after-school-clubs, entertainment, or libraries?

Not sure I understand the point you are making here. Are you asking if I am interested but not to the point of…etc?

I don’t have to defend such a government (even if you could prove that such a government has ‘brought more people down’) because you are forgetting our democratic football match…

…the ‘right’ team won the match…..so say the democratic electorate!

Democratic government or not, the rise in demand for food banks, probably the biggest since the great depression of the 1930s, says something about the situation that cannot be denied by all except the most politically blind.

So Hitler captained the right team in 1933?

Ouch.

Maybe he paid off the referee, the linesmen and the opposition, bought all the tickets for both ends and wrote the match report in his favour.

If Germany had voted democratically for Hitler in 1933 (which they didn’t?), then yes.

But please understand what I am saying here, not what you think I am saying; what that means is that democracy voted in the ‘right’ government…

Yes, very right. Politically.
What you are saying is that the people, in essence, voted in the leader, the party, so therefore it is the right government. Ok, we get it.

…that means the one the democratic process says was the ‘right’ government by the number of votes cast.

It does NOT mean that the policies of that government were ‘right’! I’ll say that again. It does NOT mean that the policies that government were ‘right’!

Like I said, we get it.

Legitimate I’ll go for. Has no morally relativistic connotations. (lies down after too many syllables)

Well done; maybe you should take a little more water with it next time…;o)

From the point of view of the New Labour establishment this is backfiring horribly.

Yes indeedy! Fun, isn’t it?!!

Obviously Blair didn’t offer up enough sacrifices or offended his invisible friend in some other way.

(You will not believe how long I have been working on this, between doing other things…!)

No, because in that analogy the views of the fans would mean that the ‘wrong’ team would not win! 😉

Eh? Did the right team win the FA cup? Did the right team win the match last Saturday?

But what you actually mean is ‘right wing governments’ not sharing out as much of the ‘spoils’ with the poor and needy as you would wish them to, not redistributing more wealth to the poor and needy than they already do, spending more than they already do helping the majority…

Again, eh?
Cutbacks on after school clubs and the like so that parents have to leave work earlier to look after their kids, cutbacks on entertainment for the elderly and infirm so that they are left with little or nothing to do, closing libraries because they don’t generate profit, selling off industries at a loss. I am a human being – therefore I have a vested interest in my fellow man: strange that you can defend a government who have brought more people down to the point where they have to feed themselves from food banks than any other in recent history. Let them eat cake…?

…as for ‘making the rich richer’ your brand of ‘non-right wing government’ presumably doesn’t stop at Calais?

There are plenty of other gateways to the continent available, why pick on that one? But let us leave it at one bunch of right wingers for the time being, yes?

The truth of the matter is that in all United Kingdom governments over the last forty years only the top 40% of taxpayers have made a net contribution to the state, the rest of the population (and not just the taxpayers!) have been completely subsidised by this 40% and have made no net contribution whatsoever!

How dare they! Maybe we should introduce euthanasia for those on benefits and decrease the surplus population… (Does that remind you of a sort of Christmassy carol-y thing?)
Anyway, if the government went on a job creation blitz instead of cutting costs and forcing reductions in the workforce of councils, the emergency services, even job centres (apparently my local one has had its staff reduced by two thirds and is struggling to cope) then some of those in the 60% bracket would be employed, and if they were actually earning a living wage they would be contributing to the economy too, rather than working yet still living off the state like so many have up to now.

As for the ‘rich’ if you are earning the average United Kingdom wage (about £25,000) that would put you in the top 1% of earners on the planet; even on ‘minimum wage’ you’d probably be in the top 5% of earners on the planet. I congratulate your stance that you will be willing to pay (much) higher taxes to support those less wealthy than yourself!

Like I said, being human I have an interest in making sure others are looked after, rather than dying of malnutrition whilst others line their pockets and insist it isn’t their problem. Can I guess where you stand on this problem, or will you surprise us?

Or, like most people, are your ideas of ‘equality’ only directed at those with more money than you?

Ha ha. How funny.[/sarcasm]

Like it would be any good asking those with less money – the needy – to share their wealth with…the needy.

…and as for ‘accumulating’, what successive governments have accumulated is a mountain of debt!

Of course, if more of the population was working there would be more tax paid, and therefore more money going into the governments coffers. The speculating I was on about was the education and training of the next generation; the money made by foreign doctors, for example, will eventually end up back in their homelands rather than being recycled here.
But businesses are also loath to speculate – they want trained people to fill their jobs, not untrained apprentices without the skills. I chatted with the chap who carried out my MoT about a month ago – he needed testers, didn’t want to train them himself or pay for them to be trained, and was moaning because everytime he employed somebody they left shortly after for a job somewhere else after being made a better offer.

No government, no matter how ‘non-right wing’, ‘socialist’ or just ‘nice’ can ignore that debt indefinitely; sooner or later (later or ‘never’ with most governments!) that debt will have to be paid (unless you are ‘left-wing’ Greece) and a first stage of paying-off that debt is to spend less than the government earns…

…and that means ‘cuts’!

Indeed, just as there is raising taxes on higher incomes so that a more fairer proportion of their income is retained to be used by the government…

Yes, there are different ways of making these cuts, but cuts there will have to be; even Jeremy Corbyn has said (I believe) that the deficit will have to be reduced so Jeremy Corbyn will be making ‘cuts’ too.

