Bolitics The New Condem Government

[saturdaygig]

can't see why £1.1bn needs to be spent on the A14 in the first place. All that needs to happen is to cut out the needless stop by the M1 and make the merger from the M6 a bit better and try and put in a relief road by the two major roundabouts between the M6 and Cambridge and that would help traffic flow much better.

They do have traffic modelling though, it ain't just guesswork. Sometimes what seems obvious just moves the congestion a few miles up the road

[drat01]

The A14 scheme is a much needed road scheme. That is one of the major connecting roads to Felixstowe and Harwich, which in turn are major ports for import and if they stopped cutting back on manufacturing exports also. If you ever travel up and down that road you will understand the requirements. The scheme would have created jobs again and increased the prosperity for many areas.

Yet again another cutback by the ConDem's that will affect the recovery

[kidlewis]

can't see why £1.1bn needs to be spent on the A14 in the first place. All that needs to happen is to cut out the needless stop by the M1 and make the merger from the M6 a bit better and try and put in a relief road by the two major roundabouts between the M6 and Cambridge and that would help traffic flow much better.

They do have traffic modelling though, it ain't just guesswork. Sometimes what seems obvious just moves the congestion a few miles up the road

which is why they need to address how the traffic moves from the M6 to the A14. It's ridiculous that junction. The flow from a major motorway onto one of the key routes to the eastern coast and Norfolk needs to be better than what is in place already.

So often at peak times traffic ends up backing down the M6 turning that part of the motorway into a dual carrigeway.

Another subject that annoys me is traffic lights, so often it could be sorted by intelligent sensor systems which appear to used in few places in towns like Warwick and Stratford-upon-avon.

Sitting at traffic lights at 1am waiting for them to go green, ridiculous. I'd love some clever boff to work out how much C02 would be saved from having these intelligent sensors in place in every major set of lights in the UK. Bet it would be a fair few thousand tonnes a year.

We rely too much on roads in this country considering how small we are. But with trains not really competitive on price with the car it's no wonder why traffic is slowly getting worse as the years go on.

I just hope the new government review the high speed rail proposal and do it properly.

[kidlewis]

The A14 scheme is a much needed road scheme. That is one of the major connecting roads to Felixstowe and Harwich, which in turn are major ports for import and if they stopped cutting back on manufacturing exports also. If you ever travel up and down that road you will understand the requirements. The scheme would have created jobs again and increased the prosperity for many areas.

Yet again another cutback by the ConDem's that will affect the recovery

yes I was a bit surprised they cut something which is obvious when you drive the route from the midlands.

Things need to be cut though, you can't please everyone all the time and they just need to look at what can be saved and how little damage will it do in cutting it.

[tonyh29]

Peter Hain just got owned by Dimbleby on QT on the Sheffield thing

[avfc89]

so if your wife goes out on a reckless spending binge with your credit card and rings up a £5 k bill and you have to cut back on a few things to pay off the debt , whose fault would it be ?

now when you have your answer replace wife with incompetent clearing in the woods and £5k with £1000000000000000000000000000 and why should your answer change

same old Tories

i agree .. sorting out a previous Labour governments mess ..same old Tories

Tony your comparison is laughable, really laughable mate. I've previously stated monetarism isn't a sure way of helping the Economy, you can't run a modern country like a household without serious consequences, I'm hoping I'm proved wrong not vindicated in the future.

[Awol]

List of projects suspended:

Search and Rescue Helicopters: £4.6bn

did something go wrong in the copy & paste - that figure sounds high!

unless i am missing something in my understanding?

The figure is correct and utterly staggering, until you realise this was yet another ludicrous PFI contract negotiated by the words removed in the last government.

[Richard]

The Tory party has not changed its ideals from the Thatcher days

What, ou mean the ideals which say Labour have got us into a right mess and we have to sort it out?

[TrentVilla]

I don't think the Tory party ideals have changed all that much as they are already pushing through their suedo privatisation of some state education with rather stupid idea of state funded run for profit schools, operating outside LA control and managed by parents, teachers, trusts or businesses.

[Jon]

Yes, so far it is smacking very much of early 90s Torysim, which is not FTW.

I can't see much of a liberal flavour yet either. Is Clegg going to kill his party so early into the coalition?

[Awol]

I don't think the Tory party ideals have changed all that much as they are already pushing through their suedo privatisation of some state education with rather stupid idea of state funded run for profit schools, operating outside LA control and managed by parents, teachers, trusts or businesses.

I know you've got some knowledge of this field so is the above not just a continuation of Labour's Academy policy?

[bickster]

The Tory party has not changed its ideals from the Thatcher days

What, ou mean the ideals which say Labour have got us into a right mess and we have to sort it out?

Labour only continued Tory policy in the main anyway

Either of the buttfuckthepeople parties would have caused this mess and the absolute hilarity of each side blaming each other continues to amuse me from the sides

Fiscally and ideologically there was very little difference in either Labour or the Tories regulatory frameworks, neither party was in favour of restricting what the banks did and now it seems to be open season on each other.

