Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

It's not dislike for the women, it's what she stood for, and the fact that the vast majority of Tories still support what she did, especially to the north.

Can a leopard change it's spots?

Maybe, New Labour did.

We can't really judge Casmeron because he hasn't any policies, just stupid, cringe making sound bites.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Gayle, it isn't just a question of not voting for them because people didn't like Thatcher. If you look at the history of working men and women througout the 20th century (and earlier centuries), it has always been the Tories who tried to keep them oppressed. So it really is a no brainer never to trust a Tory.
In May 1955 - I was 9 years old and there was a General Election - Harold Macmillan was saying ' You have never had it so Good'. Because I was a curious child I asked my father what the difference was between the Labour Party and the Conservatives, he told me about the 20's and 30's, and said that the Conservatives only looked after people with money. I have never forgotten this and as I have grown older nothing I have seen has ever given me cause to doubt these words.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Well as I understand it the mines were not economically viable as its much cheaper to import as its so expensive to extract it here, and miners were going on strike against their will! The workers wanted to get back to work but Unions had too much control. You have to agree that coming down on union power was a good thing for the country, surely? As unions are unelected yet had a enormous amount of power until Thatcher stood up to them.

However lets try not to get in to a debate on all her time in government as we've done it over and over on this forum. :p

I call it a Liberal Democracy because thats what most western nations are. It's basically a country with free market and that protects peoples individual rights such as equality, universal suffrage.

It has the term liberal in it which can seem confusing, however many of the parties share different bits of ideology, its not cut and dry. Currently all the major parties support free market economy which is essentially Classical Liberalism. For example Thatcher was a Neo-Liberal, she believed in both parts of Classical Liberalism and Conservatism.

I could write for days about this of course as you could argue that we have seen an end of ideologies since the defeat of socialism and when Thatcher left office.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

There's no need to call Less names.:eek:

He was angry I think, that Thatcher took food out of his children's mouths, but never surly.:D

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

I have no objection with people not voting for the Conservatives because of what they stand for now (or don't stand for in Cameron's case because he doesn't really seem to stand for anything). What I am always concerned about though is the 'I hate them and will always hate them' approach.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

I am now worried that my time on earth just like my fathers and my grandfathers has been wasted, how someone so young and innocent as you can be corrupted in the fashion that you so obviously have, you should be enjoying life, kicking against the traces and then when you have a real need to be greedy become a conservative, this is too early in your life!:D

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Well as I understand it the mines were not economically viable as its much cheaper to import as its so expensive to extract it here,-----------never will i agree with that cyfr, if you would care to go into the history deeper you will discover that many of the pits WERE economically viable, it was all about CRUSHING SCARGILL. who love him or hate him was CORRECT the only way he was wrong - was he UNDERESTIMATED the pit closures, pity the tory press dont tell that story.:(

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Well I have only heard that part from word of mouth but its from various people who either teach politics or are quite in the know, and none of them are Conservatives infact the teachers of politics that says they're not economicly viable hates Thatcher and is in the same position as some of you that he won't vote Conservative because of her.

But if you have some links to contridict this i'd love to take a read! I can be happily corrected :D

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Whilst I appreciate your view, myself and my family suffered under the Tories. It is very hard trying to bring up a family when your income is drastically cut.

There was so much real financial hardship caused by the poll tax, I will always remember a man who I worked with breaking down in tears because he had no idea how he would pay the 1st year's bills. He was a tough ex soldier, with a wife and 3 small children, who came to work on a bike to save money. The only way he could pay the bill was for them to eat less food. He was worried he would be taken to court for being poor.

It is thing like this that make you hate the Tories.

Also the stupid YTS schemes. which exploited youg workers then consigned them to the scrapheap after 2 years because there was a another new supply to take on.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

I believe that a pit (I think its in South Yorkshire) is to be reopened.

I agree with Cashman - Thatcher wanted to crush the workers and decided to start with Scargill.

