[jaysay]

Originally Posted by Houseboy

You could be Thatcher talking couldn't you? She kept saying the same thing years ago.
See my earlier post about "it's never our fault".
Let me ask a simple question: why is it that every time the Tories come to power after a period of Labour government they always start with the same battle cry of "we'll have to sort out this mess" and then start hammering the less well-off whilst giving hand-outs to those who don't need them?
Thatchers vacuous argument that the awards given to the rich would "trickle down" to the less fortunate was never true. It didn't happen and it never will because of sheer human greed.
The Labour party are far from perfect and you will never hear me say they are (I have posted as much on here) but I will never support a party who are so obviously contemptuous of the majority of ordinary people in this country. Their obvious favouritism toward their paymasters and old school tie buddies has nothing to do with getting the country out of a "mess" and everything to do with making the rich richer until they eventually lose power again.
As for Labour not re-nationalising I think you will find that Thatcher and her pals made that virtually impossible. Unless the government was prepared to pay millions in compensation to shareholders it would have to be a "re-nationalisation without compensation" which would, I think, be political suicide.
One of the things that made me a socialist (originally) was my basic inherent belief, however naive, in fairness. I am not and never will be "jealous" of anyone wealthy, they are welcome to the fruits of their labours. The only problem is how some people get that wealth. If it is gained by working hard and treating their workers with respect and decency and paying a good wage with good conditions then that is good. If it is gained from being talented and reaping the rewards of that talent, that is good. I don't even mind inherited wealth (providing it doesn't come with inherited privilege).
The difficulty is that too many of them gain money by deceit, by walking all over people (see Victorian post by me), by borderline (and sometimes downright illegal) legal means and by dealings (bankers?) which then pass down to ordinary people in the form of recession and bankrupt economies.
The problem is the Tories support all of this and then, when the going gets tough economically, they start looking at ways of fleecing the poor and taking no notice whatsoever of the billions wasted in not making the wealthy, including companies not just individuals, actually pay tax at all. Some millionaires pay less tax than you and I because of legal loopholes and off-shore banking.
I would sooner have an inept government than one that works so obviously against the people at the wrong end of the economic scale. Labour have often got things wrong but at least there is an element of fairness (however well hidden these days) in what they try to do.

Often got things wrong they never got anything right