Ain't got a colour to nail to the mast.
All I can say is anything but socialism, in whatever vintage.

Smith.

Although then again, first-term Blair is surprisingly not on, or generally. Surely he's not that hated to be completely missed off the poll?

"First term Blair" was New Labour as it is now, only with the benefit of being a change in regime so people look back at it with rose-tinteds.

And Smith? Talk about loading a poll! Or can somebody remind what he achieved in Government to be judged on?

Oooh.............. can't decide. Oh go on then, the wonderfully sexy Margaret it is.

The Cyril Knowles Stand.

All built on an economy bequeathed him by the previous Conservative Government.

By the time Labour had hold of it long enough to influence it it all started going tits up.

But why take facts into consideration when "Hartlepool Man" wants to big up his beloved Labour Party eh?

None of them! One self-serving crook is much the same as the next one to me.

A quality contribution from Mr Ripper whose political and economic insight is truly second to none! You after laugh!

that is the completely opposite stance to me.
Mill House Seats.

i dont sit i stand in the town end next to the twins.

darlo's new roof ???

Guess not many of you were around when thatcher destroyed many industries in the north of england and then her henchman tebbitt suggested people "get on their bikes" to find a job when people could hardly afford to light the gas never mind buy a foooking bike to find non existent jobs.
I left school in 81 and believe me there was foook all in ways of employment unless u had O levels and A levels coming out of you arse, unless you went on one of her scabby £25 a week youth opportunity programmes
The tories are a nightmare for the working class and anyone who thinks they'll do a better job than the present government has over the last 15 years wants to seriously take a good look at themselves.

I guess you're right. Tell you what, lets see how Labour does eh? Here you go, 10p tax increase for the poor; this is not the days of Harold Wilson, the socialist Labour party doesn't exist anymore.

Oh and by the way, the reason you had problems when you left school was that the then Thatcher government were fixing what Labour had cocked up in the preceeding years. Read up on the winter of discontent. Britain was completely bankrupt.

Incidentally, most of the industries you talk about were not destroyed by Maggie they were destroyed by the greed of the unions and their members. This is particularly true of the miners.

The miners were striking to protect their jobs, i'm sure it was under heath that the issues were over pay and conditions.
You could go on and on about who was to blame and who inherited who's problems. I could say that Labour inherited the problems Heath caused, so on, so on.

All I know is that Thatcher destroyed communities which will never be the same again and i'm sure when her time is up (wont be long now) the foooking 2 horned feller will be waiting for her with a very big smile.

Bollocks.

The miners were greedy and power crazy. As I've said before, there was so much institutional thieving going on it was no wonder the pits were uneconomical. As for Heath, he didn't stop long enough to do much and it again was the miners greed that did for him. Maggie watched this happen and prepared for their next huge pay demand. You know who won and who lost.

Yes she'll die soon and I'll be at her funeral along with the other mourners.

Of course, you'll have a personal invite

Probably. the SAMA committee (Falklands veterans association) will get some invitations.

We'll agree to disagree, I was going to say another pointless war but i'll leave it at that, have work to do unlike some on here!!!

I hear that Iain Wright might be deposed as Hartlepool MP by the Labour party come the next election as they're thinking of putting a homosexual child eating labrador in a red t-shirt as their candidate instead.

Apparently it's cos people like you would vote for it anyway.

Aye, good suggestion. If I want opinions on that war I have plenty of old oppos to talk to who were actually there and can offer a valid opinion.

I'm far from left wing, in fact i'm probably one of the most liberal people you could meet, doesn't change my views on the tories, as i've said before if it was a choice between wright and some tories bounder i'd vote wright all the time.

Anyway, I don't know what the problem with him is, our hospital is shoite all he has done is back a new one, and he'll get back in next election, maybe with a reduced majority but he'll be here !!!

Btw, I suggest all war is pointless, though unfortunately it will always happen.

Not even one life is worth it, not for all the foooking oil, money etc.... in the world.

You miss one or two important points.

When the policy was that it would stay open he shouted from the rooftops how essential it was for Hartlepool to have a hospital.

When the policy was to close it and use North Tees, he shouted from the rooftops how essential it was for Hartlepool to use a combined hospital in Stockton.

This arsehole is only MP for Hartlepool in name, he's a Gordon Brown sycophant who will always do as he's told while squeezing the maximum possible out of the MP's expences which he recently voted to keep. He's not MP for you, he's the MP for Iain Wright.

There are times when you have to fight for freedom, thats when its justified. Hitler and Galtieri were cut from the same cloth, they just operated on different levels.

Possibly and if an independent came to me and stated what he wanted to do for Hartlepool and he promised me to his best that he would try, then he might get my vote.

But isn't that what Wright promised, better the devil you know eh

Yes, but the snivelling little shit lied.

Nonsense. Thought it still doesn't justify war, well not to me anyway. Why they couldn't send assassination squads in to take them out is beyond me, would have saved a few million lives.

Lied Thats not an uncommon thing today is it, especially amoungst politicians

Really? tell that to six million jews and 30'000 murdered by state terrorism in Argentina.

True, but its an unacceptable part of society which is soon forgotten and replaced by other unacceptable things, always has and always will be.

Its no big deal. Its part of life!!!

It's no big deal eh, millions of people dead. Discussion over.

Yeah, I forgot that the Major years were well known for their brilliant economy.

