Re: Nick Clegg - why believe a word he says? : Thu Sep 19, 2013 7:56 am  

DaveO wrote:

... Any idea the Lib Dems have put a significant break on Tory excesses is joke. They have enabled much of the bad policy this government has enacted... <snip> ...We have the stupid situation where the Lib Dems vote with the Tories because they are both part of the government and have no option to do otherwise, not because they actually agree with the policies.

Quite so.
100% capitulation (as in the 15-minute U-turn on the economy) is not compromise.

A deal could have been done involving abstention on various issues rather than simply voting with the Tories.

Which bits of the bedroom tax, the NHS, tuition fees, welfare reform (for which read "reduction"), etc etc are "compromises" that a genuine Lib Dem could support?
What support on electoral reform and House of Lords reform did the Lib Dems get in return?

There are even instances where the Lib Dems have simply been ignored, e.g. the "Illegal immigrants go home" van episode happened without the Lib Dem Home Office minister (Jeremy Browne) or Nick Clegg even being informed of it (or so Browne says).
Some compromise.

The only good bit that comes to mind that Clegg has achieved is the increase in the tax threshold for the low-paid ... and even that was to a large degree, and for many completely eliminated, by welfare reductions and increased VAT.

Re: Nick Clegg - why believe a word he says? : Thu Sep 19, 2013 9:22 am  

According to Newsthump, Clegg is going to be forced to wear a full veil, to protect the public from his lying face...

Re: Nick Clegg - why believe a word he says? : Thu Sep 19, 2013 11:39 am  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

According to Newsthump, Clegg is going to be forced to wear a full veil, to protect the public from his lying face...

Would need to be 100% coverage, because, as everyone knows "you can't hide those lying eyes"

Re: Nick Clegg - why believe a word he says? : Thu Sep 19, 2013 1:02 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

:CLAP:
.

The only good bit that comes to mind that Clegg has achieved is the increase in the tax threshold for the low-paid ... and even that was to a large degree, and for many completely eliminated, by welfare reductions and increased VAT.

The Tories would still have implemented the welfare reductions and increased VAT (and more) without the increase in tax threshold, if they'd had a working majority.

[DaveO]

Re: Nick Clegg - why believe a word he says? : Thu Sep 19, 2013 3:28 pm  

Cibaman wrote: The Tories would still have implemented the welfare reductions and increased VAT (and more) without the increase in tax threshold, if they'd had a working majority. So what? The policy isn't that brilliant anyway in that if you don't pay tax you don't benefit. Those out of work, underemployed, on part time work who earn below the threshold won't see any benefit of it going from 9440 to 10000 anyway. They will however be paying the increased VAT and Bedrooom tax etc. I read this earlier by Suzanne Moore: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/19/nick-clegg-speech-liberal-democrat An absolutely blinding and spot on assassination and exposure of Clegg and the Lib Dems.

Cibaman wrote: The Tories would still have implemented the welfare reductions and increased VAT (and more) without the increase in tax threshold, if they'd had a working majority. So what? The policy isn't that brilliant anyway in that if you don't pay tax you don't benefit. Those out of work, underemployed, on part time work who earn below the threshold won't see any benefit of it going from 9440 to 10000 anyway. They will however be paying the increased VAT and Bedrooom tax etc. I read this earlier by Suzanne Moore: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/19/nick-clegg-speech-liberal-democrat An absolutely blinding and spot on assassination and exposure of Clegg and the Lib Dems.

Re: Nick Clegg - why believe a word he says? : Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:52 pm  

Cibaman wrote:

The Tories would still have implemented the welfare reductions and increased VAT (and more) without the increase in tax threshold, if they'd had a working majority.

Isn't that rather beside the point though? ... i.e. they didn't have a majority and have only been able to do the things that they have done because they have had Lib Dem support.
They can't say that something was all the Tories fault, what they need to be able to do is say, yes, we let them do that but it was worth it because we got this or that in exchange.

As a leader of the Lib Dems, the party most in favour of Proportional Representation and, by extension, the likelihood of coalition governments, you could have been forgiven for thinking that Clegg would very likely have been the best-prepared for coalition negotiations.
But his U-turn on the economy and cuts tells it all.
He was either so cravenly scared of what the result would be in the event of a second election or simply unprepared and not tough enough for the horse-trading required.

Maybe his declarations on economic policy, made before the election, were just a vague whim, a mere notion, nothing really serious ... so when he said, in the week of the election, “My eight year- old ought to be able to work this out – you shouldn’t start slamming on the brakes when the economy is barely growing.” he didn't really mean it.
Unfortunately for us, it was the most pressing, most debated issue of the day and the one on which many people decided their vote but, for him, it was disposable policy.

Earlier this year, he admitted that "If I’m going to be sort of self-critical, there was this reduction in capital spending when we came into the coalition government, I think we comforted ourselves at the time that it was actually no more than what Alistair Darling spelled out anyway, so in a sense everybody was predicting a significant drop-off in capital investment.”
But that's not true either, according to figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility, up to Q2 2013, the coalition had spent £12.8bn less on capital projects than was planned by Alistair Darling.

Clueless.