50 British MEPs getting smacked down by 500+ MEPs from the rest of the EU is not my idea of the British people getting a say in EU regulations!
YMMV.
Well you don't have to worry about that now, as we won't have those 50 MEPs anymore and we will still have to comply with many regulations and directives anyway with no say whatsoever.
It may also have helped if we hadn't elected quite so many UKIP MEPs, 24 in total, to represent us in Europe. A party that can't even sustain a single MP was the majority representative in the EU. It a miracle we had as as good terms as we did.
50 British MEPs getting smacked down by 500+ MEPs from the rest of the EU is not my idea of the British people getting a say in EU regulations!
YMMV.
If there is a single issue where UK interests are opposite to those of all other 27 members sure. Most of the time though the lines are drawn across ideology, not countries (liberal, conservative, socialist, etc).
Blame the UK MEPs for not being able to forge alliances, compromises or make their voice heard. You know, what they're supposed they're paid to do.
When it comes to pen pushing and red tape, Brussels makes the Federal government in Washington look like a bunch of amateurs.
Citation needed. I pointed out that you were railing against the number of regulations without providing any sort of context to your claim and you proceed to continue doing the same. That doesn't make for a very good argument.
When it comes to pen pushing and red tape, Brussels makes the Federal government in Washington look like a bunch of amateurs.
Citation needed. I pointed out that you were railing against the number of regulations without providing any sort of context to your claim and you proceed to continue doing the same. That doesn't make for a very good argument.
Citation? Common knowledge and logic tells me that the EU is a bureaucratic monster that is spinning out of control.
It started off with what? 7 members. Now it's 27.
More MEPs for each country. Staff to help those MEPs. More and bigger buildings to house them. Those buildings will need cleaners, janitors and security staff as well as restaurent staff etc etc
A civil service and commision to do all the paper work. Then you have another parliament in Strasbourg = more staff.
If there are 10,000 EU regulations in British law, then the same goes for every EU member. Somebody has to check that those regulations are obeyed = more pen pushers.
And because Britain wasn't in the Euro or Schengen, then those other nations would need more staff in Brussels to handle that.
Plus Juncker and Tusk will need their staff and hangers on etc etc etc
So, it's clear for all to see that the mission creep goes on and on, and if new members join, or the EU army takes shape, the EU bureaucracy will keep growing...
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
It was true in Ancient Rome, it is true in the EU...
When it comes to pen pushing and red tape, Brussels makes the Federal government in Washington look like a bunch of amateurs.
Citation needed. I pointed out that you were railing against the number of regulations without providing any sort of context to your claim and you proceed to continue doing the same. That doesn't make for a very good argument.
Citation? Common knowledge and logic tells me that the EU is a bureaucratic monster that is spinning out of control.
It started off with what? 7 members. Now it's 27.
More MEPs for each country. Staff to help those MEPs. More and bigger buildings to house them. Those buildings will need cleaners, janitors and security staff as well as restaurent staff etc etc
A civil service and commision to do all the paper work. Then you have another parliament in Strasbourg = more staff.
If there are 10,000 EU regulations in British law, then the same goes for every EU member. Somebody has to check that those regulations are obeyed = more pen pushers.
And because Britain wasn't in the Euro or Schengen, then those other nations would need more staff in Brussels to handle that.
Plus Juncker and Tusk will need their staff and hangers on etc etc etc
So, it's clear for all to see that the mission creep goes on and on, and if new members join, or the EU army takes shape, the EU bureaucracy will keep growing...
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
It was true in Ancient Rome, it is true in the EU...
Before anyone moans that everyone has already spoken about Gibraltar a few pages back, I haven't had anytime to catch up what with working 6-8 6 days each week. Personally I think Brexit is being, and will be used by other EU nations as a blatant excuse to raise issues that they have either no sway in or indeed no authentic reasons against the UK. I don't believe any ground will be given by May and the Conservatives over Gibraltar as it would be a political blow that could finish them off in the Commons and in public polls. Spain's lobbying for Gibraltar now because it has no chance outside big brother EU forming some compromise deal in the leaving negotiation. I don't see why the Spanish want it, apart from saying '300 years of tyranny is over...'. Yes you could argue for economic reasons or some form of strategic position that isn't really paramount at the moment for a neutral Spain. The people there are British and want to remain British, Spain is simply 300 years too late to change that and I doubt there would be a warm welcome to a Spanish conversion. Slightly going off topic, looking back we shouldn't have given Hong Kong to the Chinese, if we had to give it up it should have become an independent state. Now, yes it has Chinese investment, but its politics are a farce and public freedoms are restrained. I am not saying Spain would ever do the same for Gibraltar, but I think the Gibraltarians probably would have better semi-independent freedoms as off shore UK territory, rather than a centralised Spanish block which would probably deface everything British about it.
When it comes to pen pushing and red tape, Brussels makes the Federal government in Washington look like a bunch of amateurs.
Citation needed. I pointed out that you were railing against the number of regulations without providing any sort of context to your claim and you proceed to continue doing the same. That doesn't make for a very good argument.
Citation? Common knowledge and logic tells me that the EU is a bureaucratic monster that is spinning out of control.
It started off with what? 7 members. Now it's 27.
More MEPs for each country. Staff to help those MEPs. More and bigger buildings to house them. Those buildings will need cleaners, janitors and security staff as well as restaurent staff etc etc
A civil service and commision to do all the paper work. Then you have another parliament in Strasbourg = more staff.
You are looking at this from an isolated viewpoint though and excluding a holistic wider view.
Most of the legislation has allowed all the EU countries to drop areas like import duties. That means you no longer have to employ people to undertake this work. When you sum across all the countries where each individually has to take on a certain role then that's a massive increase in bureaucracy you are complaining about when compared to one central organisation that you are dealing with. Yes there is more bureaucracy in the area you are focussed on, but overall there is much less across all the countries.
Sentinel1 wrote: Before anyone moans that everyone has already spoken about Gibraltar a few pages back, I haven't had anytime to catch up what with working 6-8 6 days each week. Personally I think Brexit is being, and will be used by other EU nations as a blatant excuse to raise issues that they have either no sway in or indeed no authentic reasons against the UK. I don't believe any ground will be given by May and the Conservatives over Gibraltar as it would be a political blow that could finish them off in the Commons and in public polls. Spain's lobbying for Gibraltar now because it has no chance outside big brother EU forming some compromise deal in the leaving negotiation. I don't see why the Spanish want it, apart from saying '300 years of tyranny is over...'. Yes you could argue for economic reasons or some form of strategic position that isn't really paramount at the moment for a neutral Spain. The people there are British and want to remain British, Spain is simply 300 years too late to change that and I doubt there would be a warm welcome to a Spanish conversion. Slightly going off topic, looking back we shouldn't have given Hong Kong to the Chinese, if we had to give it up it should have become an independent state. Now, yes it has Chinese investment, but its politics are a farce and public freedoms are restrained. I am not saying Spain would ever do the same for Gibraltar, but I think the Gibraltarians probably would have better semi-independent freedoms as off shore UK territory, rather than a centralised Spanish block which would probably deface everything British about it.
Umm Hong Kong was far as I know on a fixed term lease like agreement so we had to give it back to China at that point as it had been laid down a long time ago that the agreement would end at x date.
We have no such agreements with fixed dates over Gibralter and Falklands which are legaly supported overseas outposts and intrests and security are guaranteed by thr united kingdom, we have every right within there self determination to choose to act in there interests and defend with physical force is needed.
You are looking at this from an isolated viewpoint though and excluding a holistic wider view.
Most of the legislation has allowed all the EU countries to drop areas like import duties. That means you no longer have to employ people to undertake this work. When you sum across all the countries where each individually has to take on a certain role then that's a massive increase in bureaucracy you are complaining about when compared to one central organisation that you are dealing with. Yes there is more bureaucracy in the area you are focussed on, but overall there is much less across all the countries.
Yes but what he means is that the bureaucracy is too centralised in one big mass. Countries would be better off if they could do their own share rather than rely on the current expanding mass. You could quite easily counter-argue that over centralisation has hypothetically cost people potential jobs. If it was less centralised there would be more employment opportunities for people in areas like import duties etc. Yes it would be more local bureaucracy but it would be more controllable and adaptable for each country. The member states have already admitted major reforms needed to happen in such areas as no one is really pleased about it, tough luck that they never raised a finger (well maybe they did) to Cameron when he tried to negotiate for a reformed EU. Now that the leaving process is finally becoming set in EU legislation they may actually act on what was on everyone's minds all along...
I had a rant on the US politics thread, so here's another rant here!
To expand on a point Kilkrazy made a while ago:
Yes, the UK could have 'owned' the EU.
If we had taken it seriously from the start, the UK could have been the beating heart of the whole damn project.
Sadly, we as a nation still think it's 1940 most of the time, and worse, we were seduced by this special relationship horsegak.
Our leaders would do well to read a history book and remember that for most of its history, the USA and the UK have been enemies and rivals. Even after WW1, there was respect, but no real love. The USA considering the British to be money grabbing imperialists who would fight to the last American soldier. The British considered the Americans to be naive amateurs on the world stage and two faced on their imperialism accusations, especially with their Jim Crow laws and the near extermination of their native population.
I like America and Americans - they are good friends and allies whom we should trust and respect, but I never lose sight of the fact that they are a foreign power. Kissinger summed it up best: "America has no friends, only interests."
We think because they speak our language and because we won two world wars with them, then they'll throw us a bone. Like all sensible nations, America puts America first.
We tried to be all things to all men and ended up losing both sides. We won the war but well and truly lost the peace. Basil Fawlty being our default position when it came to France and Germany. Especially Germany...
So a combination of that + rightwing rags, plus idiotic backbench Tory MPs, ultimately scuppered that...
And on the subject of those Tory backbenchers, they railed against the EU taking over the UK for years, and yet, those same people will happily sell out the UK to the Arabs, or the Chinese or Trump...
So yes, I voted leave, but I can see the merit in the arguments of the other side.
The thing with Gibraltar is that the isolationist approach the rUK wants would be a disaster. It's the only part of the UK to share a land border with mainland Europe, and since its small a lot of people cross thay border regularly for work and leisure. If they lose freedom of movement it's going to make life much harder for most of them, even if that's just doubling the time it takes to cross the border twice a day.
On and off Spain has been making travel from Gibraltar difficult just for the sake of it in recent years. Trumping up excessive checks and searches just to cause difficulties or in return for some recent disagreement with the UK.
Herzlos wrote: The thing with Gibraltar is that the isolationist approach the rUK wants would be a disaster. It's the only part of the UK to share a land border with mainland Europe, and since its small a lot of people cross thay border regularly for work and leisure. If they lose freedom of movement it's going to make life much harder for most of them, even if that's just doubling the time it takes to cross the border twice a day.
Spain does that every three weeks anyway. Anytime a politician gets his fingers caught in the till it becomes 'GIBRALTAR MUST BE RULED BY THE SPANISH' time.
Heck, Gib gave a very clear indication of their priorities today when they said that they'd take a hard border before they'd take any ceding of sovereignty. They're determined that they won't let Madrid gets so much as a toe of authority over that border. Which everyone knew. As I said earlier though, it was only ever proposed as a negotiating ploy, so it'll be taken off the table within a month or two.
Herzlos wrote: The thing with Gibraltar is that the isolationist approach the rUK wants would be a disaster. It's the only part of the UK to share a land border with mainland Europe, and since its small a lot of people cross thay border regularly for work and leisure. If they lose freedom of movement it's going to make life much harder for most of them, even if that's just doubling the time it takes to cross the border twice a day.
Spain does that every three weeks anyway. Anytime a politician gets his fingers caught in the till it becomes 'GIBRALTAR MUST BE RULED BY THE SPANISH' time.
Heck, Gib gave a very clear indication of their priorities today when they said that they'd take a hard border before they'd take any ceding of sovereignty. They're determined that they won't let Madrid gets so much as a toe of authority over that border. Which everyone knew. As I said earlier though, it was only ever proposed as a negotiating ploy, so it'll be taken off the table within a month or two.
It's not on the table. It's a separate table to be talked between the Spain, the UK and Gibraltar.
The UK and the EU will talk terms, then Spain and the UK will negotiate which of those terms apply to Gibraltar post-Brexit.
Herzlos wrote: The thing with Gibraltar is that the isolationist approach the rUK wants would be a disaster. It's the only part of the UK to share a land border with mainland Europe, and since its small a lot of people cross thay border regularly for work and leisure. If they lose freedom of movement it's going to make life much harder for most of them, even if that's just doubling the time it takes to cross the border twice a day.
Spain does that every three weeks anyway. Anytime a politician gets his fingers caught in the till it becomes 'GIBRALTAR MUST BE RULED BY THE SPANISH' time.
Heck, Gib gave a very clear indication of their priorities today when they said that they'd take a hard border before they'd take any ceding of sovereignty. They're determined that they won't let Madrid gets so much as a toe of authority over that border. Which everyone knew. As I said earlier though, it was only ever proposed as a negotiating ploy, so it'll be taken off the table within a month or two.
It's not on the table. It's a separate table to be talked between the Spain, the UK and Gibraltar.
The UK and the EU will talk terms, then Spain and the UK will negotiate which of those terms apply to Gibraltar post-Brexit.
Same with Ireland.
We negotiate with them and agree a deal which allows both counties to do business.
Herzlos wrote: The thing with Gibraltar is that the isolationist approach the rUK wants would be a disaster. It's the only part of the UK to share a land border with mainland Europe, and since its small a lot of people cross thay border regularly for work and leisure. If they lose freedom of movement it's going to make life much harder for most of them, even if that's just doubling the time it takes to cross the border twice a day.
Spain does that every three weeks anyway. Anytime a politician gets his fingers caught in the till it becomes 'GIBRALTAR MUST BE RULED BY THE SPANISH' time.
Heck, Gib gave a very clear indication of their priorities today when they said that they'd take a hard border before they'd take any ceding of sovereignty. They're determined that they won't let Madrid gets so much as a toe of authority over that border. Which everyone knew. As I said earlier though, it was only ever proposed as a negotiating ploy, so it'll be taken off the table within a month or two.
It's not on the table. It's a separate table to be talked between the Spain, the UK and Gibraltar.
The UK and the EU will talk terms, then Spain and the UK will negotiate which of those terms apply to Gibraltar post-Brexit.
I think the issue is that if Spain can't twist our arm to get something on Gibraltar separately, they'll veto any EU deal the other countries can agree on. Only last year Wallonia held up a deal the whole EU was trying to get with Canada, it can be done if one party is stubborn enough. It doesn't matter it's a separate issue/deal. Makes you wonder what other countries will seperately demand with threats to veto a Brexit deal.
Herzlos wrote: The thing with Gibraltar is that the isolationist approach the rUK wants would be a disaster. It's the only part of the UK to share a land border with mainland Europe, and since its small a lot of people cross thay border regularly for work and leisure. If they lose freedom of movement it's going to make life much harder for most of them, even if that's just doubling the time it takes to cross the border twice a day.
Spain does that every three weeks anyway. Anytime a politician gets his fingers caught in the till it becomes 'GIBRALTAR MUST BE RULED BY THE SPANISH' time.
Spain is currently ruled by the spanish tories after all
Herzlos wrote: The thing with Gibraltar is that the isolationist approach the rUK wants would be a disaster. It's the only part of the UK to share a land border with mainland Europe, and since its small a lot of people cross thay border regularly for work and leisure. If they lose freedom of movement it's going to make life much harder for most of them, even if that's just doubling the time it takes to cross the border twice a day.
Spain does that every three weeks anyway. Anytime a politician gets his fingers caught in the till it becomes 'GIBRALTAR MUST BE RULED BY THE SPANISH' time.
Heck, Gib gave a very clear indication of their priorities today when they said that they'd take a hard border before they'd take any ceding of sovereignty. They're determined that they won't let Madrid gets so much as a toe of authority over that border. Which everyone knew. As I said earlier though, it was only ever proposed as a negotiating ploy, so it'll be taken off the table within a month or two.
It's not on the table. It's a separate table to be talked between the Spain, the UK and Gibraltar.
The UK and the EU will talk terms, then Spain and the UK will negotiate which of those terms apply to Gibraltar post-Brexit.
I think the issue is that if Spain can't twist our arm to get something on Gibraltar separately, they'll veto any EU deal the other countries can agree on.
Nope, because the Gibraltar deal will be worked separately, after the main UK-EU deal is through.
Don't forget the Gibraltar border was closed for decades and was only opened because of EU pressure on Spain while it was trying to get in the then-EEC. That allowed Gibraltar economy to boom and fully develop.
Spanish Tories have never fully forgiven the socialists for that deal.
When it comes to pen pushing and red tape, Brussels makes the Federal government in Washington look like a bunch of amateurs.
Citation needed. I pointed out that you were railing against the number of regulations without providing any sort of context to your claim and you proceed to continue doing the same. That doesn't make for a very good argument.
Citation? Common knowledge and logic tells me that the EU is a bureaucratic monster that is spinning out of control.
It started off with what? 7 members. Now it's 27.
More MEPs for each country. Staff to help those MEPs. More and bigger buildings to house them. Those buildings will need cleaners, janitors and security staff as well as restaurent staff etc etc
A civil service and commision to do all the paper work. Then you have another parliament in Strasbourg = more staff.
If there are 10,000 EU regulations in British law, then the same goes for every EU member. Somebody has to check that those regulations are obeyed = more pen pushers.
And because Britain wasn't in the Euro or Schengen, then those other nations would need more staff in Brussels to handle that.
Plus Juncker and Tusk will need their staff and hangers on etc etc etc
So, it's clear for all to see that the mission creep goes on and on, and if new members join, or the EU army takes shape, the EU bureaucracy will keep growing...
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
It was true in Ancient Rome, it is true in the EU...
"Common knowledge and logic" tells me that you're avoiding to answer the question properly. When someone asks you to back your statement up, more personal opinion is not a relevant answer. "Common sense" or "common knowledge" is the rallying cry of the narrow-minded and intelectually dishonest, and I know from experience that you are neither of those things. Stop acting as though you were.
Herzlos wrote: The thing with Gibraltar is that the isolationist approach the rUK wants would be a disaster. It's the only part of the UK to share a land border with mainland Europe, and since its small a lot of people cross thay border regularly for work and leisure. If they lose freedom of movement it's going to make life much harder for most of them, even if that's just doubling the time it takes to cross the border twice a day.
Spain does that every three weeks anyway. Anytime a politician gets his fingers caught in the till it becomes 'GIBRALTAR MUST BE RULED BY THE SPANISH' time.
Heck, Gib gave a very clear indication of their priorities today when they said that they'd take a hard border before they'd take any ceding of sovereignty. They're determined that they won't let Madrid gets so much as a toe of authority over that border. Which everyone knew. As I said earlier though, it was only ever proposed as a negotiating ploy, so it'll be taken off the table within a month or two.
It's not on the table. It's a separate table to be talked between the Spain, the UK and Gibraltar.
The UK and the EU will talk terms, then Spain and the UK will negotiate which of those terms apply to Gibraltar post-Brexit.
I think the issue is that if Spain can't twist our arm to get something on Gibraltar separately, they'll veto any EU deal the other countries can agree on.
Nope, because the Gibraltar deal will be worked separately, after the main UK-EU deal is through.
Don't forget the Gibraltar border was closed for decades and was only opened because of EU pressure on Spain while it was trying to get in the then-EEC. That allowed Gibraltar economy to boom and fully develop.
Spanish Tories have never fully forgiven the socialists for that deal.
I was talking to a pair of Gibraltarian accountants the other day, and they were telling me that what relaxing the border did was pick up the economy of all the nearby Spanish towns. That's because the economy in Gib had always primarily rested upon being a major naval base for the British, and these days, the American Navies, as well as being the main servicing point for Mediterranean cruises. What relaxing the border made possible was the Spaniards who lived across the border being able to get jobs on the Gib side. That in turn picked up their domestic economies vastly.
Accordingly, when the border closes, the ones who really suffer are the local Spaniards. The Gibraltarians are mildly inconvenienced because they need to cross the border to get to the airport, but their economy carries on just fine. The local Spaniards though, find they can't get to work on time. Accordingly, the Gibraltarians were telling me how much this Spanish political diversionary tactic over Gib where they lock down the border really hacks off all the local Spaniards and harms their wallets. The Gibraltarians? It doesn't bother them so much. Just annoys them.
That's why threats about a hard border don't faze them vastly, and they'll prioritise sovereignty.
I think you'll find that it wasn't bureaucracy that brought down the Roman Empire but the plagues that swept Europe between the 4/5th centuries, which when combined with the factional infighting and political instability of the later Empire resulted in lower tax reciepts. This led to later emperors settling and then incorporating the various peoples migrating from the steppe/Eastern Europe into the empire, which eventually just dissolved into the various kingdoms that we're familiar with today, as Imperial attention became less and less focussed on the wider empire.
As for Gibraltar, it's only really important whilst we still view shipping as a major part of the the global trade structure. Which is liable to change dramatically over the coming decades as our reliance on oil (hopefully) comes to an end.
For years, we on the indy side have said the Spanish wouldn't veto a Scottish EU application. Indeed, the Spanish themselves have said this many a time.
Unionists warned indy Scotland about the Spanish veto all day and night in 2014.
Well, it looks like the Spanish veto does exist...but it's pointing at Gibraltar and Westminster
Honestly, I don't mean to gloat, but when you've had two years of Unionists banging on about the Spanish veto, you do get some satisfaction when the boot is on the other foot.
And yes, I still maintain my earlier comments that the Gibraltar issue is daft, as it pits two NATO members against each other.
But when Michael Howard is crawling out of the woodwork and saying that May could go to war over Gibraltar
Again, how do we know thats not just a negotiating tactic? A bluff to pressure the British Government? Sure, they say now that they won't block an Ind. Scotlands application, but do you really believe them? And even if they do intend to keep their word, by the time Scotland becomes Independent and applies to join the EU an entirely different government might be in office in Spain. This Government's promises and policies are not binding on the next Government.
As Ketara says, most of this is just bull-gak, smoke and mirrors.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: Again, how do we know thats not just a negotiating tactic? A bluff to pressure the British Government? Sure, they say now that they won't block an Ind. Scotlands application, but do you really believe them? And even if they do intend to keep their word, by the time Scotland becomes Independent and applies to join the EU an entirely different government might be in office in Spain. This Government's promises and policies are not binding on the next Government.
As Ketara says, most of this is just bull-gak, smoke and mirrors.
Even before the June 23rd referendum, the Spanish were on record as saying they wouldn't veto indy Scotland's EU application.
London just chose to stick its fingers in its ears and sing veto veto veto!
Yes but what he means is that the bureaucracy is too centralised in one big mass. Countries would be better off if they could do their own share rather than rely on the current expanding mass. You could quite easily counter-argue that over centralisation has hypothetically cost people potential jobs. If it was less centralised there would be more employment opportunities for people in areas like import duties etc. Yes it would be more local bureaucracy but it would be more controllable and adaptable for each country. The member states have already admitted major reforms needed to happen in such areas as no one is really pleased about it, tough luck that they never raised a finger (well maybe they did) to Cameron when he tried to negotiate for a reformed EU. Now that the leaving process is finally becoming set in EU legislation they may actually act on what was on everyone's minds all along...
Efficiencies do cost jobs, that is the point. However the idea behind being more efficient is that you can save money for areas you wish to prioritise. That can then generate more jobs in other areas (lets say teachers) that are more critical to the future of 'DUK PLC'. The UK now has to introduce an import duty system for the vast majority of its exports. Lets suppose the overall cost for that is £1billion (example figure only). That money has to come from somewhere, it's either direct taxes (never popular), cuts in other services (like the NHS or education), reduction in the social rights of the populace (environmental, work benefits etc) or you charge directly the companies exporting (immediately making them even less competitive, even before you take into account any duties that might need to be paid). The businesses will then have to employ more people to manage this. Yes it is more jobs, but the businesses now have a higher cost, that makes them less competitive (or less profitable). That gives those companies that don't have to pay this 'bill' more competitive in other countries. That ultimately can lead to less jobs as businesses can't compete and they either move abroad, bought out or go close completely.
In certain areas you want to be as efficient as you can as that allows you to as competitive as possible as that allows you to focus on areas that you *do* want to prioritise.
Automation is ultimately unavoidable. Why spend £15 (more or less national minimum wage) per employee per year when you can spend £500,000 (number out my arse) on a machine which'll do the job of three humans for 20 years? Those costs are a no-brainer.
Instead, we can focus on producing kids from schools very capable of programming and maintaining those machines, and doing the jobs where Machines just aren't cost efficient.
And this is coming from a committed Lefty Scum.
Robotics, whether we like it or not, are the inescapable future. We just have to plan round it.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Automation is ultimately unavoidable. Why spend £15 (more or less national minimum wage) per employee per year when you can spend £500,000 (number out my arse) on a machine which'll do the job of three humans for 20 years? Those costs are a no-brainer.
Instead, we can focus on producing kids from schools very capable of programming and maintaining those machines, and doing the jobs where Machines just aren't cost efficient.
And this is coming from a committed Lefty Scum.
Robotics, whether we like it or not, are the inescapable future. We just have to plan round it.
Change will happen. Its how we apart and prepare for it.
Preparing to be a strong player in the robotic future. That's worth investment.
Michael Howard has made an unnecessary fuss over Gibraltar. The odds of Spain rolling the tanks in is zero, so why start the chest beating about reliving the Falklands?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Automation is ultimately unavoidable. Why spend £15 (more or less national minimum wage) per employee per year when you can spend £500,000 (number out my arse) on a machine which'll do the job of three humans for 20 years? Those costs are a no-brainer.
Instead, we can focus on producing kids from schools very capable of programming and maintaining those machines, and doing the jobs where Machines just aren't cost efficient.
And this is coming from a committed Lefty Scum.
Robotics, whether we like it or not, are the inescapable future. We just have to plan round it.
Change will happen. Its how we apart and prepare for it.
Preparing to be a strong player in the robotic future. That's worth investment.
I don't disagree to prepare for the future, but I am a little sceptical about an impending robotic revolution. Until the market is flooded with cheap, efficient, reliable and to a degree intelligent robots outside of specialised environments I think future generations will be alright. The workforce will change to meet demands and habits but I think there would be a limit to what robots could replace people (in job roles that people would really want). Until this day, mechanisation is still the future in which one person replaces the many with some new form of machine/vehicle for industries. I think there should be more training for roles in operating/managing smart machines and the development of robot science until robots overtake human controlled machines.
