Brown responded that there are more young people in work than ever before, and more people in full time education. Brown said youth unemployment was worse in Spain and Ireland. Cameron accused the government of wanting to cut expenditure on helping youth unemployment. He then quotes a leaked memo from the Business Department. It calls for a cut in apprenticeships rates of 10% , adult learning budget of 10% and development loans of 50%. Brown accuses Cameron of "losing it" whenever policy is mentioned. Cameron retorts that Brown has indeed "lost it". Cameron asks Brown to acknowledge that he will make cuts in 2010. Brown says he is increasing apprenticeships, increasing student numbers and giving more opportunities to the unemployed. Says Cameron is wrong on every policy.
Cameron says departmental spending is being cut. Says Brown has neither courage nor convictions.
Brown then witters on about cast iron commitments and lists all the things Cameron supposedly opposes.
Oh dear oh dear. Is that the best he can do? Yet again he failed to answer a single question and just indulged in Tory bashing. Is that really what PMQs is for?
Nick Clegg raised cuts in housing benefit, and got rather excitable. "This is a man who talks about savage cust in public services", was the cutting response from the Prime Minister. He said any such proposals were out for consultation and no decision had been made.
Alan Simpson urged Brown to support a Tobin tax. "That's he first time he has supported my economic policy," responds Brown to laughter on the Labour benches. Brown says the banks will have to face up to their social responsibility and a Tobin tax would be one way of doing it. Funny how he used to make speeches opposing it, eh?
Gordon Brown 5 (plus 2 for the Simpson joke!)
David Cameron 7
Nick Clegg 6
David Cameron 7
Nick Clegg 6
15 comments:
Brown is like a stuck record. Tories are basically "evil." Brown is acting like he's in opposition. He seems to forget it's under his watch our national debt is higher than ever before, our armed forces are under equipped & youth unemployment is heading towards 1 million. I'm not saying Cameron has all the answers but things can't go on as they are...
futile
PMs have for some time tried to avoid answering the Qs. But Gordon is shameless.
Q: Anything by any Tory
A: IT WAS WORSE UNDER THE TORIES! (Lab cheers)
Was I dreaming, or did BROWN actually accuse Cameron of not answering questions ?
Alan Douglas
Brown is embarrassing. Again.
Political bias aside, can anyone ever remember a time when Brown has 'beaten' Cameron in PMQs?
I would urge dave to bring in a motion to change the questions. Clegg hasn't enough and Cameron too many. He always uses one as a soft ball for brown.
I propose 5 for opposition, 3 for the third party.
When is somebody going to have the gumption to tell the cretin it is PMQ not Tory policy debate.
Gordon and his bankrupt party are and have been in charge for twelve long years.
The only thing to show for it is a bankrupt country.He has done more damage than Hitler.
I am happy with Brown today I won money betting the imbecile would continue his Iron cast attack.
"Cameron accused the government of wanting to cut expenditure on helping youth unemployment."
Oh for christ's sake. We don't have youth unemployment because the government isn't taxing and spending and regulating enough. We have youth unemployment because there is too much of all of that.
At present we have a minimum wage and all sorts of employment legislation that makes it expensive to hire people, and many of these costs are fixed, or worse, are price floors, so that the least experienced and useful workers are simply not worth what it would cost to employ them, while more experienced, better educated workers are barely affected.
The social democrats caused all of this and could remove it. But what does the social democrat, be he Brown or Cameron, want to do to solve this? Increase benefits. Shift people into higher education establishments of dubious repute studying for useless degrees so that they can be paid benefits (student loans and grants) without showing up as unemployed on the stats. They are even extending benefits into the seconary schools with EMA.
Paying people to do nothing, teaching children that it is normal to be on benefits from cradle to grave, and charging people to employ others does not reduce unemployment. Labour doesn't care. Fine, they are ideologues. At least in the past we could turn to the Tories. Not anymore, it seems.
What is the point of the New Conservatives? They have made it quite plain they do exactly the same things as Labour, that they think the same way as Labour, and that they don't give much of a damn about anything other than it being them in office rather than someone else.
Like an old carthorse, Brown should be put out to grass and allowed to end his days in peace.
If it looks like a third rate intellect posing as a thug and sounds like a fifth rate intellect posing as a thug then it is indeed Gordon Brown. The problem is that the speaker will never ask him to answer the question, not just this one but all of them, so he gets to non answer and behave like the bully he is or wants to be.
Sean Haffey sums it up perfectly.
For me it is a strange feeling. Every time I think we can't plump any lower, new depths emerge. 'Shameless' is it.
'Professional politics' is making a mockery of any previous notions of duty or dignity in our representatives. They do not exist in the mindset of New Labour. New Labour wouldn't know what to do with them if they were. Worse, they are the enemy of the rules-and-regulations based mentality they exist in as they require individual responsibility and judgement.
A meaningful political exchange by people expressing their convictions and deliberations rather than their
best laid plans to seduce us seems less and less likely to see with each passing week.
It is quite depressing.
Imagine if they got rid of Brown and put in somebody that was willing to engage on any level. Play a straight bat with questions. The odds would shorten fast.
They are be retreating to factory stats, class warfare and Tory bashing, fine, took 18 years to recover last time.
Did you see the daily politics with Ben Bradshaw taking a mild beating from wee Andrew, shows how much trouble the labour party is in when Andrew Niel starts to give them a hard time.
The Sun political editor was on PM.
He came over very well over Birogate.
Mandleson led the charge against the Sun on Today this morning. He must wish he could find something on Mrs Janes. Racist? Shoplifter?
No, nothing.
So concentrate on victimisation. Pity Gordon.
Poor eyesight. Bereaved father.
The facts remain; the letter should have been typed by a literate secretary. And the army is ill equipped for its role in Afghanistan.
Not a single mention of PMQs on BBC news at six.
Brown receives sympathy from the public and the media (not the mother whose son was blown to pieces).
In what should have been a PR disaster for Brown, the mother of a dead soldier gets more vitriol than he does.
What's changed in the minds of the public to come out in Brown's corner, when for the last two and a half years he has been pretty much detested by the public??
Can't put my finger on it.
Iain said: "Funny how he used to make speeches opposing it, eh?"
This must be some kind of mistake. I'm pretty certain that this was a completely different Gordon Brown to the one you're talking about. At least that's what my anonymous source Mr P. Mandelson told me over an avocado dip lunch earlier.
He also showed me the rocking horse pictures. Quite startling!
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