Ed Milliband is the new leader of the UK Labour Party

[Foamer]

Kantor said:

Female Cabinet Members - I don't care if there are no female Cabinet members, or one, or five, or ten, or sixteen. I just want them to be chosen based on their political ability, rather than their sexual organs.

Personally I just think it's risible that 50% of the population aren't effectively represented at cabinet level because they have different sexual organs to those who are vastly over-represented. Even Cameron acknowldeged the under-representation of women in parliament by pledging to introduce all-women shortlists. It's hardly a Marxist ideal.

Trade Unionists voted for Ed, rather than his own party, and some Unions pledged to remove support if Dave won.

Which ones? I know if my union (or my wife's)  threatened to coerce me into voting in a particular way they'd be torn to shreds by their members and the courts. I'm not sure why you've emphasised Trade Unionists, either. They're fee-paying members of organisations affiliated to the Labour party. Many of them will be Labour party members, the vast majority will not. How is it a bad thing that their individual members have voted for him? They're not exactly raving Trots, you know.

Oh, I'm for giving the banks a good slap in the face. But Gordon Brown was saying he would do this for years, and he was Chancellor and PM for the period with the highest bank bonuses in history. He had the CEO of RBS knighted!

I don't get what your point is here. Brown is no longer leader and what he did or didn't do shouldn't have any bearing on what Milliband will do.

Living Wage - It's a little ambiguous. The fact is, there isn't enough money in the country to pay all minimum wage earners, say, £10 an hour. It would be lovely if everyone could live in comfort, but not everyone can. That should be a long-term goal, rather than a pledge for the current Parliament.

It is a long term goal- “People shouldn’t just be paid a minimum wage of £5.80 an hour. I want to move towards a living wage of more than £7 an hour. You would make a tax cut for business conditional on them paying a living wage.” Funnily enough, that arch-lefty bogeyman Boris Johnson increased the London Living Wage to £7.60 last year.

50p tax rate - This really doesn't need to be there. Chances are, if somebody is making £150,000 a year or more, they've done a fair bit to contribute to society and to the country. Do they need the extra money? No. Do they deserve it? In most cases, yes. The richest of the rich find ways around this, anyway.

That's a very weak argument. There are plenty of people who've done a lot for society and the country who earn nowhere near £150,000. I don't see calls for their tax burden to be reduced. As for finding ways around paying their fair share of tax, if it's OK for benefit claimants to be scruinised so closely, then it should be OK for people dodging paying their fair share of tax to receive the same treatment. After all, the amount of revenue lost through tax avoidance is many times more than the amount lost through benefit fraud. As an aside, the bankers' bonus levy introduced by Campbell was originally slated to raise about £700 million, and a lot of the commentariat suggested that it'd raise far less as people would find a way around it. In the event it raised around £2.5 billion. Makes you wonder whether a lot of the 'it's not worth doing this' received wisdom is a load of bollocks planted by those with most to lose should they actually start paying their fair share.

Graduate tax - I don't believe he's cited a figure for this. But wouldn't you rather get your loans out of the way in a few years (there are student loans now) than pay tax for receiving a higher education every day of your life?

No, because initially I was unemployed or doing low paid work and it was incredibly difficult to meet the repayments. Eventually, I defaulted and ended up with the interest frozen while I paid a debt collection company a much-reduced amount until I got a proper, decently paid job.

Yes, university is government subsidised. But it's provided for the most intelligent youth in the country to get the education they need to really make a difference. It will encourage more people to bypass university and get a job straight away, and it will also encourage university graduates to move abroad. Plus, if you can afford to pay the £20,000 odd that university costs straightaway, then you should have the option to do that, rather than paying several dozen times that amount in taxes over your lifetime. It's not as bad as David, though, who wanted to take away the charity status of private schools and start taxing school fees. Seriously. And he's supposed to be the right wing guy here.

Again, if I'd had the option of paying a couple of extra pence in PAYE until I'd paid off my fees rather than being in hock to banks and debt collectors, I'd have jumped at the chance. There's no need to soak people for years, either- they pay extra until their university fees are paid off, if they're earning more they'll be paying more through general taxation anyway.