Part 10 of our Pre-Election guide is about the Tories and their biggest chance in almost twenty years. Today, Jackart explains why you should vote Conservative.Every Labour government leaves an almighty mess for the Conservatives to clean up. The UK’s recession was the deepest and longest of any major economy because Labour was spending more than was taken in taxes long before the crash, which may have “started in America”, but predictably took deepest root in Brown’s profligate UK.
Despite the greatest rise in peacetime taxation in British history, during the country’s longest ever boom, the deficit is one of the largest in the developed world. The Labour line that to cut spending now would “jeopardise the recovery” is an outrageous lie. Public borrowing ‘crowds out’ private investment, sending viable business to the wall for want of credit. Conservatives understand this, and propose cutting the deficit as fast as possible, in order that the economy can grow.
Despite the rhetoric, much of Brown’s spending spree has missed nurses or teachers, funding instead a vast Labour client-state of quangocrats and box-tickers. Service users have seen little benefit, even on Labour’s own terms. Tories aim to cut the wasteful non-jobs which have ballooned under Labour, freeing front line professionals to do theirs.
The armed forces are nearly broken after a decade of fighting wars on a peace-time budget. The Navy and RAF have too few ships and planes, the Army is lacking helicopters. The TA (8% of forces in Afghanistan) are being told to stop training, and nearly a third of the infantry is undeployable. Defence spending has not been reviewed systematically since 1998 – this would be a Conservative priority.
Labour has been the most savagely illiberal regime in British history. Tories propose a ‘Bill of Rights’ which would guarantee liberties like Jury trials and Habeas Corpus, and a “Great repeal bill” to scrap many of the 3,000 new offences invented by this government; many of them thought-crimes of which you’re guilty until proven innocent. The Tories are not Libertarians but they understand the danger of too much power in police hands.
Conservative education policy is especially radical in allowing new schools to be set up funded by, but not run by the state. This has been shown to work in Sweden and the USA. It delivers more money directly to schools by cutting out the middle-men in LEAs. This will drive up standards in existing schools too: in US experience, the poorest areas benefit most from increased choice.
“They’re all as bad as each other” is merely Labour’s most pernicious lie. Conservatives have a coherent plan to devolve power – from Brussels to Westminster, Westminster to Councils and Councils to individuals.
Localisation means removing many of the counter-productive targets which have distorted priorities in policing, the NHS and local Government, allowing local people to see what is being done by publishing the details of spending and contracts online.
It means letting local people set priorities by electing Sheriffs to run policing. It means altering the benefits system to remove disincentives to work; simplifying the absurdly complicated tax-code; scrapping regulations hamstringing business and (eventually) taking less tax from people. It means, in short, guaranteeing people’s liberty from a bullying, nosy and rapacious state.
It is only possible to scratch the surface in 500 words of Labour’s catastrophic failure and Conservative plans for smaller, better-run and less intrusive Government, but things have to change, and the Conservatives have a plan.
Jackart is a Libertarian blogger and Conservative Party member. He blogs at A Very British Dude.
35 comments:
Conservative education policy is especially radical in allowing new schools to be set up funded by, but not run by the state.
In USA some such schools are now closing, with no regard for their teachers and pupils, because the business of running a school has increasingly become less profitable. A state funded but privately run school is a business enterprise first and an educational institution second. What else must we surrender to the laws of the market?
New Zealand's experiment with this is perhaps the most successful. The voucher programmes were never universal in the USA, where they are, the results can be remarkable. Sure some schools close, but in what way is a massive, intrusive bureaucracy better than a market at improving standards?
State education in the UK is crap, because the state is institutionally useless at delivering services.
I was going to write exactly what A Sane Person said above, but pipped at the post I was.
I find the angle of this article quite susprising, almost delusional. The writer convinced himself that the Tories are the best option for "a libertarian". The Tories!!!? The Tories!!!?
The party of the draconian Criminal Justice Bill 1994 (talk about erosion of liberties).
The party with a mammoth history of discriminating against sexual minorities.
