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Woolas: I warned this would happen
Date published: 12 May 2010
Oldham East and Saddleworth MP Phil Woolas said: “Millions of people will be let down by the Lib-Dems jumping into bed with the Tories, I warned if you voted Lib-Dems you would get the Tories.
“My party must regroup and move forward.
“As an MP in opposition my job is to fight for Oldham and I will continue to do that.
“My first priority is to get a new school for Saddleworth. I will continue to fight for the interests of Oldham at the highest level.”
Oldham West and Royton MP Michael Meacher said: “Although I think it was enticing to consider Labour-Lib-Dems coalition, I think on balance it is better for Labour to go into opposition.
“Government at this stage will be unstable and unpopular. As a Labour party we have to renew ourselves as a party and convince our core voters we are working for them.”
Oldham Lib-Dems leader Howard Sykes described the historic deal as “a proud moment.”
He said: “It has been a long time since we have had Liberals in the national government.
“There will be challenges ahead but these are exciting times and it is refreshing to see national politicians putting the national interest first.”
Meanwhile, Oldham’s Conservative party leader Jack Hulme gave a cautious thumbs up.
He said: “Like many other people I have some reservations about it, but it does seem, given the way the electorate voted last week, the logical way forward. I like the spirit of give and take that seems to be prevailing down at Westminster.”
Comments
For once I agree with Phil Woolas. Real Lib Dem supporters have been kicked in the teeth by their own 'hero' - a man of little substance. This coalition is made in hell I fear. Not good at all, especially for the working class.
Sour grapes again Woolas. Millions have been let down by your lot but you can't see it. Let somebody else sort your mess out now and be thankful for the 103 votes that let you stay in.Wonder if that will change when yet another postal vote fraud scandal is investigated
Fight for Oldham? hahahahahahaha
The disaster is the mess your lot have left us in with the biggest debt in history. a trillion and counting when you add in the hidden PFI and pensions debt!!!
I have lived in Singapore for almost two years and EVERYONE who resides here has to have an ID and it's actually no problem and there are no objections to it at all. I don't see the problems that some 'objectors' in the UK seem to feel will occur. Why should it worry anyone? It is also a very good weapon against terrorism and crime here is, relatively, very low.
I have no objection to carrying an ID - we call all carry a form of ID - Bank Cards, Driving licences, Passports etc...... so what is the problem with carrying an ID specific?
A Conservative and Lib Dems coalition and alliance, is already giveing me nightmares............
No one's ever asked the residents of Diggle if we want the new Saddleworth School on our doorstep. I for one don't want the green fields bulldozed to make way for it.
Saddleworth has been trying to vote Woolas out for years. He doesn't talk for us.
To answer your question Dramasingapore. ID cards are the thin end of the wedge leading to a full police state that labour want. The police are used to support politcal policy as a priority to upholding the law.
Isn't Singapore a police state? Try being politically active there and see what happens.
Woolas you are extremely lucky to still be an MP. The coalition between Lib Dems and Tories is the best outcome ever and reflects the majority votes in Saddleworth/Oldham East, 25856 Liberal Dem/Conservative compared to 14,186 Labour. And for all you still tediously discussing ID Cards - it's not going to happen, like the third runway at Heathrow, it's dead in the water, get over it! A brilliant and exciting result for our country.
Consider yourself very lucky to have kept your seat after your government presided over a complete immmigration shambles for 13 years.
One million ILLEGAL immigrants and counting ???? !!!!
Most countries have ID cards - Germany for example, and they're not police states. The problem here was that everybody would have to pay about £100 each to have it. And don't forget, it was originally a Thatcher idea.
Maxdamage - PFI, economic crisis, non-regulation of banks, Iraq... do you think the Tories would have done it differently? They are Tory policies. You'll see where they're coming from when they reduce the top level of income tax and put tax up for the rest of us.
Will this new school be an academy built under a PFI contract but hang on Phil Woolas and New Labour do not have power any more, so who is going to sanction this project. The hypocrisy of Howard Sykes I still have in the recycle bin election leaflets from the Lib Dems stating that it's a two horse race and the Conservatives cannot win here. Perhaps this new alliance should be called the "Pushmepullyou" coalition.
