tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8170718846507476773.post1759385416708959397..comments2022-12-13T14:45:12.233+00:00Comments on Martin Goodall's Planning Law Blog: Election bluesMartin H Goodallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07079479984296674469noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8170718846507476773.post-52358217424031832682017-06-12T10:19:29.881+01:002017-06-12T10:19:29.881+01:00Bravo Martin Goodall for your wonderfully 'lev...Bravo Martin Goodall for your wonderfully 'level headed' words of wisdom (and pre-election I note!). Right; now I really must get back to bashing my brains over what the National Policy Statement for National Networks means for this scheme...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8170718846507476773.post-25672280886404860162017-06-05T17:49:37.753+01:002017-06-05T17:49:37.753+01:00I am not exactly a fan of Jeremy Corbyn, but he ha...I am not exactly a fan of Jeremy Corbyn, but he has emerged in this election campaign as a genuine and straightforward person who is clearly sensible and level-headed, and not therefore likely to be fazed by Brexit negotiations or by the other problems that a PM must inevitably face.<br /><br />Conservative politicians and the Tory press are desperate to paint Corbyn and his colleagues as ‘Hard Left’ extremists, but if you look at their programme and at their overall approach to the country’s current problems, there is nothing extreme about what they are proposing. My only reservation is that the Labour Party is not prepared to admit that higher general taxation will be needed in order fully to fund what is proposed, but I really see no objection to paying a higher standard rate of income tax to save the NHS and our schools and social services (among many other vital public services, including defence, the police and security services, that have been starved of the resources they urgently need over the past seven years). Taxes will have to go up even if the Conservatives win, as the independent (and universally respected) Institute of Fiscal Studies has made abundantly clear.<br /><br />It is nonsense to suggest that a previous ‘hard left’ government has done any harm to the country or its economy. The last Labour government could certainly not be described as ‘Hard Left’ by any stretch of the imagination, and the deficit that was incurred after 2008 was entirely due to the huge amounts of public money that had to be poured into propping up the banking system after the crash caused by their casino-style ‘free market’ trading. Not only did the Conservative Party fully approve of the Labour government’s rescue of the banks, they had also supported the spending plans and prudent borrowing policies of that government in the years before 2008. It was only during the 2010 election campaign that the lie was spread that Labour had run up a huge deficit, so as to justify an entirely unnecessary policy of austerity that the incoming Conservative administration was hell-bent on introducing for entirely doctrinaire reasons.<br /><br />The only Labour government that could be described as truly ‘socialist’ was Clement Attlee’s post-war government from 1945-1951, which arguably had more achievements to its credit than any other government before or since – the creation of the National Health Service, the system of National Insurance and a proper state pension, and an ambitious and very successful programme of nationalisation of transport, public utilities and other public services, which served us well for many years. All this was achieved in face of the dire economic situation inherited as a result of the huge cost of the Second World War. The incoming Conservative government in 1951 had the common sense not to try to undo what the Attlee government had achieved, and so the country benefited from the work of the Attlee government for over 30 years, until it began to be dismantled by Margaret Thatcher from 1979 onwards.<br /><br />Voters, including “IslandGal” should look objectively at the Labour Party manifesto, and ignore the crude right-wing propaganda that is solely and cynically designed to scare them into voting for more Tory cuts, not to mention a hard and economically disastrous Brexit.<br />Martin H Goodallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07079479984296674469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8170718846507476773.post-37897074401203620122017-06-05T14:52:39.115+01:002017-06-05T14:52:39.115+01:00Until I read your post I had a lot of time for you...Until I read your post I had a lot of time for your opinion. I agree that Theresa May really does have her faults but the alternative is far, far worse. Just look back in history and see what happens when the UK has a hard left Government. IslandGalhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07593313506618826500noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8170718846507476773.post-81890286301098516642017-05-31T00:32:26.471+01:002017-05-31T00:32:26.471+01:00Thank heavens, for one panicked moment I thought y...Thank heavens, for one panicked moment I thought you might break out into poetry again. passerbyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07133499748098929618noreply@blogger.com