The party of Ann Widdecombe and hang the ganja smoker.
The party where a shadow chancellor implied pregnant teenage girls should be prosecuted.
The party in favour of repealing the Human Rights Act.
The party that banged the drums of an illegal war even louder than Tony Blair and his henchmen.
The party of "back to basics". The party that tried to introduce more restrictions on abortion as recent as May 2008.
The party of even greater stop-and-
search powers to the police.
The party where MPs suggest teachers be given power to stop and search pupils for violent video games.
The party in favour of tampering with the tax system in order to discriminate between different types of family, some inferior and some superior.
Shall I continue or is that enough?
Note that I don't think all of the above proposals are wrong. Just spare us the bull that the Tories are the absolute champions of civil liberties.
Which is why I say "the tories are not libertarian", and I accept the presense of a large socially conservative element. All parties are coalitions.
Section 28
HRA: The leftist conception of Human rights is very different to the Libertarian conception of rights. The human rights act will be replaced by a more appropriate bill of rights.
Labour have been savagely illiberal. There is much in the tories agenda for a libertarian to like, if you can set aside the anne widicombe stereotype.
Not all Tories want to eat babies.
I don't need to specify that I'm not a Tory, but it's true that in the last five years Labour have proven far more illiberal than the Conservatives.
A few things on top of my mind. The smoking ban, rendition flights, but particularly "42 days without charge".
42-day detention will remain etched in history as one of New Labour's most abhorrent products. To be fair to them, the Tories opposed it.
That said, I agree that the Conservatives' approach to personal liberties is hit and miss to say the least.
Sure some schools close, but in what way is a massive, intrusive bureaucracy better than a market at improving standards?
At least the massive, intrusive bureaucracy won't abandon hundreds of pupils and teachers when the business of education becomes not profitable enough. (That's sure to improve standards.) Seriously, how bad are we as a fucking society when we cannot find better ways of dealing with problems in education than turning pupils into consumers and education into a commodity that has no intrinsic value unless it's profitable?
The tired leftist objection to "profit".
It's not about profit, indeed profit making companies are specifically excluded, at least at first. It's about giving power and choice (in its condensed and fungible form, money) directly to parents, rather than having some LEA (or whatever they're called these days) bureaucrat tell you that you've got to send your kids to the crap school rather than the good one.
Some poor schools will close. Many more will open.
I suspect this will be so popular that no Labour govt (if there is another) will ever dare repeal the system.
I want to know what the Tories' plans on immigration are.
If there is one thing this series has highlighted so far it's the mainstream parties' complete inadequacy at stemming the tide of mass migration into Great Britain,the UKIP being a partial exception, and obviously the BNP though the BNP were denied a fair hearing.
UKIP though are a one-issue only group.WHat are the Tories gonna do about too many people coming into this country to live without contributing?.
What are the Tories gonna do about foreign criminals? Would they deport them?
Claude, can;t you stop this nonsense where all the patriot does is show himself up to be racist, immigration obsessed bigot.
By all means give him enough rope to hang himself but that was done long ago.
Also, what confuses me, is why a twat like him, so different in political outlook to this blog, wastes his time here?
"Also, what confuses me, is why a twat like him, so different in political outlook to this blog, wastes his time here?"
That doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Look at Liberal Conspiracy. I'd say the ratio of commenters there is 2:1 far right vs centre-left.
A few months ago here ran that piece about the BNP endorsing Melanie Phillips and it became a magnet for some real twats. And also the series on immigration myths which got spammed alright.
For some people like patriot, immigration is literally an obsession.
Jackart:
Not all Tories want to eat babies.
Of course. But let me just point something out.
The Tory press, MPs and people such as David Starkey, the affected freak of nature dressed up as 'historian' (as he spoke on Dimbleby's question time recently), have been going on about strikes and industrial unrest as the by-product of Labour governments, evoking the dark days of 1978-79 and the Winter of Discontent.
But the blinkers there are just from another world!
Under a Tory government we'd have many more strikes and also more bitter ones.
