[Tony]

That scared you didn't it?

How different things might have turned out under the Kinnock Klan. I suspect that Hugo Chavez provides an interesting glimpse of what might have been.

[callippo]

I bet with the benefit of hindsight the Tories wish he'd have won in 1992 rather than them. If that wasn't an election to lose, I don't know what was. Black Wednesday would almost certainly still have happened. Major would have quit, Kinnock would have been bundled of office even before the five years were up, and Portillo would probably have been next.

[[Matt]]

Originally Posted by Tony

That scared you didn't it?

How different things might have turned out under the Kinnock Klan. I suspect that Hugo Chavez provides an interesting glimpse of what might have been.

Any socialist leaning government scares me. Including this one.

[Longcol]

Originally Posted by [Matt]

Any socialist leaning government scares me. Including this one.

Please explain how this government is "socialist leaning".

[Longcol]

Originally Posted by Tony

That scared you didn't it?

How different things might have turned out under the Kinnock Klan. I suspect that Hugo Chavez provides an interesting glimpse of what might have been.

I think you're memory is going Tony.

Chavez is much closer to the Hattonistas of the Militant Tendency - Kinnock successfully got rid of them from the Labour party.

[[Matt]]

Originally Posted by Longcol

Please explain how this government is "socialist leaning".

As someone who would vastly reduce public services including privatising the NHS by my standards they are.

[muddycoffee]

Kinnock makes a very good elder statesman nowadays, he's intellegent and well balanced with his views on the current state of things. He probably would have done a good job as prime minister. One concern would have been the NUM at the time. They could have made his life mysery.

[Longcol]

Originally Posted by [Matt]

As someone who would vastly reduce public services including privatising the NHS by my standards they are.

By your definition David Cameron is a socialist.

[wednesday1]

Originally Posted by Tony

That scared you didn't it?

Only if you're Phil Collins or a Sun reader!

[marshlad]

Originally Posted by [Matt]

Any socialist leaning government scares me. Including this one.

They scare me too.

[[Matt]]

Originally Posted by Longcol

By your definition David Cameron is a socialist.

Partially but not as much as our current cabinet is.

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by muddycoffee

Kinnock makes a very good elder statesman nowadays,

You are joking I hope.
A Welsh windbag who, with his wife, is well seated on the gravy train

[Tony]

Don't forget that his wife, son, daughter and daughter-in-law are on board the Euro gravy train too.

They seem to have done nicely out of us with their various pensions too.

[Mister M]

Yes South Yorkshire did so well out of the Thacher / Major regime didn't it?

I make no apology for the Blair / Brown years as far as I'm concerned the Thatcher experiment in neo liberalism has trundled on for 30 years with only changes in the faces at the top.

[marshlad]

Originally Posted by Mister M

Yes South Yorkshire did so well out of the Thacher / Major regime didn't it?

I make no apology for the Blair / Brown years as far as I'm concerned the Thatcher experiment in neo liberalism has trundled on for 30 years with only changes in the faces at the top.

The only people in south yorkshire who didn't do well out of Thatcher were the miners but if they were too lazy to go to work for 1 Year then that is their own fault. SOD the miners they were just lazy violent gits.

[Grandad.Malky]

Originally Posted by marshlad

The only people in south yorkshire who didn't do well out of Thatcher were the miners .

If you really believe that you should get out more.

[Mister M]

Originally Posted by Malky

If you really believe that you should get out more.

Either that or stop reading the Daily Express or Mail.

[marshlad]

Originally Posted by Mister M

Either that or stop reading the Daily Express or Mail.

The Mail is the second most popular paper in the country after the Sun. Which means that the Sun & Mail reflect the views of most people in the country.

[VideoPro]

Originally Posted by marshlad

The Mail is the second most popular paper in the country after the Sun. Which means that the Sun & Mail reflect the views of most people in the country.

They reflect the views of what their owners and editorial want you to think.

The Sun
Owned by News corp. Daily. Tits on page 3. Infamous and ficticious stories include asylum seekers eating swans, vilification of Liverpool fans following the Hillsborough disaster, and the classic, "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster".

The Daily Mail
The ultimate UK tabloid. Anti abortion, anti immigration, anti EU, anti tax, homophobic ("Abortion hope after 'gay genes' finding" being a particularly notable headline), if there's something to oppose, the Daily Mail will be there. Tends to have a more middle class (or aspiringly middle class) readership, so is obsessed with money, especially house prices. Historically supported the Nazis. also known as the Daily Hate, the Daily Wail, the Daily Hate Mail. Prone to reactionary stances; "the Daily Mail is engaged in an unending quest of dividing everything in the world into those which cause or cure cancer" (Ben Goldacre, paraphrased). Denys climate change. A succession of blogs and articles are dedicated to expressing incredulity at the level of idiocy and bias expressed within:

http://www.mailwatch.co.uk/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis.../20/mydailyhell

quote:
Daily Mail is an adjective as well as a newspaper, shorthand for everything from patios to Tim Henman - things that are superficially harmless, but which are emblems of a struggle for competing visions of the country. Like the troubling phenomenon of Middle America, it suggests that the true soul of the Briton might not be the cheerful, tolerant, diverse, forward-thinking, internationalist happy-go-lucky, toothy consensus of the Blair-Cameron-Brown era, but a sullen and xenophobic and reactionary mass of stubborn prejudice, an immovable lump of fears and neuroses which form the dark heart of the nation.

The Mail can be particularly proud of Richard Littlejohn, author of such delightful statements as:

[QUOTE=Richard Littlejohn posted:
"Does anyone really give a monkey's about what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them."[/QUOTE]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAOCVwLrXo#t=4m50s

(thanks to http://worldnews.about.com/od/7/qt/britishtabs.htm and wikipedia for most of the basic info)

[LordChaverly]

A more apt title for the Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty would be the Baron of Bare-Faced Cheek. His position on Europe in the early 1980s was to withdraw the UK from the EU without a vote. He later became a Vice President of the European Commission (and his wife an MEP) on a huge salary and pension for life. Far from shunning the EU gravy train, he was happy to leap on it with almost shameless abandon. relegating his previous positions on the EU to the dustbin of history. Last year the ‘Open Europe’ think tank estimated that he and his wife, Glynis, now the Baroness of Bedwellty, had amassed well over £10 million in pay, perks and pensions from their posts in Brussels and Strasbourg. Moreover, as millions of British OAPs struggle to make ends meet on miserly pensions of less than 5k a year, the Baron and Baroness are in receipt of no less than six publicly funded pensions worth at least £185,000 per year. It should also be remembered that for most of their lives, the Baron and Baroness were in favour of the abolition of the House of Lords.

Would the Baron have been any good as a PM? Well, the only insight we have into his governmental abilities is his former service as an EU Commissioner, which was at best mediocre. Indeed, his most memorable achievement was the sacking of the Commission’s chief accountant, for whistleblowing on the gross irregularities in the EU’s finances. Kinnock did his best to shut her up and when this failed instituted disciplinary proceedings on the grounds that she had not used the correct channels. In all likelihood, the Baron, as a PM, would have continued with the disastrous economic policies of the 1970s (i.e. public overspending, retention, and possibly expansion, of the nationalized industry sector, attempts at pay and wages freezes – which would have inevitably failed; tripartism; and half-hearted attempts at reform of industrial relations). In short, a Kinnock government of the 1990s would have been a re-run of the Callaghan government of the 1970s, the only difference being that the garrulous Kinnock would have ensured that Whitehall would have been awash with waffle and spin.