defender

Add to that the fact that he confesses to drinking too much, blames all the social problems on immigrants and is of questionable morality and I believe we have everything that is required to lead one of the world's most important cities.

__________________
Excuse me for not taking this seriously .....

parnassos

^ I don't know anything about this Boris guy but wasn't "red ken" a bit of a joke too?

defender

Yeah, but at least he knew about what he was doing and came from a public service management background. Boris fell out of the public school system and picked the easiest way for an ugly dinosaur to get famous ..... politics!

__________________
Excuse me for not taking this seriously .....

Fortesque Smythe Brown

I think you may well be suprised at Boris.He is no fool ,flamboyant yes, much along the same lines an Piers Morgan.
Boris has been like Icarus and flown too near the sun but he has leaernt his lesson.

Red Ken was a lad full of cronyism ethics,a psuedo socialist,very much an agitprop member in his younger days with his buddy Arthur Scargill.

Hopefully there is going to be a new era a coming in British politics.Gordon Clown along with pretty boy Blair (Bush's lap dog) have shafted the U.K. long enough.'' The times they are a changing''

__________________
B.A.Calcutta (Failed)

Cyrille

In his early days, maybe for the right wing press that held sway in the UK at the time.

But at least, as defender said, he had a background.

The last budget Boris had to handle was for his purchases at the Eton tuck shop. Now he's responsible for millions.

I suppose he'll just be a figurehead, with all the work being done by his administration.


Anyway, it was a free and fair election so I guess London has the mayor it deserves.

__________________
themoreiknowthelessiunderstand

defender

How so?

That's not true ..... he bragged on a TV debate about having run a company, but when chalenged admitted that he only had a handful of employees

__________________
Excuse me for not taking this seriously .....

naboo

I was laughing my head off at this until yesterday. Its occured to me, how many times did Forest get promoted under Ken Livingston? None. Its only take Boris 24 hours to do what ken failed to do in 8 years.

Ken OUT! Boris IN!

Fortesque Smythe Brown

Defender.

How many people are now suffering because of the removal of the 10 pence tax band ? Said tax band was for low income earners now they are getting hit at the higher rate of taxation.

I presume you did note that the highest increase in multi millionaires was last year under ''New Labour" to the cost of the man and the woman in the street.

Indeed a strange brand of socialism,to go with that can Gordon Clown explain the logic as to why he sold the U.K. gold reserves at a cut price sale.

I am sure Gordon Clown can't blame umpteen years of Tory misrule, can he ?


Indeed.a rather a strange brand of socialist,upper middle class Tony with a mortage repayment of 250,000 pounds a year for their London place,Cherie with her up market apartments in Bath.

Hmm: the old founders of the Labour must be sadly disappointed in ''The New Labour Party''.

__________________
B.A.Calcutta (Failed)

Welshman

You forgot his latest acquisition...

Blair buys £4million stately home after Cherie 'fell in love with it

Some nice pictures here
The new Tony Towers: Blair buys £4million stately home after Cherie 'fell in love with it' | the Daily Mail

How Boris performs remains to be seen. But I think that many of you are missing the point. They didn't vote for him because he's a Tory but for the very qualities that you deride - he's gloriously politically incorrect, and that is what the country (and Londoners in particular) want.

Jasper

^^ True, but there's no place for socialism in the modern world, Blair showed that by keeping out the Tories for ten years, hurrah! And their response is to copy the same ideas as Nu Labour and occupy the same ground with a Blair lookalike. Blair's legacy (the two-faced saveloy) will be as big, if not bigger, than Maggie's.

^ Yep, it's a kick against Ken and Labour electing Boris. He lives in Henley for god's sake!

Also, if you're claiming Boris and Piers Morgan are similar, then they both should be put down for the good of the human race.

defender

Actually nobody's suffering, the government have accepted their misjudgment and will compensate anybody who's lost out. Now if only the UK's highest earners could be forced to pay any income tax we'd all be OK.

Sorry, that affects me how?

You were talking about how the people had been 'shafted' - sorry mate I just don't see it. Life's pretty good here - not great for everyone unfortunately, but that's unavoidable.

The things that are upsetting folk at the moment are rising prices (fuel, food etc.) and economic concerns - both outside of government control. Unfortunately the Tory party seem to think that that is enough to get them through the next election and are planning to wing it without actually offering any policies as to how they might change things.

__________________
Excuse me for not taking this seriously .....

naboo

Wrong, I'll suffer.

By the time I leave England, I'll have been paid £9000 tax. On that, I'll have paid £1250 tax. At the end of the tax year, I'll have a tax bill of £800, so will get £450 back. Under the old rules, I'd have a total tax bill of £500, so would be getting £750 back. I won't be getting any compensation in any form from the government because my current salary is above the threshold (I'd be winnning by £10/month if I stayed the entire tax year, which is actually worse than last year when I was better off by £15 due to the change in tax band, so even at £21k I'm being shafted by £5/month in real terms.).

Obviously, I'm a rare case, but the fact remains that the only people to benefit from this change has been the rich, whilst some of the poor, especially those confused by it all and not wanting the hassle of filling in a load of forms, not understanding how any of it works (which, lets be honest, is going to be the case ofr many of the uneducated poor, something Gordon Brown knows, something he knew when he introduced tax credits rather than tax cuts for the poor) and so these credits aren't going to be claimed, people are going to be left worse off. (longest sentence ever, I only just woke up, sorry)

Socialism, my arse. New Labour are as bad as old Tories. The whole political spectrum has shifted to the right. The trouble Labour have got now is their core vote aren't going to turn out. The rich/poor divide has grown too far, but there's nobody the poor can vote for to represent their views. Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems are now all right wing. Its sickening.

defender

You'll suffer at the loss of 300 quid ..... are you sure?

Despite being a low-earner, I won't be affected very much cos of my tax credits - these forms everyone's moaning about took 10 minutes and save me hundreds each year. People are too lazy to fill a form in ..... fcuk 'em!

Although it's quite right to say that the ditching of the 10p tax band was a huge mistake ..... it's just I'm not sure that it's being represented by the right people. Haven't really heard too much fuss from low earners, more from the likes of yourself who are a few quid worse off being caught up in the mix and don't like the fact that families get tax breaks and they don't. Not saying that this applies to you, but I would say that claiming you will "suffer" at the loss of 300 quid while you earn above average in a white-collar world is a tad melodramatic.

I think we'll see the government turn around on this issue ..... it would seem to be a smart political move, because the Tories are milking it for all its worth and it doesn't take a genius to work out that they would have a huge rhetorical vacuum to fill if the government backtracked.

It's all very interesting at the moment ..... history shows that sooner or later Cameron is going to have to announce something solid to back up his floppy-haired jabbering or hsi party wil suffer. Frankly, I can't really see where it's going to come from - there just aren't enough issues that he can gather support on ..... and despite his old school chums egging him on I think he don't dare play the immigrant card - he seems far too smart for that.

More like miserably centre-ground if you want my opinion.

naboo

I don't know how I'm going to get through it.....