I have a funny story to tell about a previous company I worked for and its grand scheme for a robotic future! The factory was redeveloping a line and after negotiating a good deal with some other company paid £1,000,000 for a robotic arm on top of the line development. This meant in the long run having to pay less salaries they thought. All went well until the warranty ran out a little later... The £1m robot broke and was too expensive to fix or replace outside of warranty. What did the company do? It employed outsourced labour on a cheaper wage to fill in the original job roles. As for the robot it still sits broken on a disused piece of production line. A waste of money if you ask me.
Howard A Treesong wrote: Michael Howard has made an unnecessary fuss over Gibraltar. The odds of Spain rolling the tanks in is zero, so why start the chest beating about reliving the Falklands?
They know these kind of "patriotic" statements are always popular among a certain spectrum of voters.
It's standard torie practice, the spanish ones do it as well from time to time (regarding Morocco).
Efficiencies do cost jobs, that is the point. However the idea behind being more efficient is that you can save money for areas you wish to prioritise. That can then generate more jobs in other areas (lets say teachers) that are more critical to the future of 'DUK PLC'. The UK now has to introduce an import duty system for the vast majority of its exports. Lets suppose the overall cost for that is £1billion (example figure only). That money has to come from somewhere, it's either direct taxes (never popular), cuts in other services (like the NHS or education), reduction in the social rights of the populace (environmental, work benefits etc) or you charge directly the companies exporting (immediately making them even less competitive, even before you take into account any duties that might need to be paid). The businesses will then have to employ more people to manage this. Yes it is more jobs, but the businesses now have a higher cost, that makes them less competitive (or less profitable). That gives those companies that don't have to pay this 'bill' more competitive in other countries. That ultimately can lead to less jobs as businesses can't compete and they either move abroad, bought out or go close completely.
In certain areas you want to be as efficient as you can as that allows you to as competitive as possible as that allows you to focus on areas that you *do* want to prioritise.
Yes but it won't make profitable companies go bust overnight. There will of course be concern over where potential money is found to fund the system by the government I agree, but surely if free trade is lost then Tariffs would be put on foreign imports. Get the figure levels right and you could balance the books to make it a level playing field with foreign companies. British businesses have been moving production abroad, being bought out and closing down for years (in that order some of the time but usually bought, transferred, destroyed). Brexit will change what the economy is made up of and how businesses evolve and develop. Doors will close but potentially more will open with a broader aspect of commerce to areas outside of Old World Europe.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Automation is ultimately unavoidable. Why spend £15 (more or less national minimum wage) per employee per year when you can spend £500,000 (number out my arse) on a machine which'll do the job of three humans for 20 years? Those costs are a no-brainer.
Instead, we can focus on producing kids from schools very capable of programming and maintaining those machines, and doing the jobs where Machines just aren't cost efficient.
And this is coming from a committed Lefty Scum.
Robotics, whether we like it or not, are the inescapable future. We just have to plan round it.
Change will happen. Its how we apart and prepare for it.
Preparing to be a strong player in the robotic future. That's worth investment.
I don't disagree to prepare for the future, but I am a little sceptical about an impending robotic revolution. Until the market is flooded with cheap, efficient, reliable and to a degree intelligent robots outside of specialised environments I think future generations will be alright. The workforce will change to meet demands and habits but I think there would be a limit to what robots could replace people (in job roles that people would really want). Until this day, mechanisation is still the future in which one person replaces the many with some new form of machine/vehicle for industries. I think there should be more training for roles in operating/managing smart machines and the development of robot science until robots overtake human controlled machines.
I have a funny story to tell about a previous company I worked for and its grand scheme for a robotic future! The factory was redeveloping a line and after negotiating a good deal with some other company paid £1,000,000 for a robotic arm on top of the line development. This meant in the long run having to pay less salaries they thought. All went well until the warranty ran out a little later... The £1m robot broke and was too expensive to fix or replace outside of warranty. What did the company do? It employed outsourced labour on a cheaper wage to fill in the original job roles. As for the robot it still sits broken on a disused piece of production line. A waste of money if you ask me.
True... That's a rather expensive decoration.
However teaching with a good focus on future skills and such. At the very least a high degree of computer literacy, technology and just equiping for a growing future where tech will not go away.
Howard A Treesong wrote: Michael Howard has made an unnecessary fuss over Gibraltar. The odds of Spain rolling the tanks in is zero, so why start the chest beating about reliving the Falklands?
They know these kind of "patriotic" statements are always popular among a certain spectrum of voters.
It's standard torie practice, the spanish ones do it as well from time to time (regarding Morocco).
Standard bluff and bluster for headlines. Everyone does it.
Efficiencies do cost jobs, that is the point. However the idea behind being more efficient is that you can save money for areas you wish to prioritise. That can then generate more jobs in other areas (lets say teachers) that are more critical to the future of 'DUK PLC'. The UK now has to introduce an import duty system for the vast majority of its exports. Lets suppose the overall cost for that is £1billion (example figure only). That money has to come from somewhere, it's either direct taxes (never popular), cuts in other services (like the NHS or education), reduction in the social rights of the populace (environmental, work benefits etc) or you charge directly the companies exporting (immediately making them even less competitive, even before you take into account any duties that might need to be paid). The businesses will then have to employ more people to manage this. Yes it is more jobs, but the businesses now have a higher cost, that makes them less competitive (or less profitable). That gives those companies that don't have to pay this 'bill' more competitive in other countries. That ultimately can lead to less jobs as businesses can't compete and they either move abroad, bought out or go close completely.
In certain areas you want to be as efficient as you can as that allows you to as competitive as possible as that allows you to focus on areas that you *do* want to prioritise.
Yes but it won't make profitable companies go bust overnight. There will of course be concern over where potential money is found to fund the system by the government I agree, but surely if free trade is lost then Tariffs would be put on foreign imports. Get the figure levels right and you could balance the books to make it a level playing field with foreign companies. British businesses have been moving production abroad, being bought out and closing down for years (in that order some of the time but usually bought, transferred, destroyed). Brexit will change what the economy is made up of and how businesses evolve and develop. Doors will close but potentially more will open with a broader aspect of commerce to areas outside of Old World Europe.
Don't import tariffs just mean we pay more for stuff? So we'd only balance the books if imports keep up despite costing more, via a stealth tax.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Automation is ultimately unavoidable. Why spend £15 (more or less national minimum wage) per employee per year when you can spend £500,000 (number out my arse) on a machine which'll do the job of three humans for 20 years? Those costs are a no-brainer.
Instead, we can focus on producing kids from schools very capable of programming and maintaining those machines, and doing the jobs where Machines just aren't cost efficient.
And this is coming from a committed Lefty Scum.
Robotics, whether we like it or not, are the inescapable future. We just have to plan round it.
Change will happen. Its how we apart and prepare for it.
Preparing to be a strong player in the robotic future. That's worth investment.
I don't disagree to prepare for the future, but I am a little sceptical about an impending robotic revolution. Until the market is flooded with cheap, efficient, reliable and to a degree intelligent robots outside of specialised environments I think future generations will be alright. The workforce will change to meet demands and habits but I think there would be a limit to what robots could replace people (in job roles that people would really want). Until this day, mechanisation is still the future in which one person replaces the many with some new form of machine/vehicle for industries. I think there should be more training for roles in operating/managing smart machines and the development of robot science until robots overtake human controlled machines.
I have a funny story to tell about a previous company I worked for and its grand scheme for a robotic future! The factory was redeveloping a line and after negotiating a good deal with some other company paid £1,000,000 for a robotic arm on top of the line development. This meant in the long run having to pay less salaries they thought. All went well until the warranty ran out a little later... The £1m robot broke and was too expensive to fix or replace outside of warranty. What did the company do? It employed outsourced labour on a cheaper wage to fill in the original job roles. As for the robot it still sits broken on a disused piece of production line. A waste of money if you ask me.
True... That's a rather expensive decoration.
However teaching with a good focus on future skills and such. At the very least a high degree of computer literacy, technology and just equiping for a growing future where tech will not go away.
Howard A Treesong wrote: Michael Howard has made an unnecessary fuss over Gibraltar. The odds of Spain rolling the tanks in is zero, so why start the chest beating about reliving the Falklands?
They know these kind of "patriotic" statements are always popular among a certain spectrum of voters.
It's standard torie practice, the spanish ones do it as well from time to time (regarding Morocco).
Standard bluff and bluster for headlines. Everyone does it.
I agree, but I'm sure people make similar remarks prior to the invasion of the Falklands. Its not impossible, and we should not risk getting complacent over it.
I was talking to a pair of Gibraltarian accountants the other day, and they were telling me that what relaxing the border did was pick up the economy of all the nearby Spanish towns. That's because the economy in Gib had always primarily rested upon being a major naval base for the British, and these days, the American Navies, as well as being the main servicing point for Mediterranean cruises. What relaxing the border made possible was the Spaniards who lived across the border being able to get jobs on the Gib side. That in turn picked up their domestic economies vastly.
Well, of course a couple Gibraltarian lawyers would tell you that
Truth is, the bunkering business market share of Gibraltar has been eroded lately as Algeciras, Ceuta and, most important of all, the new Tangiers port have been growing like mad. It's probably still the biggest in the region but no one really knows because Gib port stopped publishing statistics a few years back (at roughly the same time Aegean, the largest non-government bunkering company, set up shop in Tangiers).
RN navy business is not what it once was, and the USN does most of its refueling just around the corner, in Naval Station Rota where the facilities were recently upgraded.
While bunkering services are important most of the growth of the last few years can be traced to offshoring. Most British gambling companies have set up shop in Gibraltar. A lot of insurance (it used to be marine only, not so much now), etc. Now, for the most part this is leeching from the UK economy (I've read estimates on the 75-80% range) so really it's up to the UK if they want to support Gibraltar this way.... it's the other 20-25% that matters the rest (especially Spain).
At some point in the 2010s Gibraltar was collecting 30% of their budget on tobacco duties, Gibraltar was importing over 100 million cigarrette packages, which works out that every man, woman and child in Gibraltar was smoking almost 4.000 packs per year.
Now, of course closing the border means a lot of waiters and cleaning staff will lose their job, but also smugglers.
What does that mean for the Gib side? Housing, services (especially health care) are already stretched thin, so much that a lot of recent employees in the new economy commute daily from cheaper (or bigger) properties in Spain to Gibraltar. A hard border would force them to make tiny Gibraltar even more crowded with worse services, and a much tighter budget situation (meaning Gibraltar would have to cede on its traditional tax-free economics).
Just like Brexit, this is a lose-lose situation, one Gibraltarians knew it was coming.
That still doesn't mean anything with regards to sovereignity, they will have to adapt, just like they've done in the past. The first time Spain closed the border Gibraltar brought Moroccan labourers so I'm sure they'll find a way.
That still doesn't mean anything with regards to sovereignity, they will have to adapt, just like they've done in the past. The first time Spain closed the border Gibraltar brought Moroccan labourers so I'm sure they'll find a way.
The interveawing of nations in the EU is a good thing from the EU point of view, not so much from the UK point of view. UK is and stays an island which is hardly in the EU. But UK will suffer from not having free access to the EU single market. It may happen that car manufacturers like BWM (Mini) will produce their cars in Europe, say Slovakia, rather than England.
A thought I just had: can someone explain how removing the UK from the decision-making process in the EU is supposed to give sovereignty back to the UK? The same rules will still apply when trading with the EU except the UK will no longer be part of shaping that legislation. Isn't that a LOSS in sovereignty?
AlmightyWalrus wrote: A thought I just had: can someone explain how removing the UK from the decision-making process in the EU is supposed to give sovereignty back to the UK? The same rules will still apply when trading with the EU except the UK will no longer be part of shaping that legislation. Isn't that a LOSS in sovereignty?
This is time limited. After two years UK is automatically out with or without a contract with the EU.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: A thought I just had: can someone explain how removing the UK from the decision-making process in the EU is supposed to give sovereignty back to the UK? The same rules will still apply when trading with the EU except the UK will no longer be part of shaping that legislation. Isn't that a LOSS in sovereignty?
This is time limited. After two years UK is automatically out with or without a contract with the EU.
Both parties can agree to extend the 2 year deadline for a deal, as well as provisional measures before full disconnection.
Mrs. May is on record saying no deal is better than a bad deal so make of it what you want.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: A thought I just had: can someone explain how removing the UK from the decision-making process in the EU is supposed to give sovereignty back to the UK? The same rules will still apply when trading with the EU except the UK will no longer be part of shaping that legislation. Isn't that a LOSS in sovereignty?
It's simple, we can now choose to follow EU laws, if we want to keep selling them stuff. It's entirely illusionary.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: A thought I just had: can someone explain how removing the UK from the decision-making process in the EU is supposed to give sovereignty back to the UK? The same rules will still apply when trading with the EU except the UK will no longer be part of shaping that legislation. Isn't that a LOSS in sovereignty?
This is time limited. After two years UK is automatically out with or without a contract with the EU.
Both parties can agree to extend the 2 year deadline for a deal, as well as provisional measures before full disconnection.
Mrs. May is on record saying no deal is better than a bad deal so make of it what you want.
I think it's better to have a trade deal with the EU than none. The EU has a trade deal with Canada and soon with Japan. On the other hand, UK has to follow the WTO rules and these are really bad. No tariff for Whiskey but 24% for car parts.
I was talking to a pair of Gibraltarian accountants the other day, and they were telling me that what relaxing the border did was pick up the economy of all the nearby Spanish towns. That's because the economy in Gib had always primarily rested upon being a major naval base for the British, and these days, the American Navies, as well as being the main servicing point for Mediterranean cruises. What relaxing the border made possible was the Spaniards who lived across the border being able to get jobs on the Gib side. That in turn picked up their domestic economies vastly.
Well, of course a couple Gibraltarian lawyers would tell you that
Truth is, the bunkering business market share of Gibraltar has been eroded lately as Algeciras, Ceuta and, most important of all, the new Tangiers port have been growing like mad. It's probably still the biggest in the region but no one really knows because Gib port stopped publishing statistics a few years back (at roughly the same time Aegean, the largest non-government bunkering company, set up shop in Tangiers).
RN navy business is not what it once was, and the USN does most of its refueling just around the corner, in Naval Station Rota where the facilities were recently upgraded.
While bunkering services are important most of the growth of the last few years can be traced to offshoring. Most British gambling companies have set up shop in Gibraltar. A lot of insurance (it used to be marine only, not so much now), etc. Now, for the most part this is leeching from the UK economy (I've read estimates on the 75-80% range) so really it's up to the UK if they want to support Gibraltar this way.... it's the other 20-25% that matters the rest (especially Spain).
At some point in the 2010s Gibraltar was collecting 30% of their budget on tobacco duties, Gibraltar was importing over 100 million cigarrette packages, which works out that every man, woman and child in Gibraltar was smoking almost 4.000 packs per year.
Now, of course closing the border means a lot of waiters and cleaning staff will lose their job, but also smugglers.
What does that mean for the Gib side? Housing, services (especially health care) are already stretched thin, so much that a lot of recent employees in the new economy commute daily from cheaper (or bigger) properties in Spain to Gibraltar. A hard border would force them to make tiny Gibraltar even more crowded with worse services, and a much tighter budget situation (meaning Gibraltar would have to cede on its traditional tax-free economics).
Just like Brexit, this is a lose-lose situation, one Gibraltarians knew it was coming.
That still doesn't mean anything with regards to sovereignity, they will have to adapt, just like they've done in the past. The first time Spain closed the border Gibraltar brought Moroccan labourers so I'm sure they'll find a way.
They were accountants, not lawyers. One of them works for the Gibraltarian government in the tax office. Accordingly, you may be right, you may be waaaaaay off-track. I'm simply relating what a pair of Gibraltarians who know something about money have told me. You'll forgive me if I trust them over a faceless account on Dakka though.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: A thought I just had: can someone explain how removing the UK from the decision-making process in the EU is supposed to give sovereignty back to the UK? The same rules will still apply when trading with the EU except the UK will no longer be part of shaping that legislation. Isn't that a LOSS in sovereignty?
This is time limited. After two years UK is automatically out with or without a contract with the EU.
After which the UK will still have to abide by EU trade regulations if it wants to trade with the EU, the alternative to which is economic seppuku.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: A thought I just had: can someone explain how removing the UK from the decision-making process in the EU is supposed to give sovereignty back to the UK? The same rules will still apply when trading with the EU except the UK will no longer be part of shaping that legislation. Isn't that a LOSS in sovereignty?
This is time limited. After two years UK is automatically out with or without a contract with the EU.
After which the UK will still have to abide by EU trade regulations if it wants to trade with the EU, the alternative to which is economic seppuku.
Leaked info about the EU proposing an immediate zero-tariff deal on goods starting right after Brexit is finalised. Of course services are not included.
Future War Cultist wrote: If I read that right, that would mean no tariffs on all the goods they sell to us, but the services we provide to them will have levies on them yes?
No tariffs on the goods sold either way, subject to origin checks (i.e. if it's mostly Chinese, it's still treated as Chinese for the sake of tariffs) - so we can't become a cheap back door to the EU.
It's implying there will be tariffs on services (of which we're in the surplus), and that any workaround for that is proportional - we can't just brass-plate an office in Brussels and trade as normal from London.
So the concern is that cars we put together in the UK might not pass the origin checks, and may still be subject to tariffs, but everything else should flow pretty well.
Goods don't include food, which may still be subject to tariffs.
It's about as good a deal as we can expect if we want to get rid of FoM.
They were accountants, not lawyers. One of them works for the Gibraltarian government in the tax office. Accordingly, you may be right, you may be waaaaaay off-track. I'm simply relating what a pair of Gibraltarians who know something about money have told me. You'll forgive me if I trust them over a faceless account on Dakka though.
Figures are out there and easy to catch. Most Gibraltarians well tell you as much after a pint or two.
Again: why do you think that some of the most nationalistic British citizens voted so overwhelmingly remain? They don't like the EU more than the average Brit. They just know they'll be hit the first and the hardest.
Future War Cultist wrote: If I read that right, that would mean no tariffs on all the goods they sell to us, but the services we provide to them will have levies on them yes?
No tariffs on the goods sold either way, subject to origin checks (i.e. if it's mostly Chinese, it's still treated as Chinese for the sake of tariffs) - so we can't become a cheap back door to the EU.
It's implying there will be tariffs on services (of which we're in the surplus), and that any workaround for that is proportional - we can't just brass-plate an office in Brussels and trade as normal from London.
So the concern is that cars we put together in the UK might not pass the origin checks, and may still be subject to tariffs, but everything else should flow pretty well.
Goods don't include food, which may still be subject to tariffs.
It's about as good a deal as we can expect if we want to get rid of FoM.
In many senses it mirrors the recently signed Canada - EU deal. 99% of goods, no services. Further than that you need to start paying in.
Figures are out there and easy to catch. Most Gibraltarians well tell you as much after a pint or two.
Again: why do you think that some of the most nationalistic British citizens voted so overwhelmingly remain? They don't like the EU more than the average Brit. They just know they'll be hit the first and the hardest.
Mate, I'm not arguing this one. I could spend the next four hours digging around statistics to form an independent opinion, but I'd rather just roll with the opinions of two old Gib uni friends (one of which literally works for the government in the tax office there) and get on with my own research paper. It's simply not important enough to me right now to be worth crunching the data separately over.
To be fair that's probably the best solution for everyone. Remainers no longer have to suffer the misery of being turfed out the EU without rational thought. Leavers can be put out their misery because most aren't happy even though they are now Leaving without rational thought by the government and the la la land is quickly turning out not to exist. Trident Submarine captains are happy as they can test the firing accuracy of the nukes. The rest of the world is happy because they no longer have to put up with Britain whinging about everything. And Spain is happy because it gets Gibraltar back.
On the issue of the Gibraltar it appears May has a choice between the Rock and a hard place...
To be fair that's probably the best solution for everyone. Remainers no longer have to suffer the misery of being turfed out the EU without rational thought. Leavers can be put out their misery because most aren't happy even though they are now Leaving without rational thought by the government and the la la land is quickly turning out not to exist.
Blimey. I wasn't aware my life outside the EU was so bad it needed to be ended. Then again, I suppose if it spares me some of the hyperbole.....
Interesting logic concept, but what if Spain attacks first? No more giant strawberries and unseasonal tomatoes...
Also, not sure about the article saying the Navy is that much weaker currently. It is about to commission the two Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, which are far more capable than the aircraft carriers used during the Faukland wars, not to mention some of the other ships in the RN currently are some of the most advanced in the world- notably the type-45 destroyer. There are less ships, but they are more powerful. Spain is also close enough to be hit by aircraft from mainland Britain too, so it isn't just a navy fight, and aircraft carriers may not be needed anyway. Whilst I highly doubt things would ever get that far, I do wonder what Portugal would do in that situation. Probably stay neutral, but I suspect there would be pressure from both sides for them to help.
We're entering the realms of fantasy with all this talk about war.
I've never heard so much God damn nonsense in a long time.
Thankfully, cooler heads have prevailed and Michael Howard has been put back in his box where he belongs.
As to earlier comments, NATO has had member states at each other's throats in the past with Greece and Turkey getting rowdy over Cyprus, but thankfully, that was resolved.
I don't expect the Gibraltar situation to go that far.
Yeah it's stupid. We should be focusing on the real issues, like the future tariffs. If the EU insists upon putting tariffs on our services then I'm not sure if we should let them get away with tariff free goods.
To be fair...its the House of Lords where the median age is like...70. Nursing home fights over volume are the #3 leading cause of death after pudding withdrawal and disappointing grandchildren.
On a more serious note...yeah thats pretty absurd given the political realities facing the UK though
Vaktathi wrote: To be fair...its the House of Lords where the median age is like...70. Nursing home fights over volume are the #3 leading cause of death after pudding withdrawal and disappointing grandchildren.
On a more serious note...yeah thats pretty absurd given the political realities facing the UK though
True. Though drama viewers throughout uk paying there tv license get there moneys worth lol.
Aye. We have alot of far bigger problems they could be debating.
Future War Cultist wrote: I suppose they have to find some way to justify their generous daily allowances. What a shower of bastards.
I think there is a lot of lack of empathy here. Despite my general reservation at the way a large proportion of the elderly were hoodwinked into voting for Brexit, they are still a large proportion of the population and these things do matter to their lives even if it doesn't matter to some of us. As the Tories ram more and more cuts down peoples throats, more elderly are being condemned to live in their own home with their interaction with the wider world being a 20 min visit by a health care worker once every so often and after that it is just the TV or radio. For these people the TV might be the only part of life they get and therefore inaudible speech does have an impact on their life. Next time people want to criticise these sorts of debates the best thing to do is think about the people who it affects and then reconsider how important the issue might be to other people. Imagine if all you could do was sit down in front of a TV and every eight hours be given a hand to go to the loo.
Now compare this to Theresa May today who seems to be taking lessons from Trump by reading right wing papers like the Scum or Daily Fail and then coming out and condemning a company for not using the word Easter because they wanted their events to be multiculturally based (that's after ignoring Easter is all over the place on the adverts). Now lets think who is exactly wasting tax payers money? I would suggest that the PM should be far more focussed on other more pressing issues (like how to avoid the fubar they are creating over Brexit, why they are still happy to sell weapons to a states killing civilians, or why they are giving money from tax on women's sanitary products to an anti-abortion charity).
One might suggest that rather than being multicultural she is instead trying to ram Christianity back down peoples throats.
My daughter, who is 17+1/2, spoke an interesting opinion yesterday, that perhaps people over a certain age should not be allowed to vote.
Her view is that her entire future of the next 30 years has been thrown into a cocked hat by people like my father, aged 88 God bless him, who is not unlikely to shuffle off this mortal coil before Brexit is even accomplished, let alone enjoy any of the hoped for fruits or suffer the attendant disasters.
I don't necessarily agree with either point of view, but it is a point worth thinking about.
Kilkrazy wrote: My daughter, who is 17+1/2, spoke an interesting opinion yesterday, that perhaps people over a certain age should not be allowed to vote.
Her view is that her entire future of the next 30 years has been thrown into a cocked hat by people like my father, aged 88 God bless him, who is not unlikely to shuffle off this mortal coil before Brexit is even accomplished, let alone enjoy any of the hoped for fruits or suffer the attendant disasters.
I don't necessarily agree with either point of view, but it is a point worth thinking about.
It's a tough issue, but definetely worth a thought. If we consider youngsters under a certain age 'unfit' to vote due to maturity issues, perhaps senile or half-senile old people should not be allowed to vote either. Nor drive.
He blamed all his woes on the Jewish Chronicle and those (presumably Jewish) Labour MPs who kicked up a fuss about his statement of Hitler being a Zionist before he went mad and killed six million Jews. Because it's not what he said that's the problem. It's all those upset about it.
He blamed all his woes on the Jewish Chronicle and those (presumably Jewish) Labour MPs who kicked up a fuss about his statement of Hitler being a Zionist before he went mad and killed six million Jews. Because it's not what he said that's the problem. It's all those upset about it.
He just embarrassing Labour now...
I mean what does he do now. Bar making headlines for stupid statements he should know better than to make.
Future War Cultist wrote: Yeah it's stupid. We should be focusing on the real issues, like the future tariffs. If the EU insists upon putting tariffs on our services then I'm not sure if we should let them get away with tariff free goods.
We need tariff free goods (more than them), especially if we don't get tariff free services.
Columbia Pictures presents in association with Pinewood Studios:
Hard Brexit 2: Brex Harder! (1978)
Starring: Michael Caine, Gordon Jackson, Helen Mirren, Max Von Sydow, Lewis Collins, Ian Holm, John Hurt, and Liam Neeson.
Director: Michael Winner
Enjoying a well earned vacation on Gibraltar with his new wife (Mirren) former MI6 agent Jack McJack (Caine) is plunged into danger when he stumbles upon a plot to conquer Europe with an army of robotic Barabary apes, controlled by none other than McJack's arch enemy: Professor Juncker. Racing into the heart of this dark conspiracy, McJack is finally confronted with the answers he seeks, as at long last, he comes face to face with Mr Tusk, the mysterious leader of B.R.U.S.S.E.L.S...
He's denying that he said that Hitler was a Zionist, even though he said that Hitler was a Zionist. And the real baddies in all of this are all the people who got angry about him saying that Hitler was a Zionist. And they should be thankful that he's not suing them.
