Because back in 1900 climate change was a real serious political issue that the founders of the Labour Party chose to ignore, wasn't it? Environmentalism is a relatively new idea, and if you ask me it seems more fitting that Labour should rise to meet the challenge than the Tories. It is the party of working people (who are worst affected by climate change the world over) as you say, rather than the party of the rich bosses - stereotypically Tory.

But I agree with you about stealth taxes. I saw Ken Clarke on the Daily Politics some weeks ago. He was saying that the public hate stealth taxes because they take lots of money and just put it into the general kitty. If the taxes were speant on improving the roads, improving public tansport and specific environmentalist approaches then people would be more inclined to agree with them. There is also a point that stealth taxes are designed as a deterrent, but obviously they haven't deterred many people at all.

I hold that until the government renationalises public transport into an integrated public system then taxing people off the roads will not work. You can't expect people to sit back and take a load of crap if they have no alternative option.

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"The underclass created under Thatcher still had the option of being able to climb out of that hole, and indeed many have"

See, this is why you're a Tory and I'm not.

 You're comfortable with the idea of an underclass.  So long as you can see some people climbing out, you don't have a problem with grinding poverty, not least because through private properties, you can isolate yourself from it.  We on the left do have a problem with it, because we care about the social effects and self-propagation of poverty, not least because we believe in living together rich and poor side-by-side.

It's not a 20th century ideal, its 2 different ideas of what progress means, progress for me and my family or progress for my community, my people.  They aren't incompatible, but they aren't the same thing.

So, yes that means we are about state intervention into people's lives, the state as an agent for change, and Tories are the opposite.  But I said that we in Labour should be against excessive state authority.  We need to find better ways to enact change.  'Bin police' if they exist seems like a bizarre idea, we need to provide positive alternatives that people can choose and be enthused by, not just authoritarian sticks to beat them with.  

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"We have bin police menacing us from Labour dominated councils abusing the anti-terror laws to monitor our rubbish twice a month collection which doesn‘t work." 

Elderly woman must push wheelie bin half a mile to be emptied – Telegraph

Ribble Valley is a Conservative council.

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Redistributing wealth hasn't caused a lack of work ethic. Nor has it caused people to go on benefits. Labour has suggested making education compulsory until 18. I'm not sure whether this includes making EET compulsory. i think it should. 13% are in neither Education, Training or Employment. Wouldn't this be a better way to break welfare dependency, and increase social mobility, than the Tories plan to assault poorer students. The Tories will not encourage social mobility, or decrease welfare dependency, by abolishing EMA's.

You have admitted reading the Mail, who spread a great deal of innuendo, and hyperbole about the state of the NHS. It's incinuated, that as soon as you walk into a hospital, you will get MRSA. I'm not dismissing infections by any means, we need the Dutch model fast. But our hospitals are better, as waiting lists have crashed from 18 months to 4 weeks. Don't believe me? Even the BMA has acknowledged these figures, but only to mourn the demise of private hospitals. Hospitals are, inch by inch, increasing the number of single rooms to BUPA levels. Gordon "the pension robber" Brown used 0.5% of Britain's total pensions, and from upper middle-class earners, to wipe out the backlog of billions of pounds the Tories caused. And when 'beaurocracy' figures are quoted, it is again, hyperbole. Employing secretaries to take paperwork OUT of the hands of nurses, or hiring particular nurses to review the way wards, and theatres are run is somehow beaurocratic. The NHS is supposedly a black hole. But investment has mean that waiting times have crashed, and there are more single rooms, and less stressed nurses and doctors. Their main grievance is not the state of the NHS, but pay. When independent health monitors do opinion polls for NHS users, there is an overwhelming positive reponse, but when they are asked about the state of the NHS, they say it is in a terrible state. If the first point is true, the second can't be true. When I have made this point, others have admitted that it's hard not to believe.

Now, grammer schools are not the bastions of social mobility that I once thought them to be. Instead, like faith schools, they cream off the pupils of middle-class background. Only 1% are eligible for free school meals, as opposed to the national average of 17%. A better model would be the Duke county, or Dutch model. In the first, schools can only take in 40% pupils on free school meals. The ghettoised schools, were smashed apart, and the test score pass rate of low-income kids improved from 40% to 63%. The scores of middle-class kids were not affected. In the second, more funding was given to schools if they took in poorer pupils. Schools were then fighting for poorer students, and were then apportioned to each school accordingly. So, ironically a Tory policy is killing off the aspiration of poorer kids here.

Besides which, this is contradicted by empirical evidence. In countries that have a far greater level of equality, like in the Nordic countries, they have more economic success, while maintaining high employment and low poverty rates. Equality does not kill of aspiration, as your theory is proven wrong by the most successful of our European countries.

The civil service has been contracted out by the Tories before. Remember in 1995, when the DTI commissioned out a report saying that if the NMW was introduced, 1.7 million jobs would be lost?

We profoundly disagree, in terms of where we think the elctorate is heading. I think there has been a slight leftwards shift, you think there has been a slight rightwards shift.

But, as a social democrat who has lived in the countryside for the first 11 years of his life, I hate regressive taxes, and I sympathise with those who can only use an average car to travel around. I don't have any beef with a mum who uses a Toyota to drop off her two kids at the local comp. But, I don't think dropping a pro-environment policy would win us votes. I believe there are better car policies though. I don't think normal cars should be taxed any higher, non-polluting ones shouldn't be taxed at all, and SUV's need to be highly taxed, along with short-haul flights to subsidise public transport. Meanwhile, there are better policies on cars. I think car manufacturers should be mandated to:

1) Guarentee that all cars by 2020, will go by 50 miles to the gallon.

2) Guarentee that all manufacturers build 2% of their cars as electric cars by 2010, 5% by 2015, and 10% by 2020.

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All sounds good, but it also all sounds like exactly the sorts of things we are already hearing from the government. It's clearly not resonating. Seeing David Cameron also uses very similar phrases, perhaps it is just too bland.

How about something that would clearly differentiate ourselves and our opponents, something that would challenge them on their apparent concern for the poor and for social justice?

i.e. This Labour government will prioritise meeting its targets for reducing child poverty by 2010, and abolishing it by 2020. (Currently we're not on course to achieve this).

plus after agreeing upon a fair method of measurement, this Labour government will have reduced the gap between the richest and the poorest by the time of the next election.

Statements such as these would establish clear red water between ourselves and the Tories. In addition to having firm policy direction that just about every government department could help work towards, we would have a narrative that the party could proudly rally around and enthusiastically convey to the voters.

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