And Another Thing…

Yes, if you’re a member of the staff at Eton, or on the board of governors, or a pupil, and putting your heart and soul into the school how pleasant must it be for you to hear the Prime Minister of the country sneering at it.

Luckily after June the pupils of Eton will be able to study Captain Insensible and his government every week in Double History.

I believe they still teach History at Eton.

Tom, sometimes you come across as the only sane member of the labour party. If there were more like you, the party might even become electable in the future.

You seem to be describing bankers as wealth creators, in which case 2006 just called – they want their conceptual framework back.

The concept that asking the people who have messed things up to pay their fair share of fixing them is an election-loser is so absurd as to be laughable.

Labour would have won a handsome majority in 1997 if the manifesto had included a headline pledge to dress all teachers in Mr Blobby costumes and hand over NHS management to a troupe of performing badgers, the higher rate tax pledge was incidental, cosmetic, and of its time – a time which has now passed.

So who do you Tax tom those on low earnings?

seems to me if you want (do you want one?) a fair society you are going to have to start at the how wealth is distributed.
Unless you wish to rely on philanthropy (is that your preferred method) how do you redistribute wealth or create a fairer society.

Never mind Tom, you speak what sense you like.

Mr Brown has ruined the economy so he’s not going to listen to any sense from you.

After all, he saved the world.. so he must be right.

I think you and Rentoul may be confusing class with cash (an error frequently made, especially by oiks!).

Some of my classiest friends are the brokest.

@Mr. Mxyzptlk
So who do you Tax tom those on low earnings?
How about instead of taxing people we charge them a flat fee? After all, when I go buy milk I don’t pay any more or less than the guy who drove up in a Ferrari so why should health insurance, national defence, infrastructure or any other public service be different?

There would be no need to raise taxes at all if we massively reduced the amount of government spending. Admittedly a recession is not the best time to do it as you’d be adding to the unemployment lines, but when has any government ever reduced spending when the economy is booming?

Tom
It’s not a matter of class, it’s a mantter of numbers and probability.

It is fair to point out that a large proportion of the Tory front-bench went to the same school, a number of them at the same time and same university at the same time and even the same club at the same university at the same time.

That in itself is a remarkable coincidence.

But it is beyond logic and probability, in a large and diverse democracy like the UK, that half-a-dozen guys who attended the same school, university and club together are by some miracle the best people to run the country.

@Alex,

it’s also fair to point out that a large number of Labour cabinet members since 1997 were privately educated.

I don’t know about you, but if someone is making decisions that effect most aspects of my life and my money, I would like them to have gone to a top school, and a top university.

I have no gripe with MPs having attended Eton, Fettes, or Loretto.

I do have a gripe with MPs who had a privileged upbringing and education and then want to deny other people the same opportunities.

you leftie bone-heads miss one simple fact – what you earn in the city has nothing to do with class. As someone who went to a state comprehensive and has worked in the city for 18 years, I can tell you that we won the war along time ago. Labour has got away with saying banker=eton=cameron=tories. Its plainly rubbish. So, as much as it pains me, I find myself agreeing with Tom. You dirt poor middle class failures should back off, the rest of us want a chance to work hard, take risks and make money.

Yes, all must be passed through the prism of electoral success.
I paraphrase from Luke:
‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is to get a principled policy into a New Labour manifesto.’

John
The concept that asking the people who have messed things up to pay their fair share of fixing them is an election-loser is so absurd as to be laughable.
****************************************

Not half as laughable as that comment.

0.0001% of bankers were responsible – so just cane all of them.

It’s the pretend-left way.

Simon said

“it’s also fair to point out that a large number of Labour cabinet members since 1997 were privately educated.”

it’s also fair to point out that a fair number of them were not, and that those were aren’t all of the same age and gender, and they didn’t all go to the same school at the same time, nor did they attend the same club.

Neither were any of them from an identifiably multi-millionare background, nor do they/did they all live within the same postcode.

It is beyond reason that the Tory front-bench has got there by merit.

It is even more illogical to propose that such a narrowly based self-selecting group has the best brains and the experience to govern the country.