The strikes that took place under the Glorious Days of Thatcherism were the biggest in history and I'm not just talking about the huge miners'strike of 1984-85.
Think of the Steelworkers in 1980, Orgeave, the Wapping dispute of 1986, the Air Strikes under Major, the Liverpool dockers in the '90s, etc...
The average annual number of days lost through industrial disputes during the 1980s was seven million.
The annual number never exceeded one million during 13 years of Labour.
Tory Governments are traditionally more socially confrontational, which automatically increase the odds of prolonged industrial unrest and disputes.
Labour should say that loud and clear in the run-up to the election.
Jackart- I won't contest this in general- 'choice -in its condensed and fungible form, money'- but just point out that some parent's will not get the school of their choice, just as now, but it will come down to money, rather than a 'bureaucrat', that decides this. This doesn't strike me as more fair, in fact, rather less fair.
@ Stan Moss:
"The party of the draconian Criminal Justice Bill 1994 (talk about erosion of liberties).
The party with a mammoth history of discriminating against sexual minorities."
As opposed to the government that discriminates against majorities. And for the record, the bill wanted to include 'anal rape' as rape; who would want to oppose that addition? Well the answer is in the voting details of the 'age of consent' for homosexuals being dropped from 21 to 18, the Tories wanted to make it 16, so equal to heterosexuals. This amendment was defeated by Labour opponents. So it's OK to legislate heterosexual activity as rape, but not sodomy; cui bono!?
"The party of Ann Widdecombe and hang the ganja smoker."
As opposed to the government of Harriet Harman: throw out the Wightman's job applications; only women and minorities can join Lehman Sisters.
"The party where a shadow chancellor implied pregnant teenage girls should be prosecuted."
As opposed to the government that is throwing teenage boys in prison for 'loving' said teenage girls. Technically the lad at 13 who fathers a child with a girl of 15, is a rapist, thence she is a 'victim'.
"The party in favour of repealing the Human Rights Act."
As opposed to the government, that is actually bulldozing the Human Rights Act.
"The party that banged the drums of an illegal war even louder than Tony Blair and his henchmen."
As opposed to the government of Tony Blair and his henchmen, that had exclusive access to the real intelligence, but chose to hide it from the drum beaters.
"The party of "back to basics". The party that tried to introduce more restrictions on abortion as recent as May 2008."
As opposed to the government, which funds a legion of quangos, hell bent on dragging the nation back to the middle ages, via a bureaucratic feudal system. Their main obstacle being fathers and the family, so the government hoists the didache of abortion, as an exemplum against the 'evil patriarchy': Harriet Harman wants you to bleed and flush for ZanuLabours glorious utopian paradise.
"The party of even greater stop-and-search powers to the police."
As opposed to the government of presumed guilt for 42 days if you are a photographer/blogger/terrorist; and indefinitely if you had a bad shag with a feminist...
"The party where MPs suggest teachers be given power to stop and search pupils for violent video games."
As opposed to the government that gives pupils the power to stop teaching.
"The party in favour of tampering with the tax system in order to discriminate between different types of family, some inferior and some superior."
As opposed to the government whose raison d'etre, is the tax system.
"Shall I continue or is that enough?"
"You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"
Right.
How anyone thinks that Some parents will be "abandoned" by a voucher system is beyond me.
It is parents who are forced to send their kids to a failing school AT PRESENT who are abandoned. Vouchers give these people in particular a route to a better eductaion for their children.
The whinge about "profit" is just leftist cant, and in any case, the profit motive is specifically (and in my view, wrongly) excluded by tory plans.
As for immigration, I neither know nor care about Tory plans to limit immigration, as I believe borders to be an affront to human dignity. Bones have to be thrown to the section of the population who put this issue at the top of the list, but it is an ecomomic pull, caused by a badly designed welfare state that causes Britain's problems with immigration. Sort that out, and you sort the problem.
Getting some control Immigration will be an added bonus to the well-though-out tory plans on welfare, whatever pointless policies the Tories put out under this banner in the election.
Wouldn't you say, Jimmy Giro, that it's possible to be sceptical of what the Tories offer without being Labour?
