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Bollitics: VT General Election Poll #3 - GE Week One


Gringo

Which party gets your X  

90 members have voted

  1. 1. Which party gets your X

    • Conservative (and UUP alliance)
      22
    • Labour
      21
    • Liberal Democrat
      28
    • Green
      4
    • UKIP
      3
    • BNP
      3
    • Jury Team (Coallition of Independents)
      1
    • Spoil Ballot
      3
    • Not voting
      6


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I don't how many people go through university with a genuine job role in mind these days. Apart from people doing clearly occupational ones like medicine. Certainly of the people I know I can't think of any with a clear job role in mind come the end of their degree. None of my close friends do for sure, except for one who already has one lined up, he basically just needs to graduate and he's employed. But otherwise, no-one I know knows where they are going.

I mean my degree opens up a lot of doors for me, but I don't know which I'd take.

The degree is less these days about what you've done and more that you've proven able to do it.

Besides which, it's wrong to think of it as purely a job gaining thing. That's not the point of education.

Your right that Uni isn't just about job gaining, but obtaining a degree in some cases doesn't make getting a job any easier than not having one.

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No it doesn't.

But it does open up some jobs at an earlier stage/different career paths.

I'd rather have a degree than not, put it like that.

Which is lucky really otherwise the last 3 years have been a waste.

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I think kidlewis boss was right, too many people are going to UNI, it was Bliars way of rducing the jobless figures, he kept youth unemployment down by sending everyone to Uni. Seriously we have telops at work who say they are going to Uni, back in the day they wouldn't even have gone to a Polytechnic, they aren't that clever, they were FE College material, now they all go to University. The Policy of course was started by the Witch and carried on by her protege Bliar.

There really does need to be elitism in education otherwise the waters get too muddied. Why the Blue Tories started this policy is beyond me but there yer go, all a bit left wing from the Blue Party in the 80's.

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I think kidlewis boss was right, too many people are going to UNI, it was Bliars way of rducing the jobless figures, he kept youth unemployment down by sending everyone to Uni. Seriously we have telops at work who say they are going to Uni, back in the day they wouldn't even have gone to a Polytechnic, they aren't that clever, they were FE College material, now they all go to University.

which is the point he was making and I too agree.

Everyone wants a degree now as though it's some kind of ticket to intelligence. it does not work like that fortunately.

People complain about Oxford and Cambridge being too elitist. Well they bloody should be. You should have to be a bloody genius to go there. If you are rich or poor and have the ability to achieve there, then you should be allowed to go.

However I feel that the arts in the state school system and sport have taken a bit of a battering in the past few years, because there is too much focus is on maths, english and science. I only get this picture from my friends who are music and arts teachers. They get a little upset sometimes with the constraints they have to work in. But being creative their passion for the subject really makes them want to give the most to their students.

I believe the arts are as important to an individuals education than maths or science.

as someone once said 'Imagination Rules The World'. Which is very true. And without imagination, you are incredibly boring and I have to say pretty stupid as well.

It's where I believe Private schools excel, it's not in the maths, science, english, it is in RE, Art, Music, Sport, Computer Science, Classical studies, theatre & Drama. Those subjects get so much more attention in a private school education, because they obviously have much more money to invest through school fees.

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Newsnight was interesting, the tories policies again failing to live up to the pressure.

They really are talking shite, unsubstainable unrealistic flashy shite.

Labour also talk shite, but at least their shite is somewhat achievable.

Lib Dems have a lot of right ideas, but they won't get the votes they deserve.

The system need reformed, but as a politician here put well, "how can you trust those to reform the system that they've benefited from?''

Bunch of self serving plastic twunts. But what can we do? Depressing tbh.

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Labour also talk shite, but at least their shite is somewhat achievable.

Labour can certainly achieve their goal of completely wrecking the country, both economically and socially. I don't doubt them in that respect.
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The system need reformed, but as a politician here put well, "how can you trust those to reform the system that they've benefited from?''

The Green party are a bunch of long-haired hippies. The system needs changed, right, how would you change it though?

Over a year, two, three?

They lack the detail and intelligence to fundamentally change a system they are against.

Its all dafodills and lollipops with the Greens.

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That's not taking into account he's a midget.

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Met him once when he was out campaining, I called him Bill Bailey and Bill Oddies love child.

He makes a good point though, can't trust them **** when they are being paid and paid well by the system they pretend to want to reform. Probably all stems from some grumblings from some disconcerted back benchers who like to push through with the idea but when it comes to the cabinet no one really gives a toss.

How would you change it? Well firstly

1.) You cut the number of Mp's down.

and

2.) Parties shouldn't be allowed to recieve donations from buisnesses or the like, we all know what can happen then.

That should remove a good deal of any vested interests.

Although I think there should be more focus on local and individual candidates. Why? Because having two parties constantly loom over the political landscape is unhealthy. Allowing for more grass roots politicians who have their council in their best interests can only be a good thing.

But then, I am a one of those sorts that would prefer to have a collective of independent candidates debating which direction to take a country in rather than have the dull monotany of party politics telling us what direction we should go in.

A government is the voice of the people, not the other way round. And for me, it's gone too far in the other direction.

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Digital Economy Bill reading 3 goes through. Local MP didn't vote. However as it went through easily no point bothering sadly. Lib Dems the party to say no though.

