Admit it, this is the crappest UK gov't ever!

OK, I know people felt like they didn't really have a choice, 'lesser of two evils' etc., but seriously, I'm curious to know what people here were expecting when they voted and how the reality measures up.

um, Lib Dem and Tory voters excepted?

I didn't vote and I'm fifteen quid a month better off for it.

what? you get paid for not voting?

What about John Major and Alex Douglas-Hume? (or is it home?)

I'm starting to think maggie would be beeter because then there would be something to fight against. Blairism is Thatcherism by stealth.

Soundbites, dontcha just love em, longer answer later

erm, Michael, you have to be on the electoral register to vote, which puts you in the council tax field of vision, I'll say no more.

Perhaps if you aren't on the electroral register, someone fills in your name on a council tax form on your behalf, screwing things up for yourself and others... grrr. I think I will have to self-censor the c0unc*1 t4XoR mentions for the sake of my BLUD PRESSURE.

Council tax evaders!!! On ILE. I am shocked. (Of course having post delivered to your house, entering any competition ever and being in a house which isn't paying council tax but is marked as being habitable will also puts you in plain view of council tax people as much as the electoral register will).

I agree with Pete. Bloody Council Tax evaders. I hope you don't moan about litter on the streets is all I can say.

Nope, as Madchen pointed out last time she was in the Stow, the streets of the Village are rather clean!

Anyway Pete, the house is registered.

What sort of godawful hole do you have to live in for your council tax to be as little as £15 pm?

Cripes, if someone from West London called where I live a godawful hole I would think about getting out of there.

However it is a good question.

So if the house is registered, who pays the piper? Are you saying that only one person lives there, for the single person reduction and then splitting the rest? You are only cheating yourself in the long run. This is the reason why my council tax goes up to pay for more police because tax evaders like you are playing pony.

can I have this thread deleted please?

i didn't vote for them. i would have voted for jeremy corbyn *our mp - islington north) because he is one if the few reasonable labour mps left, but i wasn't on the register for there, i'm not sure where i'm on the register to be honest.

we got exactly what i expected. i don't so much think of 'Blairism is Thatcherism by stealth' (although it kind of is), its just that thatcher won the war by changing the political landscape so much that parties since have had to fit within that framework (to be fair this hasn't happened just in england) - welfare state seen as luxury.

blairism is thatcherism with the image nicely turned out, with the overt fuck youisms removed - now its for your benefit!

Ted Heath's gov was crappest. it's official.

Ha ha, Cabbage is running scared now - saving his fifteen pound a month so he can buy borgouise foreign tinned tuna. What will he say when this thread inadvertantly leads him up before the beak, eh?

I think the 'Blairism is Thatchism by stealth' argument is rather cynical, and doesn't really add up. I'm no great fan of the administration, but reducing the last two terms to 'Blairism' is a little simplistic... if only because Gordon Brown has done lots of good work in the Treasury. There has been substantial redistribution of wealth, which for understandable reasons the government keeps quiet about (for a fuller discussion see Ruth Lister's article 'Doing good by stealth' in 'New Economy' June 2001), and things like the social exclusion unit, pledges to reduce child poverty, (limited) political devolution etc etc are noble achievements. There is a kind of dogmatic anti-dogmatism about Blair (amounting to never considering public ownership, for example) which is annoying, and in the best of all possible worlds we wouldn't require spin doctors etc etc. But (cliché alert) politics is the art of the possible, and within the current political culture, New Labour are by no means the worst alternative.

Chris, you are no better than woman who spends all her fraudulent benefit money on shoes. To the PIT with you young man!

'Substantial redistribution of wealth', like in Zimbabwe?

Not that 'redristribution' is necessarily a bad thing in it itself - I just don't believe that governments EVER have 'understandable reasons' for 'keeping quiet' about stuff like that. Expedient reasons, maybe.

Yes, just like that. Tonight I am going up to Walthamstowe to burn down Cabbage's villa and redistribute his sundried tomatoes and homemade pasta.

Pete, I'll be in Thailand by then. Jonnie, shut it.

Tax evasion AND sex tourism! This board is more depraved than I had ever imagined.

If you don't pay tax in Thailand they turn you into a ladyboy. Then who would be disenfranchised eh?

"by stealth" = they think the electorate are mainly idiots who don't know what's best for them

eek! and Emma, I don't like the accusations there, I'm not that sort of boy, despite the great drought.

You are going to Thailand = You are a sex tourist. It is not an accusation but a statement of fact(oid).

can you show me your workings there Emma? I want to see how you got to that answer.

Metro last Tuesday: "80% of people who are going to Thailand say that they express at least an interest in the sex tourism scene the country is reknowned for. Of the council tax evaders asked this figure rose to 100%".

on one hand: blair govt = classic 19th-c "liberal" govt (pro free trade, pro "good works", paternalistically positive towards the "deserving" poor, intensely moralistic, culturally faddish, uneasy abt IMPERIALISM but utterly hostile to any suggested alternative)

on the other hand: blair govt = utterly contemptuous towards traditional systems of opinion-gathering (eg where you the voter put a slip of paper into a lttle box) because THEY REPRESENT ACTUAL OPINION V.POORLY (here they are correct, tho they ae also missing the point, as voting is not primarily intended as an opinion-gathering mechanism, rather as a civil-war-avoiding mechanism). Hence gvt by focus group and spin.