I slag Labour off regularly. But I suspect that I'll be opposing a Cameron government from day 1, too. This is really why I have got myself involved more in non-partisan campaigns on issues, rather than trying to get anyone in particular elected when I think they are cunts. (& this isn't a statement of ignorance, I research every candidate put before me, paying special attention to their own statements, & while I usually manage to vote it's always with reluctance & I sometimes stay at home in disgust).
Whatever Stan Moss's views may be, being critical of Tories does NOT necessarily make someone a hardcore Labourite.
Though speaking for myself, I do attack Brown more than Cameron because I think it's obvious that we have a shite government, & however bad the government are it isn't David Cameron (or Nick Griffin) who is sitting there in Westminster ramming through these shite policies.
I have heard tell of a book called "Back from the Brink" by Peter Snowdon which deals with the recent Tory revival. I can't really afford to buy any books for a bit, but next time I nip down to the library I will have a look for it, & it may be worth a thought for those who want to know about the possible new rulers.
Jimmy Giro,
hyperbole and the predictable crack at Harriet Harman's expense and a dig at minorities won't hide the fact that your comment was full of inaccuracies.
As for the age of consent, I'm just speechless.
The Tories "wanted to make it 16 equals to heterosexuals"? Yeah? And there's pigs flying, right?
Either you are lying or you are supremely ignorant. Or both.
It's out there. It's on the records that Tory peers, led by Baroness Young, repeatedly voted down Labour proposals for an equal age of consent.
Read this. It's a short article. See how you can split hairs after reading it.
What you gonna tell us next? That the BNP have been fighting all along to defeat racism and that Thatcher was the biggest supporter of the trade unions? Or that Jeremy Clarkson is warning against global warming?
Do us a favour and don't clog up the net by taking useless bandwith.
@ asquith,
Sure.
@ Stan Moss,
There is a reason why 'digs at HH' are predictable... can you guess?
As for the rest of your challenge:
Wiki
"Part XI dealt with sexual offences. The definition of rape was extended to include anal rape.
Further, the age at which homosexual acts were lawful was reduced from twenty-one years to eighteen. During the passage of the Bill, MPs considered an amendment to reduce this age to sixteen (thereby equating it with the age of consent for heterosexual sex) but the motion was rejected by twenty-seven votes[1][2]. Analysis of the division list revealed that forty-two Conservative MPs had supported equalisation, and the motion would have carried but for the opposing votes of thirty-eight Labour MPs. The dissenting Labour Members were: Donald Anderson, Joe Ashton, Joe Benton, Stuart Bell, Gerry Bermingham, David Blunkett, Jim Callaghan, Dale Campbell-Savours, Jamie Cann, Eric Clarke, Bob Cryer, Lawrence Cunliffe, Denzil Davies, Don Dixon, Jimmy Dunnachie, Ken Eastham, John Evans, Derek Foster, Llin Golding, Win Griffiths, Roy Hughes, Barry Jones, Calum MacDonald, David Marshall, Michael Martin, George Mudie, Bill O'Brien, Stanley Orme, Robert Parry, Terry Patchett, Ray Powell, Martin Redmond, Ted Rowlands, Nigel Spearing, Ann Taylor, Jack Thompson, Bob Wareing and Tony Wright."
@ Stan Moss
And from your link:
"Executive director Angela Mason said: "An equal age of consent is just and fair. The House of Commons and the majority of professional medical, legal and childcare opinion support it."
Where does the government get its childcare opinions from, the Vatican?
The schools policy has also been successful in the Netherlands and socialist paradise Sweden . I think calling it a profit driven enterprise ( and therefore especially imbued with human selfishness ?) is childishly jaundiced . Some schools might have such an ethos but there is a wide spectrum of motives in organisations outside the State all of which have to be funded
Churches in some sense compete for congregations it would be rather ridiculous to call them profit motivated , charities , fall into this spectrum and this was of course the main source of education in this country at one time .Prior to the Nationalisation of schooling there was not a remorseless profit motive
It is a danger but away from utopian dreams of the young a lesser danger than that d posed by an aggressively unionised state monopoly . Where self started schools have really had an impact is in poor and urban areas where the rich and middling sort their own children away . The risible list of excuses from Inner-city Labour Mps is a chortesome testimony to the hypocrisy of this subject .
