The Red Flag's flagging a bit... Lol.

[amateur51]

I'll scrap what I was going to say and let the indignation be given its full rein.

"There's no point at all in having policies if you are simply going to abandon them." If you were actually in politics instead of merely talking about it you'd think that was an oversimplification.

We're All In This Together - remember, french frank?

Ah! The old 'Oh you don't want to worry your little head about things like this, cos you wouldn't understand, let the paid politicians do it for you' line.

I do wish we had the emoticon

http://www.graphicsgrotto.com/emoticons/frustrated/images/emfrustrated1.gif

[french frank]

We're All In This Together - remember, french frank?

Irrelevant to this discussion.

Ah! The old 'Oh you don't want to worry your little head about things like this, cos you wouldn't understand, let the paid politicians do it for you' line.

You put it your way, I'll put it mine. I meant that if you were the one who actually had to take the decisions you would see things differently. And the point about birdseed wasn't a jibe. It was simply saying that even if the policy had been a very minor one, it would have been denounced as a breach of faith.

Let me try another point and hope for a response to it. To arrive at it from a different angle:

One of the reasons the No campaign won the referendum was because they had arguments which seemed to make sense under FPTP but made no sense at all under a preferential voting system ('the candidate who comes second can win', 'some people get more votes than others'). People fell for these arguments because they were still thinking of FPTP.

So with coalition politics: you either go into coalition or you don't. If you do, you're in a different game. You have to negotiate, you have to decide which policies should be your priorities and non negotiable. If they were in your manifesto you have 'promised' all of them. But you're not going to get everything because you didn't win the election. Some things have to be jettisoned. Why choose tuition fees in particular as a sticking point?

Whatever the LibDems chose to do, the abolition of tuition fees wasn't on the agenda, however they voted. Voting against the rise in fees might have brought the coalition down. That's why I say most people who are politically aware are more angry about the coalition than the broken pledge: it was the end of the coalition they wanted to see.

[Simon]

You waste your time, ff. There are several metaphors that could relate to the pointlessness of arguing with Gong and Amateur: most on here could no doubt envisage what they might be.

I have chosen to use the "ignore" function. It saves time that can be put to far, far better use...

[scottycelt]

FF has a point.

Many on the Left hate Clegg purely because he went into coalition government with the horrid Tories and has little to do with tuition fees or anything else. Circumstances change and Cleggs promise on tuition fees was in the admittedly wholly unlikely event of an outright LD victory, so he could have promised the earth in that regard, if he so wished.

Coalition changed everything and it must be remembered that there are LD policies now adopted that would never have seen the light of day if Clegg hadn't grabbed what was probably the only real opportunity to make these a reality. I suspect that future Liberals might well ultimately judge Clegg much more favourably than some do now.

However, I don't think there is much evidence that 'people' 'fell' for anything at the recent referendum on the preferential voting system. They great majority simply didn't like the wretched thing and voted accordingly. There may have been many and varied reasons why they didn't like it, not least that the whole thing was ludicrously complicated. There were also, doubtless, many like myself who simply consider(ed) that the fairest way to decide a winner is to give the seat to the guy/gal who happens to get the most votes, whatever the percentage.

Simple, uncomplicated, and actually quite democratic!

Anyway, let's not revive old and thankfully now redundant arguments ...

[Ariosto]

In a way Simon may be right about the Labour lot, but they are no worse of course than the stuffed shirts of the Tory party.

[MrGongGong]

You waste your time, ff. There are several metaphors that could relate to the pointlessness of arguing with Gong and Amateur: most on here could no doubt envisage what they might be.

I have chosen to use the "ignore" function. It saves time that can be put to far, far better use...

funny kind of ignoring if you ask me
fingers in the ears and "la la la" in the style of a 5 year old on a very high horse more like

[Flosshilde]

I have chosen to use the "ignore" function. It saves time that can be put to far, far better use...

A funny kind of ignore, when you feel that you have to keep telling us that you are ignoring us.

[Flosshilde]

Coalition changed everything and it must be remembered that there are LD policies now adopted that would never have seen the light of day if Clegg hadn't grabbed what was probably the only real opportunity to make these a reality.

So what exactly are these policies? I don't see that the LibDems have had much, or any, impact on Osborne's disastrous economic policies - the area that really matters. Inother areas their much-vaunted changes to the NHS Bill, for example, have still basically left the NHS open to massive privatisation.

Arguments have been put forward that without the LibDems the Tories would have run a minority government, called an election, won a majority and introduced even worse policies. That may be so, but after people had seen (& felt) the impact of them would the Tories have won the next election? As it is we have a guaranteed 5 year government, which will come to the same thing.

Scotty, if you think a coalition is such a good thing, why were you so opposed to a fair voting system - one of the main arguments used against it was that it would only result in coalitions? (not to revive an argument, but you did mention it)

[teamsaint]

well at least we all now know where we stand with the three mainstream parties.

They are all too frightened to take on the financial sector. They all support foreign wars. None of them will build the houses we need. They all do whatever the Whitehouse want.They are all happy to let the rich have everything that is best in education, Etc etc.

and they all have rubbish songs, or sing good songs badly.

no wonder people are abandoning mainstream politics .