I have no gripe with MPs who attended Eton. Even Eton will occassionally produce an outstanding individual.

I just think that the representation of those who did attend Eton on the Tory benches is not solely about merit or ability.

The same logic would apply if they all went to Gasworks Comprehensive, 1968-’73.

It is reasonable to point that out, and it is not class war to do so.

I cannot for the life of me see how it is hard to understand, but left-wing people do seem to have difficulty with this:
If you cut taxes on people who run businesses, more businesses are started up.
If more businesses are started up, more people are employed.
If more people are employed, more tax is paid.
The reverse of this is true, too.
I know half a dozen people running small businesses. we’re all struggling and we have all either made staff redundant or not taken people on in the first place.
Why are we struggling? because of the burdens – tax and regulatory – placed on us by the government.
None of us went to Eton.
I agree, too, with the commenter above who pointed out how much money this government has wasted. It is astonomically wasteful – I don’t need to enumerate how – and if it were less so we’d all be better off.

You are right Tom it the rest of your party you need to convince. Labour wants to remove ambition and denigrate hard work.

Johnny Norfolk
“You are right Tom it the rest of your party you need to convince. Labour wants to remove ambition and denigrate hard work.”

Hard work? Dave the PR man? George the wallpaper man? Boris the ??? (wothashedone?) man?. Zac the “environmental activist” man?

They’re ambitious no doubt. But hard work?

By what definition of “hard work” would that be?

As a man who comes from a working class background, grand father and his brothers were at miners at one time or another, but all of us males family members have served in the forces at one time or another and met up with people of all classes I can safely say that Labour are just showing their complete ignorance and vindictive bigotry if the do play the ‘class warfare’ card.
It is done and dusted, with only some of the Union dinosaurs and young and bigoted Labour members thinking it is a good idea.
I mix with all types of people be they from all classes, but I hate myself for having to use the word ‘class’ to point out the Labour error. There are either good or nasty people and I mix with the good of all classes.
Well done Mr Harris for rising above the sneering Labour types who insist on inciting hatred of certain people because they happened to have been born to parents of wealth. Any other political insistence of hate and disparagement to other groups could be deemed a hate crime but Labour tries to make it seem politically correct because it’s directed against ‘toffs.’

Alice
Thursday 17 December 2009 at 3:16 pm
It is beyond reason that the Tory front-bench has got there by merit.
******************************************

Pssst, have you seen the Labour front bench in the last decade or so?

Any of *them* get *there* on merit?

If so, what on earth happened to this *merit* once they got there?

I think you’ll find class war is for the plebs actually, not just regular loosers.

We need a Chancellor who understands and respects tax policy, rather than treating it as a kind of vanity project. It is too serious and important to fool around with in this way.

The first priority should be to stop taxing the poor; this needn’t be too expensive, as it would allow some benefits to be reduced while still leaving people better off and less dependent. It would, however, require Governments to control expenditure in an adult manner instead of behaving like drunken students, lurching back to their parents all the time for a further sub.

Roy Jenkins and Nigel Lawson; I can’t think of any other postwar Chancellor who really had a Scooby-Doo about tax policy.

I grew up on a council estate, I was educated at a comprehensive school. I worked hard & have done well for myself & my family. I hate the idea of a class war because I believe that our society should be open to all. Gordon Brown is a useless PM & by resorting to insulting Cameron’s schooling just proves how poor his judgement is. The sooner Brown is booted out of office the better

I think Harriet Harperson was right yesterday at PMQs

“No representation without taxation” she said.

So that’s you, the local corner shop and a Welsh Collie voting in Glasgow South next election. Give the collie a bone and it’s a landslide to Labour.

To take the sole point that Rentoul and Tom think that a tax on Bankers large bonuses will look like a tax on success I cannot help joining the mirth with which this must be greeted by the overwhelming majority of the British electorate, should they come across such views, as is unlikely.

Wasn’t it Labour that removed the assisted places scheme?

Hasn’t social mobility under Labour decreased?

