Labour.

[miasmum]

I have been with my cousin in the Lakes this weekend Kaz and one thing she said was they now offer chemo in the local hospital thank to Tim Farron. Previously when her husband was ill he had to travel to Lancaster. They are also opening a new radiotherapy suite

Sorry I have taken this thread way off topic

[Kaz]

No, it has just evolved naturally, like any conversation, and that is fine xx

[Suff]

I see that Sugar has left the Labour party stating that he has become dissilusioned with the party for some time.

Blair recognised that the Thatcher years had created a broad band of Working Class wealth which would be uninclined to vote Old Labour. He tried to bring the party to the centre ground and fight also to keep the original values of the party, or to be cynical he tried to buy everyone. You can't lower taxes and significantly give away sums of money to people from the government purse. We've all seen how that works out.

So now Labour finds that a right of centre Tory government with a conscience is much more valued by the bulk of the voters than a hard left Labour who talks about giving money away and "punishing" businesses and business people. No surprise there for me.

This, I believe, is Maggies greatest legacy. She literally changed the wealth structure of the country by selling off the council house wealth to the working class for a song. Thus catapulting them into the middle class in terms of concerns. I'm sure she did it to break the unions power, but I do wonder how far her vision went.

I note that even "Red Ed" did not offer to remove uni fees. Something Sturgeon roundly abused him for. But Ed knew what Sturgeon also knows. Scotland is running a larger deficit and larger debt than the rest of the UK by proportion of the population. Something Sturgeon justifies by the oil revenues the rest of the UK takes. However even Miliband did not offer to pay fees as he knew he could not afford to do that and give away the huge benefits he was promising as well as push huge funds into the NHS and keep up foreign aid.

When Universities were the place where 30% of the population went, when we had polytechs and trade training schools paid for by businesses under apprentice schemes, the government could afford to pay fees. When the government not only opens the door to University to everyone, but moves polytechs to Uni's and discourages apprenticeships, the government can no longer afford to fund it, even on a means tested basis.

It is like opening the door to opportunity then setting it 20 feet off the ground and demanding that you pay for your own ladder, made out of gold. At the same time closing all other doors to opportunity.

I'm sure you don't need to ask me which I think is crueller. Our country has always worked better with multiple opportunities. So why lock everyone up in Universities? In short, Unemployed warehousing. Removing fees is no more than making people pay to hide their unemployed status.

Before roundly lambasting Cameron for this, note that it was Blair who did nothing to remove them and Miliband the Socialist who didn't even put it on their manifesto...

On another note, I see the "EDstone" has vanished and the press are hot on the trail. I wonder if they're going to try and mount it in Milibands garden???

[medsec222]

I see Milliband has fled the country - he won't be worried about the Edstone, Suff

[Suff]

More on that in another post...