Front Page Of Guardian Today :::

[mikey4444]

Changes for rich people....huge pay rise caused by the abolition of 50p tax rate and self-satisfaction from knowing that poor people are being hit for six, plus changes to regulation of the financial industry ( thus providing even more opportunities to fleece the public )

Changes for poor people....Bedroom tax, lose of Legal aid, Disability Living allowance scrapped, Welfare benefit cap, further privatisation of the NHS, and introduction of "new" universal credit, providing another way to hide cuts in aid to vulnerable people.

A few days ago....changes to Air and Sea Rescue...now a private (American) firm. How long will it be that the first thing a winch man in a hovering helicopter will ask you is not "Are you OK ?" but "Which credit card do you use ? " or perhaps "what Local NHS Trust do you want to be taken to ?"

What is Wills going to do now for Gods sake ?

[mikey4444]

New Judge. Thanks for your reply. I would agree with you on one point...yes this so-called coalition is ridiculous. But with our present political system its an inevitability if one party doesn't dominate. First past the post is OK when there are only two parties, like most of the postwar period, but fails miserably when there other forces around. God knows the bloody Liberals will never amount to very much but because of them, our political system no longer works as it did. Not sure exactly what can be done about this other then introduce some kind of fairer voting procedure. Most of the world seems to have some kind of proportional voting, and we use it here in Britain for Wales, Scotland and the EEC. Never understood why the Brits won't have it for Westminster.

Your comments about Iraq however are amazing. Given your stated ignorance of Hussein and the terrible regime that he presided over, I can perhaps understand your lack of a grasp of the facts. Are you saying that Iraq was better off under Hussein ? After all the Iraqi people now have democracy for the first time in history. Would they be better off under a brutal dictatorship ? Perhaps we should have left Hitler to his own devices in 1939....after Czechoslovakia was a "far-off country of which we know little"

I have never thought that burying your head in the sand achieved very much in the medium and long term, but perhaps not caring if dictators lived or died is the best way after all !

I live in Wales (surprise surprise ! ) and now that we have the Welsh Government, we have the best guarantee that we will never be lorded over by an English MP, from an English constituency ever again. Some of the ones we remember with affection were William Hague, and John Redwood.

Redwood was perhaps the worst. The Leader of Plaid Cymru at the time said that the ghastly Redwood was about as welcome in Wales "as a rat sandwich" Another Welsh MP called Redwood the "The most bizarre political appointment since Caligula made his horse a Senator"

Thankfully he mounted a challenge to Major Bumble which failed miserably. Even his own Parliamentary colleagues didn't like him any more than we did. As soon as he started that process off, he had to resign from being Secretary of State for Wales. It didn't matter if he succeeded or not, either way we were rid of him for ever.

He tried again in 1997 after Major Bumble had to resign after being defeated by the landslide that was the Labour victory of that summer. But it seemed that the bloody rancid sandwich followed him over the Severn Bridge and he was defeated yet again.

It might seem sometimes that the Welsh are seen as chippy and bolshie...perhaps we have a good reason to be !

[FredPuli43]

The question may be, mikey, that Hussein was a dictator, among many cruel dictators in the world, but why was removing him such a priority ? Why would, or should, any country spend trillions and the loss of life of its own troops plus that of vast numbers of Iraqis, in removing a man whose really bad behaviour (gassing, massacres) had long achieved its objectives? Shutting the door long after the horse had bolted.

But what's done is done, and the Iraqis may enjoy the benefit.

[New Judge]

I don't know (and care even less) whether Iraq is better off now or not, mikey. As you say, the Iraqis do now have democracy but it seems to me they don’t know what to do with it. Unfortunately the UK government seems to believe you can just hand something like democracy to a nation used to dictatorship and expect them to “plug in and play”.

Similarly I don't know what benefits the citizens of nations that have undergone the "Arab Spring" have seen. We became involved in some of those events to a greater or lesser degree and I am yet to be convinced that it did any of them any good and it certainly did us no favours. My overall view is that whilst there are many injustices in the world firstly we do not necessarily properly understand many of them and we do not have the resources to cure any of them. When we have cured all the domestic problems that we face then I might agree to the UK once again joining the international police force.

I think the reason why the UK will not embrace proportional representation is that it makes for weak government. Italy has had more governments than there have been years since WW2. It is interesting that you agree with my views on the Coalition. Just imagine what it would be like under PR. If you look at the 2010 election results and translate the votes cast into seats the Westminster parliament would look like this:

Conservatives: 234 seats
Labour: 188
LibDems: 150
UKIP: 20
BNP: 12
Scottish Nationals: 11
Green: 6
Others: 29

Do you think anything would ever get through the Commons? Parliament would be permanently “hung” and no amount of elections would produce a government capable of holding its own (as has been demonstrated in Italy).