Maybe the actions speak volumes for the destruction of the meritocracy.

Why destroy these centres of excellence (govt. own figures) but instead bring up the rest of the schools to those standards?

I also don’t believe that Labour will cut expenditure after the election, but I would like them to outline who will be paying the extra taxes to allow them to carry on regardless

Unfortunately the markets are already discounting our gilts and thus pushing up interest rates. The official fall from AAA announcement is simply delayed until after the election.

Who would you rather mows your lawn?

1. You
2. A gardener
3. the State

It’s that simple

Laffer Curves anyone?

Lawson cut the top rate of tax in ’88 and tax revenues ROSE. Punitive tax rate at the top drive people out and the tax burden fall on the lower paid. A beter way to tax equality is to remove the lowest paid from the system entirely (raising thresholds). It also helps cure the benefit trap

Mr. Mxyzptlk asks:

“So who do you Tax tom, those on low earnings?”

No you numptie!

The whole point is we spend far more than we can afford. We spend more on benefits than we raise in income tax. The Gov’t is now borrowing £1Bn every two days and proposes to continue doing so into the forseeable future.

Ideally we need to tax less, not more – but most importantly we need to spend a LOT less and get a LOT more for what we do spend. The top 10% of tax payers already contribute more than 50% of the tax take anyway – how much more do you think its reasonable to soak them for?

The UK is now a classic case of champagne tastes on beer income. In real terms we want for very little – but nor can we afford it either & something is goingto have to give.

We need to re-discover beans on toast for a while and realise that we’ve been living high on the hog for too long & that it can’t continue.

Look at what the debt interest alone could buy us – that’s money down the drain.

Some people might get hurt in putting it right , but you know what? That’s the price we have to pay for our own stupidity. The government has been short sighted and stupid and therefore by implication so have the people who put them in power.

The sooner the debt gets faced up to the fewer people are going to get hurt in putting it right. The Government on the other hand is only worried about staying in power – as so briliantly demonstrated by the PBR.

Go the Saints.

“let’s take a rather different measure: general election results. In 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992, Labour promised tax increases (but only for the wealthy) and got hammered. In 1997, 2001 and 2005, we pledged not to increase the basic or higher rates of tax. And golly! Look what happened!”

You guys set the interest rates. Blame Gordon or blame Greenspan, blame the genious that invented the regulation system.(pause for laughter)

The bankers are easy scapegoats.

I really hope Labour pull a ’92 so the Tories can pull a ’97. (although your majority won’t last 5 years)

That may also have something to do with other factors.

‘genious’

Somewhere in another dimension I can spell.

Those who want to rob Gazza to pay Dirtbox, can always rely on the support of Dirtbox.

Know what I mean, like?

I’m not checking Labour’s manifestos to which Tom refers.

Commentators know that the defeats of 1979, and 1983 had almost nothing to do with tax – Winter of Discontent and Falklands elections.

In 1997 John Smith or Gordon Brown would have won promising a tax on Bullingdon style frock coats, and much the same in 2002. people had had enough of the Tories.

Thus far four Labour Leaders have won General Elections and Tony Blair/Gordon Brown were the only team who advocated sticking to their predecessor’s financial targets and max income tax rate.

This stance now seems to have been abandoned even by “Heir to Blair” Chameleon.

The 50p tax rate has been widely accepted too – “Events, Dear Boy, Events . . ” It is sufficiently popular Chameleon and Osborne have had to accept it for at least a year I understand.

Labour needs credible economic presentation of realistic policies – which is the way we are heading – not promises to reprise the past.

And in the past Labour has Not tackled the real class divide appropriately. Still less the power of billionaires, whether their culture is Eton & Bullingdon, or Jersey, Belize & HM Tax Evasion.

Time to move on.

It’s simple. The Labour party is going to lose because of financial incompentence.

Far from helping the poor you’re ended up scewing them into the ground.

The reason is simple, debt. You’ve put the UK into vast debts.

