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middleenglandtim

Listed below are comments made by middleenglandtim between Thursday, 2nd July 2009 and Tuesday, 29th September 2009.

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Will he or won't he? 11:25am on 29 Sep 2009 #46 Tris

"Is the British public suffering from selective memory loss? Did we moan about Gordon Brown and Labour whilst we were all doing very nicely thankyou over the last decade?"

er....yes actually.It's pretty obvious for 11.5 of the last 12 years that Labour has been all spin and no substance. The only reason they got in 3 times was that the Tories had not recovered enough to be an attractive alternative. Now they are.

I agree Gordon Brown is a serious man...seriously out of his depth. He's not even running the show, the Ignoble Lord is. Still the Labour conference is good sport "Comrades".
The baroness and the illegal immigrant 1:44pm on 22 Sep 2009 Friends, chill out. So much anger and dismay - and at what? Something all of us would have expected to happen.

There is no possibility, even a remote one, that any Minister caught doing something wrong, whether knowingly or not, whether elected or not, is ever going to get sacked by this Prime Minister. You just have to look at the track record. He even brought back someone who has had to resign twice before, made them a Lord and de facto Prime Minister, for goodness sake.

I wonder what they've all got on him??
Politicians, the press and the police 4:24pm on 10 Jul 2009 I got 'deleted' earlier for saying this was a non-story and there was far more important things to worry about.

I've changed my mind.

This is the most outrageous attack on the civil liberties of anyone who has a mobile phone and who has not had the common sense to change the network default PIN to one of their own choosing. Don't journalists realise that some of these people are responsible for the security of the realm!! The fact that they can't even secure their own mobile phone should not in any way lessen the regard we have for these great public servants, or make us worried in any way, shape or form.

The sheer brass neck of journo's to dial into the voicemail of these people should be exposed for the vile, underhand action that is, and all those who may or may not have anything to do with it, had any knowledge of this practise, or those who surnames contain at least one letter the same as those who have already been found guilty, should be immediately hounded out of their jobs.

This conspiracy of spookery, conducted on the explicit orders of the Conservative party a whole two years before they knew anything about it, is a scandal. They are not fit to hold the office of Her Majesty's Opposition and as this type of behaviour is what we would rightly only expect the government to portray, they should immediately be made to form a one.

That'll learn 'em
Has the bonfire gone out? 2:39pm on 07 Jul 2009 ps (to 145)....the cost of a passport has gone up from £51 in July 2006 - £77.50 now. That's over 50% in 3 years. Scandalous! I demand a quango looks into this....
Has the bonfire gone out? 2:32pm on 07 Jul 2009 So the cost of a passport is going up by £5 (7%) to cover for the loss in revenue due to the recession. Is this another travel tax?

They'll have us standing up on planes soon.
Has the bonfire gone out? 08:10am on 07 Jul 2009 Ah, I'm bored with quangos now. The only thing that surprises me is that Gordon Brown hasn't suggested setting up a quango to look at the viability of quangos and report back, after the election of course.

Do you think, as Political Editor of the BBC, Mr Robinson, that you could start asking all the parties the questions that really matter? e.g. what they are going to do/would do now and over the next 5 years to get the country back in the black. This focus on tinkering round the edges is a nonsense.

I have 2 daughters, twins, both of whom hope to go to University in 2 years time. At this rate, they'll be lucky if I can afford to help them achieve that ambition instead of sending them out to find work - if any exists. We, as a family, have cut back on absolutely everything. We are not 'hard up' but are definitely 'hard working'. Still, TV 2 has gone, car 2 has gone, no holiday this year, decorating plans on hold, etc, etc. There are no sacred cows in our budget, other than trying to do the best for the girls, so why should there be for the government? If you can't afford something, just don't spend money on it - it's simple really. But continuing to spend at historic rates while also finding other stuff to spend money on, at the same time as income drops through the floor, is plain stupid.

Help for hard working families? Utter tosh.

Rant over. Headache worse.
Has the bonfire gone out? 4:36pm on 06 Jul 2009 Neither here nor there Nick. Isn't the fact of the matter that at least the Conservatives are being honest about having to make cuts (not as detailed as I would like, but it's a start) and are proactively starting to talk about areas where they can be made? Contrast that with 'spending will increase year on year', 'Labour Investment...blah, blah', 'No more boom and bust' etc, etc, etc....

Start questioning the Government, Nick, they are in a position, for a few more months at least, to do something whereas the Tories can't do a bean, no matter what they would like to do. I can't actually think of a thing that the Govt has said it is going to do NOW, as opposed to leaving it until 2010. The Labour Party seems to be taking the attitude of 'why put something off 'til tomorrow when you can put it off 'til next year'....presumably when they won't have to (or be in a position to)do anything anyway.

What's the betting that at PMQ's on Weds, Gordon still trots out the same old lines about 'Do nothing Tories' & 'Labour investment vs Tory cuts'. Surely someone in the Cabinet has the bottle to tell him that nobody, absolutely nobody, believes that guff??
The PM uses the 'C' word: 'Cuts' 11:46am on 03 Jul 2009 er...why have virtually all this morning's entries been retrospectively referred to the moderator??

Anyway, Whistling_Neil, thanks for your agreement....it's a first for me!!

A good dose of honesty, straight talking and plain English would go a long way in politics. We all know cuts are needed, and will happen. The arguement should be about where they fall, by how much and what the effect will be.....not if they happen.

Btw....Something I've noticed on my intermittent visits to this forum.....Mr Robinson never seems to work on a Friday?
The PM uses the 'C' word: 'Cuts' 08:56am on 03 Jul 2009 I floated the idea on here yesterday that truth was not necessarily a 'black & white' thing, but was subjective and depended on your own perspective of things. A couple of you slapped me down...can't remember who, and frankly can't be bothered to go back and check...which is fair enough. I wish I lived in your so-certain world.

For years people have been saying 'if only politicians would own up when they make a mistake, we'd forgive them and move on'. This, I believe, is Gordon Brown's failing rather than, as someone once put it, 'being economical with the truth'. He uses language, very poor language admittedly, to attempt to back-edit what he previously said, instead of just saying 'sorry, made a balls-up, this is what I should have said'.

Unfortunately for him and Labour it is probably too late now to become 'straight' with the public.....far too much, 12 years worth, of back-editing to do in 10 months.

Interesting pieces by Jeff Randall (Telegraph) and Roy Hattersley (Times) today (or at least I just read them today). Both seem to think it's curtains for Labour. Brown certainly isn't capable of pulling them together.
The PM uses the 'C' word: 'Cuts' 09:23am on 02 Jul 2009 Is the hot weather getting to everyone? There is so much bile written on here!

I am no fan of Brown, but surely the 'truth' is not quite so black and white as some on here believe. For example, many would hold it as truth that Maggie was one of the greatest PM's of the last century, whereas others would hold it as truth that she was the worst. So which is true? It entirely depends on what you believe. No-one has a monopoly on it.

As for the 'C' word....somebody said to me the other day that there are people in the Labour Party who have regarded Gordon as something of a cult figure. I may have misheard.

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