As someone has posted on another subject, Clegg wouldn't work with the 'third party', which he believed at that time would be Labour. Is he two-faced or is Cameron a man without principle? - answers, to both points, on the back of a stamp!
As for all those Liberal voters in Oldham/Saddleworth, they must be feeling somewhat let down now, and if not, perhaps they may like to venture an explanation as to why, in the first place, they didn't vote for what they've now got!
I would rather Nick Clegg jump into bed with anyone than have Phil Woolas and his incompetent lot in power
Having just watched an Economics Professor shout angrily that the CONDEM ecconomic package (just announced) will be a disaster; he talked of the CONDEMS walking into an economic death spiral.I don't live in Oldham any more but the projected 'additional 2 million unemployed ' will impact on Oldham and the North West with devastating results. It is so unfair ...the major cities of the UK all voted Labour or Libdem ( Manchester, Birmingham, London etc)
I could weep...
Hey Phil, why don't you just stop your bitter whining and look at the worst loss of seats for 80 years that happened to your party? The Lib Dems also lost seats and you were trying to shore up the Labour vote using scare tactics, a typical failed NuLabour strategy.
If you were so good why did you take such a beating. You really are an utterly detestable deceitful man. labour is so open and transparent it didn't even consult MP's or the PLP whilst talking to the Lib Dems.
Hey Phil, you do realise the mess you left behind don't you? If you factor in pensions and PFI's our national debt will be 103% of GDP in 2012. And you have the nerve after such a resounding failure and hammering at the polls to snipe at others? have some humility and grace in defeat you horrible little man.
Hello Old_Mancunian. I wouldn't call it a police state as such and everyone goes about their business - but, as should be the case anywhere, if you step out of line then you are in trouble. I doubt Labour wanted to make a police state (that's your view and you are entitled to it). The CTV cameras have already got you marked so why worry about a plastic card? It saves carrying around all sorts of other forms of ID. Cameron will make the UK suffer along his lapdog Clegg. Bush/Blair similarity?
dramasingapore : I.D. cards didn't stop the Madrid bombings & wouldn't have stopped the 7/7 ones either. I object to I.D. cards partly because they're not as effective as people claim and partly because I don't trust any government to keep the data secure - just look at how many disks & laptops have been lost.
wazzarsa : apart from my comments to dramasingspore - Bank Cards, Driving licences, Passports are all voluntary. I.D. cards would be compulsory. How long before they're used for something other than their original purposes? How long before a govt sells the biometric information to, say, an insurance company to help pay for maintaining the database?
sorry phil! as a previous voter to your beloved party in the three previous general elections i feel short changed.
time after time you failed on nearly all the promises you gave us to vote you back in.
your party failed to evolve when things where getting bad here.
because of that you clearly showed you where not for changing and to continue on that course would ended with the destruction of our society in general here. it had to stop and finially it has.
lets hope common sense begins now!
Although observing from afar I do feel this is one heck of a risky coalition, led by two blokes whose smarmy ways give me feeling of nausea. Clegg would have supported any party to get the DPM post. He is not to be trusted. Cameron? Well, he's not for the average Joe or Josephine that's for sure. What have the UK let themselves in for? You'll find out soon no doubt. Fingers crossed?
ammypam you are sounding like a class war relic. I will never pay the top rates of income tax, but personally believe it is immoral to take more than half of someone's income. Remember Thatcher cut base rates from 33% under Labour to 25%. Whoo took away the 10% rate rather than tax the wealthier more. Gordon Brown did to try and keep the Middle England vote. The mysoginy on show over the Thatcher years is quite pathetic. One thing for sure, it can't get any worse debt wise.
Phil, we've just come out of a sustained economic boom into recession, and there is nothing in the bank to tide us over the rough times because you spent it all paying benefits to lazy types who are likely to vote for you. And when you'd spent it all you went and borrowed more and spent that too! Over the next few years your lot are going to spend a lot of time talking about ConDem cuts, when in reality they are YOUR cuts. You're not fit to run the finances of a fairground burger van!
My brother and his wife voted Tory in the election. They're now kicking themselves they didn't vote Lib Dem. How many more are there like that in Oldham, now they've seen Phil's majority?
Presumably spacebeagle your brother and sister-in-law voted Tory because they agreed with their policy manifesto,no other reason, which of course has basically gone out of the window - along with the Liberal's.