870 billion in bond borrowing
1,150 billion for the state employee pensions
1,550 billion for the state pension

Even the state pension is an understatement, it’s just the accrued liabilities. The real problem is that if you have no state pension, then you are on the MIG income, plus housing benefit, heating allowance, 13,000 a year tax free. 320,000 pounds worth of spending and that’s the poor paying for it.

For someone on Minimum wage, they are paying a lot of tax. How can a British Standard Peasant afford to work for a year to pay for one chav to receive 320,000 worth of spending. 160 of them would have to do this, whilst consuming no resources from the state. No health, no schooling, no police. They can’t even afford the Lords at 2,000 pounds a minute.

Nick

If the current Tory front bench – most of them from lesser public schools – got there on merit, how did the tory front bench Chameleon chose – half of them from Eton – when he was first elected Tory leader, get there?

How would Zac Goldsmith and his ilk get there if fellow Etonian Cameron selected a cabinet, perhaps rather as Old Ertonian Macmillan did, with a third Old Etonians and even a relative who had no idea why he had been preferred?

Does Anyone now believe that Boris Johnson was a good choice for London? He was Chameleon’s and a fellow Old Etonian and Bullingdon Cliub member.

Even the tories could spot a loser in Old Etonian Douglas Hurd, who rightly feared his background would not catapult him to success vs John Major after the Tories defenestrated Mrs Thatcher.

In fact the last Etonian to become/remain PM after a General Election was Harold Macmillan in 1959.

Must be some somewhere who are not out of touch . . but. . . Don’t hold your breath.

Sammy hasn’t noticed the polls?

Did he go to Eton’s less smart, unmanned suntanning sanctuary?

I do hope that the poor do not blindly accept the opinions of those on Tom’s thread relating to their incomes. There is never any direct reference to Tax Credits – of which there are 3 kinds – and no GCSE student would get good grades with the nonsense which is usual.

Well Tom? They turn up imagining you will abandon Labour, but don’t you agree that even Lords Wilberforce and Beveridge would stick with Labour as things are panning out?

I think we should all vote Labour, let them sort the shit we are in.

They gave us all we have..or dont have. Let Gordon the great lead us to greatness.

Please vote Labour, we need them.

Regards

Quietzapple – They’re free to imagine anything they want, but if I wanted to leave Labour, I wouldn’t be trying so hard to persuade it to adopt election-winning policies.

But yes, making work pay through tax credits is the best way of fighting poverty, and Labour’s approach to helping the poorest to help themselves is light years ahead of the Tories’ slash/burn/abandon approach.

“..embrace class politics as they would an old, beloved yet recently ignored comfort blanket.”

The Spectator has a piece that seems apposite here:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5637373/the-labour-leadership-question-hasnt-been-answered.thtml

(It’s about Charles Clarke. who apparently said a similar thing in response to the PBR – citing “brazen pre-election ‘dividing lines’ with the Conservatives”. Sounds great doesn’t it? Until you read his blog.)

Anyway, here is my response to the Spectator piece:

You don’t have to read between too many lines to discern that Clarke is putting forward an Old Labour manifesto: lose Trident, taxation over savings, raising state benefits, etc. Like the child in us that craves the occasional Farley’s Rusk and a cup of Ovaltine, Clarke has gone back in time and curled up in a comfort zone of neo-Marxism.

Labour has nowhere to go but backwards.

Delighted we agree on tax credits and the need to win what may well be a more critical election than usual, given the potential realignment, principally on the right.

Tom:

Sensible peice, but I dont know how much attention the heirarchy will pay to it. Crewe and Nantwich should have been the abject lesson where that is concerned.

Alex:

You have got a serious chip on your shoulder mate. “It is beyond reason that the Tory front-bench has got there by merit.”

OK, where do you want us to start, when it comes to people being on the front bench on merit?

Charlie Falconer?
John Prescott?
Ed Balls?
Harriet Harman?

Gordon himself, who bullied his way into the top job?

