Between now and the next election all the major parties, with the possible exception of UKIP, will have a new leader. Who is your money on?

My bets.........


Labour - Andy Burnham
Liberals - No idea, the ones I've heard of have all gone!
Conservative - Boris
Greens - Surely Caroline Lucas.
UKIP - Nigel Farage again.

Voice North: Mike Ashley

Labour: Chukka (Jesus Christ imagine that. Andy Burnham? Proper nob him.)
Cons: big boris
Greens: couldn't give two, they're an irrelevance
UKIP: Paul Nuttall

Tristram Hunt next labour leader, only front runner not tainted by previous years or crap like cukka umna. Not scared to go toe to toe either.

Liberals- fallon.

Others - don't care.

fook the grass roots, it never gets Labour anywhere, It's the south of England they need to persuade, clone Tony Blair, he would wipe the fooking floor with Cameron and his Bullingdon bum boys

Labour could always start by trying to be relevant before worrying about leaders.
They won't like. They'll be more worried about the Labour Party. It's more important than worrying about the FUCKING PEOPLE.

Well hopefully, with the rise in popularity of UKIP in England, SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales, Labour will never again get a prime minister. At least in my lifetime anyway. Now just need to get the north east voters to shape up and they will never be a force again. Don't matter who their leader is, he'll never be in No10.

Happy days

Where do you live, 3Quid? Do you think the tories will do anything for Hartlepool? I think Hartlepool should be putting massive pressure on Iain Wright to be justifying his £67k basic wage.. to see what he is doing or for the town. Personally, I live in Hull, we've just re-elected in Labour, but we already have two hospitals and several "call in" centres dotted around town. They don't seem to be doing a bad job in Hull but maybe that's because of the size of the city.

labour should ask Dave Nellist to be their leader and become a proper socialist party again

Chukka Ummunna is a good shout, he's a lawyer by profession so pretty savvy probably. Comes across quite well the few times I've seen him on tv.
Pretty sure Cameron said he'd stand down sometime this term, but he's not really known for telling the truth or sticking to what he says. Will be a fight between Boris and Gideon I'd have thought

Yeah, socialism - the country will be far better for it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 39105.html

Yup, the Tories have definitely improved our lives in the last 5 years.

http://www.trusselltrust.org/resources/ ... ne_web.pdf

How about Dan Jarvis this bloke for an outside bet for Labour Leader.. He deserves respect unlike many others .. including Milibrand and Cameron.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/wh ... r_facebook

Yes, and I'm sure if labour got into power they would have completely reversed that

There's a million people using food banks and labour would have rather used the money on foreign aid instead of helping a million people.

If they said in their manifesto "we'll tell india to fuck off and use the hundreds of millions we send them to help people reliant on food banks" I'd have voted for them. But they don't have the balls because there's too many do-gooders amongst them who've lost sight of reality.

http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats

last knockings of labour - 2008 onwards

I'll see if I can find any other stats

Ok - treat this one with care - it is from Wikipedia - but is cited with the relevant sources.

In January 2013, a Tory councilor argued there is no starvation in the UK and no need for food banks, saying they enabled recipients to spend money on alcohol instead of budgeting for food, and are an insult to the billion people in the developing world who "go to bed hungry every day".[16]

A spokeswoman for Trussell responded by suggesting that while low earners in the UK avoid starvation most of the time, they can face periods of severe hunger when hit by personal crisis, which for economically vulnerable people can be something as simple as a spell of cold weather, forcing them to choose between staying warm or going hungry.[17]

In February, Olivier De Schutter, a senior United Nations official charged with ensuring governments honour their obligation to safeguard their citizen's Right to food, warned the UK's government against leaving too much responsibility for aiding Britain's hungry to the voluntary sector.[18]

DEFRA, a government department, has commissioned research into the growing dependence on Food banks, Breakfast clubs [19] and Soup kitchens.[20][21]

In October (2013), the Red cross announced it will start providing hunger relief in Britain for the first time since World War II.[22]

Also in October, an All-party parliamentary group was established to investigate and raise awareness of hunger in Britain


But don't stress, the Tories will save us.

Obviously less were reliant than under the Tories but what were people expecting. A double dip recession, a eurozone crisis, millions more wasted in the Middle East. The only good thing miliband has done was preventing us going into Syria and Libya.

"There's no money left".

All that money to help the poor eh?

Pirlo .. The there's no money left was the standing joke between the "ruling parties" every time the Government changed hands ... We where never in and never would be in the position the Greeks are
Have a read its interesting..

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/debt_brief.php

I'm not really sure what that tells me that I wasn't aware of, but for some of those reasons and the bollocks with HS2 (and I could go on forever) I didn't vote Tory as I've already said because I don't believe they or labour would stand up for this town in parliament. And that's the be all and end all for me.

Labour couldn't give a shit about us, and we're fooling ourselves if we think otherwise.

Have to laugh at the photo of a porker leaving the Food Bank.

A porker with a child.

Life's so tough - I know what'll make things better for everyone - I'll have a chavvy.

Working Tax Credits were not a good thing - far from it.

For Working tax credits read, "Method of unscrupulous owners paying lower wages and having the state make up the monies paid to a reasonable level.".

I hear your issue and reflects my point. Wages should be higher so that the state doesn't need to support.

But as the amount of NIC payable by employers is (IMO) immorally high, I can see why they wouldn't pay more.

Not forgetting that high wages obviously don't help our export competitiveness.

Neither does a strong £ but that's another story..

Actually they were brought in by Margaret Thatcher, back then it was called Family Credit.

I've always failed to comprehend the need for working tax credits or family credits for those earning above the tax rate

It seems a sure fire way of spending money needlessly.

People earning above the tax level - but below the tax and/or family credits cut off - pay out tax - then claim some back

Surely a more efficient system would be to raise the individual tax level for this person, negating the need to give them some money back. - with the exception being those who still need a top up despite paying no taxes.

Or is that naïve of me?

Bloddy hell, I've just read that back and it sounds confusing to me, and I know what I'm trying to say.



I'll leave you guys to try and work it out, then I might try again later.

You shouldn't have had a choice about whether you took the job or not. That's the problem - benefits are too great.

P.S. Should have voted UKIP who proposed anyone on the minimum wage would pay no tax/NIC. Oh, well.