His definition of Zionism does seem a bit too broad. Its a bit like saying Briton first support an Islamic caliphate because they want to get all Muslims out of the country
Future War Cultist wrote: Yeah it's stupid. We should be focusing on the real issues, like the future tariffs. If the EU insists upon putting tariffs on our services then I'm not sure if we should let them get away with tariff free goods.
The point of being inside the EU is to be inside a free trade zone that allows the movement of goods, services, capital and people without tariffs.
The obvious corollary is that by being outside the EU, the UK will be subject to whatever tariffs the EU decides to impose within the restrictions of the WTO tariff rules. The only way to avoid that is to negotiate a deal like the Norwegian or Canadian agreements.
We could have been party to the Canadian agreement, but since we are leaving the EU it will no longer apply to us. We shall have to negotiate our own separate agreement with the EU, and with Canada, and with every other nation with whom we want to trade on better terms than WTO.
This clearly is a massive, time-consuming task, fraught with difficulty and risk, and absolutely no guarantee of not getting a worse deal in the end, which is why the great majority of international facing businesses were against Brexit.
In terms of domestic businesses, being in or out of the EU makes no difference at all, unless you rely on migrant workers for staff or something.
GoatboyBeta wrote: His definition of Zionism does seem a bit too broad. Its a bit like saying Briton first support an Islamic caliphate because they want to get all Muslims out of the country
The fact if he thought that was good idea ro say in first place.
Seriously ...
I suspect she was keeping up the rhetoric until UKIP went into inevitable meltdown.
Seeing as that's well underway (Aaron Banks has abandoned them, Farage is lodged up Trump's bahookie, their sole MP has nicked off, and Mark Reckless has run off), we can now get down to actually sane discussion.
£10 says we stay in the single market as well, rendering the whole Brexit thing moot!
Automatically Appended Next Post: And some thoughts on Corbyn's proposed VAT on private school fees to pay for free school meals.
No, but Yes in that precise order.
I'll deal with the Yes. We absolutely need free school meals made available, ideally for all students. But that's yet another symptom of our State Schools not being properly funded.
VAT on Private School fees? Now, don't get me wrong. I kind of object to some of the fringe benefits of Private Schooling, such as the 'Old Boys Club', and the favouritism still shown by top universities for applicants from Private Schools. That stuff is dead wrong, and has no place in a modern society, where educational options should be based on a meritocracy.
But, that's not to say I disagree with Private or Public schools actually existing. Choice is good, after all. But whacking 20% VAT on the fees is a bad, bad move. Why?
Contrary to public perception, relatively few Public School Students are hooray-henries, chinless wonders just waiting for a fat inheritance. Quite often, they're the kids of parents who give up a lot to try to get the best start in life for their kid. Put it this way - I don't make a massive amount of money, but I'm comfortable. If I find a wife and we have a sprog, if the Mrs earns the same as I do (and assuming my income doesn't go up massively - which it may well do, pots on the fire and that), then we could, with a few lifestyle sacrifices, stump £3,000 a term for private schooling.
But, with 20% VAT on top of that? Nope. Just been pushed out my price range. So for the most part it would only increase educational segregation.
Me, I'd love to see State Schools funded, equipped and staffed to the point that the very noticeable difference in educational quality is massively reduced to the point where there's less need for Private Schools, and they risk losing their monopoly on top education. But to do that we need to put taxes up across the board, and not just make private schooling more expensive. In the meantime, I'll be coughing up to get my God Daughter private tuition should she need it - her parents and I likely won't be able to fund a private education, but I can damned well do my best to see she gets into a Grammar School. I may not like that system. I may not particularly approve of the snobbery and elitism that surrounds it - but I'm also rational and sensible enough to know that, however much I dislike it, it's an advantage I need to ensure she has.
There is already provision for poorer pupils, free school meals already exist. Some people's lives would be made easier by their kids getting free school meals, but the many just don't need free meals. It's not a big expense, I had packed sandwiches throughout my time at school, sandwiches, fruit and a biscuit doesn't break the bank.
They don't need to give all pupils free meals, it benefits a large number of people who don't need any support. If they raise money for schools it should be spend on school resources and staffing, because that's where the cuts are biting in.
But well fed students are proven to be more attentive in lessons.
And its not just those who can't afford to give their kid a lunch. There's also those who give their kid rubbish to eat.
I know I'm being old fashioned, but when I started school (1985, fact fans) every kid got a dinner ticket. And your dinner was whatever they were serving - usually something like mince and tatties.
Now, whether Mum and Dad had to pay for that ticket, I dunno - but the important thing is the kids didn't have or need cash, and everyone ate the same thing. That helped cut down on 'visibly poor' bullying.
Fast forward two, maybe three years (might've been less - it was a long, long time ago, I was only wee). Lunch Hall became a Canteen. Choice! Chips and Cheese, every time. Some paid cash (Mum would give Bro and I £1 between us, the idea being he typically went in first, left me the change at the till. Yeah. The number of 'you've got 20p' chats I had, not funny) but some kids still had dinner tickets.
But everyone got fed (albeit rubbish by my own choice. What do you expect a 7 year old with no parental supervision to order??).
Now? Too many cuts - and all seemingly down to Tory Ideological Stupidity.
The One Size Fits None comprehensive system isn't failing - it's failed. Big time. We need to overhaul it, offer a wider choice of education (hey kid, good with practical, but struggle with the theory? There's a specialised school for that).
It's common for schools to feed kids rubbish anyway. At breaktimes they all get cakes and pizza slices, and loading them with sugar is not good for lessons, I should know. Years ago we had Jamie Oliver campaigning about turkey twizzlers, but it's not greatly improved. Food in schools is contracted out, which means it's done as cheaply as possible.
Evidence showing improvements resulting from providing all pupils with free meal has the caveat that it applies to impoverished areas. The researchers have made this clear, as Corbyn used their findings to assert that all pupils should have them nationwide.
On your other point, specialised schools are a total reverse of what we have, which is that all pupils got mainstream and do GCSEs regardless of ability, disability, or temperament. This is why pupils who clearly cannot cope in a normal classroom setting need so much individual support and dedicated staff. And those teaching assistants are the first to be cut when the belt tightens - you can hardly let the teaching staff go after all.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I'll be coughing up to get my God Daughter private tuition should she need it - her parents and I likely won't be able to fund a private education, but I can damned well do my best to see she gets into a Grammar School. I may not like that system. I may not particularly approve of the snobbery and elitism that surrounds it - but I'm also rational and sensible enough to know that, however much I dislike it, it's an advantage I need to ensure she has.
Hypocritical socialist raising another man's daughter?
Yeah, yeah SMASH THE SYSTEM but only after I get my use out of it!
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: In the meantime, I'll be coughing up to get my God Daughter private tuition should she need it - her parents and I likely won't be able to fund a private education, but I can damned well do my best to see she gets into a Grammar School. I may not like that system. I may not particularly approve of the snobbery and elitism that surrounds it - but I'm also rational and sensible enough to know that, however much I dislike it, it's an advantage I need to ensure she has.
Except the problem is that everyone will be doing this. You still have to out compete the opposition parents. Whether that is to ensure they get to best primary schools, driving up the local housing market even more; alternatively you have to hire private tutors. You still have to be in the top 5% of earners/payers (generally speaking) in the area to give that child the chance to be in the top 5% of the class to get into Grammar. You could find you spend all the money but find you are 50% behind the highest paying (and hence best) tutors or primary schools and hence the child still has no chance to get in. The best schools will keep the 'best' teachers, the mediocre ones will leave to become tutors and the poor schools will be left with the poorer teachers.
Grammar schools might have worked in the 60s better because people were less mobile (but even then they favoured the wealthy) but now it is a one way ticket to favour the rich and hence maintaining their grasp (or entrenching it) to the wealth and power that the highest education brings. Of course the Tories are predominantly from wealthy, rich, well educated backgrounds so maintaining the status quo is exactly what they want. Part of me thinks they are getting worried about the increasing liberalisation of the younger generation through better education and that ultimately could lead to the permanent change of Tories from being dominant to a bit party (hopefully consigned to the darkest smelliest sewer). Having policies that favour controlling the masses seems to me a primary concern for the Tories.
The One Size Fits None comprehensive system isn't failing - it's failed. Big time. We need to overhaul it, offer a wider choice of education (hey kid, good with practical, but struggle with the theory? There's a specialised school for that).
It's only failed (and that's rather subjective, children now are much better educated than two generations ago) because of criminal under funding and where teachers are both chastised for having 'soft jobs' by the tabloid (and lapped up by the Scum and Daily Fail readers) and massively underpaid to the point where those with a good education can earn vastly more just by becoming a supermarket manager. If it wasn't massively underfunded then the system would be a lot stronger. And there is already a huge choice of course especially post GCSE that children can do. There is more choice now than there ever has been - but again this drives issues in certain fields (like physics which is compounded that a decent Physics graduate can do much better than a teacher).
Lets suppose all teachers were paid £50k per year. How likely it that there would a be a teaching crisis. Local doctors get paid £100k per annum and yet realistically most only deal with the elderly that have colds. From a purely societal impact on a influence over a lifetime a teacher likely has much more of an affect on a person than a doctor does.
School meals are important, many of the reasons have already been covered. I'd like to add that its one of the few times the state can make sure a child is getting a nutritious, healthy and hot meal. My Mum used to work as a infant and junior school cook and she had quite a few tails that have surprised/horrified me over the years about kids and food.
Yeah, my daughter doesn't get free school meals next year (they only get them for the first couple of school years) but me and the wife are going to stump up the £40 odd a month to ensure she gets the. I think it is important for them to have a hot meal at school.
Whirlwind wrote: Lets suppose all teachers were paid £50k per year. How likely it that there would a be a teaching crisis. Local doctors get paid £100k per annum and yet realistically most only deal with the elderly that have colds. From a purely societal impact on a influence over a lifetime a teacher likely has much more of an affect on a person than a doctor does.
Whilst I agree with the majority of what you have said, I think it is somewhat unfair to bash GPs in this way. Yes, teachers should definitely get more pay for what they do, but GPs do have a very involved role too, and unfortunately there is a lot more to the job than managing colds. Most of the elderly visits involve really complex interactions with multiple diseases, that take a lot of experience to manage effectively, and can kill the patient (or put them in hospital and therefore costing a lot more than treating them in the community). It certainly isn't a simple role and the wage is supposed to represent the degree of background knowledge and experience, as well as responsibility required for the job. There is also a large business aspect, which is diminishing as more and more GPs go the salaried route. Of course there are a lot of straight forward consultations in GP practices, which is why an increasing amount of consultations are being done by nurse practitioners and other, similar clinic roles on a lower pay band, with a lower degree of responsibility.
Looking back on the week, the incompetence of the non Conservative Conservative party never fails to astonish me. The Gibraltar debacle being the latest in a long line of blunders, and yet, people still vote for them...
Michael Howard was wheeled out, with tacit approval IMO, to voice things that some sections of the government wanted to voice, but couldn't for obvious reasons, so has beens and ex-Welsh secretaries do work instead, and make the situation even worse...
And some thoughts on Corbyn's proposed VAT on private school fees to pay for free school meals.
No, but Yes in that precise order.
I'll deal with the Yes. We absolutely need free school meals made available, ideally for all students. But that's yet another symptom of our State Schools not being properly funded.
VAT on Private School fees? Now, don't get me wrong. I kind of object to some of the fringe benefits of Private Schooling, such as the 'Old Boys Club', and the favouritism still shown by top universities for applicants from Private Schools. That stuff is dead wrong, and has no place in a modern society, where educational options should be based on a meritocracy.
But, that's not to say I disagree with Private or Public schools actually existing. Choice is good, after all. But whacking 20% VAT on the fees is a bad, bad move. Why?
Contrary to public perception, relatively few Public School Students are hooray-henries, chinless wonders just waiting for a fat inheritance. Quite often, they're the kids of parents who give up a lot to try to get the best start in life for their kid. Put it this way - I don't make a massive amount of money, but I'm comfortable. If I find a wife and we have a sprog, if the Mrs earns the same as I do (and assuming my income doesn't go up massively - which it may well do, pots on the fire and that), then we could, with a few lifestyle sacrifices, stump £3,000 a term for private schooling.
But, with 20% VAT on top of that? Nope. Just been pushed out my price range. So for the most part it would only increase educational segregation.
Me, I'd love to see State Schools funded, equipped and staffed to the point that the very noticeable difference in educational quality is massively reduced to the point where there's less need for Private Schools, and they risk losing their monopoly on top education. But to do that we need to put taxes up across the board, and not just make private schooling more expensive. In the meantime, I'll be coughing up to get my God Daughter private tuition should she need it - her parents and I likely won't be able to fund a private education, but I can damned well do my best to see she gets into a Grammar School. I may not like that system. I may not particularly approve of the snobbery and elitism that surrounds it - but I'm also rational and sensible enough to know that, however much I dislike it, it's an advantage I need to ensure she has.
I have lived in precisely that category. I was privately educated and most of th other pupils were from considerably wealthier familes, both some others were not, like my parents they worked double jobs, and had no holidays because they thought the investment in my education was worth more than that. Still without a hefty discount available I would not have been privately educated.
Ironically what Corbyn intends will preserve private education for the rich alone, and will deny it to the middle classes deepening rather than filling in the divide. Also many of labours own left wing firebrands want socialism for all, yet put their own kids in private schools. Funny that.
Whilst I agree with the majority of what you have said, I think it is somewhat unfair to bash GPs in this way. Yes, teachers should definitely get more pay for what they do, but GPs do have a very involved role too, and unfortunately there is a lot more to the job than managing colds. Most of the elderly visits involve really complex interactions with multiple diseases, that take a lot of experience to manage effectively, and can kill the patient (or put them in hospital and therefore costing a lot more than treating them in the community). It certainly isn't a simple role and the wage is supposed to represent the degree of background knowledge and experience, as well as responsibility required for the job. There is also a large business aspect, which is diminishing as more and more GPs go the salaried route. Of course there are a lot of straight forward consultations in GP practices, which is why an increasing amount of consultations are being done by nurse practitioners and other, similar clinic roles on a lower pay band, with a lower degree of responsibility.
Sorry, I wasn't intending to come across as bashing GPs. I perfectly understand the role that they play in society. I was more highlighting that in the majority they treat the elderly (who for many just go to the doctors at the first sign of a cold), who whilst might be conceived as unfair, play little role on a society as a whole in terms of tax, society input and so on. However teachers are educating the next generation and how well they are initially taught has a huge bearing on the potential role that person has on society in the future for the next 50 years or so. So when you compare wages a teacher earns about 20-25% of what a Doctor does but in terms of societal impact likely has a much greater role. That was more the point I was trying to highlight.
filbert wrote: Yeah, my daughter doesn't get free school meals next year (they only get them for the first couple of school years) but me and the wife are going to stump up the £40 odd a month to ensure she gets the. I think it is important for them to have a hot meal at school.
What is “lunch shaming?” It happens when a child can’t pay a school lunch bill.
In Alabama, a child short on funds was stamped on the arm with “I Need Lunch Money.” In some schools, children are forced to clean cafeteria tables in front of their peers to pay the debt. Other schools require cafeteria workers to take a child’s hot food and throw it in the trash if he doesn’t have the money to pay for it.
In what its supporters say is the first such legislation in the country, New Mexico has outlawed shaming children whose parents are behind on school lunch payments.
On Thursday, Gov. Susana Martinez signed the Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights, which directs schools to work with parents to pay their debts or sign up for federal meal assistance and puts an end to practices meant to embarrass children. It applies to public, private and religious schools that receive federal subsidies for students’ breakfasts and lunches.
The law’s passage is a victory for anti-hunger activists, who have long been critical of lunch-shaming practices that single out children with insufficient funds on their electronic swipe cards or who lack the necessary cash. These practices can include making the child wear a wrist band or requiring the child to perform chores in exchange for a meal.
In some cases, cafeteria workers have been ordered to throw away the hot lunches of children who owed money, giving them alternatives like sandwiches, milk and fruit.
“People on both sides of the aisle were genuinely horrified that schools were allowed to throw out children’s food or make them work to pay off debt,” said Jennifer Ramo, executive director of New Mexico Appleseed, an anti-poverty group that spearheaded the law. “It sounds like some scene from ‘Little Orphan Annie,’ but it happens every day.”
State Senator Michael Padilla, a Democrat and the majority whip, said he introduced the bill because he grew up in foster homes and experienced shaming tactics as a child.
“I made Mrs. Ortiz and Mrs. Jackson, our school lunch ladies, my best friends,” he said. “Thank goodness they took care of me, but I had to do other things like mop the floor in the cafeteria. It was really noticeable that I was one of the poor kids in the school.”
New Mexico is not alone in dealing with school meal debt. According to the School Nutrition Association, over three-quarters of school districts had uncollected debt on their books at the end of the last school year. In a survey by the association, districts reported median lunch debt of a few thousand dollars — but some were far higher, as much as $4.7 million.
Once debt is deemed uncollectable, school nutrition departments must write it off, but they may not offset the loss with federal dollars. Instead, they must dip into other forms of revenue, such as profits from the sale of full-priced snacks and meals, or they must seek reimbursement elsewhere, usually from the district’s general fund.
Most districts try to collect outstanding balances through automated calls, texts or emails, and they may also hire an outside collection agency. The New Mexico law will still allow schools to penalize students with steps such as withholding a student’s transcript or revoking older students’ parking passes.
Lunch shaming can take a toll on the adults enlisted to carry it out as well as on children. A Pittsburgh-area cafeteria worker made national news when she quit her job rather than deny hot lunches to students.
Some school employees reach into their own pockets to pay for meals. Sharon Schaefer, a former chef at a high school in Omaha, said one cashier asked to be removed from her position because of the school’s “no money, no meal” policy. “She had been secretly paying for students’ meals,” Ms. Schaefer said, “and couldn’t afford to keep it up.”
Even those outside the cafeteria may be moved to help. Private individuals have sometimes paid off the entire outstanding balance at local schools, and last December, a single tweet inspired hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations around the country.
“I don’t think the main intention of the school meal debt policies is to humiliate,” said Ms. Ramo of New Mexico Appleseed, who said the group worked closely with school nutrition departments in drafting the bill. “Mostly, school nutrition directors are trying to balance their budgets and they see this is a necessary but effective evil.”
Nonetheless, she said, “We have to separate the child from a debt they have no power to pay.”
In 2010, the Department of Agriculture was directed to examine the feasibility of establishing national standards for dealing with meal debt, but in its report to Congress last summer, the department concluded that the matter should remain under local control. Accordingly, it directed state agencies to establish a formal payment policy by July 1 or to allow districts to set their own policies by that date. Texas and California have also introduced anti-shaming legislation.
In its official guidance, the Agriculture Department discourages the use of alternate meals and other stigmatizing practices. If an alternate meal is offered, the department suggests bringing it to the child’s classroom in a paper sack so it looks like a home-packed lunch, or offering the same cold meal on the lunch line so it’s available to all students.
In Alabama, a child short on funds was stamped on the arm with “I Need Lunch Money.” In some schools, children are forced to clean cafeteria tables in front of their peers to pay the debt
People on both sides of the aisle were genuinely horrified that schools were allowed to throw out children’s food or make them work to pay off debt,
One would fething well hope that people wouldn't be cool with this.
Possibly really shouldn't need a law that says "hey, don't shame children for being poor" but, well, here we are.
..odds on us getting similar lunch/poor shaming over here soon then...?
One would think that feeding children is something that all people would be fine with
The son and brother of President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged chemical weapons chief have been granted UK citizenship even though he is under international sanctions.
Amr Armanazi’s youngest son, Bisher, and older brother, Ghayth, were allowed British passports after he had been blacklisted in 2012 by the US government for running a facility in Syria allegedly involved in the production of sarin nerve gas and other weapons of mass destruction.
Armanazi’s eldest son, Zayd, a British citizen since 2009, works with his younger sibling at an investment bank in the City.
..well... p'raps there's something to be said for all the banks going elsewhere after all then eh ?
Labour holding on to Stoke was hardly front page news, but the fact that the Tories stole a seat from Labour, the first government to do so for decades, tells its own story.
Labour holding on to Stoke was hardly front page news, but the fact that the Tories stole a seat from Labour, the first government to do so for decades, tells its own story.
Let's see what happens in 4 weeks... The next local elections should be telling. The lib dems are campaigning hard in my area, Cameron's old constituency. I have only ever seen UKIP before.
Labour holding on to Stoke was hardly front page news, but the fact that the Tories stole a seat from Labour, the first government to do so for decades, tells its own story.
Let's see what happens in 4 weeks... The next local elections should be telling. The lib dems are campaigning hard in my area, Cameron's old constituency. I have only ever seen UKIP before.
I'm no expert on the powers granted to local councils, but I sincerely hope that Lib Dem Councillors aren't campaigning on a platform to take us back into the EU
When I was little every school child got free milk and orange juice. It was considered an important part of public health to make sure that children got a basic ration of vitamins and calcium.
That gradually got eroded in favour of saving money.
That's at least healthy stuff, quite unlike what a lot of what comes out of school canteens. Healthy options are available, but an awful lot of pasties and cakes get eaten instead.
Reminds me when they made a big fuss about his opposition to using nukes. Sure Corbyn definitely has his faults. But I wouldn't count not wanting children to go hungry and being against nuclear armageddon among them.
Reminds me when they made a big fuss about his opposition to using nukes. Sure Corbyn definitely has his faults. But I wouldn't count not wanting children to go hungry and being against nuclear armageddon among them.
Yeah, I'm no fan but wanting kids to be fed and thus able to have a better chance of learning something...It's not exactly death to the proletariat.
Labour holding on to Stoke was hardly front page news, but the fact that the Tories stole a seat from Labour, the first government to do so for decades, tells its own story.
Youngsters have been searching through bins in the Hollings Street and Brocksford Street area of Fenton before eating any leftovers.
Concerned residents have raised the issue at a police meeting in Fenton.
Jade Poynton, aged 38, of Fenton, said: "My nan lives in Brocksford Street and there have been a couple of times when she has heard the bin lid slam against the window and seen people having a look through the bags. It was children and she has seen the same ones doing the same thing down the street and eating bits of food they find.
That was 2014 children doing without food is hardly new. And it's a shame shared by all members of government, national and local.
NOTE Fenton is one of the five towns, that makes up the city of stoke on trent
I'm not sure what calling off the meeting achieves. At worse he would go and nothing would come of it, but better to show willing. Expecting the situtation in Syria to improve by refusing to talk to Russia seems odd.
Kilkrazy wrote: When I was little every school child got free milk and orange juice. It was considered an important part of public health to make sure that children got a basic ration of vitamins and calcium.
That gradually got eroded in favour of saving money.
Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher.
On a happier note, nice to see the nation still laughing at the bull-necked wannabe fascist twonks in the EDL. Just another in a series of vignettes showing the British Far Right losing ever more ground, and slowly going back under the rocks from whence they came.
Howard A Treesong wrote: I'm not sure what calling off the meeting achieves. At worse he would go and nothing would come of it, but better to show willing. Expecting the situtation in Syria to improve by refusing to talk to Russia seems odd.
It's what happens when your foreign policy is drafted in Washington and not London.
For all the talk of standing up for Gibraltar, I'd bet my last penny that if the USA told us to hand Gibraltar back to the Spanish, London would meekly accept.
I dunno, the US has never been particularly fond of our colonial interests, and have been pretty unsupportive in other examples like the Faulklands. So I doubt that would make much difference in the Gibraltar case.
Haighus wrote: I dunno, the US has never been particularly fond of our colonial interests, and have been pretty unsupportive in other examples like the Faulklands. So I doubt that would make much difference in the Gibraltar case.
IIRC it is more complicated than that for the Falklands. I think the USA and most of South America have a mutual defence pact. If I remember the documentary correctly Thatcher had to go and ask for permission to invade the Falklands to check that the US wouldn't come into the conflict on the side of Argentina. The US stayed independent because of the conflicting interests.
Haighus wrote: I dunno, the US has never been particularly fond of our colonial interests, and have been pretty unsupportive in other examples like the Faulklands. So I doubt that would make much difference in the Gibraltar case.
IIRC it is more complicated than that for the Falklands. I think the USA and most of South America have a mutual defence pact. If I remember the documentary correctly Thatcher had to go and ask for permission to invade the Falklands to check that the US wouldn't come into the conflict on the side of Argentina. The US stayed independent because of the conflicting interests.
Umm far as I'm awsre the united states let the us task force refuel at a American influenced or controlled to get there.
Now, I don't know if the PM is under or overpaid - that's an irrelevance to this bafflement.
But how can people representing a much lower political station possibly justify claiming a greater reward than the person ostensibly running the country and making the really, really big decisions?
And they do like to jack up their council tax to pay for it, no?
Haighus wrote: I dunno, the US has never been particularly fond of our colonial interests, and have been pretty unsupportive in other examples like the Faulklands. So I doubt that would make much difference in the Gibraltar case.
IIRC it is more complicated than that for the Falklands. I think the USA and most of South America have a mutual defence pact. If I remember the documentary correctly Thatcher had to go and ask for permission to invade the Falklands to check that the US wouldn't come into the conflict on the side of Argentina. The US stayed independent because of the conflicting interests.
Umm far as I'm awsre the united states let the us task force refuel at a American influenced or controlled to get there.
Well, they had an airbase on Ascension island they let us use.
Having looked into it a bit more, yeah, the US was actually unusually cooperative in the case of the Falklands, considering their history with the Monroe doctrine. They kinda settled in a non-inteference, but officially pro-Britain stance, although there were political divisions at a senior US level.
Now, I don't know if the PM is under or overpaid - that's an irrelevance to this bafflement.
But how can people representing a much lower political station possibly justify claiming a greater reward than the person ostensibly running the country and making the really, really big decisions?
And they do like to jack up their council tax to pay for it, no?
Haighus wrote: I dunno, the US has never been particularly fond of our colonial interests, and have been pretty unsupportive in other examples like the Faulklands. So I doubt that would make much difference in the Gibraltar case.
IIRC it is more complicated than that for the Falklands. I think the USA and most of South America have a mutual defence pact. If I remember the documentary correctly Thatcher had to go and ask for permission to invade the Falklands to check that the US wouldn't come into the conflict on the side of Argentina. The US stayed independent because of the conflicting interests.
Umm far as I'm awsre the united states let the us task force refuel at a American influenced or controlled to get there.
Well, they had an airbase on Ascension island they let us use.