So if there has to be cuts then the public will have the chance to vote along the lines of which cuts they fancy over others, or which they believe will be fairest to them.
Scared yet?

Take the NHS for example (and I’m not for a second suggesting that the NHS is not essential to the wellbeing of the United Kingdom); how can it possibly make a ‘profit’, its costs are enormous and treatment is free…

Um, we had this argument not so long ago and quite a few of your compadres insisted it is not free – we all pay for it in one way or another.

He wants to renationalise British Rail…

What an excellent idea! Shame it has been allowed to run down and different systems and procedures introduced which would make bringing it all back together again near impossible without spending £££multi-billions…

but wants to re-open Britain’s coal mines…

…seriously? When were Britain’s coal mines last profitable?

Give them the opportunity to be privatised and watch the bosses trundle around in Rollers. It would take a hell of a lot of investment and wouldn’t require the large numbers of miners that there used to be, but it is doable when you consider that what is there is (apparently) good quality and now financially viable.

…as an aging population, we need people entering the system to keep it going at all. We are replacing ourselves at around 0.9 people per 1 death at the moment, which is scheduled to get worse.

There are some people trying to help us – and Europe – out with this problem, but it isn’t all that popular, even when it makes for heart rending images on the front pages when they die in the attempt.

…the model already exists – the BBC.

The media barons would prefer they had the monopoly as far as news goes, and Sky doesn’t appreciate the competition either, but as it seems to offend every political group going, it must be doing a good job of keeping the entertainment industry and politicians honest.

Now to see what you gits have posted as I filled in the gaps…

Where did Jeremy Corbyn go to school? Why does it matter where anybody went to school…

If you want to get into politics there are certain schools where it almost appears that an education will lead to a career in politics. Can’t be bothered to search for it at the moment but in the run up to the election there was some story which insisted that an Etonian education was ‘required’ for a top flight political career.
I agree, it shouldn’t matter where anyone went to school – as long as they were educated, of course – but the political backers do care, it seems, and certain public schools tick their boxes.

…unless you’re condoning some sort of class prejudice…..and I know you wouldn’t do that! 😉

No! No no nonononono, no.
All my adult life I have experienced right wing governments doing what right wing governments do (sharing out the spoils, kicking the poor and needy, cutting spending where it would help the majority, and making the rich richer).
A recent development has been the rise in the career politician, one who has had little to no work experience outside of politics, in to which they usually come straight after a privileged education and then a top university, followed by a little job in law or the city (seemingly to make contacts whilst keeping busy outside of their political career). They appear to have no idea about how the majority of the population live – witness that hoary old cliche the price of milk test, for example – yet make decisions about how much a single man or a family can live on for a week whilst bemoaning the cost of the benefits system which is needed to top up working income and help the poorly paid to survive, even as their friends and backers (big business) complain that the minimum wage increases are not good for business.

And everything has to be majorly profitable: no longer can the country speculate to accumulate.
You hear little except of downsizing of the military, cuts to spending on the police and NHS (training doctors and nurses is expensive and they end up heavily in debt – so we ‘steal’ them from abroad instead), borough and county councils withdrawing spending on vote-winning but expensive/unprofitable policies. They need to save money, yet these are the things that other nations used to envy us for and we moan about because they are just not as good as they were, for example, twenty years ago, and twenty years before that, or in our youth, etc.
Tell me, honestly, do you really think we need fewer bobbies on the beat now?
Locally we have potholes in nearly every road (did you know that relatively few councils now have the machinery to re-tarmac roads or pavements? They have to hire the vehicles and men to do it at relatively vast expenditure and despite future planning for it usually find they no longer have the budget to do all that was planned for when the budget was allocated. Even getting a spadeful for a simple pothole is going beyond the budget in some places), over grown hedges that intrude into or over footpaths and roads, roadsigns that cannot be read because they are old and faded (cheap does not mean something will last – I have seen some signs that were redone in time for the Olympics, yet are now as faded as the one they replaced) or have long been broken and not yet been replaced. Sometimes it feels like WWII with all the signs taken down to fool invaders.

Britain is not a third world country, but it seems the political desire is there to try and turn it into one.

Actually my comments weren’t directed at socialism itself (whatever that is in 2015 Britain); more the idea that anybody can say, in a democracy, that we’ve voted in the ‘wrong’ government? Yes, you may not agree with the way the vote went but is it not extremely arrogant, in a democracy, to even suggest that the elected government is the ‘wrong’ choice?

…in the same way that fans will insist that the wrong team won at football, rugby, cricket, etc?

Googling ‘corbyn unelectable’ seems to indicate that it’s the press who are using it, when paraphrasing or interpreting his opponents.

And yet the polls said he was ahead – so the voters they asked disagreed with the papers.

Nothing new there…

…it saves trees…

Good try.

Most newsprint is recycled paper, hence the actual base colour of the paper. It might be mixed with virgin pulp from quick growth, harvested forests (spruce, fir and pine) but, even then, this is usually waste product (off-cuts, sawdust, etc) recycled from other wood-using industries which allows the newspaper industry to declare themselves to be eco-friendly – apparently more so than toilet paper, which can be as much as 25% new wood pulp.