Those of you who from doctrinal or self interested motivated wish to preserve the status quo do so chiefly at a cost to those with least chances in a society where social mobility has all but ended so be careful about getting to comfy of your pillow of sanctimony . Where has the ‘Throw money at it and hope’ policy got us ,. It has got is to the edge of a debt cliff and when we fall off it you can guess who will suffer most
I like Jackarts piece but I would like to see him emphasise that to Conservatives freedom of choice and freedom to act does not mean a liking for heartless behaviour . I believe the care a parent has for their child is stronger push for improvement than the self serving care a bureaucrat has for their job.
Jimmy Giro really finds it difficult to grasp. And yet it's quite straightforward.
This was the Commons composition in 1992.
Conservative MPs: 376 seats.
Labour MPs: 229 seats.
Now, Jimmy Giro says that the amendment in favour of an equal age of consent in the 1994 Criminal Justice Bill was the fault of Labour. Is that the case?
Let's check this out.
42 out of 376 Tory MPs only wanted an equal age of consent so you can hardly say the Tories as a party were pro-equal age of consent.
38 out of 229 Labour MPs were against an equal age of consent so you can hardly say "Labour was against".
To clairify, 334 vs 42 Tory MPs didn't want an equal age of consent while 191 vs 38 Labour MPs were in favour.
To any human, that would read like the Tories were overwhelmingly against it barring a minority, Labour were overwhelmingly pro barring a minority.
Not to Jimmy Giro.
He says, and I quote, "the Tories wanted to make it 16, so equal to heterosexuals. This amendment was defeated by Labour opponents."
So basically, whatever hard stuff it is that he's on, in his opinion Labour were the ones to blame for the motion being rejected.
Can you see why your position is absurd, Jimmy Giro? Please tell me that you can.
Looking over the rest of the comments here, many of which are really good actually, I would add a couple of bits .
It is difficult to argue that Conservatives were not “conservative” in the face of changing attitudes to homosexuality that is the vice of Conservatism . It is the vice of the socialist and the Neo Liberal to imagine that those institutions that have evolved have no value , and their year zero idea will have predictable and good consequences .I don’t think we need argue that every single change resisted was the right call . Taken overall though it was British Conservatism that saved this country from resembling East Germany . If only New Labour had stuck to Conservative spending plans as they originally did . never has the philosophy of sceptical caution been so amply vindicated
Here is where I do not agree with Jackart . He says “… I believe borders to be an affront to human dignity. Bones have to be thrown to the section of the population who put this issue at the top of the list,”….
Bones to the mangy curs eh …Speaking in cur-ese I notice he much in common here with the proponents of world Communism ,the global governance that has crept into being and the view that human loyalties are always ignorant because they are not scientific and rational in the 18th Century sense
A Conservative view would be that the nation is an expression of mutual ties that start from family and extend out to an imagined community who evolve ways of talking to each other . This is expressed in institutions which encode evolved responses and real experience. The image would be garden in which good growth is encouraged and bad discouraged but not the agri-industrial homogeneity of socialism or the wilderness of the Libertarian . It’s a balance and if the market is a powerful tool then so is a Combine Harvester , . It can be a bit over-powering for use on your carefully cultivated lawn though.
(I would be interested to know what Jack art thinks the right unit of government ought to be if it is not to be the Nation ?The EU ?)
Does he think that if all laws and customs were removed we would be free ? In fact we would be slaves . The difference between a Conservative and a Libertarian is this given a Piano a Conservative would like you to learn to play it in a traditional way according to customary disciplines . A Libertarian would be as happy for you to defecate on it .
I would argue that there is something more to freedom than the absence of rules and that Chopin may have been free-er piano-wise than a screeching yahoo atop recently emerded ivories .