I’m sure you know as a Principality of England, not a nation in its own right, complaints of Wales being “…lorded over by an English MP, from an English constituency..” are no more valid than if the people of the Lake District had voiced the same views. A side effect of devolved powers provided to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is that English people can find that measures which effect them and them alone can be scuppered by Westminster Mps representing those areas that enjoy devolution. English Mps, meanwhile, cannot influence those matters in the devolved areas for which the majority of funding comes from English taxpayers. The entire issue is a complete dog’s breakfast. Whilst devolution may well have slaked the thirst of those who have benefited from it, it remains a complete affront to democracy as far as the majority of the UK’s population - the English - are concerned. But governments of the past fifteen or twenty years have seemed far more interested in appeasing minorities, fearful to the extreme of upsetting any of them lest they appear |”nasty”, than meeting the needs and wishes of the majority.

[jake-the-peg]

(as has been demonstrated in Italy).

Really? how long did it take to get rid of Berlusconi?

But the PR debate is dead now anyway referendum happened people said no -

Just as well as it turns out otherwise we'd probably be looking at a UKIP/Tory coalition.

Whereas with the current system UKIP will be lucky to take 5 seats and might not even take 1

[emmie]

do the Iraqi people have democracy, when did that happen, and how many dead Iraqis has it taken if so. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, but did we go in to topple him for it's own sake or other reasons. And are the people of Iraq better off, are they happy with what we did, i very much doubt it. Another nail in the coffin of international relations.

[jake-the-peg]

//did we go in to topple him for it's own sake or other reasons//

What follows is only my personal suspicions and I have no evidence BUT:

I think the US invasion of Iraq was personal - Bush is alleged to have demanded evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11 and was very disappointed there was none. GWB wanted to finish off what his father started plain and simple

I believe our involvement may have been prompted by some unrevealed blackmail along the lines of 'If you want to continue intelligence sharing with us you need to get involved on the ground'

(I fear I will not live long enough to see that come out from under a 50 year rule)

Finally - after the US was in there was developed a scheme for the US and allies to profit by selling Iraqi oil to pay for overpriced 'reconstruction work' handed out to chosen US companies with a few UK involvements and that this plan went sour when it became harder than expected to suppress the country - I don't personally think that was part of the original plan.

You can form your own theories but that's how I think it went down

[Sqad]

\\What follows is only my personal suspicions and I have no evidence BUT: \\

Saddam Hussein had an almost 10 year war with Iran during which time he had used biological warfare.

Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and set alight the oil refineries.

Saddam Hussein had used biological warfare against the Shi's and the Kurds of his own country.

At that time he was a dangerous and destabilizing force in an unselltled middle east.

He was importing components, disguised as oil pipes, which could well be construed as making a gun which could project biological elements into Israel.

He would not allow the UN into Iraq to establish the presence or otherwise of nuclear weapons, although he did eventually and non was found.

He ruled a repressive regime against his people.

From what i recollect....the West was very nervous of this potential lethal cocktail of imponderables and rightly or wrongly military action was taken.

With hindsight of a retroscope, many of these fears were unfounded.

[New Judge]

Berlusconi has served three terms as Prime Minister, jake. May 1994 to January 1995; June 2001 to May 2006 and May 2008 to November 2011. So you could say that it did not take the Italians too long to get rid of him, but they were foolish enough (or perhaps devoid of suitable alternatives) to re-elect him twice. However, leaving him aside, there have been (I think) 64 governments since 1945. Only one has lasted its full term. The country still has no government some five months after the last general election. The root cause of this ridiculous situation is the absolutely ludicrous system of voting that has been in use in Italy for almost all of that time. It mixes proportional representation (with a threshold of 2 percent for parties in a coalition and 4 percent for single parties), together with a system of “bonus seats“ - the details of which are too tedious to go into. It permitted more than 20 parties to take seats in 2006. So please let’s not have any support for any type of system which is likely to produce such chaos.

General Elections in the UK rarely end up with “hung” Parliaments. There have been five since 1900 and the most recent led to Harold Wilson forming a minority government which lasted about six months. The country was then asked to vote again and a Labour government with a small majority was returned. This was a far more preferable outcome to the ridiculous state we now find ourselves in. Supporters of all parties are bemoaning the Coalition (for which “none of them voted“). PR would lead to a permanently hung Parliament and if people are moaning now just think what would happen if the 650 seats were distributed thinly among about eight or ten parties.

[emmie]

how many Iraqi dead, those by coalition forces...