[Houseboy]

This thread seems to have taken on a life of it's own (viral or what) and I will admit I haven't read all of it, I honestly don't have that kind of spare time, but it does seem to give a good indication of the political diversity on this forum, and that's good.
My view of politics has changed over the years and I have become less "committed" to any one party. I am a life long, (or at least adult long) socialist, not out of some political dogma but out of an innate sense of fairness but even that has diminshed somewhat due to the fact that the more I learn about humanity the more I realise it can never really work. The fact is though I still have an intense dislike of the Tories because nothing in their principles is aimed at fairness, and there still is an overwhelimg bias toward the wealthy. There was a time (pre-late seventies) that concensus politics ruled and there was less radicalism but the Thatcher era put an end to all that. She took politics in this country so far to the right that it created what came to be known as the wratchet system. In other words the labour party itself had to become more right wing to compete with the greed and selfishness that ensued.
I thought the dark days of Thatcher were long gone but the present incumbents are showing the same attitude of shifting wealth from the poor to the rich that occurred then.