Slow news day, eh?

Not quite up to the big leagues yet.

But maybe someday soon you'll be playing the might that is Crawley Town in the Conference proper!

Good luck trying anyway

I saw your comment on my site, thanks for that.

Here are my responses to your comment:

"taxes have gone up yes, but conservatives would cut taxes and make public services worse than they already are"

This is actually incorrect. The £35 billion cut is not understood so well, I find. The £35 billion is not cuts to current rates of spending on services, but is a policy which will *increase spending on services* but at a rate of £35 billion less, than labour. Therefore, things will be running as they have been for the past few years, with improvements, but not to the extent that labour proposes. This remaining £35 billion will be used as a tax break.

This basically means that Conservatives will spend money on services, AND give us tax breaks, without reducing anything at all.

Therefore your argument is a total red herring.

"conservative policies are racist"

I disagree here, if you're refering to the immigration policies. In fact, it's labour who have pledged to reduce the number of asylum seekers. Although I believe this to be empty arguments: they have not committed to a number yet.

Anyway, the Conservatives (& UKIP) is committed to reducing numbers of immigrants too. This is hardly racist. It is simply a case of ratios between public service&benefits to people living in the UK. It is not possible to maintain good services such as the NHS whilst at the current rate of immigration. There is no doubt that immigration laws need to be tightened, the whole thing is a joke. People are coming to the UK to take advantage of the NHS and various other free services. Where else in the world do people get such things as free council housing, free health service, child benefits, unemployment benefit? Nowhere. The UK is being exploited. It is time to redress the situation. By doing so, it does not make Britain a racist nation. Racism would be "anti" a certain group of people, or all groups of people who aren't British. I.e. the reason for banning immigration would be "because youre not british" rather than "we cannot cope with it" which is the current case. Immigration laws are not against others, but protection for the brits.

"but the basics [of Old Labour policies] are still there"
I'm afraid this is not so. Labour are only slightly left of Conservative. This is a big jump: whereas now they are left of the right, they used to be slightly right of the left!!

They have ditched many of their basic policies, such as the redistribution of wealth and their fabian policies. They have basically cut links with the Unions - it was initially the unions who funded the labour party, so they had a lot of political say within it. That all changed in 1997. Tony Blair made it all "go away" somehow. I'm not sure what he's done, but he's altered something there, which, i suppose, it why we dont see any major union influence on the labour party.

Anyway, it was the ditching of these policies - such as the fabian ones - which causes labour to be left of the right.

"low turnout of 2001 may have been because people were happy how things were if people were really distressed about the situation surely they would want change"
That's a clever argument, but that's not how this political system works. Whereas your theory would have been more apt in the 1830's, prior to the Reformation Bills (1832, onwards to 1911), it doesn't work in modern politics. Prior to the reformation bills, there was no actual need to
actively gain support of voters, for someone to stay in power. That all changed.

These days, voters vote to support and strengthen their party: if they were happy with things, they would still vote labour, as to strengthen their numbers and gain more of a majority in parliament, thereby making a stronger gov't. If they were not happy with labour, they would vote conservative, thereby creating a stronger opposition - even a majority opposition - to keep labour in check. The fact that both labour and conservative supporters didn't vote, was not because they were happy with things the way they were, but because they were disillusioned. And the same is true for this years elections. The hardest thing for politicians is to get people - not first time voters, but your parents, say - to vote at all (I hope i've explained the impossibility of your argument well enough here, if not, just say and i'll elucidate more).

"but they are not yet fit to run a country"
I find this to be a faux-pas argument. Some of the world's strongest and greatest political parties came to power without even having any guidlines. Roosvelt's administration in america drew up the implementation of their policies in the first 100 days when they came to power. The nazis were elected on the basis that they would reduce unemployment - the slogan was "work and bread" - but they had no actual policy. All they had was a slogan.

Liberal Democrats have had good governments in the past, my favourite of which was under Lord Asquith in the early 1900's. Of course, they were the official opposition to the Conservative party until the rise of labour. It was a liberal democrat gov't who introduced many of those reform bills i spoke about before (they were known as the "Whigs" back then).

Therefore, to say they have never run a gov't before is untrue. They are also the only party which has remained almost totally stagnant in their political views, unlike labour.

To say they are currently incapable of running government is true, yet issues of party organisation will be ironed out very quickly if they did actually gain power. If it didn't, there'd be little problems: the gov't would simply resign, and we'd re-elect someone else. Or the Queen would appoint a national gov't, which would probably be the best thing, imho :p

Anyway, one reason why they are not ready for gov't is because people have been dismissing them for the past 70-odd years.

I don't agree with their policies, otherwise i'd be tempted to vote for them.

Anyway, I hope this has helped somewhat. Sorry it's so long.