Having looked into it a bit more, yeah, the US was actually unusually cooperative in the case of the Falklands, considering their history with the Monroe doctrine. They kinda settled in a non-inteference, but officially pro-Britain stance, although there were political divisions at a senior US level.
Now, I don't know if the PM is under or overpaid - that's an irrelevance to this bafflement.
But how can people representing a much lower political station possibly justify claiming a greater reward than the person ostensibly running the country and making the really, really big decisions?
And they do like to jack up their council tax to pay for it, no?
I don't get that either.
Quite simple really, Local councils only get back hander's from planning proposals, and building contracts. MP's get back hander's from industry banking and foreign governments. So local councilors need it more.
Quite simple really, Local councils only get back hander's from planning proposals, and building contracts. MP's get back hander's from industry banking and foreign governments. So local councilors need it more.
Hang on, the US are sending their Secretary of State to Moscow, may even speak to Putin directly. Yet Boris just pulled out of the first such meeting in years from the UK.
Boris has badly screwed this up making us look incredibly weak and lacking any independence. Boris should go if he hasn't the gumption or skill to handle our own diplomatic affairs.
Howard A Treesong wrote: Hang on, the US are sending their Secretary of State to Moscow, may even speak to Putin directly. Yet Boris just pulled out of the first such meeting in years from the UK.
Boris has badly screwed this up making us look incredibly weak and lacking any independence. Boris should go if he hasn't the gumption or skill to handle our own diplomatic affairs.
My loathing for all things Bojo related is well known on these boards, but perhaps Ketara is right about May's plan for Bojo, because Bojo is out of his depth on this one.
For that matter, May is also showing herself up to be clueless. May and Trump were in the papers this morning lecturing Putin that Syria is not in Russia's strategic interests!
The naivety of these people
May and Trump are seriously going to tell Putin what is and isn't in Russia's interests?
Somebody should really tell our PM how diplomacy, great power politics, and international relations work.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: And indeed democracy, the international market, the WTO rules, human decency, hypocricy.
There's an awful lot she needs to understand.
Exactly. One minute May is banging on about Assad having blood on his hands. The next minute she's in Saudi Arabia, flogging some guns, and knowing full well that women and children are being killed in Yemen by these same weapons.
The double standards at times is enough to make you vomit.
Say whatever it takes to get the column inches, grease whoevers palm needs greasing to get their tawdry rag to support you - then once elected do precisely whatever the heck you want, because you've got five years at least to line your pockets.
Haighus wrote: I dunno, the US has never been particularly fond of our colonial interests, and have been pretty unsupportive in other examples like the Faulklands. So I doubt that would make much difference in the Gibraltar case.
IIRC it is more complicated than that for the Falklands. I think the USA and most of South America have a mutual defence pact. If I remember the documentary correctly Thatcher had to go and ask for permission to invade the Falklands to check that the US wouldn't come into the conflict on the side of Argentina. The US stayed independent because of the conflicting interests.
Umm far as I'm awsre the united states let the us task force refuel at a American influenced or controlled to get there.
Ronnie Raygun had our backs in that one but was hindered publicly by not wanting to appear anti-Latino. [Sir] Casper Weinberger ensured that all British requests were met, particularly AiM9 Sidewinder Missiles that proved so effective. It has also latterly been found that they had made preparations to provide the Iwo Jima assault carrier if either of the two UK carriers wee damaged/sunk.
I don't think there is any doubt that the US played her part.
I also don't doubt at all that the US wouldn't support a populations right to decide their own fate. Of course Gibralter is also a very handy layover point for the US Navy which I'm sure they wouldn't want to see disrupted...
Australia's minister for foreign affairs, Julie Bishop says it's her government's priority to focus on a trade agreement with the EU, and expressed concerns about the current tide of economic nationalism taking hold in certain parts of the world.
The deputy leader of the Liberal Party in Dublin today conducting bi-lateral meetings with her counterpart Charlie Flanagan, as well as the Irish-Australian Chamber of Commerce.
“Our priority is to conclude a free trade agreement with the European Union”, Minister Julie Bishop told Newstalk.
“And we see Ireland as a great opportunity for us to work with countries of the EU, through Ireland.”
Much of the economic argument behind the push to leave the EU in Britain was the notion that the UK could be free to do its own bi-lateral trade deals, without Europe having a say over how trade is conducted.
The UK is not free to engage in any official trade negotiations until Brexit divorce negotiations are concluded, and it is no longer a member of the EU.
The Australian government had hoped for the UK to remain with the EU, and a trade working group has been sent to the UK after the vote, but the Foreign Minister said today that Brexit now gives Australia the “opportunity to reset the relationship [with the EU] and enhance our trade an investment ties.”
“We are committed to free trade that is in the interest of the Australian people. It grows our economy; it provides jobs, particularly for young people.”
Nationalism
She also said the current rising tide of protectionism and nationalism in parts of the US, UK and other countries is a “concern” for Australia.
“We take very seriously this rising sentiment of protectionism and economic nationalism and intend to continue to pursue an economic agenda that involves free trade. We are pursuing free trade agreements – we’ve concluded a number including with the North Asian giants of China, Korea and Japan.
"We’ll continue with a free trade agreement, hopefully with the EU.”
She said she also sees Australia increasing trade with "countries like Ireland where we have so many similarities and complimentary economies."
“Australia’s economic strength; our standard of living depends on our ability to sell our goods and services in to the market places around the world, and I believe Ireland has a similar outlook”, she said.
..not too worry I'm sure disgraced minister Liam Fox will sort it out -- or bojo -- assuming the septics let him go anyway.
Tired from months of wondering whether their jobs will be moved or cut, foreign employees at some of London’s biggest banks are taking the initiative and asking to be moved back home, according to people with knowledge of the requests.
Staff at Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and HSBC Holdings Plc have volunteered to return to their native countries inside the European Union should their employers need to relocate staff after Brexit, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the discussions are private. At Societe Generale SA, at least two traders have already moved home -- to France and Italy -- in anticipation that the bank might start dispersing its London-based employees across the continent, one of the people said.
Global banks have begun the process of moving some U.K.-based operations to new or expanded trading hubs inside the EU after British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered the formal mechanism for quitting the 28-nation bloc. Firms are preparing for a so-called hard Brexit -- the loss of their right to sell services freely around the region from their bases in the City -- and want to have offices up and running elsewhere before the end of the two-year negotiation period between the U.K. and EU.
Brexit could help reverse a trend: For decades, the brightest university graduates from across the EU have moved to London to pursue careers in finance because that was where the global investment banks had their European headquarters.
HSBC executives have been vocal about plans to relocate as many as 1,000 traders from London to Paris. After U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd last year said she would force companies to disclose how many foreign workers they employed to prevent migrants “taking jobs British people can do,” the bank received requests from French employees eager to return home, one of the people said.
Family Waiting
One managing director at another bank who recently moved from Frankfurt to London to run a trading business left his wife and children behind in Germany on the assumption that his job will be relocated there after Brexit anyway. Only if Prime Minister May secures a good deal for the industry from her EU partners will he consider pulling his children out of school and moving the family to London, said the banker, who asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
It’s not just job security that bankers are after. Many of the jurisdictions competing for the spoils of Brexit are promising attractive tax incentives for high-net-worth individuals to relocate. The French government has been among the most aggressive, offering some returning nationals and foreigners income tax breaks of up to 50 percent for eight years, and exempting overseas properties and assets from the wealth tax. In February, Italy unveiled a package of tax measures including a “flat tax” of 100,000 euros ($107,000) on all foreign-source income.
Read more: Italy’s efforts to woo banks
Due to talent shortages in most EU financial centers outside London, bank executives are hoping to staff their new EU hubs largely with current employees returning home, according to two people familiar with their firms’ plans. The objective is to save time and money recruiting and training new staff, and avoid having to offer generous packages to move those who aren’t as keen to relocate.
At Citigroup, which last week sent a memo to U.K. staff warning that some "client-facing roles" may be relocated, at least two Italian bankers have offered to be relocated back to Milan, one person said. Foreign bankers at Goldman Sachs, which is considering moving as many as 1,000 bankers to Frankfurt, have made similar approaches to managers.
Spokesmen at Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Societe Generale declined to comment.
London could lose 10,000 banking jobs and 20,000 roles in financial services as clients move 1.8 trillion euros of assets out of the U.K. after Brexit, according to think tank Bruegel. Other estimates range from as much as 232,000 jobs to as few as 4,000. There are about 45,000 EU nationals working in financial services in London, according to PwC data.
London Impact
One Dublin-based headhunter said she’d already seen a spike in inquiries from Irish bankers living in London keen to return if the right jobs came up. None have made the move as banks are still in the early stages of implementing their contingency plans, she said.
London’s high-end real estate market, already suffering after investment banks cut staff and slashed bonuses last year, could be hit again as European deal-makers and traders start to leave. Demand is slowing for rental properties charging between 3,000 pounds ($3,750) and 5,000 pounds a week that are traditionally popular with senior executives in financial services, broker Knight Frank said in a report Monday. In some cases, landlords are having to make double-digit percentage reductions to rents to keep apartments occupied.
“Every time I’m with a group of Irish bankers all the talk around the table is about when they’re going to move back home,” said John Purcell of Purcell & Company, a London-based executive recruitment firm. “If you think it’s inevitable that you’re going to be moved, and you have a pretty good sense of where to, then you’re better off getting in there early so you can get a decent house and get your children into a decent school.”
Now, I don't know if the PM is under or overpaid - that's an irrelevance to this bafflement.
But how can people representing a much lower political station possibly justify claiming a greater reward than the person ostensibly running the country and making the really, really big decisions?
And they do like to jack up their council tax to pay for it, no?
The link is wrong, this is not Councillors, it's Council employees (strictly speaking Directors and Chief Execs).
The argument is always that if you want the better people then you have to pay higher wages. They are the ones responsible for implementing the crackpot schemes of the Councillors and government. Also unlike the PM they don't get a guaranteed pension after anything from 1 day to 5 years in office. They are also directly responsible for child welfare, social care, your local waste sites and so on.
Compare this to the PM May who lies through her back teeth to the populace, does party political broadcasts saying how well everything is going to be (for the Tory party); whilst showcasing what £350m from the EU can do for a region; whilst screwing over every one else. So really I'd give May the minimum wage, it's fairer to everyone!
On a slightly confrontational approach, it's all smoke and mirrors to turn people against local councils as wasting money (whereas in reality they provide a lot of support for those actually in need). After all why not complain about those working for the government that are earning more than the PM? These are people directly under the control of the Government of the day.
They can see that May and stooges are in the process of launching another Titanic to float freely in the Atlantic and would rather leave before it hits the obvious iceberg.
It's starting to look grim now.
Construction down,
Manufacturing down,
RPI now hitting greater than 3%
Public spending is down almost a 1% on non food products.
That might be true, but overall industrial output is still down (based on Febs figures anyway). If the internal market is shrinking faster than the exports are growing then you still have a problem.
Meanwhile, business lobbies seeking to influence Downing Street would be wise to tread a careful line, expressing their concerns only in private meetings rather than through public campaigns.
Officials have made clear that any critical statements in the media about immigration, trade, or the rights of EU residents will be punished with an immediate cessation of access, according to one big business lobby.
This is the taking back control we've heard so much about then is it ?
reminds one a bit too much about disgraced minister Fox's dept already stipulated 'cultural fit' with regards to contracts.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: That's fething stupid. If private businesses and other lobbyists are trying to influence government policy I'd prefer they did it publicly and not behind closed doors.
The Govt only wants them to do it behind closed doors because they're afraid of how it'll make them look. Every business in the country is going to be agitating the Govt via lobbyists to put it's interests front and centre, every business. That's a lots of sectors who will be making a lot of noise, and it's going to look horrendous if that all start doing it out in the open.
Yep, you know things are not going great if you don't know what's going on because the Govt is not confident enough to let it's people know what it's upto.
But saying that, so much of Govt is opaque already, it's not really surprising when they do this sort of thing.
r_squared wrote: Yep, you know things are not going great if you don't know what's going on because the Govt is not confident enough to let it's people know what it's upto.
But saying that, so much of Govt is opaque already, it's not really surprising when they do this sort of thing.
The difference here is that it is actively telling companies/organisations that it wont deal with them if they put out any public criticism (which after all we have freedom of speech they are entitled to do). It basically forces a party line and doesn't allow any dissention which is a terrible things to do. Nodding dogs is not what we need right now especially when we have fools and clowns like Empress May, Bozo, Dumb Davis and "Give a tax break to myself" Hammond.
To be fair this is not just a Tory party issue. Trump does exactly the same thing and Corbyn is also doing it. It's a dangerous path forbidding arguments because it misses that the track has not yet been laid by the time the train gets there (which is exactly what the excrement that is the Tory party are doing right now).
The only thing I can recommend is that unless you are earning over £100k a year is not to vote Tories at any election ever and make sure your children, nieces, nephews know just how much they have been robbed of a better future so a few Tories can benefit. Hopefully then the Tories can be consigned to the deepest, darkest foulest sewer where they belong.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Despite these uncertain and troubling times we live in - it's good to know that some people still want to have fun.
They might not be raving when they see how much interest is on university loans and what they are paying isn't covering the cost of the interest they are accruing.
r_squared wrote: Yep, you know things are not going great if you don't know what's going on because the Govt is not confident enough to let it's people know what it's upto.
But saying that, so much of Govt is opaque already, it's not really surprising when they do this sort of thing.
The difference here is that it is actively telling companies/organisations that it wont deal with them if they put out any public criticism (which after all we have freedom of speech they are entitled to do). It basically forces a party line and doesn't allow any dissention which is a terrible things to do. Nodding dogs is not what we need right now especially when we have fools and clowns like Empress May, Bozo, Dumb Davis and "Give a tax break to myself" Hammond.
To be fair this is not just a Tory party issue. Trump does exactly the same thing and Corbyn is also doing it. It's a dangerous path forbidding arguments because it misses that the track has not yet been laid by the time the train gets there (which is exactly what the excrement that is the Tory party are doing right now).
The only thing I can recommend is that unless you are earning over £100k a year is not to vote Tories at any election ever and make sure your children, nieces, nephews know just how much they have been robbed of a better future so a few Tories can benefit. Hopefully then the Tories can be consigned to the deepest, darkest foulest sewer where they belong.
This policy started under the Blair years, and buy did they make a meal of it. Th Tories are following th road phoney Tony took, while that is a bad road the answer of singling out the Tories for doing it and unilaterally saying that people should not vote for them is tanatmount to saying that those who caused the problem to begin with should form the next government.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: I know, I just don't like the opaqueness of it. Doesn't make for transparent government.
I completely agree.
The big problem, judging by Radio 4, is that the majority of business is against Brexit because they see lots of downs and not much ups, and wants to stop or reverse Brexit's most important factors or stopping immigration and withdrawing from the free market. The government rightly doesn't want a constant rattle of complaints and lobbying about things which are being decided on political grounds rather than on practicality.
The problem of Brexit is that no matter what you do some people will be bitterly disappointed, and the #1 rule of current politics is that the UK has a selfish electorate and any controversial decision that effects people personally needs to drown out its opposition and that requires a large mandated majority because those who lose out on any issue will be far louder and more persistent than those who benefit.
Brexit has this in spades, on every issue either the 'Remainers' or the 'Brexitters' will be out in force complaining while those you are happy with that decision will overlook it in favour of things they didn't get or will just sink into a quiet "I'm alright jack" mentality.
Just want to to do the best for OWFS and JAMs Ms Greening? How about shoving Brexit up your arse?
That'll do the best for OWFS and JAMS. Getting fething sick of politicians turning real people into "squeezed middle" fething soundbites to support tory ideology.
Politics in the UK has turned into a fething joke, and I've had too much to drink.
It's disappointing that yet another lot of strategic shaking up of education is going to happen. It happens every few years, much like the major strategic plan changes in the NHS.
Nothing really changes except somehow less money goes to schools and hospitals while more money goes to private support services.
At the same time, it's notable and curious that the social care industry, largey privately run, is on the verge of collapse.
Orlanth wrote: The problem of Brexit is that no matter what you do some people will be bitterly disappointed, and the #1 rule of current politics is that the UK has a selfish electorate and any controversial decision that effects people personally needs to drown out its opposition and that requires a large mandated majority because those who lose out on any issue will be far louder and more persistent than those who benefit.
Brexit has this in spades, on every issue either the 'Remainers' or the 'Brexitters' will be out in force complaining while those you are happy with that decision will overlook it in favour of things they didn't get or will just sink into a quiet "I'm alright jack" mentality.
Suppose there will be no trade deal between EU and UK within two years.
Then we might see lots of traffic congestion at the borders. Some say, 100 km between Dover and London. Then neither remainers nor brexiteers will be happy. I guess this will be the time that mr. farragh moves to an EU country.
There isn't going to be a trade deal that does not involve the UK leaving the single market. Therefore whatever deal is done, there will need to be customs inspections of all goods between the EU and UK in both directions. This is possible to arrange without necessarily causing 100km tailbacks, however, to do so requires a lot of work to prepare and run the system for it.
Herzlos wrote: Very true, whatever happens, some large proportion of the 52% will be pretty upset.
Despite being a leave voter, I never had a problem with immigration. In this globalised world, it's impossible to keep people put.
And as has been argued many a time, the housing shortage has been caused been 30 years of gak poor government policy.
I don't blame migrants for that.
And because of the weak pound, foreign spivs and speculators are snapping up cheaper London property, thus causing more housing problems and pricing people out.
Again, I don't blame your ordinary immigrant for that.
The 100,000 immigration target was always obviously a load of crap, for example.
Pretty much most of what was said by politicians as part of the Brexit debate on both side was the same. The only difference was that Brexit politicians told people what they would do and then on day one turned round and told people that they effectively lied (or to put in IDS words "Possible Promises".
Brexit became about very right wing elements of the Tory party wanting to grasp control of the party so they could design a system so they could pocket the benefits whilst screwing over anyone earning less than £100k or so.
How anyone votes for Tories is beyond me, they lie through their back teeth and still people ignore. It's just a shame that the major opposition is in such a shambles that they can't arrange a piss up in a brewery never mind put a coherent argument together. The only large scale opposition (unfortunately LDs have too few MPs) is SNP. SNP are now the effective opposition party.
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Kilkrazy wrote: It's disappointing that yet another lot of strategic shaking up of education is going to happen. It happens every few years, much like the major strategic plan changes in the NHS.
Nothing really changes except somehow less money goes to schools and hospitals while more money goes to private support services.
At the same time, it's notable and curious that the social care industry, largey privately run, is on the verge of collapse.
The Tory party is all about moving money from the poor to the wealthy (an anti Robin Hood party if you want). Therefore stripping public services (which vastly help the poorer parts of the community) is what they want. That means the poor have to pay more and more to these private services whilst the wealthy vampires favoured by the Tories suck such people dry. I believe the Tory party has moved on from the obvious privatisation of yester year. Now they are taking the more subtle approach of ruining education/health/social care and forcing more and more to pay privately to have any sort of quality of life/education and so on, until eventually they will get to the point where they disband those services as they are no longer required. Education / NHS / social care are all in their sights.
Whirlwind wrote: The Tory party is all about moving money from the poor to the wealthy (an anti Robin Hood party if you want). Therefore stripping public services (which vastly help the poorer parts of the community) is what they want. That means the poor have to pay more and more to these private services whilst the wealthy vampires favoured by the Tories suck such people dry. I believe the Tory party has moved on from the obvious privatisation of yester year. Now they are taking the more subtle approach of ruining education/health/social care and forcing more and more to pay privately to have any sort of quality of life/education and so on, until eventually they will get to the point where they disband those services as they are no longer required. Education / NHS / social care are all in their sights.
Curse those evil Tories and their goal of privatising the country to sell off to their wealthy cronies. Their amazing organisational skills in pulling off such complex long term goals in secret despite changes in government and leadership only show just how much good they could truly do. If only they'd use those powers for the people instead of their nefarious, evil, incredibly wealthy, and good looking backers!
Whirlwind wrote: The Tory party is all about moving money from the poor to the wealthy (an anti Robin Hood party if you want). Therefore stripping public services (which vastly help the poorer parts of the community) is what they want. That means the poor have to pay more and more to these private services whilst the wealthy vampires favoured by the Tories suck such people dry. I believe the Tory party has moved on from the obvious privatisation of yester year. Now they are taking the more subtle approach of ruining education/health/social care and forcing more and more to pay privately to have any sort of quality of life/education and so on, until eventually they will get to the point where they disband those services as they are no longer required. Education / NHS / social care are all in their sights.
Curse those evil Tories and their goal of privatising the country to sell off to their wealthy cronies. Their amazing organisational skills in pulling off such complex long term goals in secret despite changes in government and leadership only show just how much good they could truly do. If only they'd use those powers for the people instead of their nefarious, evil, incredibly wealthy, and good looking backers!
Well, in my lifetime, if it wasn't nailed down, the Tory party would sell it. We were sold the dream that privitization for the cure for Britain's ills. Sitting on a delayed, overcrowded train, and not for the first time I may add, I question the idea that we got a good deal. Energy bills are sky high. Broadband sky high. Royal Mail flogged off and so on...
And now they're going to sell us out to the Chinese, the Arabs, and probably Trump as well.
The Tories are corrupt, incompetent, and it's high time they were swept away...
Whirlwind wrote: The Tory party is all about moving money from the poor to the wealthy (an anti Robin Hood party if you want). Therefore stripping public services (which vastly help the poorer parts of the community) is what they want. That means the poor have to pay more and more to these private services whilst the wealthy vampires favoured by the Tories suck such people dry. I believe the Tory party has moved on from the obvious privatisation of yester year. Now they are taking the more subtle approach of ruining education/health/social care and forcing more and more to pay privately to have any sort of quality of life/education and so on, until eventually they will get to the point where they disband those services as they are no longer required. Education / NHS / social care are all in their sights.
Curse those evil Tories and their goal of privatising the country to sell off to their wealthy cronies. Their amazing organisational skills in pulling off such complex long term goals in secret despite changes in government and leadership only show just how much good they could truly do. If only they'd use those powers for the people instead of their nefarious, evil, incredibly wealthy, and good looking backers!
Well, in my lifetime, if it wasn't nailed down, the Tory party would sell it. We were sold the dream that privitization for the cure for Britain's ills. Sitting on a delayed, overcrowded train, and not for the first time I may add, I question the idea that we got a good deal. Energy bills are sky high. Broadband sky high. Royal Mail flogged off and so on...
And now they're going to sell us out to the Chinese, the Arabs, and probably Trump as well.
The Tories are corrupt, incompetent, and it's high time they were swept away...
Everyone knows the Tories champion privatisation. It's just the insistence on the simplistic good/evil narrative that makes me laugh. Most politicians can't plan their way out of a paper bag, and the Tories are no different in that regard. They're reactionary short termists with an ideological bent towards small government, not criminal masterminds out to screw the country over for a profit. It's not the first time I've had to point this out, we had two pages of it a month back.
I know frothing vitriol about the Tories is great fun and all, but I have to weigh in occasionally with reality, lest the more impressionable young 'uns reading genuinely start to believe Theresa May is a dastardly lizardperson who survives by drinking the tears of the poor.
Whirlwind wrote: The Tory party is all about moving money from the poor to the wealthy (an anti Robin Hood party if you want). Therefore stripping public services (which vastly help the poorer parts of the community) is what they want. That means the poor have to pay more and more to these private services whilst the wealthy vampires favoured by the Tories suck such people dry. I believe the Tory party has moved on from the obvious privatisation of yester year. Now they are taking the more subtle approach of ruining education/health/social care and forcing more and more to pay privately to have any sort of quality of life/education and so on, until eventually they will get to the point where they disband those services as they are no longer required. Education / NHS / social care are all in their sights.
Curse those evil Tories and their goal of privatising the country to sell off to their wealthy cronies. Their amazing organisational skills in pulling off such complex long term goals in secret despite changes in government and leadership only show just how much good they could truly do. If only they'd use those powers for the people instead of their nefarious, evil, incredibly wealthy, and good looking backers!
Well, in my lifetime, if it wasn't nailed down, the Tory party would sell it. We were sold the dream that privitization for the cure for Britain's ills. Sitting on a delayed, overcrowded train, and not for the first time I may add, I question the idea that we got a good deal. Energy bills are sky high. Broadband sky high. Royal Mail flogged off and so on...
And now they're going to sell us out to the Chinese, the Arabs, and probably Trump as well.
The Tories are corrupt, incompetent, and it's high time they were swept away...
Everyone knows the Tories champion privatisation. It's just the insistence on the simplistic good/evil narrative that makes me laugh. Most politicians can't plan their way out of a paper bag, and the Tories are no different in that regard. They're reactionary short termists with an ideological bent towards small government, not criminal masterminds out to screw the country over for a profit. It's not the first time I've had to point this out, we had two pages of it a month back.
I know frothing vitriol about the Tories is great fun and all, but I have to weigh in occasionally with reality, lest the more impressionable young 'uns reading genuinely start to believe Theresa May is a dastardly lizardperson who survives by drinking the tears of the poor.
Two things spring to mind:
1) They don't believe in small government anymore - that's a myth, otherwise, they would not support full scale state intrusion into our private lives with their numerous spying bills.
2) They are not, and will never be Tories ever again. They're Blairites, and have been for years now. The Tories haven't been Tories since the 1970s.
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Compel wrote: Whenever I read that sort of thing the phrase that always comes to my mind is.
"The Americanisation of British politics."
And we can all see the end result of that in the other thread.
Good point. I do get carried away from time to time. I will dial things down a bit.
It just makes my blood boil when I see things like flood affected areas of England, voting Tory, even though the Tories cut the funding for flood defences...
I suppose in that example, you'd then have to look at the individual policies of the actual MPs and their candidates in those affected areas, what their stances were on any flood debates or discussions and so on.
I live in an area that is essentially a toss up between Lib Dem and Tory, and have voted for each in the past and will vote for either in the future, as the situation evolves.
One of the key battlegrounds, debates and arguments between the candidates was the closing of a nearby library. Naturally, the Lib Dem candidate pulled out all the stops to keep it open, Tories disagreed.
That time, the Lib Dem candidate won. The library stayed open, yay!
Right... Right?
It's a medium sized town, this library is a half hours walk away from the town center and the main, heavily invested, library of the town.
The library they fought so hard to save? It's poorly sited, never has anyone in it, has terrible opening hours, isn't open on weekends, is maybe 2 to 3 times the size of my flat (and I don't have a big flat), has maybe a dozen shelves of books in it, no reference books of note inside it for students. The only real redeeming quality of the library is the parent/child reading group it hosts.