If we start to vote on personalties rather than policies, all we will eventually finish up with is Simon Cowell's political version of BGT!
They should think about voting BNP and that way they will get who they voted for,even with all the anti BNP media bias they are on the up,now the fourth party in UK politics.The only party to see their vote go up by over 50%.
EHYUP phil looks like the parties you had on GLODWICK didnt get you all the votes! Stop whinging your out of a job, and as for working for oldham DONT BOTHER you never did nowt for some of us oldhamers anyway. just ride of into the distance and dont look back YOU WONT BE MISSED.
Old boy, the coalition was a prisoner of the numbers, and was the ONLY workable possibility given how the election results turned out. The alternative was a minority government (inherenlty ustable) or another election. I'd put up with a degree of compromise rather than the weeks of political paralysis which would have followed either of those; neither of which would have been able to do anything about Labour's monumental debt mountain legacy.
Hi Dramasingapore. Sure its only my opinion about a police state (remember Walter Wolfgang) but Peter and others agree that the gov't would either lose or sell the data.
As for your comments on Clegg and Cameron, fair enough, but just read the vitriol towards Woolas and Labour.
Locally Labours' McMahon sounded really plausible until he blew it with his double voting trick to "seize power". Is it the public he's interested or the power.
So now we know,vote Lib get Con and what a con,fortunately the good people of Oldham and Saddleworth ignored the Liberal lies and returned Labour MPs.
spacebeagle, there's no argument from me about the numbers stacking up, but as for calling this coalition stable,only time will tell.
How well do you think Clegg can defend, when deputising for Cameron, policies that his Party never have, and never will, support? What will happen as and when Cameron comes to reshuffle his cabinet? Will the Lib-Dems lose out?
As for the debt, don't forget it's an international problem and not one restricted to the UK.
Old boy I suspect Clegg will defened things because he has to, just as Cameron will. As for policies, reshuffles etc. time will tell, we're in unchartered waters. I don't agree that the debt problem is an international one, the UK is the 2nd most indebted country in the world behind Japan. UK government and personal debt stands at 466% of GDP. The Germans have an article in their constitution preventing government debt exceeding 35% of GDP, hence why they're so upset at baling out Greece!
/continued
The fact of the matter is that government debt is the legacy of the most incompetent Labour government ever. It did nothing to address the crisis in public sector pensions, £1,070,000,000 of benefits promised and nothing in the pot to pay it with! It di nothing to address the crisis in state pensions where payments out in real terms will treble within 40 years. It expanded the public sector to create a client state of likely labour voters, 1 worker in 7 in 1997, 1 in 4 now!
Hi! Old_Mancunian. Yes, Ive seen the vitriol even on this side of the world but I guarantee it won't be long before worse is aimed at CON-CLEGG. Have a good weekend.
malcolm, should have voted tory then shouldnt you.
all the liberals could say was vote for us because the tories wont win here.
all labour could say was vote fo us because the the tories wont win here.
the tories are the only realistic was we can get out of this debt riddled mess left by labour.
to vote for anyone else was a waste and it just let useless phil back in.
utter fools!
Just a thought - When the CONDEM coalition collapses watch Clegg join the Tory party...just like a previous Liberal Oldham MP...Winston Churchill...Whatever happened to him?
I really don't understand all the fuss about ID cards. I accept the issue regarding the cost to the public, but as far as carrying identity with you, what's the big deal? Unless you've got something to hide of course. All this moral high-ground about 'authoritarian' and 'police state' is ridiculous. I'm sure these same people do not refuse to go abroad or drive a car because they feel that having a passport/driving licence is an infringement of civil liberties.
steveml : my point is that the ID cards are compulsory, driving licences & passports are voluntary. I've nothing to hide but still don't want an ID card. The govt has nothing to fear from me so has no need to know that much about me. Who would have access to that data? Can they be trusted? A stolen/forged ID card would give a crook almost unlimited chances for fraud/theft, as so many agencies & firms would take the card as gospel. How accurate is the biometric data? What is the margin of error?
Have Your Say
If there is a reason to be happy about this Lib-Con government it is Wollas's authoritarian ID card scheme getting binned.
By Gritter @ 12/05/2010 13:16:09