The class war is only going to get you one place, mate. Obscurity. You ought to start looking an awful lot closer to home; whose tax regime has allowed huge companies to get away without paying corporation tax in the UK? Whose tax regime allowed the Venture Capitalists and the Hedgies to flourish? 12 years he has had to finesse the regime appropriately to ensure that it is fair and effective. Gordon failed spectacularly because he obsessed about getting a job that he was singularly incapable of doing and that nobody wanted him in anyway. If anyone is going to pull Labour back from the abyss its going to be the likes of Tom and Frank Field. You’d be better off listening to them than Gordon and Harriet’s dogwhistling.

The real class warriors are Chameleon and Osborne who might well have learned their economic dictums like:

Increase IHT thresholds to suit 2% of all estates
Public debt is wrong, minimal state is right
Firesale of Northern Rock was suitable approach to the problem
Sell Royal Mail to Ken Clarke’s wideboys for whatever can be got for it.

& etc.

These economic policies reflect the economic interests of the overwhelming majority of those who send their kids to Eton, as the PM suggested.

Tom: “…Labour’s approach to helping the poorest to help themselves…”

I do recall commenting on a previous post of yours, with link, how the UK has the lowest social mobility of any developed nation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1555697/UK-one-of-worst-countries-for-social-mobility.html

And that’s from June 2007 when things were still ticking along.

The only lesson which might be learned by The Labour Party from the Crewe and Nantwich By-elections was that Labour activists dressing up to resemble toffs looks silly and selecting the daughter of the previous candidate was a nepotic mistake.

As Gwynneth Dunwoody was fond of saying, it was, from its inception when she first fought it, a Tory seat.

It was an obvious midterm loss.

Those who so often cite it as a proof that class is not a good collection of issues for Labour delude themselves, they need some evidence, not this phantasm from the billionaire press archive. And there is so little that Crewe and Nantwich has to be drawn round the bend of the Cheshire ring far too often for their credibility’s survival . . .

lets see now i m not being racist but communists are helping their scottish comrades because they re ruining britain the silent majority must call in the army now what ever happened ot putting uk first

@Quietzapple

IHT is morally indefensible.
Minimal state is good (public debt is acceptable).
The government should not be in the business of business, if there is no over-riding reason for the government to be involved then it should be run by private operations and regulated and possibly even paid for by the state, e.g. break up and sell off the NHS and have the government either fund it or (help) pay insurance costs for the public.

Heavy taxes on high earners will always be popular with the lower earners, who form the majority. The difficulty is not with imposing the tax rates. The problem comes when the economy falls apart because all the useful people have gone.

The really foul truth is that this government does not care whether the economy is destroyed, so long as it hangs onto its own power. Hence its policies.

Keith.

Tom said: “But yes, making work pay through tax credits is the best way of fighting poverty, and Labour’s approach to helping the poorest to help themselves is light years ahead of the Tories’ slash/burn/abandon approach.”

All well and good, but can we afford that approach? Based on current figures, “not even close” is the answer. Besides work doesn’t pay for far too many people.

Lets not get into how complex the benefits system has become – its so complicated half the people administering it don’t understand it and we spend more on it than we gather in income tax (which ain’t becase we don’t tax enough!)

Its also all well & good “looking after the poor and disadvantaged” but as somebody once said “The trouble with Labour governments is that sooner or later they run out of other people’s money!”

And that’s exactly where we are now – again.

So now what do you do? Oh yes, no chance of cutting back on Quango’s & “Diversity o-ordinators” etc, lets hammer the people who start & run businesses & employ people, lets hammer the people in work who are just about getting by – brilliant!

Any chance there’s 10% fraud in the benefits system? There’s £16.5 Bn a year right there. Even 5% is 8.5 thousand million pounds (!) Go and get that sorted out before you come asking the rest of us for more money.

Aside from that you can’t “fight poverty” just through government action. Of course it takes some policy & direction, but it also takes some action from the bottom up – it takes people wanting to better themselves. Of course some do, but far too many do not & are happy to sit there on the hand-outs “Cos its my right, innit?”

I give you Karen Matthews & her ilk as a prime example of how low things have got. Ignoring her propensity for kidnapping, a unique case? I don’t think so.