Question: do these hands i. manifest as a Worst of both Worlds combo, ii. merely cancel one another out, iii. fuse in dynamic but little-noticed ways to produce the unexpected (good and/or bad)? Second question: which is matters more, failing to deliver on promised changes, or delivering things you didn't promise (or even imagine)?

Please note: if the Blair gvt's ONLY ACHIEVEMENT is peace in N.Ireland, this possibly puts them ahead of every previous govt since Gladstone (Attlee possibly excepted — but the Attlee govt had many built-in failings also, not least the pervasive centralised bureaucratic managerialism out of which its key achievements sprang). Blair may NOT achieve peace in Ireland, of course, in which case all bets are off.

Aren't councils not allowed by law to consult the electoral roll for the purposes of council tax collection? Call me naive, but the confusion of electoral roll and council tax registry really pisses me off cause I'm sure it's a big part of why voter turnout is so low (esp. among the young).

Chris, you are a cancer on our socirty and I demand empty your own dustbins.

I think this government has done quite a few good things. It's not terribly bold or inspiring and it's not morally blemishless, but I'm happy enough.

well, I'm goig because it's a very cheap place to learn how to scuba dive, and the food's nice, as is the weather.

And the whores are cheap.

indeed. Those places ain't called Bangkok and Phuket for nothing.

"Scuba" diving. Yeah, right.

Nick, I believe you are correct with regards to the legality of using the electoral roll for council tax purposes. This all came out of the Poll Tax thing. However cynicism suggests otherwise since both rolls are kept in the same place. It could certainly be used in a similar way to the TV licence detecting thing (ie they use it, and they they think of another excuse to bang on your door).

To the actual question, I do believe the current government is obsessed with making people like them (hence the spin). Anyone in management knows this is a bad idea, your employees should respect you, not like you and chummy up and want to go to the pub with you. Once they sort this out, and become proud of some of the social changes they have instigated (there has been a massive change in what Q would call the underclass) then they might get into the business of governing properly.

They are also, unfortunately, ceaseless tinkerers.

Chris, are you still intending to blow your redundancy, so to speak, ona Thai bride while you're over there? Did you check out www.matematcher.com like I said?

It would appear that during my lunch hour numerous ILEers who know Mr Cabbage far better than I do have PROVED MY POINT that he is indeed a tax evading sex tourist.

Pete talking of TV licences you owe me 36.333333333333333333333 etc. pounds for ours.

I don't live there anymore. Or something (cheque will be on the side tonight).

I hate you all.

'Blair gvt's ONLY ACHIEVEMENT is peace in N.Ireland' - I'm going to be an asshole and say, what achievement there is even necessary beside banging their stupid heads together, or casting the whole place into the sea? One bunch of gangsters whine and bitch about another bunch of extortionists, compensatory gestures are made and the whole thing starts over again, this sort of thing isn't necessary in the current age.
'Big change in underclass' - seriously, what is it? (Besides the fact that they've all acquired free mobile phones in some mysterious fashion - for their job searches presumably)

(Disclaimer - I should mention the current office manager is from Belfast, so I'm kind of hoping he reads this, the cunt)

achievement = less people killing each other

obv if ppl not your "thing" this is a mixed blessing

I think I will just stick to voting Green from now on. Not that I voted for Tony.

Alan T = Europhobe, also not kind to Ugandan Asians

I voted Lib Dem but I was still glad that Labour defeated the Tories in my constituency, especially for the sheer joy of seeing large swathes of it = ON THE SURFACE the epitome of the Tory idea of "deep country" and mistily-recalled village / seaside life = not actually a Tory MP.

I lived through the Major years, and the government, quite apart from lacking the justification in a democracy for radical change that Thatcher's majorities after 1983 gave her, was insulting, backward, crude, amoral, rotten and vile. You can't say that all those attributes attach themselves so totally to the Blair administration: more to the point they *do* have a vast majority, like it or not. Personally I can't stand Blair, but my ire at this government has slightly mellowed since I realised how much of a child of the free market I am (though of course my views don't always fit together: ie I believe more strongly than even Tony Crosland in state education and against the idea of paying for education, but oppose tight regulation of TV and radio even more than Thatcher did = I loathe and despise the Blair government on the former subject but am happy with them on the latter).

a) Ted Heath took us into the Common Market.

b) On the grounds of on one glib comment you are suggesting that Alan T is not all about Ugandan Asians. I get the feeling he may have been refering more to the three day week.

I was just being sarky (I've no doubt Alan T was thinking more of the industrial, ahem, problems), also because I genuinely like Heath. Compared to most of what came after in his party, anyway ...

I have some minor (MINOR) affection for Heath. His govt was the crappest tho.

Thos of us old farts who remember the power cuts & thee 3-day week would prob give joint prize to 70's heath/wilson efforts. Christmas is coming!!!! Then we had better stock up on candles & buy a camping stove!!@#!@#~ (this = actually true) This govt is a bit bloody crap tho'. Oh Dear!!! What would the DAILY FUX!|\|G |\/|A!L THINK!!!@#!@#!@#~ Lest we forget thee major govt had michael "s.th. ov thee night" howard as home secretary. Thatcher was just ev0l.

I wish I'd voted for Paddy Ashdown all those years ago: Pa ddy Ashdown's |337 life.