In an earlier post you said Unions were unelected - but the members of each union elect the officiers at branch, regional and national level, so I fail to see how they are not elected.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Somewhere between 200, to 400 years worth of coal will never be mined because the pits have been closed and neglected, they could never be opened again and for how long will it be 'economical' to import coal from other countries?
Everybody is on the global warming band wagon, so just using that as a modern day example must mean that environmentally alone moving heavy coal half way around the world would make closing the pits seem stupid.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

cfyr why do you need links? you can read any old crap on the net by so called experts etc.as well as good info, you cannot know the differance? i tend to listen to people who have the T-Shirt. of all sectors, then i consider and make my mind up. i dont ignore the net, but i dont take it as gospel.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

thats been on the news in the last couple of months approx over 100 years of coal in the seam they are going to reopen,and yer correct it is in yorkshire

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Because they're not elected by anyone except the members of the union. So institutions that are not elected by the majority of people shouldn't have the power to bring the country to a standstill against workers wishes.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

and you would know:confused: the miners union voted to SAVE jobs not for MONEY by a MASSIVE majority over 90%. and i and many non pit-workers supported them, some of us financially as well.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Maybe some unions had too much power, but without their formation in the first place, the vast majority of people living in this country would still be living in poverty.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Torys won again in our borough...GOD HELP US....I hoped it might be a reversal of fortunes ....:eek:

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

im afraid p b is grinnig from ear to ear once again. its the voters we have to thank for that

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

they won in ours granny, but they LOST in our ward= there is a god.:D

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

i just cant uderstand it, most people seem to have a strong dislike for pb than how is it that he gets the votes

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

The tories lost 3 seats in Rossendale Labour took 2 and Lib Dems took 1.

And one tory got in by 2 votes and another by 12.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

was over 100.000 spoiled votes nationwide that to me is a ridiculous state of affairs.:(

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

I think a lot of the spoiled votes in Scotland had something to do with the new electronic voting ....

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

yeh but was far more spoiled in england, was wondering if the 100.000 are included in the 38% that did vote?

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

There are a lot of unhappy people up here because of it and a lot reckoned they were robbed. The was 40 foriegn journilists following this and some hoped it would be a way forward now they must be laughing their socks off.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

It is an unfortunate fact that the Tories can get there voters to come out to vote more easily than Labour. In the wards in Hyndburn where Labour won, they won easily, with very large majorities.
Also, where there is a candidate who is a retiring councillor, many voters do vote for the person not the party. Although there were a couple of Tory councillors re-elected who have done very little for their areas but still got re-elected.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

The spoiled ballot papers are counted in the number of votes cast.

When you see the ballot papers some papers are obviously ment to be spoilt, being left blank are writing neither candidate are examples.

But there are some people confused with the postal votes, if the declaration is not received as well as the ballot paper, the vote does not count. I know that there has to be some proof of who the voter is in postal voting, but some people do get confused by how to complete everything.

In my ward there were 1362 ballot papers counted, the candidates got the following votes - Labour 837. Tory 514, which means there were 11 spoilt ballot papers.
Figures for spoilt ballot papers in Hyndburn wer
Altham 11
Barnfield 4
Baxenden 12
Central 22
Church 8
Clayton-le-Moors 16
Huncoat 1
Immanuel 9
Milnshaw 14
Overton 19
Rishton 12
St Oswald's 13
Total spoilt votes in Hyndburn 141 out of 17850 votes cast - this is 0.79% of votes cast

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

i wasnt allow to vote, in my area, but dont understand why they need a few just for ossy, it should be one for all the town

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

ta for info claytonender,interesting to see a low % of spoilt here.;)

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

"most people --- " Do you mean the people who have indicated their dislike for him on AccyWeb or are you privy to the views of the vast majority of people in the area who know nothing of AccyWeb ?

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Well said -- and I can probably go back farther than most who post on here and even now remember the bitterness and frustration felt by my parents and other working class neighbours in the 30s. ( Please, please don`t use that "working class" expression as a means to divert the thread)

While I have never voted Tory in all my years I am not blind to the pandering to "Big Business" and other issues that to me have been a disgraceful chapter during Blair`s tenure in charge of New Labour.