I'm no Blairite but he did some brilliant things. Good Friday Agreement, minimum wage, education and NHS money. If you would've preferred Major over Blair then you're being silly. Very silly.

There are diplomatic ways to stop wars, or even removing dictators in a illegal sort of way, but, someone tell me churchill was not a warmonger
Him and Douglas Haig make a right pair, tie that in with Thatcher albiet on a smaller scale.
Hopefully the first 2 are being whipped by the devil as we speak!!

How was Churchill a 'warmonger' he wasn't even PM when war was declared

How was Haig a 'warmonger', a bad general perhaps, but he didn't declare war...

Correct me. Churchill had a big say behind the scenes before he became pm, Haig was a butcher.

What say did he have, perhaps it was don't let Hitler and is cronies bring Europe & the Far East too its knees, oooh to late..

Or perhaps we should have turned a blind eye and used appeasement like Chamberpot did?

We should have taken them out before the war started. Would have saved a few million lives on all sides!!

As for Haig his foolishness or should I say his pompous directives cost many innocent lives which could have been avoided.
His worst which is why he deserves "The Butcher" as he was appropriately called was his decision to sign the death warrants of many soldiers accused of desertion.

Honestly, I can't be bothered arguing such a ridiculous point.

Churchill was a warmonger when he took over after the war started.
We should have taken out Hitler despite him being protected by tens of thousands of SS stormtroopers
We should have stayed out of it, there's no justification for war.
People dying is tought, live with it but Haig should have been done for hangin people.

Figure out your position, you're worse than Claudio Ranieri.

He didn't hang them, he had them shot

Some were hanged
Some died from being flayed on a gun carriage. (Field punishment number 2)
Some were sent on tasks which were certain to result in their death
And yes, quite a lot of them were shot.

I don't think Haig was a warmonger. He was of the old guard, similar to Kitchener - used to fighting underclassed opponents with better weaponry. The First World War encouraged the most rapid growth in technological knowledge (more than any other) and he just couldn't keep up. When the mine went up on Hawthorn Ridge on the Somme, he thought the shock and awe was enough - 3 miles away, machine gunners were firing at and killing British and French targets they couldn't even see.

It's the same with Churchill - the Turks weren't exactly seen as a masterful race, and the Dardanelles were bad enough without the heavy mines, massive bouts of dysentery and a mixture of both fake and real gun emplacements. It was underestimation of the enemy whether it be institutionalised expectations after being the leading naval power of the previous 200 years, or the fact we just walked into countries and claimed them for the Empire.

Very few people were shot under Haig. Shellshock was the main cause but it only saw off about 300. I say only - it's not great, but in a society that has no understanding of psychology it wasn't as bad as it could've been.

We also forget that this war had two sides with three or more powers. They all believed in attrition after their major ideas were culled by 1915 (see Dardanelles, see Schlieffen Plan). So what about Ludendorff? von Below? Foch? Petain? von Gallwitz? Same old story. People find it easy to judge old ideas with new morals.

I mean ffs, there were still cavalry charges until early 1915. 60% off shells didn't work or were faulty. Radios were down as soon as shrapnel hit them.You can't just label Haig or Churchill as warmongers without even considering part of the wider picture.

Jesus, I've just agreed with an entire post from Mr Duracell.

He's dead right though. Haig just took the tactics of the charge of the light brigade and employed them on the Western Front. It was the way he will have been trained at staff college back in around 1860/1870.

A land fit for heroes.......................

We've been quite a team in the past couple of days.

It seems we're not so different after all.

I sit at home watching teletext. usually were getting beat like. Whats new

Go and read up on it and come back.

The Good Friday Agreement was Bill Clinton. He cut off the Noraid money at a stroke and PIRA HAD to come to the table. Tony Blair, y'know, anti terrorist Tony, fighting the evil axis, gave PIRA the keys to the safe and opened the jail gates. The fu cking coward.

Incidentally Mr Tree, I know the discussion has moved on a bit, but just to go back to the miners strike, the miners weren't fighting for their jobs. Only SOME miners were fighting for their jobs as there was never a Union wide vote. Only some areas were balloted and those who didn't walk out, not having had a vote, were visited by the flying pickets and beaten into submission. This is where the Union of DEMOCRATIC Mineworkers came from and the era where the word 'scab' came into popular parlance. Would you support a strike when you hadn't been given a vote on whether to feed your family??

Arthur didn't demand jobs for life for the existing miners, he demanded three generations of jobs for life and is that workable in these days of declining fossil fuel??

On Blair again. Remember the election promises of no more income tax increases?? 'We aren't tax and spend??' Within months of being elected what happened?? ERS went up a straight 1%. Yes they didn't lie except by omission but a lie is a lie and a tax is a tax and they've been crudely lying ever since. This is the most consistently shamelessly dishonest set of Minsters this country has ever had. Today they're lying about the trends in crime. Tomorrow they're borrowing their way out of trouble, knowing that the Tories will inherit the shit pile they're leaving.

They think everyone is stupid and in the last two elections they've been proved right.

Peter Brooke, who was Tory Sec. of State for NI between '89 and '92, is seen as the man who got things really going. He was willing to compromise unlike some of his predecessors. The Yanks had a fair sized part as well. Most commentators would agree though that Labour's election speeded up its implementation by more than a few good years; seemingly fresh and new style of government, popular with the country and a party that couldn't be challenged in parliament etc. Still, the Tories should get the credit for it.

Shall we give a bit of credit to Mo Mowlan along the way?

Spot on