Reply to the comment left by "Gary Dully" at "11/06/2017 - 18:43":

Gary

Thanks for your reply. It is neither my job nor desire to try and persuade you to vote for whoever you think will serve the country best. So I am not going to defend every single policy proposed by the Lib Dems or any party for that matter.

True democracy would perhaps require a proportionally representative voting system? On the important subject Brexit and in particular the final deal agreed I also feel that there needs to be some involvement from representatives of all sides of the political spectrum.

To use your expression - ‘as democratic as a shotgun blast to the face’. This was exactly what May and gang tried to do with several policy areas including Brexit, but much of the voting public do not appreciate that approach.

Personally I would never base my vote on my own personal circumstances alone, but on the subject of the PRS which is provided by both individual and corporates: I may be wrong but I would be very surprised if any other party would have ever tried to get away with heavily penalising 1/5 of the providers which inversely is likely to assist the remaining 4/5 (S24).

David Gauke - former first secretary to the treasury was at the very least the govt's principal defender of s24 if not the architect behind it. He is now the work and pensions secretary which I believe makes him responsible for Universal Credit. If any landlords out there need a further reason not to let to the 1.5m work shy or other benefit scroungers soon to all be UC recipients then this would be it - he won't care a jot when he is presented with UC horror stories affecting landlords.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Shine" at "12/06/2017 - 14:26":

Well Mark,

Let's put your Brexit theory to the test shall we?

Suppose you have 2 surgeons

One surgeon called Tim Farron, who believes in holistic medicine.

And another called Nigel Farage who says you require surgery on one of your gonads that are swollen with the effects of the cancer.

You listen to both arguments and also read the government pamphlet that says once you leave your gonad in the surgeons kidney bowl you still can make love, but you'll have to try harder to raise your game.

I think that if a surgeon asks me if I want a cancerous gonad removing and I vote for it with my signature on the medical consent form, I will have thought about what I was voting for.

The least I can expect is that my wishes are carried out at speed and not to be told by Tim Farron that I don't understand what I signed for, the surgeon didn't tell me I had a choice of two gonads a hard gonad and a softer gonad.

Surgeon Farron suggests that by leaving my gonad in place and waiting for a second signature two years later before it gets removed will be better than what I voted for.

I don't think the General Medical Council would call Mr Farron very ethical, if to suit his own viewpoint, he got the nurse holding my nutsack to postpone the treatment, until after the EU had carried out medical trials on a new shower gel that might cure the cancer or at best make my ball sack smell nicer.

As for other issues, such as a hung parliament, they can wait until my nutsack gets better, don't you agree?

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Shine" at "12/06/2017 - 14:26":

Mark you just can't have a negotiation with lots of people involved you'd never get anywhere.
I've negotiated multi million pound deals all over the world as a professional.
What your asking for is lots of different views to collect into a negotiation strategy that tactically gives you the upper hand to deliver the best results for the country. The truth is in those wildly different views you'd end up with a watered down nothing to say negotiation where the EU walk all over you! There is no HARD or Soft Brexit, just a negotiation, that negotiation gives a best result. The harder we go in the better the result, and you can Never leave anything off the table.
NO DEAL BETTER THAN A BAD DEAL.......i've used it many times why? Because its a game, a game of fear, power and skill of tactical argument than gives you control of the negotiation...The soft weak liberal approach would consign us to the worst of all deals.
I took the mighty automotive giant Bosch to the cleaners because i was well planned, have great leverage to remove £12.5 million of business, and after being bullied for nearly £1.5m, i then proceeded to play a canny game where by i never paid the money and took back £4.5m over 3 yrs.....No one takes Bosch for 20%, but i did, and the hinge?
No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal.....

Reply to the comment left by "Mike D" at "13/06/2017 - 09:19":

Mike D - the voice of common sense. Why ? Real world business experience. Not some privileged spoon fed over educated academic with an unrealistic utopian view of the world (that's MPs I'm talking about !). If we had more people with a business background in politics we really would not be in this dreadful mess.

The establishment, the well meaning remainers, the anti-democratic remoaners and the naïve young will now get their wishes - soft brexit is not brexit and we would be better off putting up with the EU farce as it is until another country that respects it's voters more and/or has the balls to see it through has their own brexit.

There really is no hope in this country now. For Brexit, for a sound economy, for the future generations, for tenants and landlords.

I think its worse than that Mark to be honest.
I was in China in 2001, i came back to the country and told alot of professionals we'd become 'fat & lazy' privileged life styles and not really willing to work very hard!!

I voted to leave based on my Global work experiences, the EU is technically bankrupt, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Ireland, Italy....the only countries either in profit or holding head above it are Germany and UK. The debt mountain runs deep, and i think Italy will be the next, it will take down some German and French banks and collapse the Euro they are in denial and that's why they are in such a state though over costed socialist programmes they could never afford.
Interestingly, the 'Young' wanted to stay in Europe, 'we've stolen their futures' how little they know. (we've saved them!) Brexit needs to give us EU access but ability to Trade deal globally. If we acheive this then we will grow exports with a weak pound, grow jobs & bring wealth to the country, while the EU withers on the vine, i'm not sure when it will break but i'm very certain it will.
A So called Hard Brexit, it the exit we need, tied into the EU they will take us down with them, the the Young will have a stolen future with 10-20% unemployment rates as they have in Europe!

Headline in The Times 'Austerity is over' May tells Tories. For goodness sake what is wrong with the people in this country. A few snowflakes from Generation Rent vote for an old Marxist and we chuck financial prudence out of window. The tories have dumped on 2m tory voting landlords, threatened to do the same to the self employed (NI farce) and then the old folk (dementia tax) - now they want to kick the financial problems of the country further down the road. No. Not good enough. The money tree does not exist.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Shine" at "09/06/2017 - 22:29":

And I find most people are unaware that the raising of the personal allowance (taking 3 million low earners out of tax), the pupil premium and the triple lock, to mention just three, were all Lib Dem policies.

Reply to the comment left by "Mandy Thomson" at "10/06/2017 - 12:55":

Out of the four (Tory, Labour, Lib Dem and Green) the Lib Dems are the most even handed with regard to landlords. Tories are more concerned with enabling huge corporate bodies to buy/build/manage tens of thousands of homes, and Labour and Greens are of the opinion that the PRS should be destroyed. Lib Dems accept the ongoing need for good quality PRS properties, would consider limited, not blanket licensing and promoted a rent to own model, to help tenants save for a deposit, or pay rent for 30 years and then own the property (obviously not those owned by private landlords) Unlike Corbyn, who seems to think we should sell our properties at deep discounts to tenants and Greens who attack us for taking peoples' housing benefit.

Reply to the comment left by "Cautious Landlord" at "13/06/2017 - 11:22":

'2m tory voting landlords'

Who says they all normally vote Tory? There are a LOT of Labour MPs who are landlords.

It's also worth remembering that of those 2m landlords, if the govt stats are accurate - whilst 20% will financially suffer as a result of S24, 80% are likely to financially benefit from it's implementation.