Is it just me or do others find it not only unpatriotic, but also unhelpful to refer to British society as broken, especially coming from a bloody Tory? Britain is not broken. Society is not broken. And while we are at it, Britain is not bankrupt. David Cameron is arguing Britain is not as nice […]
Continue Reading Broken Britain, Broken Society and the BIG Society
A very typical and blinkered view, you must be a libdem or lab supporter. Britain is in terrible trouble. You may live in a nice area and not have any “social” problems, I don’t and integration, knife crime, drugs and intimidating behaviour from immigrant youths is rife. I welcome the crackdown on people carrying knives and I hope a zero tolerance on other crimes follows suite. You may live in a working society but your little World is just that, “little” and doesn’t apply to the bulk of the population where society does feel broken. Here’s a phrase you’ll know……”Get real!”
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I’ve lived in council or housing association properties up until 5 years ago when we bought our first house. So 30+ years in mostly council housing (rented privately when at Uni for 2 years).
In the last housing association property we lived in Grimsby next to a street locally called murder mile.
On one side we had OK neighbours, your average family (kids loved football), didn’t cause any trouble. On the other side we had a single parent mother in her forties with three kids that had NO parental control whatsoever, (though the kids weren’t that bad, issues with boundaries, but never caused problems with us) the mother was on drugs (she even sold drugs), was drunk 90% of the time and while we lived there their windows were put through twice! She had different low life men and women at the house every week and the social services were too afraid of the family to take the kids into care! Eventually everything went to crap with that family and the kids did eventually end up in care.
When the housing association took the house back it was a complete mess and needed a new kitchen etc…
The next tenants weren’t much better. Young single mother with young kids and we just didn’t hit it off. They were constantly causing trouble and I was assaulted by her boyfriend: fortunately I can look after myself and he came off much worse.
A young lad was visiting their house and someone he was with (a neighbours kid) caused trouble with our kids and I told her to pack it in, next thing I know I have this lads Dad (recently out of prison) at the door with a friend pissed that I’d told his kid off. Nothing happened since I wasn’t even talking to his son, but could have easily gone violent.
After the fight with the neighbours boyfriend that bloke came back with two friends, one carrying a car tool and wanted me to come out the house so he could sort me out (I may have made a few stupid decisions in my life, but I’m not that stupid :-)). Called the police, nothing happened and never saw that numpty again.
As a teenager (14) I received a 24 hr attendance centre order for burning down a cricket pavilion (I was a complete idiot as a teenager) and at 15 spent 2 months in a detention center for a bunch of juvenile crimes (burglaries mostly).
At 18 I was cautioned for criminal damage, would have been worse but agreed to pay for the damage (stupid drunken night out, me and a friend put our fists through a pub sign). Used to go to pubs and night clubs as a teenager and would get into fights quite a lot.
I’ve been part of the anti-social behaviour problem and experienced it.
Oh, we also have drunks hanging around at the back of our property and had a brick through our kitchen window recently and I left a bunch of copper piping down the side of the house (own an ex-guesthouse and removed a lot of plumbing work, wink in every room) and it was stolen!
I still don’t think our society is broken, it’s individuals that are ‘broken’ not society, the majority of people living in Britain today are good people. It’s the minority that’s the problem, when it’s the majority then we’ll have a broken society.
So you “Get Real!”
David
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The only time we had a broken society in Britain was under Thatcher
I fully agree with Mark.
This country needs to be mended and we DO need change.
Mr Cameron is the man to do it and his policy on the people that don’t want to work and having their benefits cut is what Labour should have done years ago.
I say that if your happy with the country now and the state it’s in then vote Labour, if your happy with a weak party then vote Lib Dems…My vote has aleady gone to the Conservatives.
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“Mr Cameron is the man to do it” – erm no, it is down to us as a society to do it… he is just a man that has his own agendas like everyone else!
None of the parties actually discuss how they will mend a broken Britain, through Mr Camerons speech he didn’t once suggest ‘HOW’ (which is probably the most crucial thing we need to hear). He is just a deceptive and hidden as any other politician previously involved with Westminster.
My problem is that no party discusses culture and cultural spending. Britain is broken because it has a lack of identity, a lack of culture and because of that nothing for us to be proud of – or to even want to be a part of…. no wonder we have youth rebelling and causing havoc – they dont care about Britain, and why should they? We give them no reason to.
