Who is your Favourite British Prime Minster.

I'm interested to know what's wrong with Cameron compared to his two predecessors, if there is anything. He seems okay on the foreign relations front...

Since Cameron came into power, he's done pretty much nothing on the domestic front but make cuts, cuts and more cuts. I understand cuts are necessary, but Cameron is really being quite brutal.

Plus, he's basing a worrying amount of his domestic policy on the idea that cutting public services doesn't matter, because volunteers will step up to do it for free.

Yeah, he's basically saying, "You are going to lose your job because we have to make cuts. Now you have no job, volunteer!"

Despite you know, a lot of the council funding cut goes towards charities, so they are in turn losing money and are unable to step in.

Basically the cuts are disproportionately affecting the poor.
(Also did anyone see the cut %s per Council in the UK? Those that took the maximum cuts 8.9% were poorer areas already a lot of them up north and labour constituencies whilst the majority Tory Heartlands received cuts under 1%.)

edited 29th Oct '11 2:03:42 PM by IanExMachina

Ian, the only reason my local concil only got their funding cut by 8.8% is because that was the cap

They cut Birmingham by the maximum?!

Yeah, that's where a bunch of the poorest urban constituencies are.

Good job, Tories!

edited 29th Oct '11 2:12:10 PM by Inhopelessguy

Cameron, from the various tidbits I pick up here and there, strikes me less as malicious and more as kind of inept...

I think his premiership the predated the prohibition of the slave trade and the actual abolition of slavery in Britain. He supported the abolitionist movement but died before any legislation made slavery illegal.

edited 29th Oct '11 2:11:38 PM by TheGloomer

Well, the whole thing about making more cuts in more deprived areas is probably because he wants to keep Tory voters loyal, and the areas where they are a majority tend to be the wealthier areas. He's probably not actively thinking "I'm going to punish the poor!", but the end result is the same.

@ Panny. Depends which way you look at it. I mean, he's obviously got some good intentions, but he's being very heavy-handed in the way he does his things, and his policies don't have very obvious effects, or no effect at all.

RE: 55. That might be already covered by the issue that cuts affect the poor and poverty related schemes more. Funding for these things often go through councils and new labour was particular prone to having schemes which ordered to councils to do things and provided the money so if they are cutting those, you'll see it come out of council budget. Richer councils don't have those issues so didn't get the funding i the past and so don't get the cuts now.

Just a guess.

That was Blair. It wouldn't have even come under the Chancellor's purview, I don't think.

edited 29th Oct '11 2:19:30 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

Mm.

~shrug~

WHY, BLAIR, WHY? WHY, 9/11, WHY?

Ruining all our politics. Fucking terrorists. ;_;

The cuts were inevitable and were going to suck. Britain has been spending money it doesn't have since... well, since 9/11 again actually.

At least the top rate of tax is taking some of it.

Yeah, but he didn't have to make the most cuts to the most deprived areas. That's what upset people.

edited 29th Oct '11 2:27:20 PM by ArlaGrey

However the distribution of cuts hit the poorest and left the wealthy pretty much alone.

There are other ways to make up the money, actually taxing companies properly (HEY VODAFONE) and making it harder to avoid tax by dealing with the British territories that are popularly used as tax havens.

However off topic.

One Topic:
It is quite interesting to see the views on non UK citizens on the Prime Ministers and the reasons behind them.

edited 29th Oct '11 2:28:41 PM by IanExMachina

Like in war, when the rich find they've overspent and overreached, it's the poor who bite the bullet.

I wish I knew more British Prime Ministers. I only really know those who majorly intersected with American history, unfortunately...

edited 29th Oct '11 2:29:31 PM by USAF713

@ all the answers about Cameron

I...see.

Maybe this guy should be a foreign minister instead then...or give someone more competent the job of fixing the local economy...

However, Brown had a stronger record of sucking up to the rich than Cameron ever did, unless you believe he was really stupid enough to hand millions of pounds to greedy bankers with no strings attached and believe they wouldn't pocket it.

On this last page we've been close to getting to a point that affects our topic:

Prime Ministers have to rule over their Cabinet and lead their party. Especially before Thatcher, they were more like Chairmen. I mentioned Wilson and Jenkins- Jenkins was Home Secretary and he was really truly in charge of that section and he can lay claim to the legislation he introduce. Even now we have conflict between the benefit an poverty issues that Duncan Smith wants to reform and needs money for, the "Cut, Cut, Cut" Chancellorship of Boy George Osbourne, the fairly liberal Justice Secretary whose methods of saving money get screwed up by him putting his mouth in it, and the Typical Tory feelings of the hard right, Home Counties dwelling, double barrelled backbenchers who forgot to notice they didn't win the election.

And that's before you put in the coalition.

So you have to look at what the Prime Ministers do in their parties and in their cabinet rather than the sum of the policies put out during their premiership. Don't give Blair the minimum wage for example, give him the fact that he did what Kinnock struggled to do and pulled them out of being a party that called each other Comrade to something more like Wilson's party. Then put that against everything that is represented by Mandelson and Campbell.

Did the USA ever get told that Saddam was capable of launching biological and chemical weapons in 45 minutes, USAF?

Er... I was only in the Third Grade when we went for Operation Iraqi Freedom. I don't really remember what they told us, honestly.

Yes. I truly believe he thought that. That is a problem all countries have had: Politicians getting what effectively constitutes starstruck over wealthy groups and finance industry leaders who yabber on about how great giving them tax reliefs and leaving them unregulated will be, after those people have only really gotten access by virtue of being associated with money, rather than any "not full of bullshit" quotient. It gets me so mad, i think there should be some sort of protest.

I have the feeling that if you guys were, it would have come up in more recent news a lot more.

edited 29th Oct '11 2:56:52 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

There you go.

I think that makes me a year older than you, and I remember my teachers telling that to us. I really feel betrayed by that piece of scaremongering. Did intelligant adults actually believe that bullshit?

As for organising a party, I agree it's a vital skill. But what good is it if the things the party actually do don't benefit the country? I'd say Thatcher had a better control over her party when she started out, but she's still near the bottom of my rankings for Prime Ministers.

Edit: Also you can question how much of this reorganisation was down to Blair. A lot of people seem to credit John Smith with doing the real work and my father, not the most left wing of people, thinks that by the end of his leadership Kinnock had made the Labour Party a workable opposition to the Conservatives.

edited 29th Oct '11 3:14:20 PM by C0mraid

The things that occurred under her premiership we call Thatcherism, this is a sign of how she dominated her cabinet and steered it and owned the policies. So yeah, we can say that what the party did is a way to judge her. Then again, Churchill, in terms of laws and policies? Pfh, obviously not much interesting there. What we judge him by was his capacity to lead a War Cabinet and the ideas that he encouraged (under different prime ministers, I think commandos, operation mincemeat and bouncing bombs would have been less likely ideas for example). Wilson's success was in not doing something and in his ability to tread a line between two sides.

Yeah, I kind of agree, Kinnock basically "loosened the lid" and put them on that path. But he lost. A sense of "we can't go back" occurred because of the evident reasons why they lost and then I think really anyone could have come in and tried to change something.

edited 29th Oct '11 3:29:24 PM by SomeSortOfTroper