Ironic belly laughs from the cheap seats.

[TrentVilla]

I don't think the Tory party ideals have changed all that much as they are already pushing through their suedo privatisation of some state education with rather stupid idea of state funded run for profit schools, operating outside LA control and managed by parents, teachers, trusts or businesses.

I know you've got some knowledge of this field so is the above not just a continuation of Labour's Academy policy?

I think its fair to say that yes, I see where you are coming from although I think 'continuation' is perhaps the wrong word. That suggests that the current government is simply picking up and running with the former governments policy which isn't quite the case.

Granted the Labour policy of Academies (a most un Labour like policy from its inception) is proving to be the foundation of the later Conservative policy but they aren't the same.

For a start Labour only opened the doors to Secondary schools to become Academies, the Tories plan to open this to Primary schools or should I say Primary aged pupils.

This I think is given the performance of similar schools and similar policies in Sweden a risk that shouldn't be taken with childrens education. Get education wrong at that age and the child is cursed for life.

Secondary school Academies in this country have been a success by and large and their creation has seen schools move away from such close LA control that is beyond question.

The driving principle being that they are actually better funded than traditional state schools as normally 10% of state schools budgets are held back for centralised costs. Academies though receive this additional 10% meaning more money in the schools own budget and (in theory) spent on childrens education.

These schools though are still though bound by certain LA rules such as admission, a crucial issue in this.

The Labour program of Academies was underpined by the largest program of school building this country has seen in 100 years with huge amounts of money put into new sites and structures. I admit not all of it was state funded, some was private money but the schools essentially remained state schools but with more autonomy.

The proposals from the Tories mean that this policy will be taken further and for the first time applied to Primary schools which as I've already stated is a worrying development in my view.

Then there is the issue of who is running these new schools, we aren't talking about existing schools turning to Academies like under Labour, run by a head teacher sometimes as part of a foundation.

We are talking about new schools being created, created by teachers, or parents, or foundations or businesses. Totally out of the control of the state but funded by it. The people running these schools will be to a large extent a law unto themselves and able to run there schools at a profit.

I personally am fundermentally against state funded education being run for profit, that has nothing to do with politics or party politics and everything to do with what I believe to be best in terms of the education of children.

I don't mind private schools, I have no issue with them at all I'm against the blurring of the boundaries between them and state schools. I'm also curious to know exactly what the admission policy of these new schools will be.

Oh and I'd also point out its up to these new schools to find the premises, the government aren't going to build new schools for them.

For every set of parents who can run a school and I accept there are many that can (financially anyway) there are many that can't. What also happens when the parents who can lose interest when their children move on from the school? Who picks up the pieces? its not a traditional state school after all, is it closed? What happens to the kids?

I could go on and on but I won't, hopefully I've made my point and the degree of seperation between the two things is evident.

One final point though, the previous academy system was working. Not in every case but then what does have a 100% record, but it was working. The statistics from Sweden on which the Conservative model is based would suggest that it isn't, yet the Tory party advisor on this I believe is from the company behind much of the project in Sweden.

[drat01]

Chief Tory paymaster Lord Ashcroft has avoided paying 127 million pounds in Tax.

Sheffield Forgemaster were asking for a loan of 80 million that would have secured and created jobs - this was rejected by the ConDem's

"We are all in this together"? - absolute and utter bollox

[avfc89]

Chief Tory paymaster Lord Ashcroft has avoided paying 127 million pounds in Tax.

Sheffield Forgemaster were asking for a loan of 80 million that would have secured and created jobs - this was rejected by the ConDem's

"We are all in this together"? - absolute and utter bollox

Typical Tories Ian, I think more people will see this in the coming years.

[Risso]

Sheffield Forgemaster were asking for a loan of 80 million that would have secured and created jobs - this was rejected by the ConDem's

You can't leave notes saying "there's no money" on one hand, then go round around pre-election, promising huge cheques. Like most of Labour's actions over the last few years, it just doesn't add up.

[tonyh29]

if one looks beyond the knee jerk

The £80m is now going to come from private sector money instead of government money , so the jobs will still be secured / created ...

[TrentVilla]

Which if true (not disputing I just don't know) would strike me as being a good decision, in the current financial hole I would in a case like that rather see private than public investment.

[drat01]

if one looks beyond the knee jerk

The £80m is now going to come from private sector money instead of government money , so the jobs will still be secured / created ...

The 80M will not come from private sector money.

The initial thing that was agreed was a mix of private and state funding for the loan. This would enable the rapid start to the scheme that is required.

With the ConDem's pulling the plug on this - and no surprise that they again target a manufacturing area in a Labour constituency - the scheme is severely delayed at best and will probably be mothballed.

In the mean time competitors from other countries will progress ahead and job losses will occur.

The Con's at least and I am fairly sure that the Dem's did before they joined, said that they were going to "place engineering at the heart of a rebalanced economy" - which is proving to be another complete and utter lie on their part.

[TrentVilla]

How many jobs are at stake?