The money used to secure, staff and keep this place running could very easily have been used in other ways, for a lot less. - For example, putting money towards having the activity groups in any of the 5 volunteer room / YMCA / public hall locations within a handful of minutes walk from there, partnering with the nearby schools to improve their libraries, maybe providing extended opening hours for the main town library and so on.
Library's tend to be quite an emotive subject, especially among older voters IMO. In a way I'm kind of jealous your in an area that genuinely gets fought over. Living in a "safe" Labour seat it often feels like the party's are just going through the motions.
Everyone knows the Tories champion privatisation. It's just the insistence on the simplistic good/evil narrative that makes me laugh. Most politicians can't plan their way out of a paper bag, and the Tories are no different in that regard. They're reactionary short termists with an ideological bent towards small government, not criminal masterminds out to screw the country over for a profit. It's not the first time I've had to point this out, we had two pages of it a month back.
I know frothing vitriol about the Tories is great fun and all, but I have to weigh in occasionally with reality, lest the more impressionable young 'uns reading genuinely start to believe Theresa May is a dastardly lizardperson who survives by drinking the tears of the poor.
If young'uns do start believing the Tories are dastardly lizardpeople that have taken a lot of potential from their future then with a bit of luck by the time they get to our age there won't be a Tory party and the UK will be a better place!
Realistically though, if they weren't taking from the poor then how do you explain the last budget? Where pretty much most of the publicly funded services like education/NHS/local government etc (apart from media) all had significant cuts in their budget compared to the previous years budget (and that's before you take into account that by then you are looking at a 12-16% increase in inflation) by 2019/20; whilst at the same time they bring more under the control of government so they can spend it where they can get the most votes compared to where it is most needed. This is at the same time that they are bare faced lying to the public saying they are increasing the budgets!
Realistically though, if they weren't taking from the poor then how do you explain the last budget?
Easy. We have no money? And they're gradually cutting back the operational deficit with the intent of making costs match the tax receipts? As they've been saying they're doing for the last 7 years? They haven't really hidden that fact.
But then, I know you know that. And at the same time as I've read you decrying the evils of the cuts, I've seen you point out three posts later how they still haven't balanced the budget and complain about the 'lie' of Tory debt (conveniently ignoring the difference between national deficit and operating deficit).
We both know that if they didn't make any cuts you'd be slating them for running up vast national debt, and if they cut straight back to what the government brings in, you'd shriek they were inhumane monsters. Right now, they're sitting in the middle, and you do nothing but complain about it. They literally can't win when it comes to people like yourself. You despise the Tories, and your perspective is completely coloured by that.
Hence all the absurd comments about evil Tories with their grand master plan to break the British Government and sell it off to their rich puppetmasters (couched in more subtle language to make it sound less daft).
This is at the same time that they are bare faced lying to the public saying they are increasing the budgets!
That's because politics. You can't run around saying 'Yeah, the NHS is going to be worse, but hey, at least the operational deficit is coming down from staggeringly high unsustainable levels!' because everyone will focus on the first part and ignore the second. So instead you say 'The NHS has never had a higher amount of funding' and ignore things like inflation, etc. People want to have their cake and eat it. So soundbytes have to be written with that in mind.
Realistically though, if they weren't taking from the poor then how do you explain the last budget?
Easy. We have no money? And they're gradually cutting back the operational deficit with the intent of making costs match the tax receipts? As they've been saying they're doing for the last 7 years? They haven't really hidden that fact.
But then, I know you know that. And at the same time as I've read you decrying the evils of the cuts, I've seen you point out three posts later how they still haven't balanced the budget and complain about the 'lie' of Tory debt (conveniently ignoring the difference between national deficit and operating deficit).
We both know that if they didn't make any cuts you'd be slating them for running up vast national debt, and if they cut straight back to what the government brings in, you'd shriek they were inhumane monsters. Right now, they're sitting in the middle, and you do nothing but complain about it. They literally can't win when it comes to people like yourself. You despise the Tories, and your perspective is completely coloured by that.
Hence all the absurd comments about evil Tories with their grand master plan to break the British Government and sell it off to their rich puppetmasters (couched in more subtle language to make it sound less daft).
What you are effectively advocating is that the poorest pay for the consequences of the rich and that's not something I'd ever support. Yes we have a large deficit (that the Tories effectively doubled during their current tenure), however the before the banking crisis this was running at 30 - 40 % and relatively stable. The Country bailed these companies out for their mismanagement, but its the poorest that are having to pay for those consequences. The wealthy (that made these decisions) will have the resources to pay for private education/health/social care/transport etc whereas those that cannot afford such things and that rely on the public services are the ones that have to pay with underfunded education/a health service that's bordering on collapse at peak times/barely acceptable social care/bus services being cut so access to work is significantly reduced and so on.
There are other methods for reducing the burden, such as recovering more taxes from the wealthiest and those that caused the large deficit in the first place (for example one of the first things done by the Tories was to cut the top band of tax, whilst asking the poorest to pay by reduced services). To ask the wealthiest to support the poorest is the basis of a social society.
Things they could implement to do this would be implement a means test on pensions. Everyone is guaranteed a minimum but if you pulling in a £100,000 private pension then you shouldn't be expected to get that and the state pension. This supports those that are poorest without benefiting the wealthy.
You could re-implement the higher tax bracket (and perhaps a super tax bracket for the ridiculously paid, e.g. footballers.).
You can change the tax system so that if better represents companies activities in the UK. When Google is paying tax amounting to approximately a 10th ofone County Council's budget then something is horribly wrong with the system.
There are other ways to control the budget deficit than pummelling the public services/disability allowances/child allowances of the poorest that really need it the most.
And this is why I reiterate that the Tories are worse than excrement and will lie through the back teeth. They favour the wealthy and have no interest in supporting the poorest.
I also think that despite everything some in the Tory party are clever. Underestimating the Tory party now is tantamount to handing over the keys of anything valuable to a few wealthy few which the Tories are quite happy with as long as they keep getting their support. Make no mistake the Tories are interested in one thing only and that's money and keeping in power. Those controlling the party don't give a damn about the populace overall and the only thing they will do is persuade them with lies and the occasional perk to ensure things stay that way.
It's just a shame that Corbyn's Labour is so weak that they can't even get a well considered argument in to the public domain.
There are other methods for reducing the burden, such as recovering more taxes from the wealthiest and those that caused the large deficit in the first place (for example one of the first things done by the Tories was to cut the top band of tax, whilst asking the poorest to pay by reduced services). To ask the wealthiest to support the poorest is the basis of a social society.
This was the bit I was thinking of too. It is all very well wanting to reduce the deficit, but it is a bit odd to be trying to do that by cutting taxes...
What you are effectively advocating is that the poorest pay for the consequences of the rich and that's not something I'd ever support.
I'm not 'advocating' anything. Pointing out that the outgoings of the State currently vastly exceed its income, and you thus have three choices, cut, cut slowly, or maintain isn't really a proposal. More of an assessment of the situation.
Yes we have a large deficit (that the Tories effectively doubled during their current tenure), however the before the banking crisis this was running at 30 - 40 % and relatively stable.
This is precisely the sort of thing I'm talking about. The sly little 'The Tories have doubled the deficit during their tenure' shot. Yes, they have. And you'd have slated them for cutting expenditure far enough to stop that being the case, and you'd have slated them for not reducing it at all. The Tories inherited a state with outgoings, far, far beyond its income, and whilst they've gradually throttled it back through cuts, those outgoings are still accumulating debt. It's basic mathematics. Unless they somehow magicked up more cash than more than half the countries of the world make in GDP or slashed state expenditure to a level that most people would dub inhumane, that was always going to be the case.
It really, really, isn't a black mark against them that the national debt has carried on going up. Haven't the Tories got enough serious flaws to pick on than wasting time on something like that?
There are other methods for reducing the burden, such as recovering more taxes from the wealthiest and those that caused the large deficit in the first place (for example one of the first things done by the Tories was to cut the top band of tax, whilst asking the poorest to pay by reduced services). To ask the wealthiest to support the poorest is the basis of a social society.
Sadly, the wealthiest tend to stash their money in shell companies and swiss bank accounts. Whilst you can crack down on them in one country, it just makes them shuffle their cash quickly into another system in advance of the changes and leave the country. We saw it in France when Hollande started enacting reforms. Reds8n has a great quote in his sig about that sort of thing. The result being that trying to whack the multi-millionaires and billionaires usually nets very little. Their accountants are too good, and they're too flexible in terms of assets.
I agree with this in principle but it never works in practice short of Soviet style measures.
Things they could implement to do this would be implement a means test on pensions. Everyone is guaranteed a minimum but if you pulling in a £100,000 private pension then you shouldn't be expected to get that and the state pension. This supports those that are poorest without benefiting the wealthy.
How many people do you think pull in that sort of pension? I mean, seriously. The average income for a working person is half that.
You can change the tax system so that if better represents companies activities in the UK. When Google is paying tax amounting to approximately a 10th ofone County Council's budget then something is horribly wrong with the system.
The google thing was a European tax issue, it's why Ireland and Luxembourg have functioned as tax havens for so long. I believe that one's being removed now, but doubtless there'll be other dodges. It's part of belonging to all those international institutions and signing all those agreements. You make it easy to move money between countries, and every multi-national takes full advantage.
There are other ways to control the budget deficit than pummelling the public services/disability allowances/child allowances of the poorest that really need it the most.
And this is why I reiterate that the Tories are worse than excrement and will lie through the back teeth. They favour the wealthy and have no interest in supporting the poorest.
This is the thing though. The measures you've described recoup absolute peanuts. You've tried to make it sound like there are realistic alternatives that only injure the rich, and it's simply not true. Our deficit is staggeringly high, and those would barely make a dent. You've also (I noticed) neglected to take into account things like the Tories continually raising the tax free portion of income for the poorest, opening up postgraduate qualification to those who couldn't afford it, and so on.
The only thing that can pay for our huge expenditure on healthcare and pensions is a higher general burden of tax on the general population. That's it. That's the hidden fourth cheat option to match 'Cut lots, cut slow, or don't cut'. Every other country who spends on these sorts of things to the same degree on us bills their population far, far higher for it. Frankly, I'm amazed at how much value our government does actually squeeze out of so little funding.
Realistically though, if they weren't taking from the poor then how do you explain the last budget?
Easy. We have no money? And they're gradually cutting back the operational deficit with the intent of making costs match the tax receipts? As they've been saying they're doing for the last 7 years? They haven't really hidden that fact.
But then, I know you know that. And at the same time as I've read you decrying the evils of the cuts, I've seen you point out three posts later how they still haven't balanced the budget and complain about the 'lie' of Tory debt (conveniently ignoring the difference between national deficit and operating deficit).
We both know that if they didn't make any cuts you'd be slating them for running up vast national debt, and if they cut straight back to what the government brings in, you'd shriek they were inhumane monsters. Right now, they're sitting in the middle, and you do nothing but complain about it. They literally can't win when it comes to people like yourself. You despise the Tories, and your perspective is completely coloured by that.
Hence all the absurd comments about evil Tories with their grand master plan to break the British Government and sell it off to their rich puppetmasters (couched in more subtle language to make it sound less daft).
What you are effectively advocating is that the poorest pay for the consequences of the rich and that's not something I'd ever support. Yes we have a large deficit (that the Tories effectively doubled during their current tenure), however the before the banking crisis this was running at 30 - 40 % and relatively stable. The Country bailed these companies out for their mismanagement, but its the poorest that are having to pay for those consequences.
Whilst I 100% agree that the banking bailout shouldn't have happened - I'm a firm believer that 'the world goes on' and had they all gone bust new companies would have taken their place and only those rich enough to invested millions in the banks would have lost out.
That said however blaming the bailout on the Tories is a little unfair since it was Brown and Labour who did this.
I'm generally against the Tories on most things, but then Labour are generally just red Tories and the libs are just yellow Tories, the days of any kind of real opposition in this country are long gone.
You have the governing party having to choose between an anti gay, pro fix hunting, Walter mitty banker, or a right wing anti immigration focused individual who thought it was a good idea to have vans drive around london with "go home" in massive letters.
One of these two will be responsible for negotiating our exit from the European Union, which after a mess of a campaign with half truths and lies from both sides, is looking like the worst decision since Tony decided he knew best about Iraq.
The opposition is fighting itself, led by a man which would be perfect if he could actually lead, instead mumbles and bumbles his way through his tenure, more interested in his hopeless quest for a mythical new way of politics.
All under the shadow of a media that has ultimate control of who sits where.
Full disclosure: I'm a Canadian living in England. I am neither a Europhile nor do I have any reason to leave or stay. That said, I think you might be simplifying things a bit.
The Leave vote had a higher turnout than any general election in the last 20 years. And the majority of those people voted to leave.
Are you suggesting that the majority of Britons are either wealthy, gay-hating bankers or immigrant hating white supremacists? Because, if you really think they are, then I would suggest that leaving England for immigrants would probably be the safest course of action and is probably a good idea, much like it would have been great for Jews to get out of Germany prior to the war.
If you -don't- think the majority of Britons are like that and this is simply to demonize a group you never would have agreed with in the first place, then maybe you should pay more attention to what they were actually saying rather than assigning them strawman arguments. After all, it didn't work during the election and most people will just end up tuning you out
But you have stated that this is 'Turning out to be the worst decision' since Iraq, so I am hoping you can enlighten me. What concrete, actual consequences have come about because of that decision that lead you to believe it's so bad? I can say my life hasn't changed that much one way or the other so far and, I might be blind, but I don't see London burning or gangs coming to my door yelling about me being an immigrant.
To expand on what I was saying earlier, there is nothing wrong with being right-wing, or a Conservative, or a UKIP voter in our democracy. I don't like these views myself, but i would defend people's rights to express them.
People are probably bored of me banging on about this, but when I look at the non-Conservative party, I see a corrupt, incompetent racket, that puts party before country, and worse of all, betrays the very ideology it claims to represent!
The corruption is people like Liam Fox and top Tories profiting from Royal Mail being flogged as two examples. Fox's track record should have seen him exiled to British Antarctic territory, but here he is at the heart of government...
The incompetence is Jeremy Hunt and Crabb at DWP amongst others.
And the party before nation is the events of the last 18 months:
1) Did David Cameron call a EU referendum because he wanted the British people to have a say on the great constitutional issue of our times? no! It was done to heal divisions in the Tory party.
2) Did May appoint Bojo to foreign Secretary becuase he was the best man for the job? no! It was done to neutralise a threat to her leadership. Party before country...
3) Is May prioritisng immigration over single market access in the Brexit talks because of ideological conviction? no! It's done to heal party divisions.
And when I look at the Tories letting the Chinese build our nuclear power plants, alarm bells start ringing. Who would entrust such a potentially dangerous thing to a foreign power? A totalitarian power that isn't even democracy? The Tories...Where the feth is the national interest in that?
On June 24th, I witnessed a Prime Minister abandon ship and stick the middle finger up the nation he claimed to love...
And yet, people will keep voting for these in the millions...
I live in hope that both the Tories AND Labour will collapse and allow new parties to rise from the ashes. Its a fools hope I know, but we've certainly come close with the Labour party under Corbyn, the Blairites just lacked the spine to split from the party.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: I live in hope that both the Tories AND Labour will collapse and allow new parties to rise from the ashes. Its a fools hope I know, but we've certainly come close with the Labour party under Corbyn, the Blairites just lacked the spine to split from the party.
The curse of Blairism has infected UK politics for 20 years now. Labour, Tories, Lib Dems...they all sing from the same song sheet and believe in the same stuff, offering no alternative.
That's why they hate Corbyn. He's an old-fashioned left winger who believes in ideology.
I don't think Corbyn is up to the job, and I disagree with a lot of what he believes in, but the fact that he does believe in something that's not Blairism scares the gak out of them IMO.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Future War Cultist wrote: If people keep voting for the Tories it's only because the other parties are even worse. I'm sure people long for an alternative. I know I do.
As I've said before, I honestly thought that post-June 23rd, the old parties would be swept away to reflect the new reality and new parties would fill the vacuum. Maybe it will still happen?
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: I live in hope that both the Tories AND Labour will collapse and allow new parties to rise from the ashes. Its a fools hope I know, but we've certainly come close with the Labour party under Corbyn, the Blairites just lacked the spine to split from the party.
The curse of Blairism has infected UK politics for 20 years now. Labour, Tories, Lib Dems...they all sing from the same song sheet and believe in the same stuff, offering no alternative.
That's why they hate Corbyn. He's an old-fashioned left winger who believes in ideology.
I don't think Corbyn is up to the job, and I disagree with a lot of what he believes in, but the fact that he does believe in something that's not Blairism scares the gak out of them IMO.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Future War Cultist wrote: If people keep voting for the Tories it's only because the other parties are even worse. I'm sure people long for an alternative. I know I do.
As I've said before, I honestly thought that post-June 23rd, the old parties would be swept away to reflect the new reality and new parties would fill the vacuum. Maybe it will still happen?
Corbyn has had maybe the most opertunities to hit the tory gov hard and never managed to pull it off. EU, and many other issues yet they can barely land a blow. The SNP are a stronger opposition to them.
Ketara wrote: Yes we have a large deficit (that the Tories effectively doubled during their current tenure), however the before the banking crisis this was running at 30 - 40 % and relatively stable.
This is precisely the sort of thing I'm talking about. The sly little 'The Tories have doubled the deficit during their tenure' shot. Yes, they have. And you'd have slated them for cutting expenditure far enough to stop that being the case, and you'd have slated them for not reducing it at all. The Tories inherited a state with outgoings, far, far beyond its income, and whilst they've gradually throttled it back through cuts, those outgoings are still accumulating debt. It's basic mathematics. Unless they somehow magicked up more cash than more than half the countries of the world make in GDP or slashed state expenditure to a level that most people would dub inhumane, that was always going to be the case.
It really, really, isn't a black mark against them that the national debt has carried on going up. Haven't the Tories got enough serious flaws to pick on than wasting time on something like that?
The many 'F - marks' is because how they have gone about cutting the deficit. Despite all their bravado about how Labour were incompetent with the finances strictly speaking no one could have really predicted how irresponsible the banks were really becoming. There was support from both sides for bailing the banks out because of what it might bring about. However since then the Tories have continued with the mantra that they will get the deficit down, yet have failed consistently to get it under control. I don't think either side would have acted differently at the point of the banking crash.
But the real thing against them is how they decided to undertake it. Rather than asking the more wealthy to pay their share (or even recover more money form the banks to pay off the debt) the Tories have hammered those that did nothing to contribute to the crash, the poorest have lost more and more of their services that they rely on or they are consistently getting worse (so longer waiting times and so on). The Tory party are happy to remove disability allowance or reduce payments to those who they deem have too many bedrooms whilst at the same time reducing tax for the wealthiest, guaranteeing inflation equivalent or pensions for those that don't need it and so on. If the Tories took a more socially responsible view of managing the deficit down to minimise the effect on the poorest then I would be less critical; but they have done exactly the opposite. They've made the wealthy ever more so and poorest even poorer, what is unfortunate is just how many people don't see this is what the Tories stand for.
Sadly, the wealthiest tend to stash their money in shell companies and swiss bank accounts. Whilst you can crack down on them in one country, it just makes them shuffle their cash quickly into another system in advance of the changes and leave the country. We saw it in France when Hollande started enacting reforms. Reds8n has a great quote in his sig about that sort of thing. The result being that trying to whack the multi-millionaires and billionaires usually nets very little. Their accountants are too good, and they're too flexible in terms of assets.
That just requires a change in tax law. I've heard too many times that "People will just leave if you tax them too much". Well if that is the case and they really don't pay that much then it wouldn't be a great loss would it? It is however not an excuse to make a more balanced tax system that more appropriately spreads the burden of the taxes so the wealthiest support the poorest. Because that leads to a fear of acting and hence always favours the wealthy. There are always ways and means, its just wanting to implement them that you need to undertake.
How many people do you think pull in that sort of pension? I mean, seriously. The average income for a working person is half that.
The £100k was an extreme example. The actual cut off I was thinking off was would be much lower. I'd suggest that if your private pension is anything less than a certain value then you'd get a top up to that value up to a maximum of the minimum wage and then there would be a sliding scale reduction after that value. The cut off I'd suggest would be around £20kish where there was no state pension, but I'd heavily caveat it that I don't know whether this is appropriate and would need to get more data as to what was reasonable. Pensions make up 20% of the UKs expenditure so savings here would make a good contribution to pulling down the deficit (especially if you also control how fast they rise to average rate pay rise or similar).
At the moment we have individual pensions increasing by 3-4% per annum whilst the wage growth is half of this value at best. Given the increasing number of people retiring it doesn't take a genius to work out that to keep the pensions the same but with no tax rises means that more and more has to come from elsewhere - which largely impacts the poorest members of society. Year by year the pensions requirement grows and the number of people supporting it diminishes (and heaven help the country if they really do bring down immigration to negligible levels).
The google thing was a European tax issue, it's why Ireland and Luxembourg have functioned as tax havens for so long. I believe that one's being removed now, but doubtless there'll be other dodges. It's part of belonging to all those international institutions and signing all those agreements. You make it easy to move money between countries, and every multi-national takes full advantage.
Not really, the UK is allowed to set it's own tax rules within certain EU principles (such as an individual state not being discriminatory, or effectively giving a country state aid). They could 'easily' change the system so that companies can no longer move money around (for example you could tax all companies on the basis of their sales in the UK vs their total sales as a proportion of global pre tax profit), very broadly this would stop companies moving money around as even if they did it makes no difference.
This is the thing though. The measures you've described recoup absolute peanuts. You've tried to make it sound like there are realistic alternatives that only injure the rich, and it's simply not true. Our deficit is staggeringly high, and those would barely make a dent. You've also (I noticed) neglected to take into account things like the Tories continually raising the tax free portion of income for the poorest, opening up postgraduate qualification to those who couldn't afford it, and so on.
They are much more than the cuts on disability allowance or the bedroom tax save though and that's the point I'm trying to make. As for increasing raising the tax free threshold, yes it makes some difference, but for the part time parent that is on minimum wage it makes no difference. Whereas those on more the approx. £40k got the benefit of both this and the changes to the higher rate of tax. As such my point still stands these changes benefit the wealthiest and hit the hardest. It should be the other way round where the wealthiest got the least benefit and the poorest got the most.
As for the postgraduate loans that's really just a joke. Yes someone poor can now take out student loans so they can do a postgraduate degree. So lets assume 3 years as an undergraduate and 4 years as a postgraduate requiring £20k per annum for fees and living costs. By the time they have finished they then have a debt of £140k. Interest rates on student debt is now running at about 6%. That's about £8.5k of interest on the debt on the first year alone...Yes really a good way to get the poorest to be educated. Saddle them with a lifetime of debt.
Despite all their bravado about how Labour were incompetent with the finances strictly speaking no one could have really predicted how irresponsible the banks were really becoming.....
As stated before, my judgement about New Labour is drawn from their spending patterns from about 2001 onwards. The Financial Crisis was bad, but they'd been royally screwing the countries finances for a good half a decade beforehand.
But the real thing against them is how they decided to undertake it...They've made the wealthy ever more so and poorest even poorer, what is unfortunate is just how many people don't see this is what the Tories stand for.
No, it's what you imagine them to stand for. They don't literally stand up there twiddling their moustaches and cackling whilst they devise new ways of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. It might well be a byproduct of their policies, but for the most part, you're conflating the end result with the motivation. When I eat a nice cake, I don't do it with the goal of putting on weight, I do it to enjoy the cake and sate my hunger. The extra fat I put on wasn't the reason I ate it though.
That just requires a change in tax law...There are always ways and means, its just wanting to implement them that you need to undertake.
I never said there was no point in doing it. Just that it wouldn't really achieve anything unless you literally stop them leaving the country, torture them to get their account numbers, and seize all the private assets you can find. If you don't do that, the transfer of wealth will be minimal. You'll seize one or two billion, and the rest of the money will leave.
The £100k was an extreme example....Year by year the pensions requirement grows and the number of people supporting it diminishes (and heaven help the country if they really do bring down immigration to negligible levels).
I'm not fighting you on this one, as a matter of fact, I agree with you. But the gray hairs are the ones who vote, so nobody touches them.
Not really, the UK is allowed to set it's own tax rules within certain EU principles (such as an individual state not being discriminatory, or effectively giving a country state aid). They could 'easily' change the system so that companies can no longer move money around (for example you could tax all companies on the basis of their sales in the UK vs their total sales as a proportion of global pre tax profit), very broadly this would stop companies moving money around as even if they did it makes no difference.
The reason it worked before was because the companies set up shell companies abroad and then had the shell companies loan the UK company a ridiculous sum at a ridiculous interest rate so that they always registered a loss for tax purposes. Because legally they were separate companies, there was no way to stop it from happening within the single market without concerted EU action. You could choose to tax those basic companies within your country however you like, but whilst the facility existed for intra-company loans within the single market, there was no way of eliminating the loophole without screwing up a crapton of financial arrangements for more normal companies and financial services. I believe it's been more or less battened down on now, but there's always another way....
They are much more than the cuts on disability allowance or the bedroom tax save though and that's the point I'm trying to make.
I'm really not sure that they are. Comparable perhaps, but it would still leave us with a whacking great operational deficit. You can argue that they should have hit something else first, but it really doesn't address the core issue; that outgoings are substantially higher than income.
As for increasing raising the tax free threshold, yes it makes some difference, but for the part time parent that is on minimum wage it makes no difference.
.....It makes a substantial difference to the full time adult on minimum wage though.
Seriously mate, just accept that they did do something that helped out those at the bottom of the food chain. I know it did as a fact, because when they started, I was there and it raised my pay packet, something I desperately needed at that point in time.
As for the postgraduate loans that's really just a joke. Yes someone poor can now take out student loans so they can do a postgraduate degree. So lets assume 3 years as an undergraduate and 4 years as a postgraduate requiring £20k per annum for fees and living costs. By the time they have finished they then have a debt of £140k. Interest rates on student debt is now running at about 6%. That's about £8.5k of interest on the debt on the first year alone...Yes really a good way to get the poorest to be educated. Saddle them with a lifetime of debt.