Britain has a strong and valuable cultural identity – music, art, theatre, craft, homegrown produce etc etc however none of this is encouraged throughout education or even in society – cultural activities are the last to have money spent on and the last to be given acknowledgment.
If you involve people and have a good time (which cultural actives already do) then they will be proud and become involved, a community is built by sharing and experiencing together…. something which Mr.Cameron and Mr.Brown are completely unaware of, which is proven by their parties lack of interest in culture time and time again – i dont think they deserve another chance to prove they can do a good job, they have had their chances and they had failed…. proven by the lack of community and pride we now have.
I for one am fed up of people who understand nothing about actual life as a member of the British public deciding what is best for us. Clearly they live in a completely different world.
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PS. “people who dont want to work” ???? We are in a major recession some people are extremely qualified and are just having a really hard time – me for one among many many others…. and if you are willing to let hard working, intelligent and decent people to be tarred with the same brush and sink into poverty…. they you are no better then any other fascist.
Views like that are the reason we have a separated community and a broken Britain. And is proof that if the Tories are elected then Britain will continue to be divided even further.
No one should be punished or uncared for in Britain, we should be pulling resources together not denying people help and guidance.
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What the Tories and Labour are really saying is “my way or no way”! They are demonstrating a lack of democratic tendancies and just want to carte blanche impose their will on the majority of people, who did not vote for them in the first place. Also, if Mr. Cameron is truly disturbed(as his poster campaign) about the increasing gap between the well off and the less well off, how is he going to correct this? It seems to me that thise who are already wealthy, will inevitably find themselves best placed to take advantage of better economic circumstances and the only real way to adjust for this is via the tax system! Do the Tories propose to do this?
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I’m fascinated by this “broken society” bit, I’m 75 and when I was in my teens kids went to Brighton to have a rumble, and I have to confess I was there, but it was only reported in the southern newspapers. Today it would be on 24 hour news every fifteen minutes, my parents were convinced that Britain was going to the dogs, and over my lifetime it’s always been the same cry every decade.
However this time I haven’t found it very annoying, because Cameron has decided to make it official and insult the entire community, because he’s not just talking about the bloke down the road, he’s talking about you and me, we are responsible for this supposedly broken society, though of course he wants you to believe it’s everyone else’s fault and only you can put it right.
What I’ve find funny about getting old, is people younger than me saying they daren’t go out after dark, I regularly take my dog out at any time between 10 at night and 1 in the morning and I’ve never had a moments trouble. Nottingham is supposed to be a no go area for anyone over 50, my wife and I take buses in to the cinema and amble about the great city and get the last bus home. It’s baloney, if you go looking for trouble you’ll get it, but that has always been the way things are, from when I was young living in London to now.
Britain is far from a broken society, the people I meet in down town Nottingham and in uptown Britain are great, but they suffer from nasty bigots who try to convince them they don’t live in a wonderful free thinking society, which I’m proud to say my generation started.
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you have not lived under a tory run goverment i have if you are after a equial soicty under cameron forget it they finished off all industries north of watford and will do the same too the south west next time if we allow it by voting tory no one party is doing right by all british people and probley never will THINK hard its importent to get this election right
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I have to agree with Joe and Bryan, i lived and worked under 18 years of Tory government and they were hatefull, they destroyed society and the NHS, Thatcher would have been the most hated PM ever had it not been for the Falklands war which we won despite her, not because of her, if it had happened 6 months later we would not have been able to fight it as she was selling the air craft carriers off, scrapping HMS Endurance which gave the green light to the Argentinians in the first place and then for her to pose in that tank with scarfe and goggles on and take the credit makes me sick, her cuts cost the lives of 250+ British servicemen.
So vote Tory again and get Thatcherism through the back door.
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screw all this political crap get royalty back in the big chair
I agree we should go back to a royalty led country provided we could open the Whitehall window and pass them through it one at a time like in 1649.