Jackart also makes some tremendously good points that are so obviously right its confuses me that they need discussing
OK jackart,
Now I don't really care whether, in some respects, schools are run directly by the state, or by other bodies, broadly organised by the state, or local govt.
But the school voucher system you propose really seems like a white elephant as far as anything except a dogmatic attack on state education is concerned.
Unless you have thousands of half empty schoools, you will always have people who fail to get their kids into the school of their choice- private sector choice (as opposed to competition itself) is based on spare capacity.
So this scheme will largely benefit those whose parents are most concerned to get their kids into certain schools , in other words, the kids who will do best anyway. A Tory scheme that benefits the already better off- sounds familiar.
As for your rather feeble attack on the left's 'phobia' of profit- this rather misses the point. There a good reason to object to private enterprise running education (and other sectors). Firstly, the market fails, regularly. Now if your favourite restaurant closes, bit of a downer. If your school (or hospital etc) closes, it can wreck your education (and thereby your life chances)- simply, some things are too important to leave to the market- meaning the state to bail out failure, which would presumably distort the wonderful efficiencies and incentives of the market which proof so attractive to you in the first place.
More importantly, some on the left as A Sane Person states, object to the intrusion of the market into every aspect of our lifes. We don't find market led-values of competition, greed and self-interest to be healthy or attractive values upon which to base our society, and want to mark off some important areas from these values.
Anyway, ignore the fact that I don't remotely agree with you, thanks for a good piece.
But the market IS freedom, because the alternative is STATE PLANNING which cannot lead to freedom.
Markets generally fail most egregiously when states intrude and before anyone says "BANKS" the idea that banks were unregulated is ridiculous. Indeed the regulation and implicit guarantees underwrote recklessness.
An aside. I made the point about borders. I take the libertarian view that free movement of people is desirable. Thus the EU has one tangible benefit. The immigration problem we have is a result of a badly designed welfare state. You can no more stop illegal economic migrants crossing borders than you can drugs for the same reasons. There is no point trying. It would be better to change the incentives for migrants. For my part, I would roll out the welcome mat, but say "no benefits till you've paid tax and NI for 5 years". Bingo: the genuinely opressed can still come. Those who want to milk the system bugger off somewhere more amenable.
Simples.
Borders are only really 100 years old or so. We did fine without passports before WW1.
@ Stan Moss
I think the problem of communication stems from the difference between:
1. Freedom of sodomy.
2. Licence to rape.
The young who are 16, are legally regarded as children. There is a difference of allowing their freedom of sodomy, compared to allowing licence of sodomites acceptable access to 16 year old 'children'.
Please tell me, or the police, that you can see the difference.
Ceri the state also fails but what has actually been found is that a small amount of choice for all ( as opposed to only the rich as you propose ), quickly drags up the state sector
Like any monopoly market even a small market share outside its control has a large effect.
The argument of 'duplication' you make is a sad reminder of the endless Marxist tracts about the waste of 'advertising'. It is cost true but the net gain is huge over time
Claude you keep repeating your pro immigration case as if it was an agreed fact but it is not. You utterly misrepresnted the data and I think frankly I demonstrated that to be the case
"That is a lie. Plain and simple. It's false...."
No it is not .You have not even tried to stop up the the hole in your attempt to normalise what is not normal.The truly comparable countries , Holland and France are a great deal more excited than we are
Newmania,
you're so anxious to talk about immigration that you got the wrong thread!
I made the point about borders. I take the libertarian view that free movement of people is desirable.
Ha ! When I freely move into your comfy chair and help myself to your Sweet Sherry and Wotsits I expect you will find that freedom has its limits
A country is a home in some sense a thousand invisible ties , language history allegiance and memory . Perhaps this is irrational but then so is a disinclination to eat your relatives rather than gathering in tearful groups at the graveside.
As for the free movement of peoples well thats lovely until they are freely putting you out of work . Labour does not move freely I think you are a bit one size fits all on this although movement of resources and free trade is obviously a worthy objective
The immigration problem is to do with wealth not welfare, immigrants work more, not less, than the indigenous ..Ahem …I suggest a truly sensitive understanding of the bloody and territorial history of , say , Europe will reveal the surprising fact that there were borders … Psssst ..people got quite cross about them
Claude on this thread you wrote .....
