I ❤ JustinBieber

It was only the loss making mines that were closed, the very few that were still making some money survived Tebbit must be mellowing in his old age but I don't believe in throwing money at failing industries, it was just best to cut the loss making pits loose

But what was the solution Norma ? Just throwing money at the industry for the sole purpose of propping up workers ? that isn't the answer, do it with the mines you have to do it with everyone, of course miners lost out but just writing blank cheques for industries that were losing money hand over fist and never likely to make any money again was unsustainable

There is/was no point in propping up lame duck crumbling industries with taxpayers money just to keep people in jobs, coal was so riddled with industrial action and over pricing that mines were losing money hand over fist and it was cheaper for businesses to import coal from Romania than it was to use British coal, steel was in massive decline and over staffed and losing money with no realistic sign of making any, tin mines were uncompetitive, there is no justification in just writing blank cheques of taxpayers money to prop up uncompetitive industries that were dinosaurs Britain under Maggie developed into a service economy and that was the right thing to do Of course areas where there was mines, steelworks, tin mines etc lost out but Maggie did the right thing in not throwing good money after bad

He was a friend to Britain during the Falklands conflict I would not have wished to live in Chile under Pinochet's rule but if something is going to benefit Britain it is wrong to be all moralistic and Pinochet's information and logistical support helped Britain I don't like the Chinese domestic policy but they are the worlds most important economy in the coming years is it right to miss our share of the action because of their human rights record ?

Pinochet saved the lives of thousands of British servicemen by giving them intelligence information and allowing Chile to be used as a refuelling base for British planes, whatever his regime was up to he was of valuable use to us in that conflict and I am grateful to him for that

Damn you beat me by 2 secs :(

I don't recall any information from the UN suggesting us defending our territory was illegal The Falklands conflict had a UN mandate But hey you would rather we had stood idly by and had British citizens ethnically cleansed clearly :rolleyes: Argentina was run by a deranged dictator in Galtieri with an appalling human rights record, British citizens in the Falklands were in danger, the Falklands was right If Galtieri had had the islanders killed or tortured or whatever Maggie would have got appalling stick for sitting on her arse doing nothing so it was a no win situation for her

Several miles ahead of Chris I would say ;) Like my views or dislike them I back them up with reasoning, Chris comes up with Sun editorial soundbites

At least Maggie had a mandate for war and only killed military personnel, Blair had no mandate for war and carpet bombed residential areas of Baghdad along with his fellow genocidal war criminal Bush

Maggie inherited an absolute mess from Callaghan A country with rubbish piling up on the street, the dead going unburied, strikes strikes and more strikes, a country that had its chancellor going cap in hand to the IMF begging for help, a country known as "the sick man of Europe", a country with an archaic manufacturing base, a country having regular power cuts, a country in the pocket of the unions Maggie turned that around to create the 6th most powerful economy in the world, a country that was enterprising, dynamic, prosperous, a country where business could be carried out free of the threat of union intimidation, a country with a budget SURPLUS. Of course some areas and some people didn't do well under Maggie, $h!t happens, not everyone will do well under any leader it is impossible to keep 50 odd million people happy but Maggie turned the country around from a dinosaur debt ridden strike happy nation into a global powerhouse service economy. Greatest PM ever

If they do then it will be down to the Lib Dems During the negotiations with the Conservatives they were pressing them to bring in spending cuts faster than Cameron wanted to, Clegg wanted even faster spending cuts and it is looking like that is what is going to happen so if there is economic problems as a result then Clegg has to shoulder huge amounts of blame

Brown had the chance last Friday to bow out with a shred of dignity, now he will always be known as the "Squatter", he should have stepped down as Labour leader Friday morning with immediate effect and let Harriet Harman manage the transition to conservative government

How will it when growth the last quarter under BROWN was 0.1%, just 1/10th of a percentage off a double dip recession so it would be unfair to blame Cameron if a double dip recession started The priority is sorting out the debt mountain left by Brown There will be pain before there is gain

And so he should given the debt that he inherited from Brown Blair inherited a strong economy from Major

That bottle of champagne is being drunk now ;) I might not be sober enough to do the quiz :P

Better late than never, Brown should have resigned Friday morning

Squatter finally evicted from Downing St

This is it :D Brown about to speak, good bye and good riddance

And a lot of Labour MP's were against it too Blunkett, Straw, Reid, Jowell, Burnham to name but a few

Self defence from the look of that video, he saw them trying to vandalise or break into a car and then they came and confronted him and he was trying to reason with them and they invaded his personal space and then the one on the left went to attack him so he was defending himself The BNP are vile but that didn't look like a racist attack to me it looked like self defence

Not so sure tbh A lot of people liked the novelty of a hung parliament but now the reality has kicked in already of the chaos and instability a hung parliament really brings the novelty has already quickly worn off and a fresh election would have a very different result I think

I think it is pretty clear now that the papers have a lot less influence over their readers than even I thought Almost all the tabloids did a complete hatchet job on Brown and Clegg and told everyone Cameron's $h!t smelt of roses and yet we still never got a working majority so the influence of the press is very little now

I think if talks break down between Cameron and Clegg that there should be a fresh election as opposed to an alliance between Brown and Clegg, 2 parties who failed miserably compared with 2005 should not be able to lock out a party that gained in the region of 100 seats I am confident with a fresh election that the public would realise their mistake and elect a Conservative administration with a working majority

LOL not at all :lol: Given the votes were in inner cities it is more than likely 90% of them were for Labour so it is Labour that lost out by them not voting not conservatives

Disagree totally Polls were open for 15 hrs, if people want to leave things to the last minute when they have had 15 hrs to vote it is their tough $h!t if they miss out, no one has such a busy life that they can't find any time at all between 7am and say 8.30pm in which to vote, I blame solely those who left everything till the last minute. For those few that can't find the time then there was always postal votes, no excuses. There was one stupid bint who was on BBC saying she drove past at 6 and there was a queue so she came back at 7 and there was still one and drove past again at 8 so she came back at 9ish, the stupid mare should have been patient and queued at 6 or 7, her fault she missed out No excuse for running out of ballot papers but in terms of the queues and people missing the cut that was their own fault