VIVE LA REPUBLIC
Do you really think the Tory’s are going to solve all those problems you have just talked about? You have to ‘GET REAL’. Look at the problems they caused in the 80’s. They are full of promises that will be broken as soon as they are in power. Come back to me in a years time, after the tory’s have been in power and i bet the area u live in is just as bad, if not worse, but the middle class area up the road will be better off, with better schools with more resources, professionals making more money, and buying more cars and holidays etc……to get our economy started again! While the rest of us face the same old same old. Dnt kid yourself that a tory government is going to change a thing. And before you try to label me as labour or a socialist, i am a floating voter who doesnt believe any of the nonsense they are all talking.
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I personally agree with comments from David Cameron. Following rule of Law is frowned upon. In the class room discipline seems to have evaporated. The teacher is harassed by unruly children. No one can make any comment about lack of discipline. There is virtually no incentive to do any job prpperly. If the children do not attend school and go to all sorts of places during lessons time, it does not seem to bother anyone. Nowdays children enjoy virtually free buspasses. I have seen them visiting various shopping aras during school time.
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I am a teacher and totally disagree with your comment. I work in Easterhouse, a very deprived area in Glasgow. If you are good at your job and work with the children and not against them then you earn respect. Too many people talk about education matters when they do not have first hand experience of it. David Cameron should spend more time discussing things he knows about and stop scare mongering. I understand schools have problems but the reasons for these problems is due to lack of funds, increasing class sizes, lack of ecudcation suppose for children with learning problems, lack of classroom assistants etc etc. If a Tory government was to get into government i can promise you that the education problem in this country will worsen as it will be the first place cuts will be made and from personal experience resources are already stretched to the max.
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Let me begin by stating quite categorically that I dont believe any of the main parties have the solution or the conviction to mend “Broken Britain”.
A fact that seems to be ignored by most political commentators is that a British goverment, regardless of party will not be ALLOWED to impose the measures required to clean up the mess we are in, because the EU controls what laws we are allowed to pass or repeal in respect of these issues.
The only way we could reimpose law and order, respect, national identity, immigration control etc etc is to get out of the EU.
Looking back at our history with European control. It is absolutely true that the Tories first got us in to the common market under Edward Heath and John Major very kindly fiddled through the Maastricht treaty on the speakers vote in 1992. But I’ll tell you this, the England I remember in 1997 when Election day came around bears no resemblance to the mess it is today after 13 years of Labour mismanagement.
There are 10,000,000 more immigrants here than there were then. The open door policy has been nothing short of a disaster which the majority of voters has always been against. Crime has gone through the roof, in certain places you feel like youre an outsider if you are english. I have watched national identity and respect for the law destroyed under Labour. ( As the cabinet is mostly Scottish, you cant really be suprised.)
Labour has had scandal after scandal and accountability has been minimal. You need look no further than Lord Mandelson who having twice been disgraced and kicked out of the cabinet was rewarded for his crimes with a peerage and a third go at a ride on the gravy train for an example of this governments corruption.
Now, after 18 years of Tory rule, I remember one hell of a better country in 1997 than what Labour has created by 2010. You want to blame Thatcher ? Who’s been in power for 13 years ? The Tories certainly encouraged the “me,me,me” behaviour and enterprise throughout the 80’s and beyond, but the tripled national debt, pensions crisis, national health debarcle, illegal war in Iraq and immigration nightmare has all been thanks to the Labour party. Thanks a bundle.
What breaks my heart is that the majority opinion is not represented by ANY of the main parties. So as we go to another general election where we are non-represented again, the only question you have to ask yourself is: which is worse, giving the Tories a go for 5 years or sticking with the most corrupt government these shores have ever known ?
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You are possibly right that Britrain is not broken, it may just be badly bent.
The nation is effectively bankrupt however. If it was a business right now it would be put into receivership by the courts. The government is having to borrow money to pay its bills and service its debts and has few assets left that can be sold as the Conservative and Labour governments of the last thirty years have offloaded everything of value to their mates the international finance community at knockdown prices.
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Britain is not bankrupt, for it to be bankrupt we’d have to go into receivership or something and not be able to pay back our debts: basically other countries would have to bail us out.
So stop scaremongering about bankrupt Britain, all you are doing is adding negativity to a difficult financial situation. Think about the effects of all this scaremongering in the media is having, foreign investors won’t want to invest in Britain if Britain believes it’s bankrupt!
