British Government!

[Althorianos]

Okay,so I need to know other people's opinion on this. I am a strong supporter of The Conservative Party in Britain and I would like to know who YOU support, Be it Labour,Conservatives,Lib Dems or BNP! Have your say here (F.Y.I Torries and Conservatives are the same people)

[Kaylaneh]

Eh? That's an interesting topic. Well I voted on the Dutch Socialist Party which is like the Labour party in Britain but a bit more extreme. But..explaining Dutch politics will make your head spin, really.

[Aldrannath]

Hahaaa! Fun idea. Okay.

I haven't lived in Britain for about ten years, but for what it's worth I (still) consider myself a Lib Dem. Labour have been awful in so many ways it's not worth enumerating them, but (unlike Althorianos) I still vividly remember the last Conservative government, which - get this - was WORSE. Seriously. WORSE. The Tories have certainly changed a lot, but judging by their policies (as well as by the rhetoric if you read between the lines) they are still the party of rich people who think the poor should benefit less from their taxes.

Living in Belgium, I seem to spend two thirds of any political discussion arguing in favour of capitalism and pointing out how horribly unfair socialism is, but honestly I think Britain goes too far in the other direction. In my view, if you want a good example of how a liberal and democratic market economy should be run, check out the Scandinavian countries - and the Netherlands.

[Caranir Elmheart]

I didn't vote in the recent council elections but I intend to vote Tory in the general election next year, pending any dramatic developments of course. I'm too young to really remember a government before Blair's New Labour, so I don't have much of a yardstick to compare a government against.

I strongly believe that a government's only domestic agenda is in upholding the rights of people and businesses in the UK. I believe people are generally responsible enough to spend their own money in the best way possible for themselves, a government is not needed to take their money in taxes and spend it inefficiently on their behalf. I think that the Conservative party is the closest mainstream choice that reflects this belief.

That said, I don't have much hope that the next government will cut taxes at all. Not only will they inherit a huge bundle of debt to deal with, they also probably won't be in a strong enough position to cut government spending with the job losses and unpopularity that always entails.

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy."

[Aldrannath]

Nov 4, 2009 22:54:30 GMT 1 Caranir Elmheart said:

I strongly believe that a government's only domestic agenda is in upholding the rights of people and businesses in the UK. I believe people are generally responsible enough to spend their own money in the best way possible for themselves, a government is not needed to take their money in taxes and spend it inefficiently on their behalf.

Gosh, wow, hardcore libertarian much? ;D

I open the floor to my honourable guildmates, some of whom may also feel that this view deserves challenging. Discuss, devour, rend limb from limb.

[Kaylaneh]

Heh, Caliyen's the complete opposite from me. ^^ I think a government needs to care for its people, and the taxes are a good way to finance that. That said, the UK doesn't have a 50% tax rate in comparison to the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. So its not that bad yet for you

I believe people are generally responsible enough to spend their own money in the best way possible for themselves, a government is not needed to take their money in taxes and spend it inefficiently on their behalf.

Enter the 19th century factory boss who likes to kick workers at the earliest opportunity. If there weren't taxes, there wouldn't be an out-of-work payout. That would harm the economy faaar worse than some high taxes

And to point out how red I actually am, Communism isn't bad. Its the people that abused Communism that made it bad. Though I wouldn't like a total Communism country, some parts in combination with a liberal policy would actually be really good. I do know that the major problem of this system is the fact its prone to abuse, which is a really severe problem in my country. NOTE: I'm not referring to mister Stalin's policy who butchered millions of people and completely outlawed any form of faith. He was a complete goof ball.

[Caranir Elmheart]

Nov 5, 2009 0:11:45 GMT 1 Kaylaneh said:

Enter the 19th century factory boss who likes to kick workers at the earliest opportunity. If there weren't taxes, there wouldn't be an out-of-work payout. That would harm the economy faaar worse than some high taxes

I know this is a bit of a crass answer, but if there wasn't a 50% tax levied on you while you worked then you'd have more money to save for contingencies such as losing a job.