I'll be frank, you clearly haven't looked into it. Which is fair enough, we all miss stuff in the news. To cut it short, what they do is give a proportion of costs towards them. So you get £10,000 towards a masters qualification, or £25,000 towards a PhD (starting 2018-2019 academic year). As someone from a working class and dirt-poor background who funded their own way through their postgraduate qualifications by working and studying at the same time, I'll tell you now that the existence of such support would have meant all the difference in the world to me. Student loans going up ceases to mean anything past a certain point, you accept you'll never pay it off. It just becomes something of a graduate tax instead.
However you look at it though, the fact remains that it gives an option to poor people outside of ruinously high commercial loans. And that's something to be applauded, whether you like the Tories or not. As a fellow academic, I would have thought you'd agree.
Ketara wrote: Yes we have a large deficit (that the Tories effectively doubled during their current tenure), however the before the banking crisis this was running at 30 - 40 % and relatively stable.
This is precisely the sort of thing I'm talking about. The sly little 'The Tories have doubled the deficit during their tenure' shot. Yes, they have. And you'd have slated them for cutting expenditure far enough to stop that being the case, and you'd have slated them for not reducing it at all. The Tories inherited a state with outgoings, far, far beyond its income, and whilst they've gradually throttled it back through cuts, those outgoings are still accumulating debt. It's basic mathematics. Unless they somehow magicked up more cash than more than half the countries of the world make in GDP or slashed state expenditure to a level that most people would dub inhumane, that was always going to be the case.
This. The Tories are being blames for two economic calamities which can both be properly accredited to Gordon Brown.
First the gross mishandling of the debt crisis in 2008, and the continuation of a spend policy to try and buy the way out of a recession despite warnings from France and Germany it was not going to work.
The second was a round of punitive spending in 2010 once New Labour realised it weas gouing to lose the election. So much money was squandered in the final months of the Browen government the Civil service made the rare move of issuing formal complaint. To compound this Brown deferred all interest from his borrowings until 2011 minimum, at the cost of extra income. These two calamitie placed the Uk in a bigger debt position than it was at the nd of World War 2, and irt projected to take three genwerations to pay off.
The Tories knew the only answer was austerity, austerity is unpopular but sadly necessary as the alternative is bankruptcy, even so the UK cannot fully service its debt and interest still accrues.
It has been argued that the heavy debt was a punishment for abandoning New Labour, and the deferral of repayments was a way to kick the problem to the next administration and thereby hoodwink the public into thinking the next government was the cause of the problem rather than those who received it as a challenge. Guess it worked.
TL: DR Gordon Brown essentially mortgaged the entire UK economy for quick cash, heavy austerity can pay off most of the interest but not the true capital.
There are other methods for reducing the burden, such as recovering more taxes from the wealthiest and those that caused the large deficit in the first place (for example one of the first things done by the Tories was to cut the top band of tax, whilst asking the poorest to pay by reduced services). To ask the wealthiest to support the poorest is the basis of a social society.
This was the bit I was thinking of too. It is all very well wanting to reduce the deficit, but it is a bit odd to be trying to do that by cutting taxes...
These figures from last year suggest that is happening, don't they?
As stated before, my judgement about New Labour is drawn from their spending patterns from about 2001 onwards. The Financial Crisis was bad, but they'd been royally screwing the countries finances for a good half a decade beforehand.
Yes it was truly terrible that the UKs pre-banking crisis debt by GDP was *less* than what it was when the Tories left power. When the Tories left debt by GDP was running at about 40% and then dropped over the next few years to 30% under Labour and then slightly rose again to about 37-38%. After which point it massively spiked because of the banking crash in 2007/2008. Given that the Tories managed to increase debt by about the same amount over a shorter period prior to them losing power I'd assume you'd also state they were fiscally irresponsible as well? Here's a link to the chart just in case we would like to get the data to actually get in the way...
No, it's what you imagine them to stand for. They don't literally stand up there twiddling their moustaches and cackling whilst they devise new ways of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. It might well be a byproduct of their policies, but for the most part, you're conflating the end result with the motivation. When I eat a nice cake, I don't do it with the goal of putting on weight, I do it to enjoy the cake and sate my hunger. The extra fat I put on wasn't the reason I ate it though.
So just to confirm what you are saying is that Tories introduce policies that significantly benefit the wealthy over the poorest but that they are *just* being naïve and stupid because they really do want them to help the poorest but they are just too idiotic to realise they are doing the exactly opposite despite everyone carrying on and telling them this? I suppose the changes to the business rates that saved money for Hammonds businesses was just an unhappy coincidence?
I never said there was no point in doing it. Just that it wouldn't really achieve anything unless you literally stop them leaving the country, torture them to get their account numbers, and seize all the private assets you can find. If you don't do that, the transfer of wealth will be minimal. You'll seize one or two billion, and the rest of the money will leave.
Why worry about it? If they really pay little tax then in reality they can leave and it won't make any difference? Alternatively if they leave they leave but you can still change the tax system so that the more wealthy pay a greater share. If you are worried about large amounts of money being hidden away then just tax large transfers of money as well or you could ask them to pay pro-rata for the number of days in the country. So if they are in the UK 25% of the time then they have to do specific tax returns that total their global assets and you pay the appropriate tax on the 25% of that. As I said there are ways and means, its government willingness to do it that is the issue (especially given that these wealthy people are also those pay into the Tory party).
I'm not fighting you on this one, as a matter of fact, I agree with you. But the gray hairs are the ones who vote, so nobody touches them.
All we can do is encourage the younger population to vote.
Seriously mate, just accept that they did do something that helped out those at the bottom of the food chain. I know it did as a fact, because when they started, I was there and it raised my pay packet, something I desperately needed at that point in time.
You are missing the point. As is the Tory way the changes benefited the wealthy much more than the poorest, whereas it should be the opposite way. When things are in financial trouble it should be the wealthy paying more relatively not the poorest.
I'll be frank, you clearly haven't looked into it. Which is fair enough, we all miss stuff in the news. To cut it short, what they do is give a proportion of costs towards them. So you get £10,000 towards a masters qualification, or £25,000 towards a PhD (starting 2018-2019 academic year). As someone from a working class and dirt-poor background who funded their own way through their postgraduate qualifications by working and studying at the same time, I'll tell you now that the existence of such support would have meant all the difference in the world to me. Student loans going up ceases to mean anything past a certain point, you accept you'll never pay it off. It just becomes something of a graduate tax instead.
It's different for STEM subjects then. There are already fees paid and stipends offered for PhDs that amounts to about £25k pa which you don't have to repay. Pretty much anyone that wants to do so can undertake a funded STEM PhD if the universities deem the candidate good enough regardless of background. Masters are rarely undertaken because most undergraduate degrees offer a Masters option anyway. The only people that have to pay are those in unique circumstances (for example those that have been outside the country for two years, even if that is just to an undergraduate degree or tour the world etc). Then they have to wait two years or have to get out loans - which as I've pointed out previously gets expensive. My main suspicion is that the loans are the first step on removing stipends completely (so fees will be paid but living costs won't).
The Tories knew the only answer was austerity, austerity is unpopular but sadly necessary as the alternative is bankruptcy, even so the UK cannot fully service its debt and interest still accrues.
There is no denying Labour made decisions that were questionable, but then none of us know what would have happened if alternative options had been taken. It's also not in question that Tory fiscal policy has not also been extremely questionable during their tenures as well. You could argue that there is one almighty fiscal problem every ten years or so by whichever government happens to be in power. It appears Brexit is likely to be the next one, but that will be very much self inflicted.
However the question the point that is being made is who should actually pay (and is continuing to pay) for these errors. In the majority the current Tories have taken the approach that it is the poorest with less services, such as decaying NHS, education and social care service whilst those with wealth have been let off the hook and given the easier ride or were given tax relief and so on. When you compare who was potentially responsible for the issues surrounding the banking collapse it definitely wasn't the former group, yet they in the main are the ones having to pay the consequences.
This isn't an argument about who was responsible for the crash, it's about how the Tories have punished a certain group (the poorest) afterwards in a drive for reducing the debt which they have spectacularly failed to do.
As an aside I'm not sure what gas May is on but here latest statement that the Country is coming together seems further and further from the truth. You only have to look at the BBC comment sections to see it is not correct.
But still I see she is pushing for the "we should be Christians line again". She'll be putting up crosses for the heathen non-believers next....
Yes it was truly terrible that the UKs pre-banking crisis debt by GDP was *less* than what it was when the Tories left power. When the Tories left debt by GDP was running at about 40% and then dropped over the next few years to 30% under Labour and then slightly rose again to about 37-38%. After which point it massively spiked because of the banking crash in 2007/2008. Given that the Tories managed to increase debt by about the same amount over a shorter period prior to them losing power I'd assume you'd also state they were fiscally irresponsible as well? Here's a link to the chart just in case we would like to get the data to actually get in the way...
If you want the data, sift my posts in this thread. I provided an extensive statistical breakdown based on financial expenditure earlier in the thread. I'm not doing it again.
So just to confirm what you are saying is that Tories introduce policies that significantly benefit the wealthy over the poorest but that they are *just* being naïve and stupid because they really do want them to help the poorest but they are just too idiotic to realise they are doing the exactly opposite despite everyone carrying on and telling them this? I suppose the changes to the business rates that saved Hammonds businesses was just an unhappy coincidence?
I find it somewhat strange that you seem to believe the only two possible motivations for anyone ever doing anything in politics are either screwing or saving the poor. There's a million and one reasons for adopting a policy that can result in either occurring, but which have nothing directly to do with them.
Why worry about it? If they really pay little tax then in reality they can leave and it won't make any difference?
I'm not. I was just pointing out that it isn't this 'Hit in case of proletariat emergency' button that some people seem to think it is as a method for fixing the deficit. I don't have an issue with it happening, I just point out the likely consequence.
You are missing the point. As is the Tory way the changes benefited the wealthy much more than the poorest, whereas it should be the opposite way. When things are in financial trouble it should be the wealthy paying more relatively not the poorest.
Then you've missed my point. I'm not saying the wealthy shouldn't pay and the poor should, or even the opposite. I'm saying that taxing the rich isn't the solution, because it won't raise enough. Instead, the people who will need to pay are the middle classes (eg the general population) because that's the only way you'll raise sufficient capital to cover the deficit. That means whacking pensions and general income tax for the money.
But that's death by voter suicide, so the Tories won't do that. Instead we get Hunt trying to slip by savings by reducing what doctors get with a new contract, attempts to shift the burden of tax gathering onto local councils so the Tories don't look like they're raising taxes, and so on. The Tories aren't trying to hurt the poor and enrich the rich, it's more that they know whacking the rich won't raise much and hitting the middle classes costs votes. So instead we get a million ways of slipping through sly cuts as a way of trying to fix the deficit without breaking the system.
Those cuts may well end up killing the patient instead, but it isn't the deliberate end goal/motivation.
It's different for STEM subjects then....
Yeah, STEM tends to be a different ballgame altogether when it comes to postgrad, both in terms of structure and funding. These new options are available for STEM too, but not many students would utilise it. Lab plant is too expensive.
This. The Tories are being blames for two economic calamities which can both be properly accredited to Gordon Brown.......
I used to think something along these lines back when I was a teenager and didn't know anything about economics. Economics being one of those things where what you're doing almost always looks crazy to anyone who knows nothing about it.
Truth is, Brown was a clown, and financially inept. But many of his actions, such as jacking up spending immediately after the recession hit, were textbook Keynesian economics. I'm certain there was an element of self-interest involved, and his measures were generally unimaginative and crude, but he wasn't acting like the complete fop the papers were making out at the time.
'Austerity', meanwhile, was never anything but a catchphrase with little relation to actual Tory policies.
Pushing the income tax threshold up helps the rich more (in absolute terms) than the poor because it pushes up the higher rates too (unless I misunderstand). Increase it by £100 and you'll save £20 for a lower rate but £40 for a higher rate.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I think as with a lot of things it's benefit to the working class is incidental than than the focus.
I also see that the tories are giving another £200m to the company that deems that people don't need disability benefits. That's a lot of money spent to save some money?
I understand that savings needs to be made, and noone will be happy with it. but how come we can afford trident and to blow holes in the middle east bug don't have money to help those that need it?
Automatically Appended Next Post: All austerity seems to do is hamper the economy; the rich can hide/save money but the poor have to spend it. Less money for the poor means less money movkng about.
Plus a lot of the cuts to services actually cost money by exchanging cheap early treatment for expensive late treatment. Is it cheaper to provide a min wahe carer for someone in their own home 20 hours a week, or put them in a hospital bed?
You have misunderstood the way the tax bands work.
The tax free allowance was put up from £11,00 to £11,500. After that you pay 20% on everything you earn up to £32,000. You then pay 40% until you hit £150,000 when it goes up to 45%.
Compel wrote: So in other words, not really a big deal for anyone. Except for those where it really,really is.
Just to put that in quantifiable figures, in 2010, the personal allowance was £6,475. This year, it's hit £11,500 (and been confirmed it will hit £12,500 by end of this Parliament). The Basic Tax Rate is 20%. Minimum wage, meanwhile, has gone up from £5.93 to £7.50. In other words, someone earning full time minimum wage has gotten a substantial boost to their pay packet.
In 2010, working a 37.5 hour week, your wage would be £11,563.50 per year, and the government would squeeze you for £1017.70 in direct tax, leaving you £10,545.80.
In 2017, working a 37.5 hour week, your wage is £14,625 per year, and the government takes £625.00 in tax, leaving you with precisely £14,000 per annum.
Ignoring national insurance (which has only increased by 1%), that's an increase in the pay packet of the average minimum wage worker of no less than £3,500. That's a huge increase, and it's estimated to have cost the exchequer several billion in lost tax revenue.
Now if you were determined to try and pick holes and claim people are still worse off somehow, doubtless you'd waffle something about increases in living costs or greater strain on the NHS; yet it remains the case that even with extraneous factors the working poorest of this country are far better off in terms of direct finances right now than they were in 2010.
Kilkrazy wrote: You have misunderstood the way the tax bands work.
The tax free allowance was put up from £11,00 to £11,500. After that you pay 20% on everything you earn up to £32,000. You then pay 40% until you hit £150,000 when it goes up to 45%.
The 40% band went up from about £43k to £45k at the same time though.
So you pay nothing on the first £11,500, then 20% on the next £34k, then 40% on the next £105k, and then hide the rest in stocks, pension and dividends.
It's been a massive boost to anyone paying tax, and presumably makes more of a lifestyle difference to those that were earning between the thresholds, going from some tax to no tax. But it also benefited those in the 40% (and I assume the 45% band, I think they lose some allowance but I don't really know how they work since I only know 1 person to be in that band and that was only after dumping a careers worth of stock allowance).
Plus wasn't the tax threshold increase a Lib Dem thing?
Plus wasn't the tax threshold increase a Lib Dem thing?
Debatable. They backed it in the 2010-2015 coalition, but the Tories also had no trouble with pushing a slight further increase and maintained those rises even after Cameron won the next election and the Lib Dems were ejected. Then the minute May got in, she actually jacked up plans for the allowance beyond what Osborne had envisioned.
Personally, I think it was originally a mixture of economics and voter strategy for Cameron and Osborne. They hoped to stimulate further spending at the base of the economy to aid with recovery, it gave them an effective verbal comeback on the floor to people saying they didn't care about the poor, and let them shout about how it 'paid to work' whilst squeezing the disabled and those on benefits.
May and Hammond though, I think, actually jacked it up slightly further out of a sense of deliberate 'help the poor and squeezed middle' policy as opposed to for political and economic gains; neither come from well off backgrounds.Why do I think that? Firstly, because there was no political/economic imperative to even do what they've done so far, they could have stuck to Osborne's plans. And secondly, they also went ahead and tied further increases after that to inflation instead of to minimum wage as Osborne imagined. It'll help to keep the living standards for the poorest more in line with living costs as opposed to what the government of the day feels like allocating them.
To help reinforce that, here's what they're doing about the top bracket.
All taxpayers with income of £123,000 or above in 2017 to 2018 have their personal allowance tapered to zero. Therefore they derive no benefit from the personal allowance increase.
In other words, if you're not earning in line with the middle or lower classes, your tax actually goes up, as you no longer get a personal allowance. The rich are actually being stung (albeit exceedingly lightly) to fund part of this tax break for the poor.
I know that for those who are well educated and don't have to worry about money, they wonder why May is still so appealing to those often in poverty, but here's the answer why. At the end of the day, those struggling by know that since the Tories came to power, they have an extra chunk of change in their pocket at the end of the week, and it keeps getting larger. When you're barely living from paycheque to paycheque, that commands a sense of loyalty above abstract meanderings about Brexit, NHS cuts, or a concern about what those in the upper tax brackets are getting. It's the same reason why you rarely actually get the working poor on protests, they're too busy trying to make ends meet to concern themselves with other politics. That sort of thing is for people with time, education, and spare money.
The council elections are in a few weeks time, and I've got some reading to do, because of that damn STV voting system! Grrrrr!
I like to think I've got some idea how it works, but trying to explain it to other people is a right 'mare!
Please tell me if I'm going wrong. Example:
Ward X 4 candidates and 4 seats up for grabs. 100 votes cast (I'm using 100 votes for simplicity)
Candidate A: 51 votes
Candidate B : 30 votes
Candidate C: 10 votes
Candidate D: 9 votes.
For simplicity' sakes, I rank A,B,C,D 1,2,3,4, with A obviously being my first choice.
Because A got 51 votes, that's a simple majority, so A gets a seat. And the rest of the votes got to B,C,D under STV right? Because technically, your 1 vote goes further?
Where it gets hard to explain is what happens if I only choose C and D and number them 1 and 2...
I need an idiot's guide, or a layman's explanation.
Any hints or tips from people? This is why FPTP and even proportional representation, is so much better.
Compel wrote: So in other words, not really a big deal for anyone. Except for those where it really,really is.
Just to put that in quantifiable figures, in 2010, the personal allowance was £6,475. This year, it's hit £11,500 (and been confirmed it will hit £12,500 by end of this Parliament). The Basic Tax Rate is 20%. Minimum wage, meanwhile, has gone up from £5.93 to £7.50. In other words, someone earning full time minimum wage has gotten a substantial boost to their pay packet.
In 2010, working a 37.5 hour week, your wage would be £11,563.50 per year, and the government would squeeze you for £1017.70 in direct tax, leaving you £10,545.80.
In 2017, working a 37.5 hour week, your wage is £14,625 per year, and the government takes £625.00 in tax, leaving you with precisely £14,000 per annum.
Ignoring national insurance (which has only increased by 1%), that's an increase in the pay packet of the average minimum wage worker of no less than £3,500. That's a huge increase, and it's estimated to have cost the exchequer several billion in lost tax revenue.
Now if you were determined to try and pick holes and claim people are still worse off somehow, doubtless you'd waffle something about increases in living costs or greater strain on the NHS; yet it remains the case that even with extraneous factors the working poorest of this country are far better off in terms of direct finances right now than they were in 2010.
That all sounds wonderful, if you ignore indirect taxation.
The Govt is not losing billions in lost tax revenue, it's making people think they're better off by cutting their direct tax burden, then taking it off them elsewhere in all sorts of sneaky ways to make the Govt look like it's adhering to its ideology of low taxation and more choice.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Any hints or tips from people? This is why FPTP and even proportional representation, is so much better.
No, FPTP is preferred by most people because it is very easy to understand and therefore "feels" fairer. STV voting is not complicated - children can grasp the concept easily. It's the mechanics behind it that feel unfair due to a lack of understanding, similar to how statistics are mistrusted. This is the result of a lack of education on the matter and deliberate obfuscation by parties that have a vested interest (and that includes those who pretend that it is difficult). "Oh, those poor, simple proles. They'll never understand something so mind blowingly complicated!"
If over two thirds of a population are actively opposed to one party, then how the hell is it fair for that one party to win an election just because those two thirds votes are split among multiple other parties? FPTP is only better if by better you mean more simple. As a measure of fairness FPTP is awful.
As the Norn Irish have recently done, it's probably worthwhile to #Votetilyouboak - i.e. if there's one candidate who you can't stand, rank absolutely everyone on the list with them last. This ensures that you have someone who isn't them for your vote to transfer to at every stage, rather than your vote ceasing to have any weight after the candidates you want have been elected/eliminated because you didn't vote for anyone else.
So hold your nose and vote for candidates in order from "Awesome person" to "Vile lunatic" with no gaps.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Any hints or tips from people? This is why FPTP and even proportional representation, is so much better.
No, FPTP is preferred by most people because it is very easy to understand and therefore "feels" fairer. STV voting is not complicated - children can grasp the concept easily. It's the mechanics behind it that feel unfair due to a lack of understanding, similar to how statistics are mistrusted. This is the result of a lack of education on the matter and deliberate obfuscation by parties that have a vested interest (and that includes those who pretend that it is difficult). "Oh, those poor, simple proles. They'll never understand something so mind blowingly complicated!"
If over two thirds of a population are actively opposed to one party, then how the hell is it fair for that one party to win an election just because those two thirds votes are split among multiple other parties? FPTP is only better if by better you mean more simple. As a measure of fairness FPTP is awful.
Thanks for the link
As for your other point, I think the public's suspicion of STV stems from the fact that Nick Clegg is a big fan of STV
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Graphite wrote: As the Norn Irish have recently done, it's probably worthwhile to #Votetilyouboak - i.e. if there's one candidate who you can't stand, rank absolutely everyone on the list with them last. This ensures that you have someone who isn't them for your vote to transfer to at every stage, rather than your vote ceasing to have any weight after the candidates you want have been elected/eliminated because you didn't vote for anyone else.
So hold your nose and vote for candidates in order from "Awesome person" to "Vile lunatic" with no gaps.
Normally, that's what I do. I've got the basics nailed down for myself, but explaining how it works to other people is a 'mare.
The Govt is not losing billions in lost tax revenue, it's making people think they're better off by cutting their direct tax burden, then taking it off them elsewhere in all sorts of sneaky ways to make the Govt look like it's adhering to its ideology of low taxation and more choice.
Looking at your article and its sources in turn, I think we're all aware VAT exists. It went up by 2.5% since 2011, but it doesn't really account for all that extra cash in the pocket and is mostly borne by the businesses themselves. Supermarkets don't tend to be keen to pass those things on because it makes them less competitive. Council tax rises have been worse, but that depends on where and how you live, and in no way sucks up another three grand per annum. The article in general is also working on the basis of someone being on the average wage, instead of minimum wage.
It remains the case that for your average full time employed minimum wage employee, they are directly financially better off at the moment since the Tories came in. You can try and fool yourself into thinking it's a fudge if you like, but it doesn't make it less true. If you want to attack the Tories, there are far, far better grounds to do it on elsewhere (anyone remember ATOS?).
It remains the case that for your average full time employed minimum wage employee, they are directly financially better off at the moment since the Tories came in. You can try and fool yourself into thinking it's a fudge if you like, but it doesn't make it less true. If you want to attack the Tories, there are far, far better grounds to do it on elsewhere (anyone remember ATOS?).
Whilst a full time minimum wage employee may be better off, how many of them even exist any more? With the rise in use of "flexible" contracts (of which zero hours contracts are the most extreme example) it is possible that whilst people working full time would be better off, there are now way less of them so the people actually working minimum wage jobs are not actually getting any benefit as they are not being given the hours required to approach that higher threshold.
A Town Called Malus wrote: [
Whilst a full time minimum wage employee may be better off, how many of them even exist any more? With the rise in use of "flexible" contracts (of which zero hours contracts are the most extreme example) it is possible that whilst people working full time would be better off, there are now way less of them so the people actually working minimum wage jobs are not actually getting any benefit as they are not being given the hours required to approach that higher threshold.
Errrr... minimum wage rises apply to part-time work also? You'd receive less of a noticeable benefit if you were earning only £6,000 a year since 2010, but the only adults who do that are either on benefits, tax dodging, or teenagers (because no independent working age adult can really live on six grand a year).
So in answer to your question, the zero hours contract is pretty irrelevant to the point being discussed unless you're changing the discussion to now being about 'What the Tories did to poor people on benefits'. Which is a worthy discussion in its own right, but does nothing to detract from 'What the Tories did for those working adults who live off a minimum wage income'.
It remains the case that for your average full time employed minimum wage employee, they are directly financially better off at the moment since the Tories came in. You can try and fool yourself into thinking it's a fudge if you like, but it doesn't make it less true. If you want to attack the Tories, there are far, far better grounds to do it on elsewhere (anyone remember ATOS?).
Whilst a full time minimum wage employee may be better off, how many of them even exist any more? With the rise in use of "flexible" contracts (of which zero hours contracts are the most extreme example) it is possible that whilst people working full time would be better off, there are now way less of them so the people actually working minimum wage jobs are not actually getting any benefit as they are not being given the hours required to approach that higher threshold.
Exactly. Have an exalt.
It's all very well for the government to say that employment is rising and unemployment is falling, but if you're on zero hours, or working for spivs and speculators like Uber, then it's a harsh reality compared to the steady jobs our parents and grand-parents had back in the 1950s/60s/70s.
And when are the government going to stop subsidising business with tax credits and parasite landlords with housing benefit?
There is working Britain the myth and working Britain the harsh reality and never the twain shall meet.
It remains the case that for your average full time employed minimum wage employee, they are directly financially better off at the moment since the Tories came in. You can try and fool yourself into thinking it's a fudge if you like, but it doesn't make it less true. If you want to attack the Tories, there are far, far better grounds to do it on elsewhere (anyone remember ATOS?).
Whilst a full time minimum wage employee may be better off, how many of them even exist any more? With the rise in use of "flexible" contracts (of which zero hours contracts are the most extreme example) it is possible that whilst people working full time would be better off, there are now way less of them so the people actually working minimum wage jobs are not actually getting any benefit as they are not being given the hours required to approach that higher threshold.
Quite a lot actually in manufacturing and warehousing, though in my experience they're mostly agencies so the job security is poor. 2/3 of the jobs I've had have been full time (40hr) minimum wage jobs.
The Govt is not losing billions in lost tax revenue, it's making people think they're better off by cutting their direct tax burden, then taking it off them elsewhere in all sorts of sneaky ways to make the Govt look like it's adhering to its ideology of low taxation and more choice.
Looking at your article and its sources in turn, I think we're all aware VAT exists. It went up by 2.5% since 2011, but it doesn't really account for all that extra cash in the pocket and is mostly borne by the businesses themselves. Supermarkets don't tend to be keen to pass those things on because it makes them less competitive. Council tax rises have been worse, but that depends on where and how you live, and in no way sucks up another three grand per annum. The article in general is also working on the basis of someone being on the average wage, instead of minimum wage.