...And also the series on immigration myths which got spammed alright........ With link
Clearly you find your own comments so thrilling that you forget then five minutes later. You may have a point excoooooose me for engaging .
The privately run schools are sucessful in Sweden, but so are the state run schools, because Sweden is a strong socialist state which invests in the preservation of public goods. But this proposition is nothing but a way to further deepen the divide between failing schools and successful schools, instead of doing the opposite, which is fixing the education system. It does nothing to address why schools are failing, and without doing that, it doesn't guarantee that privately run schools will not also fail. What's the point of it then, except that they will provide a handy way of transfering public funds into private hands?
Newmania:
"Clearly you find your own comments so thrilling that you forget then five minutes later. You may have a point excoooooose me for engaging ."
Yes, engage away, no probs, but your reply of 12:01AM referred completely to stuff from another thread. You even quote something I said there. How are other people supposed to follow? It gets even more confusing than it already is.
Now, back to other points (because there are other things in life other than immigration), A Sane Person is right.
The comparison with Sweden is flimsy, because society there is organised in a totally different matter. You can't just take the one aspect that you like and export it without taking into account the world it comes from.
It's like the debate about the minimum wage. Some people would say "but in Sweden and Denmark they don't have it". Well they don't (which is not fully true anyway- they sort of do), because the wage structure is organised in a completelydifferent manner from our own, hence they don't need it.
The comparison with Sweden is flimsy, because society there is organised in a totally different matter. You can't just take the one aspect that you like and export it without taking into account the world it comes from.
Yes it is, enormously wealthy due to industry built by ferocious capitalism and judiciously amoral foreign policy . Fabulously spacious awash with resources and catering for only EU commuting rather than immigration able to take draconian measures to control its deficit and with a less redistributive tax code than ours . I should explain that much tax is recycled and is called a transfer. I pay for education and then I use the system, this does not redistribute . health spending is almost entirely a transfer .Sweden redistributes less than the UK
Swedish people start out more equal, a position which predates socialism.
So yes ,stop yanking a historically contrasting country and telling us that their way of living will work here , can we have that written in blood please and with it an undertaking never to use the phrase “In line with the EU” ever again ?
There is a cultural element here as well . Swedes are dull milch cows and like taking orders .In one day they changed the side of the road they drive on , imagine that here , imagine it in Italy ? No-one wants to go to Sweden
That said there is no need to entirely discard every idea they have and this is a good one .I find it hard to believe that the collective minds here are content to let tracts of the population get herded into pre prison despite torrents of money wasted . That`s it then .... stay as we are ? Have you absolutely no conscience about the waste of human potential or is it just that the Unions won`t have it ?
Newmania. You ignorant Little Englander.
"No-one wants to go to Sweden" and
"catering for only EU commuting rather than immigration"
What is stunning though, Newmania, is the fact that nowadays information is a couple of clicks away. Yet you don't think for a moment whether the drivel you type up is correct or not.
You obviously think that Sweden is just lots of tall blonde people (and maybe that all Greeks have a moustache). A cold country where no-one goes were it not for business trips or maybe football matches.
Instead:
As of 2008, 18% of the population had foreign origins, with 14% foreign-born and another 4% born in Sweden of two foreign-born parents.
Annual net-migration is around 70,000 people out of a population of just over 9m.
If that was proportional to UK numbers, it would mean an equivalent of 500,000 net migrants into Britain each year.
Sweden also has a history of providing a home for refuges around the world, especially those fleeing wars and persecution. Since the 1990s for instance they took large numbers of people from the ex-Yugoslavia or the Middle-East.
But Newmania has decided. A swiping statement: "No-one wants to go to Sweden".
Staggering, staggering ignorance.
Your patience and tolerance and in turn, allowing a forum to this racist Newmania shows you to be a man of greater moral fibre than I.
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