I'm not totally for the removal of benefits, especially for those who are incapable of working, but I think there are other ways governments can help in the situation you mentioned than just throwing money at people. They can (and do) protect workers from unnecessary job losses through legal systems and they create (at least in the UK) an atmosphere where businesses find it very difficult to just terminate workers abruptly, they are obliged to compensate them.

[Farel Forestclaw]

British or dutch, gosh i am danish / swedish and still on no side an goverment should care for its people agreed, but not be too nice to the people as i think the teenagers needs to respect them more then now ( and yeah i am an teenager of an kind so i should know! *coughs* ) and thirdly, i can't vote, yet

[Salabadon Starfire]

Wooh danish! *cheers*

And about taxes.. Taxes in Denmark are VERY high, but at least the money are spent on stuff we get free.. Medical care and insurances. Free schools, roads and whatever we got. That's good :3

[Farel Forestclaw]

haha! xD well in sweden the taxes ain't that high i think ^.- well my parents ain't complaining, only when i spend too much money on stupid things xD but hey thats life, and well, it is my own money as i kinda work ^.- but yeah, Denmark is alot more expensive at some things where Sweden is extremely cheap, or something

[Aldrannath]

Okay, now I've had time to chew on this, and with a couple of hours in the plane yesterday and not much to do except mess around on my laptop, I felt like writing a proper response. Is logorrhea a condition I should worry about?

On reflection, a formula like "the government's job is to protect the rights of its citizens" is actually something I can live with; the crunch comes when we start discussing what those rights really are. In my view, education, health care, adequate shelter and adequate food are "rights" that wealthy countries (like the UK) should guarantee for all their citizens - indeed, for all their denizens, but that's another story. So I can say pretty much exactly the same words - but for me that means voting Lib Dem.

I don't know, of course, how far you feel you would take the whole libertarian thing. Do you believe that education should be available to children only insofar as their parents can afford to pay for it? That children's welfare in general should be entirely subject to their parents' wealth? I suppose probably not. And I suppose I needn't go into what might happen to the elderly and bereaved, the disabled, orphans, or just plain ordinary, unskilled, unlucky working people, if the government renounced responsibility for ensuring their well-being.

Ethical considerations aside, there's even an economic argument for this approach; the long-term economic costs of severe and widespread poverty, and (most especially) of poor education, are *far greater* than the cost of welfare and education, in an otherwise relatively well-governed society. It is actually cheaper to keep poor and unemployed people fed and sheltered, than it is to handle the cost of the crime and other problems that inevitably arise if they are truly desperate. Welfare isn't free, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than prison. Of course, actual anarchy is a low-tax solution, but then armed self-defence and vigilante justice are quite expensive too - and I suppose you're not advocating that, either. Equally, and even more significantly, if everybody is reasonably well educated, that makes the whole economy richer in the long run, meaning more prosperity for everybody (including the rich). As such, high quality state-funded education is actually an excellent long-term investment.

As for efficiency, it is often but not always true that the market is more efficient than the government as a provider of services. To take one topical and very striking example, the British National Health Service, which is undeniably about as "socialist" as it could be, is much more effective, and *several times cheaper*, than the misregulated mess of a market that passes for a healthcare system in the US. And despite what the US Republicans have been screaming, the NHS doesn't even prevent the rich from getting private health insurance if they want to pay for gold-plated medical service-on-demand, just as they do in the US.

Actually, making the market work well is not simply about intervening/regulating as little as possible, but about intervening/regulating *intelligently*. To take another example that's topical in Brussels at the moment (although you wouldn't know it from the British press, who seem to think Telecoms regulation is all about what the British government decides), telecoms have to be very carefully regulated to ensure an open and competitive market. Of the big EU countries, the telecoms industry in the UK is the *most* regulated - but the regulation is pretty smart, and as a consequence the British telecoms industry is also the most competitive, the most advanced, and broadly speaking the best in terms of value for the consumer. By contrast, the German telecoms industry is the least regulated and the least developed, because Deutsche Telecom are able to use their dominant position to stifle competition and avoid the expensive investment and restructuring that is actually needed for customers to receive a high-quality and efficient service. In the end the disparity will become so obvious that people will want change, the German government will *have* to liberalise (i.e. in this case, regulate properly), and then the British companies who've had the chance to figure out what actually works well will take over the German telecoms market. That's why the German government's policy is bad, even for Deutsche Telecom; in the short term they get to be lazy, but in the long term they're doomed to be overtaken by companies who've had to deal with a tougher environment and have become more efficient as a consequence.

