« Your views on the non-election | Main | First poll after Brown's non-election announcement gives Conservatives a 3% lead »

Comments

Alas Google has biases like in their idiotic action to ban anti-MoveOn.org adverts. It is their right as a private company but its a bit of a worrying trend.

'We need your help in reducing government spending'. Absolutely! Most people including most Conservatives believe that the state will look after them from the cradle to the grave.
To make real changes rather than tinkering with tax the Conservatives need to sell the benefits of a genuinely low tax society.I don't think we've even really started yet. I don't for one minute think this will be a quick process probably not even in a Conservative governments first term but we should be making the case now.

In terms of modernising government, it may be worth looking at what the Koreans are up to (see http://www.mogaha.go.kr/gpms/view/english/inno/in_03_01.jsp)

"You should be choosing what you want, and acting to get what you want, so your money is spent on your priorities, all the time."

Do I detect a hint of 'no such thing as society?'in those words?

Anyway, we've been down this road of 'choice' before. Choice is not a universial pancea.

Malcolm said "Most people including most Conservatives believe that the state will look after them from the cradle to the grave."

Yes, thankfully, Malcolm, they still do. It took years of struggle, not to mention two World Wars to get to that point.

Except Comstock it doesn't. Or at least it doesn't do it well.Think of all the wrecked lives of the children taken into care by the state, the people who've lived their lives on welfare who have no hope and no aspiration and those pensioners living in grinding poverty because they thought the state would look after them. Despite the best of intentions and after a decade of a Labour government you must be able to see that it can't.

In the real world it's not either/or. There is no doubt we have to move away from the bureaucratic model and that Brown has made things even more bureaucratic. He really is the exact opposite of where the country needs to go. However releasing info and expecting choice has limits. What the speech refers to is a very interesting and important debate. It reflects to a large degree a problem businesses have experienced as well, some of whom have learnt that they need to empower staff much lower down the chain to engender responsibility and enable the organisation to compete in a more complex world.

Malcolm, if you want an example of a wealthy 1st world country without 'cradle-to-grave' care you would do well to look at the USA. Outside of the upper-middle classes you won't find it pleasent viewing by any means.

Then look away quickly, and be grateful for what we have.

Lovely words.

Completely at odds with Cameron's proposals for state-political parties, and absence of any aim to actually reduce the size of the state (taxes taken as a % of GDP) but lovely, candy floss words.

Yes, lovely words, Chad. Can you imagine Gordon Brown uttering anything like them?

Well give me an open statist over a closet one who talks the small government game but actually has no intention in reducing the size of the state!

That is a very dishonest approach.

Luckily under the State’s tender care the journey from cradle to grave will hardly take anytime at all.

Everything the State touches it destroys Comstock, our hospitals are dirty deathtraps yet your lot actively prevent competiton, independence and patient choice, our schools churn out superbly qualified illiterates yet independence is restricted and the bureaucrats left in charge, the police have so entirely swallowed the targets culture, their newish legal requirement to foster better race relations and the diversity agenda that when they are not filling out forms they are arresting victim as well as perpetrator.

The Home Office (as was) is not fit for purpose and has utterly and deliberately lost control of its borders, the Foreign Office is actively trying to replace our borders with those of Greater Europe, Defra can’t pay farmers the mite we get back from the Uber-bureaucracy and has presided over the bonfires and mass slaughters of foot and mouth, pensions have been raided, benefit dependency extended to 94% of the population through CTC, the country is hugely in debt and – worst of all, the Armed Forces have been murdered to feed these success stories. I use that word advisedly.

Comstock, you can take your welfare state and… bury it in the hole marked out for Gordon’s ambitions and Labour government. The tide is turning away from the post-war settlement now chum, it is turning toward liberty.

The comments to this entry are closed.

#####here####

Categories

ConHome on Twitter

    follow me on Twitter

    Conservative blogs

    Today's public spending saving

    New on other blogs

    • Receive our daily email
      Enter your details below:
      Name:
      Email:
      Subscribe    
      Unsubscribe 

    • Tracker 2
    • Extreme Tracker