One of the great mistakes of this government is underestimating / not believing what a load of freeloading layabouts a sizeable proportion of the UK population are. Why else would we have people from the EU flooding in to work & over two million “unemployed” (lets not forget the 2.5M who are “unable to work” – “yeah, riiiiight” for at least half of them

….and its ALWAYS somebody else’s fault, nobody wants to take responsibility for anything, nobody accepts that what happens to them is their own responsibility.

It has and is costing the rest of us billions and we’re sick of it.

And then everything gets micro-managed at huge expense from the centre by people who wouldn’t last 5 minutes in the private sector. Then again is it the private sector that’s incompetent for not realising where the “gravy train” really is. Public sector pensions are a joke in this day & age & current climate.

The last 13 years have been a massive failure of a social experiment and we are going to paying for it for decades – and not just in terms of taxation/cash.

Taxed to death
The last 13 years have been a massive failure of a social experiment and we are going to paying for it for decades – and not just in terms of taxation/cash.
*********************************************

Well quite.

But you’ve come to the wrong place if you expect a (sensible) answer to that post.*

http://www.frankfield.com/blog/ is where you need to go. But judging from the percipacity you showed in your post, I’m sure you knew that already.

*Cf ‘Tory/slash/burn/abandon/slaughter babies/ destroy blah blah blah

Income tax:

The top 1% of earners pay about a quarter of all income tax.

The top 10% pay over half of all income tax.

In case anyone was interested.

EVERYONE KNOWS ENVIRO-MARXIST DO-GOODERS ARE TOO NAMBY PAMBY BECAUSE THE EU NOW CONTROLS THIS COUNTRY. IT IS VITAL THAT WES MASH THE SYSTEM. LETS DO WHAT THE FRENCH DO AND ALL STRIKE!

“The bonus tax is popular in the short term (on the “tax anybody but me” principle), but I think it will have a negative effect on perceptions of Labour over the long term because it makes the party look as if it doesn’t like success.”

I actually think is complete cobblers and this misses the point on a couple of levels.

First – the bonus tax does actually have a policy objective which is to discourage banks from paying large bonuses. That’s why it’s on the banks not the bankers (though we can argue about who really ends up paying it). This seems to have been forgotten by those who argue that it’s a tax on ambition or whatever.

Second – I think most people realise that a) the state bailed out and is propping up the banks and that therefore b) it’s reasonable to try and restrain the banks’ behaviour and/or get some money back off them again. I do think people see this as different to say the 50% top rate because it is aimed at the sector that did the damage. I think the number of people who will therefore see this specific tax as anti-success will be rather small.

It is of course vital that Labour does not become seen as anti-aspiration. But it’s also important that we don’t let this argument lead us to fail to address what are very real issues. It’s notable that many people who actually work in the City (or have done) would be much more radical about remuneration, fees etc than people on the Left who claims to taking a more realistic or aspiration-friendly line.

Don’t underestimate the public’s ability to distinguish between pointless punitive taxation, and measures that are aimed at ensuring that wealthy people who are currently supported by the state don’t take the piss.

Tom P -

Its an imperfect world but what’s better, paying a few bonuses (small change in the context of current Gov’t borrowing) or losing some of the major financial institutions to places unknown? Because if they go they won’t be back in a hurry.

The one thing all these companies want is a stable, predictable tax regime – not knee jerk stupidity pandering to ill informed public opinion (and no I don’t work for a bank or even in the city!)

HSBC & Barclays didn’t take/need any state aid. Why should they not be able to pay their people what they like? They could if they based themselves in say Dublin where corporation tax is 12.5% & where at least 4 FTSE 100 companies have relocated to in the last year or two. Dublin is open for business. The UK is just a place to get your pocket picked. Look at the Irish budghet released on the same day as the UK PBR – chalk & cheese.

If you think bonuses encourage “bad behaviour” well, maybe they do – but maybe that would/could/should be better contained by effective regulation.

Remind me who tore up the regulation that actually worked & introduced the silly tri-party system & the FSA that has failed just so miserably to contain the products & services being touted around the financial markets?