As for Communism, I think it's a system doomed to fail in the long run, and not only because some people are assholes. For communism to really work, it not only requires everybody to work to the best of their ability without having any meaningful incentive to do so, it also requires central economic planners blessed with near-divine powers of insight, foresight and oversight. The market isn't a solution for every problem, but it does of itself provide constantly-updating, vitally important and enormously complex information about the relative value of goods and services, which communist planners have to figure out all by themselves. As a result, with economic and technological change over time, a communist system is doomed to become dreadfully inefficient in comparison with a capitalist one. Now, you might say, China is doing pretty well for itself economically, but as George Bernard Shaw didn't quite say, the parts of their system that are good are not communist, and the parts that are communist are not good. They *have* been very clever about handling the gradual transition to a market economy, unlike of course Russia, whose government at that time created a godawful mess. As for human rights and such, well, hm, let's hope that improvements in prosperity and education, and the growth of private enterprise, will lead to more domestic pressure for democratisation in the long run. China has already come an astoundingly long way in this respect since the '50s.

Of course, it's very attractive to have a system where everyone is guaranteed the basic necessities of life, but e.g. Finland or Norway demonstrate that this can be achieved much more efficiently and successfully in a market economy if the political will and intelligence is there. Finland is also a nice example of smart, proactive government leading to economic success; they have a high rate of tax, a high rate of social and economic welfare, excellent and universal state-funded education, and more or less THE most competitive and productive economy in the world, basically however you measure it. Tories like to talk about Euro-stagnation, which of course has been a problem in e.g. Germany or Belgium - but they avoid mentioning Nordic countries, which the Lib Dems (quite rightly in my view) take as a model of good economic management.

[Aldrannath]

By way of a footnote, I liked this campaign:

hang-em.com/

Are any of you going to join me in voting for a hung parliament?

[Caranir Elmheart]

Edit: Ironically, if Hang'em is about shaking up the system, the candidate it's telling me to vote for in Bath is the Lib Dem MP who's represented the constituency for 18 years already.

Political renewal has got to be a good idea, but I don't see a hung parliament bringing it about. Plus, a hung parliament with no majority party OR the labour/lib-dem coalition alternative is surely going to lack any resolve to take action on the budget deficit, leaving it even worse for the NEXT government, which is about when I'll start paying tax.

On another note, I really like the 'big society, small government' theme that the Tory campaign has shifted toward now, if only because it actually highlights the difference between the parties instead of the usual quibbling over small details they usually engage in. I'm sick of stupid "tax on jobs" soundbites from Cameron now though, I'm starting to like Clegg just for the fact that you hear his voice a lot less!

[Vaelitha Skysong]

Hmm... Politics... *falls asleep*

Yeh, I couldn't even gather a coherent sentence about it.
I know it is criminally lazy and irresponsible to not really care, but... I don't really care.
Does this make me a bad person? Yes, probably..

Politics in this country is duller than ditchwater and to be honest... it all blends into one big muddy morass of... sameness. There is no clearly defined lines anymore. One party almost apes the other and everyone jumps on the newest bandwagon, fully prepared to leap off once it heads to the inevitable ravine, only to hitch their skirts and make ready for the next. And sure enough... along it trundles. This week... catching the middle-class vote. Gordon Brown is MIDDLE-CLASS! David Cameron is not really all that posh! Nick Clegg is... uhm. Who is Nick Clegg?

*shrug* That pretty much sums it up for me. As long as some rascist like the BNP don't get in, I don't mind which moron is leading. Because one moron is much like another. And so are the three main Political parties.

*end cynical rant*

[Shanna Tenderleaf]

Im not sure who im voting for.. To be honest none of the partys gets me going, THEY ALL SUCK!!