I recently had a thread about the pension scandal which didn`t rate a peep by AccyWeb`s staunch Labourites. I wonder why?

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

I certainly wouldn't class myself as a Blairite, but I didn't post in that particular thread because I probably didn't understand it fully enough.

As far as I could make out, these were private pension schemes that aren't going to pay out. I agree with the government's decision not to bank roll those people's pensions with tax payer's money. Every effort, both financial and supportive, should be made available for those people to get help, which as far as I can make out, the government are doing. Lloyd's names weren't bankrolled by the tax payer's when they lost a lot of money in the 80's/90's, and to me this is no different.

Like I say, perhaps I haven't understood it fully, so forgive my ignorance if I'm way off the mark.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

The Conservatives handled this all much worse than Brown. Their suggestion was to bankroll the lost pension schemes from all current pension schemes. Cameron tried to play clever and suggest it was only current pension surpluses within those companies he was going to use but the Pension Industry told him that there were no surpluses, those so called surpluses are always reinvested as part of current pension scheme payments and the removal of so-called surpluses would in fact reduce the pension payments to their members pension schemes. Pension schemes like mine. Cameron acted really stupidly for quick political gain and it wasn't Labour that embarrased him the most, but Pension Companies.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

to me the people that should be accountable for private pension deficits are the people who run them and have taken in many many cases (pension holidays) cos they had a surplus, not the labour party, or any party in power, saying that though ANY goverment should be able to regulate to stop these pigs creaming the pension funds.:(

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

It certainly is an eye-opener going to a count for the first time.I say anyone who votes Labour should go to a count and see how their candidates conduct themselves.Certain councillors really let their party down with their jeering and sneering and snide remarks.I was shocked.There really is no need for it.I didn't see any of that from any other party.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Funnily enough, I reported a similar story last year only it was the Conservatives who were badly behaved. Guess it depends what side you're on as to whether it's friendly banter or rude and aggressive. :D

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

Gayle once again it was the Tories you were badly behaved.
Peter Britcliffe actually went into the middle of the counting area, only the party agents are allowed in there and he was made to leave by the Returning Officer.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

I suppose if you know someone and despite being on 'the other side' as it were, you have a kind of rapport and can have a bit of banter without anyone taking offence then that would be ok but certain Labour candidates were jeering and sneering at people from other parties,including some people they had never met before so these people obviously took offence.One candidate was heard swearing at someone in another party.It puts them in a very bad light and makes them look childish and petty and it spoils the evening.

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

The King was in the counting house,
Counting out his money;
The Queen was in the parlor,
Eating bread and honey. :D

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

your being a bit harsh on PB. claytonender, surely you gotta understand rules to observe them?:D

Re: Local Elections on Thursday.
 

There are a number of interesting views on this forum which I couldn't help but comment on.


Firstly, to address the bickering, if there is anything that puts constituents off participating in the political process then it is optimised in the apparently constant arbitrary wrangling that takes place between the Borough's parties. Politics is a passionate subject designed to stimulate debate and those at the highest level disagree in the most prolific of ways imaginable. This is the obvious nature and bi-product of democracy and in a properly manifested form, should be encouraged as part of the debate process.


One should remember however that the function of local (or national for that matter) government is to serve the people. It's not a place for people to take an arbitrary stand point or to thrash out personal disputes.


My concern with the entire process is the attitude, employed by members of all parties (in the main), that one should disagree, in fact dislike, a member of another party. That, to me, does not serve in the best interests of the local electorate. I have encountered, first hand, serious dislike and hostility from people I dont even know, simply because I wear one colour rosette and they wear another. How can that be in the best interests of local government, how can that best serve the people of Hyndburn? Simple answer, it cant.


The reason for having multiple parties is to ensure that the minority opinion is heard, that's the true nature of democracy. The moment you start making that personal is the moment you have lost sight of the process. I for one will shake anyone's hand and will listen to other opinions, safe in the knowledge that the problems facing the world today are far beyond the wisdom of Solomon, let alone me. This may be naive, but its the best way to start.