Anyway, being up to your ears in debt is all the rage these days. How or why does the government expect people (or even banks) to behave responsibly when it is so fiscally irresponsible itself?? Pot, meet kettle.

Tom P
Friday 18 December 2009 at 2:04 pm
First – the bonus tax does actually have a policy objective which is to get Labour re-elected.
********************************************

Yes, quite.

The bankers bonus tax has various objectives, not least to make we non-bankers feel just a little vindicated.

Lawyers, journos and politicians may even feel slightly less disliked.

People have amour propre and no doubt schadenfreude will be evident in the tabloids as tales of Bankers having to set their chains of polo ponies loose onto Dartmoor in the snow will please some . . .

“Stinker Banker’s Prancers Dartmoor Chukka!”

Wasn’t it amusing in a way when Iceland and Ireland – countries whose conservative governments were so very much lauded by Dan Hannan MEP and various others of those who imagine they are “libertarians” – fell into the recession like walruses into an elephant trap?

Re Hannan & co: would you take advice on where to buy stamps from this man?

Ah you’re obviously not one of Toms fans then Quietz are you? My, what big chips you’ve got on your shoulders!

I suppose you find it equally amusing that Ireland are out of recession and we aint, thanks to the monocular mutineer and his band of idiots?

You conveniently, as most of the class warriors do, tend to have a selective memory. You seem to forget how many of the Labour front bench and the PM himself have private educations and privileged backgrounds. You just try and deny it and shout the usual dogwhistling rubbish, because the tribal idiots on the sink estates will keep on believing it, are too dim to question it and will keep on voting Labour because their dads told them to. But its hollow and full of s..t and easily demolished. Only the thick and the sheeple will buy it.

Could be in with a good chance of a fourth term then. Glad I’m abroad. I’ve had about as much I can stomach of these troughing , self satisfying egotists.

Quietzapple asks:
“Re Hannan & co: would you take advice on where to buy stamps from this man?”

Much more likely to do so than to take advice from Brown & Darling on how to run my finances.

The pair of them couldn’t run a bath let alone a country & its economy!

(also quite likely to take advice from Hannan on how to make a ver fine speech see : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

Quietzapple, taking pleasure in the economic misfortunes of others doesn’t seem like a very Christian attitude.

Oh wait, while you have infinite pleasure for eternity in heaven and I suffer eternal damnation in hell, you will not be concerned about me so I guess that is quite a Christian attitude after all.

The UK is out of recession, and has not lost anything like as much of its GDP as Ireland has either, despite the collapse of the Finance Industry which forms so large a part of out economy.

I delight in Hannan’s foolhardy errors, not the economic difficulties which result from the policies he has approved of.

Oh, Hannan’s real aficionados think the speech which he made when abusing his temporary anomalous position re the Conservative Party in the EU Parliament to obtain the right to extend a hospitable welcome to Gordon Brown was not one of his best. Stilted abuse really.

Gordon Brown went to a state Primary and a Comp High School. One would expect someone who make out I have a chip on my shoulder and thinks we are sheeple, when he prattles about troughing like the usual Baaaah Expenses shower to get just about everything wrong.

I’m happy to be a member of the same Labour Party as Tom Harris.

Oh, Paul . . ? You may already have made it to purgatory, volunteers often do.

Sensible comment Tom. So you can assume it will be ignored by the illustrious (in their own opinion) Labour leadership.
Social mobility under Labour? I’m an immigrant here myself & my ex-husband & I split up when our youngest was 4. He moved to a non-EU country so it was me & my two kids. They went to state infant & primary school and then my daughter went on to the local comprehensive. My son meantime got an Assisted Place – remember them Tom? He did so much better than my daughter – not just academically but also attitudewise. My daughter reckoned why study as her teachers had said there wouldn’t be any jobs anyway? After her GCE’s I moved her to a private school – her academic levels shot up – she did re-takes & got them. They both decided they wanted to go to University – this was before tutition fees so between the three of us working at any spare jobs available (I already had a full-time job), with grants they were able to do so & graduated with an Honours First & an Honours 2.1 between them. Fast forward to life today – both my kids would have to go to the local comprehensive (not the one my daughter went to) – for a single parent family there’s no other choice now unless the kids are exceptionally brainy & can win scholarships. The Comp’s main claim to fame is that it holds the record for the youngest teenage Mum & it looks like a majority of the teenagers around here see single parenthood & the Benefits System as a lifestyle choice. Social mobility? Not under Labour! But then a well educated electorate, independent of the Benefits System, wouldn’t be so easy for the govt to boss around – would it?

