David Cameron claimed in his Party Conference speech that he has "courage, leadership and a strongly Conservative vision for Britain" and rejected Brown’s appeal to the importance of experience, insisting that character and judgement matter more.
Do you believe that Cameron has what it takes to steer Britain through financial turmoil, or does Brown’s past make him better qualified? Is it about personality or experience?Milk from Bristol, It would depend on where you stand Milk!!! The Trade Union movement and the TUC where formed to fight the oppressive industrial barons who thought they owned the people who worked for them !!!! Right through the industrial revolution there are classic examples of anti working class brutality and clear examples of anti working class legislation to force the employers will on to his workforce !!!! The will of the people encouraged workers within industry to rise up against their employers exploitation of them and form Trade Union federations, And the united front of workers gradually formed into a hard hitting workers co-operative that negotiated with the employers for employees rights and made this country what it is today !!!! The past Labour Governments worked with the peoples representatives to ensure proper working conditions where upheld and proper terms and condition applied to every worker in the country held together by employment laws that protected the workers from the ruthless employers who would exploit at the drop of a hat !!!! Weekend and holiday pay and all manners of benefits were fought for by Trade Unionist through the country in industrial battles against unscrupulous employers and the successes of their fight for fair and decent hours and conditions are in place today but only because they are laws of the land !!!! Thatcher changed so much of the hard fought working class employment laws insomuch she changed them to the benefit of the employers in her term of disastrous office in the 80s when she destroyed all the nationalised industries in her draconian anti trade union attacks and sold them off to foreign competitors, The right to belong to a trade union was almost made illegal, !!! along with free collective bargaining , representation of a Union Official was made difficult inso much that if the employer didn't want to recognise the Trade Union he simply didn't and the Union cannot do a thing in law to protect the employee !!!! The Tories under Thatcher implemented the most savage anti working class bunch of Employment laws ever forced on a democratic people and they are still being used to exploit the working classes of this country !!!!
Still waiting Grubber !!!!! Dont you know ?
M from S, I can, indeed, see some problems, but unlike you and your blinkered approach to reality, i accept that this governement are erroneously adopting Tory inspired-policies in some areas. That, sunshine, is the problem. However, the good outweighs the bad, and I have no doubt that, given more time to correct 18 ruinous years of Tory socio-economic incompetence including the pervasive corrosion of the Black Wednesday fiasco, (Rome wasn't built in a day, after all), things will eventually continue on this upward trend of improvement, global forces notwithstanding. Overall, though, our NHS staff do a sterling job, and thanks to Labour it will stay OUR NHS. Not some nightmarish quasi-private profit machine that the Tories would dearly love to turn it into. Long may the words 'Tory Opposition' be standard lexicographic currency.
No, look what the tories did lasttime
The Government insisted it has no plans to charge interest on crisis loans to the country's poorest households, after the idea sparked fury across the political spectrum.
The proposal to charge up to 2% a month - the equivalent of almost 27% annually - for loans available to people on benefits under the Government's social fund was included in a consultation paper issued last month under the signature of Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell.
Conservatives accused the Government of acting like loan sharks, while Labour MPs, unions and charities expressed dismay. Labour's former leader Lord Kinnock said there was "no justice" in the proposal.
Work and pensions minister Kitty Ussher hastily announced that ministers had ruled out the change, even though the consultation does not officially end until Tuesday.
She insisted the Government's aim was to make emergency credit more easily available to vulnerable households, in order to avoid them turning to loan sharks charging as much as 1,000% in interest.
Ms Ussher said that the Government wanted to enter into partnerships with local credit unions, which offer loans at interest capped at 2% a month. But she insisted that any state loans provided through them would be interest-free.
She said that she would like to see rules governing the loans relaxed, so that applicants could borrow state money to buy their children Christmas presents, as well as for urgent and essential expenses like repairing a broken boiler. The social fund pays out around £500 million a year to low-income households unable to access credit from mainstream sources.
The DWP document proposed allowing credit unions to take over responsibility for providing the loans, and suggested that interest could be charged "at affordable rates" in order to cover the cost of other services, such as savings accounts and financial advice.
Charging interest would add £47.80 to the cost of the average budgeting loan of £433.30, which would take four weeks longer to pay off as a result, it said.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling wrote to Mr Purnell demanding he ditch the "outrageous" plan. He said: "I just don't understand why on earth the Government would come up with a plan like this in the middle of a recession, when unemployment is rising by thousands each week.".
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