It remains the case that for your average full time employed minimum wage employee, they are directly financially better off at the moment since the Tories came in. You can try and fool yourself into thinking it's a fudge if you like, but it doesn't make it less true. If you want to attack the Tories, there are far, far better grounds to do it on elsewhere (anyone remember ATOS?).
We're not "fooling ourselves" in to thinking it's a fudge, it is a fudge. If every full time, minimum wage employee was wandering about with an extra £3500 in their pockets, as you claim, there would be parties in the streets, but instead we have food banks.
I'm afraid that indirect taxation takes up the vast majority of any extra that we may get through the reduction in direct taxation.
In fact a short Google of Govt tax receipts shows that there has been an increase in tax receipts received by the Treasury over the last few years.
Business rate rises, council tax increases, pension tax relief cuts, apprenticeship levy, rises in VAT, increases in insurance premium tax, higher levels of stamp duty, all these costs will, with a few exceptions, be eventually passed onto the average citizen, regardless of their income. It equates to lots of smaller, varied, harder to track increases in tax that arent as obvious as direct income tax increases.
I think you're allowing the improvement in your own personal circumstances to cloud your analysis of the situation.
As far as I'm concerned there are 6 'evils' that are blighting Britain, holding this nation back, and need to be tackled efficiently and quickly if the nation is to progress.
I doubt if anything will be done about them in my lifetime, but one day, if we're lucky, we might get a government with the guts to tackle them.
The 'evils' are:
1) Taxpayers subsidising business through tax credits to make up for gak poor wages.
2) Parasite landlords making millions from housing benefit and thus contributing to the major housing crisis we have in this nation
3) Spivs and speculators who have ran this country into the ground with taxpayer bailouts and kamikaze banking practices.
4) London. Not the city itself or the people there, but the sheer concentration of wealth and power has created this black hole of London that sucks the rest of the UK into it.
5) Tax evasion, tax avoidance by the rich, the multi-nationals. It's likely to get worse because of Brexit.
6) The gradual erosion of law and order which has left us with incompetent police forces unable to carry out their primary duty, and a prison system at breaking point.
Until these problems are tackled with verve and determination, I see nothing but a bleak future for this nation...
Ketara wrote: .... At the end of the day, those struggling by know that since the Tories came to power, they have an extra chunk of change in their pocket at the end of the week, and it keeps getting larger. When you're barely living from paycheque to paycheque, that commands a sense of loyalty above abstract meanderings about Brexit, NHS cuts, or a concern about what those in the upper tax brackets are getting. It's the same reason why you rarely actually get the working poor on protests, they're too busy trying to make ends meet to concern themselves with other politics. That sort of thing is for people with time, education, and spare money.
That's pure patronising conjecture, with no evidence. What about industrial action? Those are working poor people participating in legal, sometimes political public demonstration. I could say that the working poor are too busy to vote too, so loyalty to the party is meaningless, but that doesn't make it true.
So it looks like the European Banking Authority and the European Medical Agency will begin the process of withdrawal from London in the next few weeks, probably knowing their new home by June. That'll be an interesting development to see where they end up.
It remains the case that for your average full time employed minimum wage employee, they are directly financially better off at the moment since the Tories came in. You can try and fool yourself into thinking it's a fudge if you like, but it doesn't make it less true. If you want to attack the Tories, there are far, far better grounds to do it on elsewhere (anyone remember ATOS?).
Whilst a full time minimum wage employee may be better off, how many of them even exist any more? With the rise in use of "flexible" contracts (of which zero hours contracts are the most extreme example) it is possible that whilst people working full time would be better off, there are now way less of them so the people actually working minimum wage jobs are not actually getting any benefit as they are not being given the hours required to approach that higher threshold.
Quite a lot actually in manufacturing and warehousing, though in my experience they're mostly agencies so the job security is poor. 2/3 of the jobs I've had have been full time (40hr) minimum wage jobs.
Agency workers maybe doing 40 hours a week, but they're not full time employees. Having done agency work in the past, you are generally not guaranteed any work at all, and can only work whatever is offered to you. They could be also subject to a zero hours contract with their agency, so it's not really analgous to say that 40 hours work a week equals a full time job. Its a miserable existence being an agency worker, unless it suits you, but there are very few people who choose to be Agency workers through anything other than need. No holiday or sick pay, and an expectation that you'll jump through whatever hoops are flung your way, and they take a cut of your wages. I once worked for a dairy as an agency worker, tied in for 6 months, working six days a week from 1am for £160 a week, and I was doing in excess of 60 hours a week!
Never again.
That categorically does not apply to any of the jobs I have worked. All of my jobs whether agency or direct employment have had guaranteed hours, and all but one have been full time Mon-Fri. You are fully employed until the day you get fired. I wouldn't have accepted the jobs otherwise, and have told the job centre that I'm unwilling to take unreliable ad hoc work with no guaranteed hours, which they respected.
(I do however have the advantage of a fantastic JCP work coach. I've never experienced the typical horror stories you hear from jobcentres).
I do get holiday pay once I accrue it through time worked. I actually checked with my agency last week and they confirmed that I'm getting paid for this Easter bank holiday because I've been employed for 5 weeks and have accrued enough holiday pay.
I only get statutory sick pay which kicks in after 5 days. I was off sick last week for two days (Karate injury).
I once worked for a dairy as an agency worker, tied in for 6 months, working six days a week from 1am for £160 a week, and I was doing in excess of 60 hours a week! Never again.
When? In the last decade? Or it was this 2 decades ago or longer? I'd say that reflects more on that particular agency and that particular industry, then agencies in general. Agencies suck, but they're not all as bad as this.
My problems with Agencies have typically been less to do with the contracts, and more to do with the staff themselves, some of them are more than willing to deceive and mislead you.
I went to register with Castl.e Vie.w, who offered me a "guaranteed interview" with a specific company for a specific role on condition that I attended a 5 day training course (health and safety, lean manufacturing etc). That was 3 months ago...I still haven't had that interview and I'm in employment with a different agency now. Turned out they'd lied to me, C.V. wasn't the agency responsible for hiring for the role, they were just handling the training and then passing our CV's to other agencies who were hiring for the role.
The paperwork had EU "social fund" logos emblazoned on everything, so my guess is it was a scam to claim government funding. Get lots of people in (it was a class of 15+ people) based on false promises ("you'll get an interview at the end of the week"), shove them through a course that you literally cannot fail (the Tutor told us so) and which costs barely nothing to run, claim Government/EU funding and then cut them all loose.
Don't touch CV with a 10 foot barge pole, they're awful.
Quite a lot actually in manufacturing and warehousing, though in my experience they're mostly agencies so the job security is poor. 2/3 of the jobs I've had have been full time (40hr) minimum wage jobs.
The figures are actually there for anyone who wants to view them. There are 31.42 million people in employment in this country, and 8.43 million of them are part-timers. The unemployment register has about 924,000 people on it.
r_squared wrote:We're not "fooling ourselves" in to thinking it's a fudge, it is a fudge. If every full time, minimum wage employee was wandering about with an extra £3500 in their pockets, as you claim, there would be parties in the streets, but instead we have food banks.
That's because other sectors (like disability benefits) have suffered under the Tories, as opposed to the working poor. If you're just going to conflate the issues of every different group, you might as well throw the rich in there as well for all the sense it makes to the specific group I'm discussing.
In fact a short Google of Govt tax receipts shows....
You also keep conflating every area tax is raised in, essentially, and saying that it all ultimately rebounds on this specific group of poor people in some undefined way that completely cancels out all benefits from the changes made to minimum wage and tax-free allowance.
If you want to rabbit on the Tories so badly, you're more than welcome to do so, but on this specific point, namely the financial situation of the full time employed on minimum wage, they have been financially better off under theTory Government. I've provided the figures, and (to a less detailed extent) accounted for changes in VAT, National insurance, and council tax. Waving vaguely at the fact that taxation and food banks exist disproves me in no way.
There are plenty of other groups that have been less fortunate than the full time employed minimum wage group of this country. But trying to lump them all in together and declare 'The Tories have never helped anyone badly off ever!!!!!' just comes across as the sort of overexaggerated broad brush political partisanship you get over the Big Wet. Life and politics have more shades than black and white.
That's pure patronising conjecture, with no evidence. What about industrial action? Those are working poor people participating in legal, sometimes political public demonstration. I could say that the working poor are too busy to vote too, so loyalty to the party is meaningless, but that doesn't make it true.
Find me someone working a sixty hour minimum wage week with kids who isn't facing an immediate severe crisis of some kind that has loads of spare time to go assorted political rallies, and I'll show you someone very much in the minority.
The bottom end of society who are in full time employment and don't possess much of an education (note the specific group being referred to) are usually only brought out into active political protest by issues immediately and pressingly relevant to themselves. They don't usually parade around protesting Donald Trump, for example. People only have so much energy after a week's work.
Agency workers maybe doing 40 hours a week, but they're not full time employees. Having done agency work in the past, you are generally not guaranteed any work at all, and can only work whatever is offered to you. They could be also subject to a zero hours contract with their agency, so it's not really analgous to say that 40 hours work a week equals a full time job. Its a miserable existence being an agency worker, unless it suits you, but there are very few people who choose to be Agency workers through anything other than need.
I worked for G4S as an agency worker back when I was an undergrad. Let me work more or less full time in the hols, and nothing in term time. I got a sheet every month with what was available, and I signed up or didn't as appropriate. One of my friends right now is technically an agency worker for Historic Palaces. He's working full time, and loving it (he just started, and gets full period costume).
There are plenty of gak agency jobs, and you wouldn't want to be trapped in one. I think it concerning that they are on the rise also. I despise the Uber system of employment. Nonetheless, there is a place for them, I think.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: As far as I'm concerned there are 6 'evils' that are blighting Britain, holding this nation back, and need to be tackled efficiently and quickly if the nation is to progress.
I doubt if anything will be done about them in my lifetime, but one day, if we're lucky, we might get a government with the guts to tackle them.
The 'evils' are:
1) Taxpayers subsidising business through tax credits to make up for gak poor wages.
I agree, although the payment of the minimum wage should be taking care of this, if it isn't, why is that? Is it because the minimum wage isn't enough, or that the cost of living is too high? However, paying tax credits keeps business costs down, which keeps them competitive domestically and internationally.
2) Parasite landlords making millions from housing benefit and thus contributing to the major housing crisis we have in this nation
This I agree with wholeheartedly. Its bonkers that we have a situition where we are paying more to private landlords for a sometimes lower quality service than we would do if we had kept social housing.
3) Spivs and speculators who have ran this country into the ground with taxpayer bailouts and kamikaze banking practices.
I have often wondered about the too big to fail argument. Why the Govt chose a handful of privately owned banking business to save, whilst letting other business let the market decide their viability. Nothing regulates a banking sector like the threat of bankruptcy and mass unemployment. All we did is basically tell the speculators and spivs that we were prepared to underwrite their failure, no matter the cost, as long as it continued to make us rich. It'll happen again, of that I have absolutely no doubt.
4) London. Not the city itself or the people there, but the sheer concentration of wealth and power has created this black hole of London that sucks the rest of the UK into it.
I was visiting family at the weekend back down South, and got chatting to a few people in my dad's local. There is a genuine, all encompassing belief that there is absolutely no work north of Watford, and that the rest of the UK lives off benefits and the fat of the South. As long as the belief remains that the rest of the UK has nothing to offer, this will not change.
6) The gradual erosion of law and order which has left us with incompetent police forces unable to carry out their primary duty, and a prison system at breaking point.
Im not sure I agree that there has been a gradual erosion of law and order, maybe an increase in our awareness of criminal activity thanks to media exposure? We also need to rethink what prison is actually for, rehabilitation, punishment or protection of society or all of the above? Is it appropriate for prison to be a sanction for all the offences committed today? Its not just prisons that need reform, but our attitude to crime and it's solution.
Until these problems are tackled with verve and determination, I see nothing but a bleak future for this nation...
Not exactly helped by the fact that on top of your list, we now have Brexit and a hideously divided and angry population. Mostly down to the actions of a particular political party currently being strenuously defended by Ketara.
Our country is facing enormous and diverse challenges, almost every facet of public life could do with improvement. I don't think our current Govt is upto the task, as our political structure simply does not lend itself to long term, sound political decisions. As long as FPTP exists, and politics is driven by political parties, there will be pretty much no solutions to the problems you've outlined.
Not exactly helped by the fact that on top of your list, we now have Brexit and a hideously divided and angry population. Mostly down to the actions of a particular political party currently being strenuously defended by Ketara.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: That categorically does not apply to any of the jobs I have worked. All of my jobs whether agency or direct employment have had guaranteed hours, and all but one have been full time Mon-Fri. You are fully employed until the day you get fired. I wouldn't have accepted the jobs otherwise, and have told the job centre that I'm unwilling to take unreliable ad hoc work with no guaranteed hours, which they respected.
(I do however have the advantage of a fantastic JCP work coach. I've never experienced the typical horror stories you hear from jobcentres).
I do get holiday pay once I accrue it through time worked. I actually checked with my agency last week and they confirmed that I'm getting paid for this Easter bank holiday because I've been employed for 5 weeks and have accrued enough holiday pay.
I only get statutory sick pay which kicks in after 5 days. I was off sick last week for two days (Karate injury).
I once worked for a dairy as an agency worker, tied in for 6 months, working six days a week from 1am for £160 a week, and I was doing in excess of 60 hours a week!
Never again.
When? In the last decade? Or it was this 2 decades ago or longer? I'd say that reflects more on that particular agency and that particular industry, then agencies in general. Agencies suck, but they're not all as bad as this.
My problems with Agencies have typically been less to do with the contracts, and more to do with the staff themselves, some of them are more than willing to deceive and mislead you.
I went to register with Castl.e Vie.w, who offered me a "guaranteed interview" with a specific company for a specific role on condition that I attended a 5 day training course (health and safety, lean manufacturing etc). That was 3 months ago...I still haven't had that interview and I'm in employment with a different agency now. Turned out they'd lied to me, C.V. wasn't the agency responsible for hiring for the role, they were just handling the training and then passing our CV's to other agencies who were hiring for the role.
The paperwork had EU "social fund" logos emblazoned on everything, so my guess is it was a scam to claim government funding. Get lots of people in (it was a class of 15+ people) based on false promises ("you'll get an interview at the end of the week"), shove them through a course that you literally cannot fail (the Tutor told us so) and which costs barely nothing to run, claim Government/EU funding and then cut them all loose.
Don't touch CV with a 10 foot barge pole, they're awful.
It was in fact about 20 years ago, when I was in a pretty desperate situation living on a friends sofa having lost my previous job and flat. I was desperate for work, and that was all there was about at the time, but it made me particularly determined to never get myself into that position ever again. So you could say that in one way it was a positive experience.
I am not surprised that there are still disreputable agencies out there, but it's good to hear that agencies can be positive too.
I doubt I would ever go and work for one ever again though, I'd rather work for myself.
Not exactly helped by the fact that on top of your list, we now have Brexit and a hideously divided and angry population. Mostly down to the actions of a particular political party currently being strenuously defended by Ketara.
The world must be much simpler in monochrome.
I'm sorry, is there another political party responsible for Brexit? Must have missed that.
It's a bold plan : enact Brexit but then simply refuse to acknowledge any changes that we don't like.
... I guess it'd be kinda nitpicky to point out that these departments leaving would indeed be one of the affects of brexit was kinda pointed out a wee while ago...
Excl: Home Office looking at 'barista visas’ to ensure coffee shops and pubs are still fully staffed after Brexit;
Barista visas.
uh huh.
We'll add those to the list which thus far reads something like : care home visas, nurse visas, teacher visas, retail visas, fruit picking visas, dentist visas.
So far.
..Oh, I vaguely recall something about construction work related visas too.
.. so the only people we appear to be losing are from EU agencies which the Govt. apparently wants to keep and/or various people who've lived here quite happily and peacefully for a good while and people don't want to see deported.
... and Davis is apparently the smart one of the 3 Brexiteers.
r_squared wrote: It was in fact about 20 years ago, when I was in a pretty desperate situation living on a friends sofa having lost my previous job and flat. I was desperate for work, and that was all there was about at the time, but it made me particularly determined to never get myself into that position ever again. So you could say that in one way it was a positive experience.
I am not surprised that there are still disreputable agencies out there, but it's good to hear that agencies can be positive too.
I doubt I would ever go and work for one ever again though, I'd rather work for myself.
Well there you go then. Your experience is out of date. Bad agencies no doubt still exist, but I doubt they can get away with what you experienced today, employment laws would have changed drastically.
r_squared wrote:We're not "fooling ourselves" in to thinking it's a fudge, it is a fudge. If every full time, minimum wage employee was wandering about with an extra £3500 in their pockets, as you claim, there would be parties in the streets, but instead we have food banks.
That's because other sectors (like disability benefits) have suffered under the Tories, as opposed to the working poor. If you're just going to conflate the issues of every different group, you might as well throw the rich in there as well for all the sense it makes to the specific group I'm discussing.
Because the working poor will be paying for all these things as well even though they've had a direct "tax cut". They won't be any better off at all because they're still going to be paying the same amount of tax, just indirectly. It's not rocket science, but you seem to be having a hard time grasping the idea. I'll just give up flogging this particular dead horse.
In fact a short Google of Govt tax receipts shows....
You also keep conflating every area tax is raised in, essentially, and saying that it all ultimately rebounds on this specific group of poor people in some undefined way that completely cancels out all benefits from the changes made to minimum wage and tax-free allowance.
If you want to rabbit on the Tories so badly, you're more than welcome to do so, but on this specific point, namely the financial situation of the full time employed on minimum wage, they have been financially better off under theTory Government. I've provided the figures, and (to a less detailed extent) accounted for changes in VAT, National insurance, and council tax. Waving vaguely at the fact that taxation and food banks exist disproves me in no way.
There are plenty of other groups that have been less fortunate than the full time employed minimum wage group of this country. But trying to lump them all in together and declare 'The Tories have never helped anyone badly off ever!!!!!' just comes across as the sort of overexaggerated broad brush political partisanship you get over the Big Wet. Life and politics have more shades than black and white.
See above, they're only superficially better off if you completely ignore every other method of taxation being levied. That extra pound in their pocket will make its way back to the treasury one way or another, it just looks like they're better off. Better to be monochrome than one dimensional.
That's pure patronising conjecture, with no evidence. What about industrial action? Those are working poor people participating in legal, sometimes political public demonstration. I could say that the working poor are too busy to vote too, so loyalty to the party is meaningless, but that doesn't make it true.
Find me someone working a sixty hour minimum wage week with kids who isn't facing an immediate severe crisis of some kind that has loads of spare time to go assorted political rallies, and I'll show you someone very much in the minority.
The bottom end of society who are in full time employment and don't possess much of an education (note the specific group being referred to) are usually only brought out into active political protest by issues immediately and pressingly relevant to themselves. They don't usually parade around protesting Donald Trump, for example. People only have so much energy after a week's work.
I've not been to an anti Trump rally, so I haven't asked what the financial status of those involved was, but clearly you have access to more information than me. Did you find a poll that backs up your claim, or did you conflate it from the images in your head of dreadlocked hippies in kaftans? However, at least you recognise that the working poor can sometimes gather the energy to give a gak about more than putting about crust on the table. However, to say that they will be bothered to go and vote for a party, but not take part in any other political activity because they're "too tired" is patronising bollocks.
Agency workers maybe doing 40 hours a week, but they're not full time employees. Having done agency work in the past, you are generally not guaranteed any work at all, and can only work whatever is offered to you. They could be also subject to a zero hours contract with their agency, so it's not really analgous to say that 40 hours work a week equals a full time job. Its a miserable existence being an agency worker, unless it suits you, but there are very few people who choose to be Agency workers through anything other than need.
I worked for G4S as an agency worker back when I was an undergrad. Let me work more or less full time in the hols, and nothing in term time. I got a sheet every month with what was available, and I signed up or didn't as appropriate. One of my friends right now is technically an agency worker for Historic Palaces. He's working full time, and loving it (he just started, and gets full period costume).
There are plenty of gak agency jobs, and you wouldn't want to be trapped in one. I think it concerning that they are on the rise also. I despise the Uber system of employment. Nonetheless, there is a place for them, I think.
I do agree that there is a place for flexible working, that's common sense, but theres a big difference between the situation you were in, which obviously worked well for you, and having to rely on agency work to live, permanently. But as mentioned before, there are some good agencies, and it appears that it works for some people to work like that.
As it happens I also worked for a motorcycle courier company back in the 90s who used the "self-employed" scam that Uber tried. It's been going for years. However, that time it worked for me, as I was able to claim back about £600 in tax that year thanks to my wife sorting out my tax returns. But, just as Uber have been caught doing, I was an "employee", unable to go and freelance at any other company, but had to be available for Diamond couriers Mon to Saturday from 7am to 7pm for whatever work came up. They of course didn't have to pay any NI or PAYE, but that was obviously just a fringe benefit.
Everyone should have couple of gak hard graft jobs under their belt to give them some perspective, and motivation.
Excl: Home Office looking at 'barista visas’ to ensure coffee shops and pubs are still fully staffed after Brexit;
Barista visas.
uh huh.
We'll add those to the list which thus far reads something like : care home visas, nurse visas, teacher visas, retail visas, fruit picking visas, dentist visas.
So far.
..Oh, I vaguely recall something about construction work related visas too.
.. so the only people we appear to be losing are from EU agencies which the Govt. apparently wants to keep and/or various people who've lived here quite happily and peacefully for a good while and people don't want to see deported.
... and Davis is apparently the smart one of the 3 Brexiteers.
Visas for skilled workers definitely, visas for unskilled labour? Only if we can't fill it ourselves, I think we're going to need the employment.
I'm sorry, is there another political party responsible for Brexit? Must have missed that.
You're rolling Brexit into it now as well? Blimey, come one, come all. You want to include global warming and our foreign policy towards China into a discussion about a very specific policy impact?
Because the working poor will be paying for all these things...
...paying for what things? Just to recount this specific line of back and forth:-
-I note that you could waffle on about various other points to try and reduce the impact of what I'm saying, but it wouldn't amount for the full total of extra cash.
-You say that food banks exist so it doesn't count.
-I point out that that issue (food banks) doesn't tend to apply particularly to the full time employed minimum wage employees, but another group of people.
-You say that the working poor pay for these things.
What things? Food banks? You're conflating your lines of argument.
See above, they're only superficially better off if you completely ignore every other method of taxation being levied. That extra pound in their pocket will make its way back to the treasury one way or another, it just looks like they're better off. Better to be monochrome than one dimensional.
Errr....I've accounted for income tax, national insurance, council tax, VAT, and so on. Your argument appears to be 'taxations is being increased somewhere somehow and that means that money must be drained from this specific group of people to pay for it cancelling out any other benefits'. Repeating a vague generalisation with no figures or chain of causation doesn't make it any more substantial, y'know....?
I've not been to an anti Trump rally, so I haven't asked what the financial status of those involved was, but clearly you have access to more information than me. Did you find a poll that backs up your claim, or did you conflate it from the images in your head of dreadlocked hippies in kaftans? However, at least you recognise that the working poor can sometimes gather the energy to give a gak about more than putting about crust on the table. However, to say that they will be bothered to go and vote for a party, but not take part in any other political activity because they're "too tired" is patronising bollocks.
I'm working purely off empirical data here. I've held down bog standard jobs on minimum wage for a chunky period of my life, and you talk to a lot of coworkers. Sometimes, you even talk about politics. And I'm not that far gone either, I was doing it up until two years ago. Spread across three jobs with probably somewhere in sample region of around forty coworkers this sort of thing came up with, the average white english minimum wage worker I encountered who voted Tory cited views along the lines of those I've given. I'm perfectly happy to concede to any sort of statistical evidence to the contrary if you can produce it though...?
r_squared wrote: I do agree that there is a place for flexible working, that's common sense, but theres a big difference between the situation you were in, which obviously worked well for you, and having to rely on agency work to live, permanently. But as mentioned before, there are some good agencies, and it appears that it works for some people to work like that.
I don't think you'll find anyone who quarrels with that.
If you want the data, sift my posts in this thread. I provided an extensive statistical breakdown based on financial expenditure earlier in the thread. I'm not doing it again.
And as the data shows Labour were fully in control of the finances up to the financial crash (and had better debt control than the Tories). Once we hit the financial crash options were rather constrained and we don't know whether any other path would have been worse or better. There's a judgement here being made that Labour made bad decisions but we simply don't know that because the situation had never occurred before. The Tories could have been in power and not bailed out the banks starved the poorest of money and things could be a whole lot worse. Conversely it could have all turned out roses. The simple case is no one really had any idea what to do because there was no past references to make a judgement on. Hence a guess was made. Whether that was the right or wrong guess we will have to wait until we have been a hundred or so similar crashes so we can have better analysis. No one knew what the best option was...
I find it somewhat strange that you seem to believe the only two possible motivations for anyone ever doing anything in politics are either screwing or saving the poor. There's a million and one reasons for adopting a policy that can result in either occurring, but which have nothing directly to do with them.
No I can think of other reasons like:-
They are idiots and generally incompetent?
They are evil?
They just don't give a damn and action what they hell they want?
They are really led by the Emperor and Darth Vader in disguise?
They are being paid to sell the country to the US/China/Russia/Kenya?
They want to ruin the economy?
They are on drugs?
They are all round just generally nasty?
See lots of reasons I can come up with
Then you've missed my point. I'm not saying the wealthy shouldn't pay and the poor should, or even the opposite. I'm saying that taxing the rich isn't the solution, because it won't raise enough. Instead, the people who will need to pay are the middle classes (eg the general population) because that's the only way you'll raise sufficient capital to cover the deficit. That means whacking pensions and general income tax for the money.
Ah well you see that's what I mean by the 'rich'. Compared to someone who is earning less than £11,000 they have plenty of money and can afford 80% of things relatively comfortably (excluding central London). Yes there are sacrifices to be made but then that's for the better if it maintains the public services for everyone.
And I reiterate my point this class got 'double' the benefits from changes in the tax systems. They gained from both the increased zero rate tax allowance and the change to when the higher rate kicks in. Hence my complaint that the Tories only favour the rich (i.e. >40kish). What should happen is the poorest get the breaks to help them raise their living standards, but the rich shouldn't be given the same boon because they can already afford most of the things they want. What is a more social way of running things is to give the tax breaks to the poorest whilst offsetting that against the an increase in the tax on the rich £40K+ crowd (so either increasing the element slightly or dropping when the threshold kicks in). That way you can reduce the burden by providing the money on the public sector rather than running it into the ground for the benefit of the rich group. In fact all you do by giving the rich group is make the poorest even poorer relatively and drive a larger gap between the rich and the poor (as the tax breaks can drive a higher inflation than the poor can withstand).