We are no where near what you’d call bankrupt, even Greece isn’t bankrupt and they are in real trouble financially, but still at a point where with help they can recover.
We don’t need any external help, as long as the next government manages the finances reasonably well (and Labour has done an OK job so far, not great, but OK) we’ll slowly see the debt reduce over time. This will be true of the vast majority of Europe with countries like Greece and Italy struggling far more than countries like Germany, France and the UK where the debt levels relative to GDP (measure of ability to pay) are much lower.
There’s nothing to be gained in having any country go ‘bankrupt’, it damages world trade.
I was watching the news earlier (not sure which channel or who was speaking :-)) a woman who was part of some sort of financial organisation was saying we are nothing like Greece, the biggest risks for us is if the world as a whole starts to look on economies with large government debts (pretty much all the European economies) because of the recession etc… and started to worry about their ability to pay back those debts, (hypothetically) then we along with other European countries would be in trouble and lenders would run away. She also added right now they aren’t running away from us, they are running to us (that’s a good thing).
Another thing that was interesting is our debts are apparently not very old, where as Greece’s debts are much older (and they have new debts). The importance of this is Greece is having to renegotiate old debts as they become due and this causes problems (I’m assuming higher rates of interest?).
Since our debts aren’t old, if things did start to get much worse it would apparently take a lot longer for problems to affect us (we wouldn’t be renegotiating old debt).
Please stop scaremongering like the tabloid newspapers tell you to!
Do some research and you’ll see as long as we don’t slip into a world depression (if we do the entire world will be in the s##t) and the next government acts responsibly, we’ll be fine medium term. We are looking at some very difficult times ahead and none of the main parties are dealing with this before May 6th (I’m sure whoever wins they will deal with it).
We are in for a parliament of massive public sector cuts under the name of efficiency savings! I accept it has to be done, I just hope on May 7th we don’t have a Conservative government who were initially salivating at the prospect of massive public sector cuts in spending!!!!!! At least Labour and the Liberal Democrats don’t want to cut public sector spending, even though they will have to.
David
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It would be very easy to get this country out of debt, we should go to Ocean finance.
Clear your debts by getting a loan.
It’s clear now that this site is in fact affiliated with Labour, given the constant attacks on the Conservatives and non-publishing of any manifestos other than Labour
It’s not AFFILIATED with Labour, it’s not affiliated with any political party.
Yes I’m biased, I want the Tories to loose the election and yet you get to post comments supporting the Conservatives and have the option to start new articles about anything political (and unique) at https://general-election-2010.co.uk/politics/.
I’m currently planning to vote Lib Dems, but that might change back to Labour, will see after the economy debate tomorrow.
I’ve posted the manifestos of 8 political parties including the Conservatives. Added them in the order they were published and on the day they were released online, so that meant the Tories manifesto 2010 was added second on April 13th.
So stop making BS up and start debating politics.
David
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The fundamental question isn’t whether the country is broken or not. Society is the real issue.
As there are very few people in this country who can’t find something to moan about in their life, also true of government.
We are all aware that for the next 10 years or more a large amount of fiscal belt tightening is going to be required and the effects of this will probably be felt for a generation.
So who’s to blame?
There are many who would blame the government and banks for getting us into this mess but in reality it is our own innate greed and apathy that has been the downfall of this country.
With regard to greed, every one of us wants the best deal we can get on everything we buy and in a free market society the banks and card companies are no different to your High St stores, offering wondrous deals on their products and consequently we dutifully go along and take them.
Let’s be honest when things were good no one cared about banking profits, now things are sour lets all jump on the same bandwagon and form a lynch mob. True the government of the day, whoever it maybe (as this will happen again) should have seen this coming but had they tried to legislate against or cap the publics capacity to borrow we would have all complained about interfering.
With regard to apathy, we as a people seem to find it difficult to say no to anything thrown at us by the government we put into place.
Very occasionally the people of the country will get up in arms about an issue and on occasion win a small victory. The petrol protest of a few years ago is a good example. The whole country up in arms at the rising cost of fuel and we won. No we didn’t, we had a very short term reprieve and once the furore was over prices kept rising and not a ripple.
We as a nation have very much become a “lie on your back and think of England* country.