189 Ayes 47 nos and a lot of fecking absenteism :(

What the hell is the quorum in the House of Commons?

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VAT is a regressive tax! It would be reduced to 10% if I ever came to power in a decade or two!

The reason the USA has no VAT is that the right wing opposes it because it raises massive sums of money while the left wing opposes it because it's regressive.

The minute the left wing discovers that it raises massive sums of money and the right wing discovers that it's regressive, the USA will have a VAT.

I hope that minute never comes...

Daniel Mitchell (of the Cato Institute writing in the NY Post)"]

One of President Obama's top economic advisers, former Fed chief Paul Volcker, sug gested this week that it's time for America to adopt a VAT, or value-added tax. The White House yesterday downplayed the idea -- but it's sure to resurface: It's an inevitable consequence of a government that's too big now and likely to grow even bigger thanks to Washington's reckless spending spree.

Don't get me wrong: The VAT -- on top of all the other taxes Washington imposes -- is a terrible idea. Imposing it would pretty well finish the transformation of our country into a European-style slow-growth nation. The right way to close Uncle Sam's gaping deficits is to reverse the continued explosion of federal spending.

The VAT is a type of national sales tax, levied on the value-added at each stage of production. Consider a piece of furniture: The VAT would be imposed when the raw timber is sold, when the sawmill produces lumber, when the manufacturer builds a chair, a tax at the wholesaler level and then when a retailer sells the chair to a consumer.

To avoid double taxation, each seller along the way gets a credit for taxes paid at earlier stages of the production process. So the final tax to the consumer, at least in theory, is the same as a retail sales tax of the same amount.

The VAT has its virtues: As a single-rate, consumption-based system, much like the flat tax or national sales tax, it would introduce far fewer economic distortions than today's income tax -- and a heckuva lot less paperwork.

That would be a persuasive argument -- if proponents wanted a VAT to replace the Internal Revenue code. But that's not what's intended by Volcker -- or Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who've also been chatting up the VAT.

The politicians want a VAT, and they want to keep the income tax. (To be more accurate, they want a VAT and to raise other taxes as well.)

They want the cash, of course, so they can continue buying votes by spending other people's money.

This decade already has seen a huge expansion of government. In the Bush years, federal spending rose from $1.8 trillion in 2001 to $3.5 trillion in the last Bush budget. Now President Obama is well on the way to doubling outlays yet again.

He has already saddled the economy with $800 billion of "stimulus" and a giant new health-care entitlement, and his proposals for next year will push the federal budget even higher.

Meanwhile, our aging population and the built-in growth in federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security has a dramatic expansion in the size of government set to occur automatically in coming decades.

Simply stated, there's no way to finance all this new spending without an added broad-based tax. But this is exactly why we should vigorously resist a VAT.

Blocking a VAT may not be sufficient to control the size of government, but it's necessary. Handing Washington a whole new source of revenue would be akin to giving keys to a liquor store to a bunch of alcoholics.

The real-world evidence shows that VATs are strongly linked with both higher overall tax burdens and more government spending. In 1965, before the VAT swept across Europe, the average tax burden for advanced European economies (the EU-15) was 27.7 percent of economic output, versus 24.7 percent of GDP in the United States.

But the Europeans began imposing VATs in the late 1960s, and now the European Union requires all members to have a VAT of at least 15 percent. Good news has not followed. By 2006, the average tax burden for EU-15 nations had climbed to 39.8 percent, versus 28 percent in the United States.

The spending side? In 1965, pre-VAT, government spending in EU-15 nations averaged 30.1 percent of GDP, against 28.3 percent in the United States. By 2007, government spending consumed 47.1 percent of GDP in EU-15, significantly higher than the US burden of 35.3 percent.

Nor has the VAT stopped Europe from raising other taxes.

Taxes on income and profits consumed 8.8 percent of GDP in Europe in 1965 -- below the US level of 11.9 percent. By 2006, the European burden had climbed to 13.8 percent of GDP, slightly higher than the 13.5 percent US figure. (The same trend holds for corporate-tax data.)

Today's income-tax system is a nightmarish combination of class warfare and corrupt loopholes. But adding a VAT solves none of those problems, it merely gives politicians more money to spend and a chance to auction off a new set of tax breaks to interest groups. That's good for Washington, but bad for America.

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Digital Economy Bill reading 3 goes through. Local MP didn't vote. However as it went through easily no point bothering sadly. Lib Dems the party to say no though.

189 Ayes 47 nos and a lot of fecking absenteism :(

What the hell is the quorum in the House of Commons?

As fas as I'm aware, there isn't one, they use a pairing system, so one MP is paired with one from the opposition, if one is out of the room, so is the other

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wiki"]

A quorum in the House of Commons is forty.

There is no need for a quorum to be present at all times - in fact, Commons debates could theoretically continue even if attendance in the chamber dwindled to just one MP and the Speaker.

But if a division is called and fewer than 40 MPs are present to vote, then a decision on the business being considered is postponed and the House moves on to consider the next item of business.

Interestingly, the lack of a quorum does not lead to the suspension of the business of the House, but merely postponement of that specific business.

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I'd seriously vote for ANYONE who promises to bring down fuel prices

Agreed. £1.20 a litre? Thats about £6 a gallon. Any other nation would be protesting in the streets and raising hell. When I went to the United States last year they were pissed off about paying less than half that.

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