OK Quietz. If you’re that certain of your class warrior credentials lets try a little experiment then shall we, as you’re both party members.

You stand in your constituency – or better, in a floating/marginal, for the party on your class warrior ticket, with your dogwhistle in your donkey jacket pocket. Tom stands in his, on the ticket he thinks is correct based on this article.

Lets see who loses their deposit first.

Bet it wont be Tom. If the party pursued the attitudes of Tom and Frank Field, they’d be more likely to get people like me to vote for them than this class war crap. Brown might not have had the public school education, but if you know anything about Scotland you’ll realise that his position as a son of the manse would have afforded its own privileges.

You just cant or wont see it. You have an envy problem with those born into money. You can try and deny it but there are just as many on the Labour front bench who went to public school and University, who were in mysoginistic drinking clubs, like Ed Balls, who are related to aristocracy like Harriet, but you dont acknowledge the hypocrisy of that. Since when has anyone born to privilege stopped YOU from achieving anything in your life? If they havent, what is your problem? The same 1% have owned most of the resources for the last 12 years, despite the leadership pledging social justice and to change social mobility. Yeah. That worked didnt it? [rolls eyes]

Face it, this is the only way you’re going to shore up your own core vote and stop it defecting to the BNP. Appeal to the lowest common tribal benefit dependant denominator, despite the fact that you’ve been indulging the privileged classes and the bankers for the last 12 years, allowing major corporations to get away without paying corporation tax over here, being “intensely relaxed about people being filthy rich” and now suddenly when Gordon’s house of cards is about to tumble, you cast off the clothes you stole from the Tories 12 years ago and lurch back to the left. Only the politically dim or the tribal crowd will fail to see through it. And its got nothing to do with what is good for the country. Its about saving your own electoral hides.

It is the mark of a leadership which is morally, spiritually, politically and economically bankrupt. The only thing Gordon gives a damn about is Gordon.

Oh, and the UK out of recession? Yeah, right. On your planet maybe. Not in the real world.

@ FS

For both good and ill nothing I read in your spiel was true, perhaps I shall re-read it when I have time.

And Tom Harris MP and I will both be fighting on what is likely to be the winning side next year.

It is quite clear that my idea of what you like to call a class war differs from the phantasm you and Mr Chameleon enjoy.

You aren’t one of Tom’s Dr Who fans, are you?

Shhhh Polly . . .

I almost mentioned the Bullingdon, but I don’t think anyone noticed . . .

Quietzapple

Thanks for your posts i used to be a die hard labour supporter but thanks to people like you i have seen the light. You like labour are only interested in dividing the country rather than tackling the real issues facing this country.

Quietzapple states “The UK is out of recession.” No, it is not. As the Times posted today; “UK stays in recession as output shrinks by 0.2%” I suggest you stick to the facts in future rather than wishful thinking.

Isit

Oh certainly, as always class war is only a bad thing if fought by those at the bottom of the pile. To those at the top it is just everyday life.

@Alex

“..It is fair to point out that a large proportion of the Tory front-bench went to the same school…But it is beyond logic and probability.. that half-a-dozen guys who attended the same school, university and club together are by some miracle the best people to run the country…”

Oh Dear! I had better change my doctor – two out of the three in the practice went to Barts. And I note that a very large number of the British physicists at CERN studied physics at Manchester…

Then again, perhaps the best people to do certain things are all trained in the place that specialises in that thing…

[...] Tom Harris MP says its unpopular, so it must be true! “In 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992, Labour promised tax increases [...]