How many people do you know have views on contentious issues such as immigration, anti social behaviour, the NHS, employment, smoking in public places and rising travel costs. How many of those people are then prepared to openly discuss them, not many I’ll bet, for fear of coming across as bigoted, racist or populist.
This is the reason this country is broken. A country built on the ethic of freedom of speech and the right to express which has been gagged. This is true for the political parties as well as the individuals and until such time as the laws that govern us are loosened and the politically correct unelected bureaucrats accept we have an opinion which deserves to heard the wheel will remain well and truly of the wagon.
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I would like to see a basic respect for people and zero tolerance for anti-social behaviour. A society where you can ask someone to turn down the volume a little without getting a knife in the guts. A smile is always so much better than a snarl.
I would like to see more justice. If someone is attacked [as I was] by children and you raise a finger in self defence YOU are the one imprisoned for GBH. Even the police agreed that I was right to suffer the attack without retaliation.
I would like to see fair rewards for hard work instead of arrogant inadequate bankers who fail being given obscene bonuses or MP’s allowed ot feed on the gravy train. This is not the politics of envy but the politics of justice. Does a nurse who saves a child’s life receive one penny in bonuses or expenses? No and furthermore s/he does not expect to do so. Is prancing about taking other people’s hard earned cash so much more worthy of reward than the saving of a child’s life? I don’t think so.
I would like to see nore unity and regulations before marching into another person’s country and declaring war. It was obvious even to bears of little brain that Saddam had no WMD. How would we have felt if he had marched into the UK to sort out the N.Ireland woes? We were then told that war was declared on Saddam Hussain on humanitarian grounds. He was certainly no humanitarian but if those were the grounds why was [and still is!] Robert Mugabe tolerated and feted in the UK?
If ANY political party could promise that the UK would become a fairer, more tolerant and decent society then that would be riches beyond dreams.
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This site os not affiliated to Labour, but like the BBC it is giving you the impression there are only three parties to vote for. Not true. The LibLabCon are all crooks, and even the new boy Nick Clegg took £3.5 million in illegal donations to his party, then brazened it out.
Cameron will have no power.
We can get out of debt, but only if we leave the EU.
They are all puppets of the EU which rules us now. VOTE UKIP.
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At least you accept the site isn’t affiliated with a particular party.
What exactly would you have liked to see to give your party reasonable coverage?
UKIP is included in relevant polls.
UKIP has a section about it’s policies pre 2010 manifesto: https://general-election-2010.co.uk/votes/ukip-policies/ (same setup as for the Lib/Lab/Con).
UKIP has a section for it’s 2010 manifesto : https://general-election-2010.co.uk/ukip-manifesto-2010-general-election/ (same setup as for the Lib/Lab/Con).
In the political parties news section for the site I’ve included the UKIP RSS feed: https://general-election-2010.co.uk/ (same setup as for the Lib/Lab/Con) so all UKIP news is posted for discussion.
Under the forum (which is under used) where anyone can start a new thread there’s a section for UKIP: , no threads so far, can’t force people to use it, feel free to make some pro UKIP threads (keep the content unique, copied content is deleted).
What more do you want? In the above article I wrote I only cover Labour and Conservative since they are the only two parties that have been in government, would be pure speculation to discuss any other parties past action with regards to government.
Like with the BNP, the Greens and any of the other smaller parties (parties currently with zero MPs), UKIP appear to not be gaining in support at general election level to a point where handfuls of MPs are inevitable: UKIP aren’t threatening to upset the status quo like the Lib Dems are.
It does make parties like UKIP a bit irrelevant after May 7th, even if they have a few MPs they hold no real power to change government policy. You should be hoping for a massive shift to the Lib Dems so they bring in proportional representation so at the next general election you’ll get MPs when you have a reasonable % of the popular vote.
UKIP did well in the EU elections, but they haven’t taken that success to the next level, I’ve watched Lord Pearson many times on the BBC news channel and other channels and he’s an awful spokesman for UKIP! I think I know more about UKIPs policies than he does!!! I’m sure they’ll dump him as leader soon enough.
How many MPs are UKIP estimating on May 7th?
BTW don’t spam my site with links to irrelevant sites (I deleted the links). Link to sites relevant to what you are saying in a comment by all means, but not as a matter of course because you want traffic to your site.
David
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