[mercia]

None of them will build the houses we need.

plenty being built round here (SE England), fortunately by builders rather than politicians

[teamsaint]

plenty being built round here (SE England), fortunately by builders rather than politicians

any at a price that anybody except footballers and doctors can afford?
By any definition there is a huge national shortage of housing... and jobs come to that.

[mercia]

any at a price that anybody except footballers and doctors can afford?

point taken. from approx. £150,000.

http://www.whathouse.co.uk/new-homes

[Mandryka]

I think scottycelt is right: Clegg may look OK to future generations of Liberal historians, to whom he may well be remembered as the man who finally brought the Party back into Office (if not Power).

Then again, he may be remembered as the man who finally finished the Liberals as any kind of political force, by aligning them with the Tories (which is what happened to Lloyd George).

But I think we should attempt to forget Party politics, at least for the time being: the actions the Coalition are taking now are pretty much the same actions that a re-elected Labour government would have been compelled to take. There just isn't the political/economic room for maneouvre that would allow for anything else - something that Ed Balls acknowledged at last week's conference, when he stated that some of the 'damage' the Coalition cuts would create would be 'impossible to reverse' (which reads: 'I'm really glad the Con-Dems are making these cuts, which WE would have been forced to make if we were still in power; when/if we return to power, we won't reverse the cuts, but will continue to blame the wicked folk who imposed them').

[amateur51]

Irrelevant to this discussion.

Certainly not, french frank; indeed it’s almost central to this discussion, in my view. That slogan was how the coalition sought to ‘sell’ its fast-track extra-deep austerity plans to the great British public who were used as polling fodder and then ignored, especially by the LibDems for whom people had voted, perhaps foolishly it now seems, because of some of their election promises. To call it irrelevant is to show contempt for the electorate, something I‘m getting used to, sadly.

And the point about birdseed wasn't a jibe. It was simply saying that even if the policy had been a very minor one, it would have been denounced as a breach of faith.

You don't know that - let's stick to the known facts, shall we?[/QUOTE]

So with coalition politics: you either go into coalition or you don't. If you do, you're in a different game. You have to negotiate, you have to decide which policies should be your priorities and non negotiable. If they were in your manifesto you have 'promised' all of them. But you're not going to get everything because you didn't win the election. Some things have to be jettisoned. Why choose tuition fees in particular as a sticking point?

I think you're missing the point - no-one voted for a coalition. No electorate has been faced with this choice since the 1930s. The parties involved were not honest with the public, it was all about smoke & morrors and hey presto! we have a coaltion government with two sets of policies, a bit of convergence and no clear idea for public consumption about the mechanism of 'who gets what' from their manifestos. 'A pig in a poke' barely describes it. Next time, the public will know what the game is & I don't expect the 3 leaders to put themselves up for 'live' TV scrutiny again.

That's why I say most people who are politically aware are more angry about the coalition than the broken pledge: it was the end of the coalition they wanted to see

But the broken pledge is fundamental to the coalition; they are inextricably linked. You can't have the coalition without the broken pledge

[french frank]

However, I don't think there is much evidence that 'people' 'fell' for anything at the recent referendum on the preferential voting system. They great majority simply didn't like the wretched thing and voted accordingly. There may have been many and varied reasons why they didn't like it, not least that the whole thing was ludicrously complicated.

Well, we've been diverted from the lack of musicality in the Labour party, why not swerve off on to voting reform? That was another 'No' propaganda coup (you didn't mention the '£250m it would cost to introduce counting machines'): it's 'ludicrously complicated' in the way a computer operating system is. Which means the experts have to understand it but the general public just picks it up by using it.

Floss: quite a few of these anti-coalition arguments are just prejudiced black propaganda. They leave out of every equation the inconvenient matter of what, facing the same set of circumstances and problems, is the range of solutions which an alternative government would have to work within. Already, we're seeing the clarification of Labour policy on tuition fees: no abolition, no freeze but a cautious 'capping' at £6,000. The gap between the acceptable and the 'outrageous' is narrowing ... (but Labour isn't in power so doesn't have to make their sums add up).

Well, of course, I would support the coalition, wouldn't I? because being someone on a fairly meagre income I've seen my tax bill reduced - due to the Lib Dems forcing past an unwilling Tory party their policy to raise the personal allowance to help the people on the lowest incomes. Then there's the extra money being put into schools, targeted on the most disadvantaged children as a 'pupil premium' - Clegg's baby which he said openly he thought was more important than taking what at best was no more than a moral stand on university fees. Then, there's the setting up of the Green Investment Bank. There are the new tax powers and funding for the HMRC to tackle tax avoidance and tax evasion by the wealthy.

You deride the changes made to the NHS reforms, which is your right, but the objection just goes back to the same old point: if you hadn't gone into coalition there wouldn't have been such reforms to water down in the first place. But the influence the LibDems have had has been on helping the poor and on the environment. That suits me, even if I wish it were more.