But that's death by voter suicide, so the Tories won't do that. Instead we get Hunt trying to slip by savings by reducing what doctors get with a new contract, attempts to shift the burden of tax gathering onto local councils so the Tories don't look like they're raising taxes, and so on. The Tories aren't trying to hurt the poor and enrich the rich, it's more that they know whacking the rich won't raise much and hitting the middle classes costs votes. So instead we get a million ways of slipping through sly cuts as a way of trying to fix the deficit without breaking the system.
Those cuts may well end up killing the patient instead, but it isn't the deliberate end goal/motivation.
It's just the same, turning a blind eye is not an excuse! But you are still justifying what I said all along that the Tories are in it for themselves and have no interest in improving the lives of the poorest.
We'll add those to the list which thus far reads something like : care home visas, nurse visas, teacher visas, retail visas, fruit picking visas, dentist visas.
So far.
..Oh, I vaguely recall something about construction work related visas too.
They would be better off making a list for those that won't be allowed in for work purposes, it would be a much shorter list, which currently stands at, erh um, well there doesn't appear to be any...perhaps they should go back to free movement after all it's going to cost a fortune to manage all these visa groups.
It's a bold plan : enact Brexit but then simply refuse to acknowledge any changes that we don't like.
It's the Theresa May way, didn't you listen to her statement on Easter Sunday...
I've always stated that I thought DD was an idiot and this just adds more evidence to the pile. Still maybe there will be bargain basement offices to let in Canary Wharf in the near future, so all is good...
Holly crap, she wants to be Empress May.
Still bitter that she wasn't allowed to trigger article 50 without a parliament vote. Everything was about me, me, me, my, my, my. Wants a general election because she's getting pissy about MPs telling her that as a member of parliament she doesn't have the authority to be god-empress.
What a horrible wretch she is.
Well I guess at least it's going to settle the Labour question of whether the not really left wing MP group or the much more left wing Corbynites are right about who the country will vote for
Big conservative win = goodbye Corbyn
status quo = probably solidifies his position, but the rumbles will continue
Big labour win = maybe the party will finally knuckle down and cooperate with him
but it doesn't seem a smart move with regards to the brexit timetable as I see exactly zero productive negotiation going on while we're faffing around with our general election
Tories have a strong lead today. The EU vote had a good turnout of voters. Article 50 has been triggered - leaving the EU is a done deal, there's no going back. Will voter turnout drop to more normal levels and if they do who of those remaining are going to be motivated to turn out?
Or will the Tories run on a platform that makes it appear as though the people are having to vote again? - vote for us or those scary liberal types might stop that thing you all voted for!
Lib Dems will be campaigning on a platform of withdrawing Article 50, or whatever one does to withdraw from a withdrawal from the EU.
This is our chance to organise.
May is confident of a clean victory here due to the other parties currently polling so badly. So the spin, if she gets it, will be that there is a clear mandate for a hard Brexit. Plus of course we get 5 more years of the Tories driving us off a fething cliff.
However. The last couple of years have shown us that massive upsets are possible. That politicians, and everyone else, cannot predict the outcomes of votes any more.
How do you organise, if you oppose Brexit?
Think locally. Find the politician who will commit to voting for the softest imaginable Brexit, or for cancelling Article 50 if possible. Support them. Campaign for them. Get people to vote tactically. Yes that probably means handing a lot of power to the Lib Dems. I'm not happy about the prospect either but it's way, way better than the alternative.
Oddly, it's that second referendum which might hand Labour a shock win.
As a Scot who's lived in England since 1991 and has no plans whatsoever to return (career, friends etc) I'm neither for nor against - I've very deliberately not formed an opinion as I'm distant from life and politics up there.
But looking at my FB feed, it seems Sturgeon isn't particularly popular at all - so we may see the SNP lose ground to Labour, on account there's precious few Tories in Scotland!
It depends where you're getting information from - the howling lunatics in the BBC SpeakYourBranes comments sections obviously loathe Sturgeon. But for Labour in Scotland we have the mighty Kezia Dugdale as leader, a woman who permanently looks as if she's about to burst into tears and start beating her fists against the ground that it's All So Unfair. The Tories have Ruth, who hasn't made herself popular recently with her support for the Child Benefit cap and is actually going to have to come out of hiding soon, but seems to be doing well otherwise. The Lib Dems are... there? But if you're going to vote against Brexit, you'll vote SNP as they actually have a chance.
I think Scotland will be a sideshow in this. The SNP might not get quite as many MPs as they have now, but they're likely to be far in advance of anyone else. This one's down to what the Lib Dems manage to pull off in England.
Well, seeing as Westminster would have to approve a second referendum (as they do any referendum), people who want to remain part of the UK may see Labour as the best way to oust the SNP, and reduce the chances of that actually happening.
My views on the Conservative party are well known on these boards, and it goes without saying that I've had little good to say about May over the years. First as Home Secretary, and now as PM.
None the less, I always saw her as reliable. Reliably dull and predictable, but reliable none the less.
Today's announcement is something I thought I'd never see: May going kamikaze! WTF!
What does she gain from this?
When and it is when, Labour get defeated, Corbyn is out the door. I thought the Tory plan was to keep him Labour leader as long as possible.
Weasel Farron and the fib dems will try and re-run June 23rd and probably pick up a few more seats. So we have 5 years of fib dem pontification to look forward too from those useless
Labour are already rock bottom, so there's little gains to be made there.
The boundary changes don't kick in til 2020, and seeing as they favour the Tories anyway, she could have waited until 2020.
The SNP will run this GE as a de facto Scottish independence referendum
And for all the talk of a mandate for Brexit, the HoC voted overwhelmingly in favour of passing Article 50...
All in all, it's a strange decision...
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Oddly, it's that second referendum which might hand Labour a shock win.
As a Scot who's lived in England since 1991 and has no plans whatsoever to return (career, friends etc) I'm neither for nor against - I've very deliberately not formed an opinion as I'm distant from life and politics up there.
But looking at my FB feed, it seems Sturgeon isn't particularly popular at all - so we may see the SNP lose ground to Labour, on account there's precious few Tories in Scotland!
As somebody who lives in Scotland, I can assure you that Sturgeon is still popular, helped in part by the fact that the opposition is poor.
Sturgeon is polarising, because of her tunnel vision for an independence agenda. Some will love it, others will be hardened against her.
However the SNP has made many critical mistakes over the last few years, and are hoping that the Indyref focus will be enough of a smokescreen to cover them. That might backfire on them dependent on on how much of devolutions failing can be shifted on to the Tories. There is a solid core of nationalistic zealots who will buy that, and sell it on. However the combination of mismanagement and indyref tunnel vision will polarise opposition also. However unless a lot of tactical voting takes place those numbers might not materiialise in a meaningful way.
However the SNP has made many critical mistakes over the last few years
After the Gibraltar debacle, the NI U-turn from Hammond, and now May's massive U-turn on a GE,
how can anybody criticise the SNP for their mistakes? And that's before we even mention Corbyn?
I'm struggling to contain my laughter here.
If anything it would seem the SNP has positioned itself rather well to push for its agenda of independence, or at least as well as it could realistically hope for. I don't think going independent would be terribly productive in the big picture, but it is a golden second chance that they'd be stupid to not try and seize if that's what they're aiming for.
Easy E wrote: These snap electiosn should be interesting. The outcome will either solidify Brexit or put it into some doubt again.
Interesting times,
Not really IMO.
I don't know how closely you or any other American dakka member follows British politics, but the opposition Labour party are bad. really bad. Gak poor bad. They make Trump look like FDR.
Theresa May will win. No question of that. What majority she will have is another story.
In the USA, you guys have Florida and Ohio deciding elections. In Britain, our version is Middle England. The people who live there tend to turn up for elections and most importantly, vote Conservative.
For them to vote for Labour under its leader Jeremy Corbyn would be like Texas voting 80% for Hilary Clinton.
However the SNP has made many critical mistakes over the last few years
After the Gibraltar debacle, the NI U-turn from Hammond, and now May's massive U-turn on a GE,
how can anybody criticise the SNP for their mistakes? And that's before we even mention Corbyn?
I'm struggling to contain my laughter here.
If anything it would seem the SNP has positioned itself rather well to push for its agenda of independence, or at least as well as it could realistically hope for. I don't think going independent would be terribly productive in the big picture, but it is a golden second chance that they'd be stupid to not try and seize if that's what they're aiming for.
I'll declare my bias by saying that I'm a SNP supporter and voter. Last election we won 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland. Most of our seats have bomb proof majorities i.e more than 5000 votes, in some cases 10,000 vote majorities. We have a large activist base, lots of people ready to volunteer and put in the hard yards of a election campaign, and we have generous backers, so the money situation is good.
The opposition parties are on the run up here, and one of their MPs was declared a liar by high court judges, which is obviously a serious thing. Our vote will hold up, no question.
On another note, I see the US politics thread is closed, so if any American dakka members are visiting, and you're more than welcome, and if you don't know the nuts and bolts of British politics, I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: My views on the Conservative party are well known on these boards, and it goes without saying that I've had little good to say about May over the years. First as Home Secretary, and now as PM.
None the less, I always saw her as reliable. Reliably dull and predictable, but reliable none the less.
Today's announcement is something I thought I'd never see: May going kamikaze! WTF!
What does she gain from this?
When and it is when, Labour get defeated, Corbyn is out the door. I thought the Tory plan was to keep him Labour leader as long as possible.
Weasel Farron and the fib dems will try and re-run June 23rd and probably pick up a few more seats. So we have 5 years of fib dem pontification to look forward too from those useless
Labour are already rock bottom, so there's little gains to be made there.
The boundary changes don't kick in til 2020, and seeing as they favour the Tories anyway, she could have waited until 2020.
The SNP will run this GE as a de facto Scottish independence referendum
And for all the talk of a mandate for Brexit, the HoC voted overwhelmingly in favour of passing Article 50...
All in all, it's a strange decision...
I agree. It's a very strange decision. May's statement:-
"So I have a simple challenge to the opposition parties, you have criticised the government's vision for Brexit, you have challenged our objectives, you have threatened to block the legislation we put before Parliament.
"This is your moment to show you mean it, to show you are not opposing the government for the sake of it, to show that you do not treat politics as a game.
"Let us tomorrow vote for an election, let us put forward our plans for Brexit and our alternative programmes for government and then let the people decide.
"And the decision facing the country will be all about leadership. It will be a choice between strong and stable leadership in the national interest, with me as your prime minister, or weak and unstable coalition government, led by Jeremy Corbyn, propped up by the Liberal Democrats, who want to reopen the divisions of the referendum, and Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.
She told ITV:-
Before Easter I spent a few days walking in Wales with my husband, thought about this long and hard and came to the decision that to provide that stability and certainty for the future that this was the way to do it, to have an election.
Weird as it stands, I kind of read this as a crisis of confidence on her part. She's been taking such a slugging for pushing through with the results of a referendum she didn't call, I think it may well have gotten through to her. Despite all the derogatory comments about 'Empress May', it would appear that she doesn't actually want to push the country in a direction it hasn't shown itself to be firmly behind. So she's calling for an endorsement of both her, and the policy of Brexit as a way of deciding this democratically and ending it once and for all.
Which is, bizarely enough, what the Lib Dems and a lot of remainers have been calling for, because it'll be their chance to try and turn it around. But if they lose here, then they more or less have to concede that they're done. Fair's fair. Let the games commence.
But then the question is: Why couldn't she have done this before triggering Article 50?
Really, the only plausible reason that she has picked now is because she thinks the conservatives can win. It isn't at all about ensuring that the british people get a say, it's about ensuring that the Tories get more time in power. If Brexit turns out to be a complete clusterfeth and nobody gets what they hoped for (and looking at who we've got in charge, I think this is likely) then the Tories would be demolished in 2020. This way they could hold on until 2022, by which point things may be starting to get better after the crash of Brexit in 2019.
A Town Called Malus wrote: But then the question is: Why couldn't she have done this before triggering Article 50?
Note the chronology. She decided to hold the election after that. Which reinforces the idea that this is a snap decision of hers that's been bubbling around in her head and troubling her for a while now.
Weird as it stands, I kind of read this as a crisis of confidence on her part. She's been taking such a slugging for pushing through with the results of a referendum she didn't call, I think it may well have gotten through to her. Despite all the derogatory comments about 'Empress May', it would appear that she doesn't actually want to push the country in a direction it hasn't shown itself to be firmly behind. So she's calling for an endorsement of both her, and the policy of Brexit as a way of deciding this democratically and ending it once and for all.
Which is, bizarely enough, what the Lib Dems and a lot of remainers have been calling for, because it'll be their chance to try and turn it around. But if they lose here, then they more or less have to concede that they're done. Fair's fair. Let the games commence.
As I've said many a time, Middle England, which actually turns out and votes, will never pick Corbyn over May. Never. So the Tory victory is not in doubt. The problem is the Remainders rallying behind Farron, and of course, if the SNP stand fast in Scotland, that's another cast iron mandate for them to push on with indy referendum 2.0.
Scotland's only Tory MP has a slim majority of 798 votes. 2000 odd people voted Green party last time in that constituency. The Greens support Scottish independence. Can you see where this is going?
Also, as other people have pointed out, there are two more problems:
1. The council elections are overshadowed.
2.What the feth happens to the electoral fraud investigations from 2 years ago? The CPs will not want to be seen to interfere in the democratic process, so candidates under investigation will essentially, get off scot-free.
How well do you think the lib dems will do? They'll probably position themselves as the party of undoing Brexit. There could be a lot of votes to be had there.
Future War Cultist wrote: How well do you think the lib dems will do? They'll probably position themselves as the party of undoing Brexit. There could be a lot of votes to be had there.
Personally, I think they'll pick up a few seats here and there. Seeing as they're rock bottom, I suppose the only way is up. I think they'll lose their only seat in Scotland because of the Frenchagte scandal, and the fact that the MP concerned was branded a liar by high court judges, and tried to ruin 4 of his constituents who brought the case to court. So local factors will count against him IMO.
At any rate, I think the country has accepted article 50, wants to get on with it, and the Lib Dem comeback based on the Remain vote might be a damp squib.
The GE turnout won't match the referendum, so the committed voters who turn out are likely to be a majority of old people, who usually vote Conservative.
Future War Cultist wrote: How well do you think the lib dems will do? They'll probably position themselves as the party of undoing Brexit. There could be a lot of votes to be had there.
I hope they do well and pull enough pro-EU conservatives away to remove (or at least lessen) the Conservative majority. If the conservatives lose their majority it would be very interesting. They couldn't go into coalition with the LIbDems again considering their polar opposite stances on Brexit, same with the Greens and SNP. But then Labour have also shut themselves off from those coalitions with their official backing of Brexit, so we could see the Tories trying to carry on with a non-majority government, which would hugely weaken their ability to pass legislation in parliament and have the complete opposite effect of what they hoped this election would have when it comes to unifying Parliament behind Brexit.
Also, apparently it has been announced that there will be no television debates this election.
Hardly surprising considering she isn't even capable of putting a good performance in PMQs. TV channels should organise debates anyway. Invite the Tories and then it is up to them if they turn up. If they don't they can just have an understudy read out relevant sections of their manifesto in response to questions.
At any rate, I look forward to being stuck in front of a TV at 3am on June 9th, high on diet coca cola, and surrounded by empty bags of Walkers' crisps
And John Curtice will be getting a haircut soon for his general election night TV appearance. He gets a haircut every 5 years
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whembly wrote: I thought ya'll argued that post-article 50 triggering, the reasonable thing would be to have a snap election.
So that ya'll have a chance to get your "peeps" in to negotiate the Brexit?
Or, is this some ploy for May's party to increase their majority?
This is British elections whembly. A SIX WEEK campaign and not that 2 year circus you guys go for.
Plus, our parties only spend £100,000. Not the billions of dollars you guys throw at an election. Get with the system.
To answer your questions, this is the Conservative party putting party interest before the nation. Again!
Parliament overwhelmingly voted for article 50. She doesn't need a majority.
whembly wrote: I thought ya'll argued that post-article 50 triggering, the reasonable thing would be to have a snap election.
So that ya'll have a chance to get your "peeps" in to negotiate the Brexit?
Or, is this some ploy for May's party to increase their majority?
I wanted an election prior to enacting A50 as, even if a pro-EU government were elected, there is no guarantee we can cancel A50.
As for this being a ploy, basically nothing has changed since May was emphatically saying that there should be no election until 2020 except for the Tories gaining a big lead over Labour in polls. Do the maths
whembly wrote: I thought ya'll argued that post-article 50 triggering, the reasonable thing would be to have a snap election.
So that ya'll have a chance to get your "peeps" in to negotiate the Brexit?
Or, is this some ploy for May's party to increase their majority?
I wanted an election prior to enacting A50 as, even if a pro-EU government were elected, there is no guarantee we can cancel A50.
As for this being a ploy, basically nothing has changed since May was emphatically saying that there should be no election until 2020 except for the Tories gaining a big lead over Labour in polls. Do the maths
For weeks, May has been saying that now is not the time for another Scottish independence referendum, and now this massive U-turn on a GE.
The SNP will be having a right laugh at May, and will make capital from the U-turn.
Parliament overwhelmingly voted for article 50. She doesn't need a majority.
This yet another reason why there should have been an election prior to enacting A50. With the way it was done, there was no chance for people who voted to Remain to get MPs into parliament who represented their views, especially with the Tories and Labour using the whip to vote in favour.
So even if there had been a swing towards remain after the referendum, it would not be represented in parliament as all of the parties were still basing their stances on the referendum result.
Parliament overwhelmingly voted for article 50. She doesn't need a majority.
This yet another reason why there should have been an election prior to enacting A50. With the way it was done, there was no chance for people who voted to Remain to get MPs into parliament who represented their views, especially with the Tories and Labour using the whip to vote in favour.
So even if there had been a swing towards remain after the referendum, it would not be represented in parliament as all of the parties were still basing their stances on the referendum result.
You're aware A50 could theoretically be withdrawn? If remainers care enough to catapult the lib dems into power, Brexit will likely go kaput.
Parliament overwhelmingly voted for article 50. She doesn't need a majority.
This yet another reason why there should have been an election prior to enacting A50. With the way it was done, there was no chance for people who voted to Remain to get MPs into parliament who represented their views, especially with the Tories and Labour using the whip to vote in favour.
So even if there had been a swing towards remain after the referendum, it would not be represented in parliament as all of the parties were still basing their stances on the referendum result.
You're aware A50 could theoretically be withdrawn? If remainers care enough to catapult the lib dems into power, Brexit will likely go kaput.
The word to emphasise there is theoretically. I would rather certainty about the possibility of retreat before committing to a path.
Parliament overwhelmingly voted for article 50. She doesn't need a majority.
This yet another reason why there should have been an election prior to enacting A50. With the way it was done, there was no chance for people who voted to Remain to get MPs into parliament who represented their views, especially with the Tories and Labour using the whip to vote in favour.
So even if there had been a swing towards remain after the referendum, it would not be represented in parliament as all of the parties were still basing their stances on the referendum result.
You're aware A50 could theoretically be withdrawn? If remainers care enough to catapult the lib dems into power, Brexit will likely go kaput.
Nah, the Brexit ship has sailed, and the Lib Dem torpedoes will harmlessly bounce off the hull.
A lot of people are overlooking party finances and base.
The SNP are well placed for money and activists. The Tories will probably get a dodgy donor throwing them some cash. Plus they can count on Middle England.
Labour have the activists but not the money. The Lib Dems are struggling in both areas.
Parliament overwhelmingly voted for article 50. She doesn't need a majority.
This yet another reason why there should have been an election prior to enacting A50. With the way it was done, there was no chance for people who voted to Remain to get MPs into parliament who represented their views, especially with the Tories and Labour using the whip to vote in favour.
So even if there had been a swing towards remain after the referendum, it would not be represented in parliament as all of the parties were still basing their stances on the referendum result.
You're aware A50 could theoretically be withdrawn? If remainers care enough to catapult the lib dems into power, Brexit will likely go kaput.
Nah, the Brexit ship has sailed, and the Lib Dem torpedoes will harmlessly bounce off the hull.
A lot of people are overlooking party finances and base.
The SNP are well placed for money and activists. The Tories will probably get a dodgy donor throwing them some cash. Plus they can count on Middle England.
Labour have the activists but not the money. The Lib Dems are struggling in both areas.
Which is probably another reason the Tories don't want TV debates. TV debates would give wider exposure to other parties and their policies. Better for the Tories to just outspend them with dodgy battle buses and way more adverts.
Parliament overwhelmingly voted for article 50. She doesn't need a majority.
This yet another reason why there should have been an election prior to enacting A50. With the way it was done, there was no chance for people who voted to Remain to get MPs into parliament who represented their views, especially with the Tories and Labour using the whip to vote in favour.
So even if there had been a swing towards remain after the referendum, it would not be represented in parliament as all of the parties were still basing their stances on the referendum result.
You're aware A50 could theoretically be withdrawn? If remainers care enough to catapult the lib dems into power, Brexit will likely go kaput.
Nah, the Brexit ship has sailed, and the Lib Dem torpedoes will harmlessly bounce off the hull.
A lot of people are overlooking party finances and base.
The SNP are well placed for money and activists. The Tories will probably get a dodgy donor throwing them some cash. Plus they can count on Middle England.
Labour have the activists but not the money. The Lib Dems are struggling in both areas.
Which is probably another reason the Tories don't want TV debates. TV debates would give wider exposure to other parties and their policies. Better for the Tories to just outspend them with dodgy battle buses and way more adverts.
A statement from the CPS has just said that the investigations will continue into 2015 election expenses, irrespective of what is happening on June 8th, so yeah, you're right. The last thing the Tories need is election fraud being flagged up in a debate watched by millions.
So we have a Remainer, in May, leading her party in a leave campaign against the Leaver, Corbyn, leading his party in a remain campaign then right ?
..and people say politics isn't confusing ?
One almost feels sorry for those Russian hackers.
Not only have they suddenly had a deadline thrust upon them but they'll still have to decide which party will do more damage to the UK.
There'd been some speculation about May's health, apparently, but one hopes/assumes this is not related.
Yet another chance for we, the public, to feth ourselves deeper and more painfully than ever before.
It's almost as if they want to get an election out of the way before the consequences of Brexit start to become apparent......
It makes sense to me. Invoke Article 50, because that's what the referendum and parliament said.
However, the question of what kind of Brexit, hard, soft, what do people most care about, is something that's never really been answered.
And that sort of question, with all its nuances and differing priorities and decisions can do with a general election to decide what particular aspect Brexit is going for.
Compel wrote: It makes sense to me. Invoke Article 50, because that's what the referendum and parliament said.
However, the question of what kind of Brexit, hard, soft, what do people most care about, is something that's never really been answered.
And that sort of question, with all its nuances and differing priorities and decisions can do with a general election to decide what particular aspect Brexit is going for.
That was my initial read as well...
Question, with these snap elections, does that reset the "5-year" term?
As I understand it, there's provision in the 5 year term setup for this.
Essentially the MPs (tomorrow?) make a vote, determining whether there's "No Confidence" in the Government. This requires 75%, so is a pretty difficult thing to do - and will require a number of MPs agreeing to this from various parties.
At which point, if agreed, on June 9th, a new 5 year term will start.
If that 75% threshold DOESN'T happen, presumably things will just continue as it was, and we'll have Brexit May style (whether people personally agree with that or not).
Before this 5 year term, you didn't need that 'no confidence' vote, and people could just declare an election whenever, according to whatever tides is turning that day.
This is just my own personal understanding though, I'm not a political analyst.
Before Easter I spent a few days walking in Wales with my husband, thought about this long and hard and came to the decision that to provide that stability and certainty for the future that this was the way to do it, to have an election.
Bizarrely though she came out on Easter Monday saying that the Country was coming together after Brexit and then a few days later she is saying the country is too divided over the issue... Doesn't really add up.
Message to all
DON'T VOTE FOR LYING TORIES AND DARTH MAY!
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Future War Cultist wrote: How well do you think the lib dems will do? They'll probably position themselves as the party of undoing Brexit. There could be a lot of votes to be had there.
There's still an awful lot of anger over the Brexit debate and that a lot of populace were lied to get a outcome that a few Tories thought they'd benefit from. Not even Boris thought he'd win, but used it as a political gambit to further his career. For a lot of people they view it as a bit of a smash and grab in football terms especially for the younger generation who, for many, view Brexit as old grumblers wrenching a future away from them that they weren't given.
A real question is how many of those that didn't want to leave the EU and didn't vote realise that this is an opportunity to mitigate some of the massive damage the Tories will inevitably inflict on the Country.
May has called the election because this is her best chance to get a public mandate and a large majority for 5 years of conservative rule.
It's pretty obvious that Labour are going to collapse. UKIP will fall apart and a lot of their natural voters will vote Tory. The SNP will of course win Scotland and nothing outside. The pro-Brexit Tories will line up behind May and she will get most of the anti-Brexit Tories because power.
The best hope for any kind of opposition is the LDP, who probably will make some good gains in both Labour and Conservative marginal constituencies where there is a strong Remain vote (e.g Richmond-on-Thames.) Even so, I don't see them getting into position of being the second largest party.
As far as one can tell from a bit of websearching the boundary commission has not finished its work so we'll be using the current boundaries/seats right ?
reds8n wrote: As far as one can tell from a bit of websearching the boundary commission has not finished its work so we'll be using the current boundaries/seats right ?
Yes there won't be time to finish the changes and to get proper debate through parliament before they close for the election. This is another reason not to want a huge Tory majority - it means almost certainly a big shake up in the boundaries that will even more favour the Tory party.
As for Labour I see that MPs are now leaving before the election gets underway....
Compel wrote: Essentially the MPs (tomorrow?) make a vote, determining whether there's "No Confidence" in the Government. This requires 75%, so is a pretty difficult thing to do - and will require a number of MPs agreeing to this from various parties.
Not quite. You are correct that the fixed term prevents Empress May from doing whatever she wants, whenever she wants (something that must really rankle with her), but there are other ways to call a general election. A vote of no confidence is one possible way of getting it done, but it wouldn't look great. A no confidence vote is bad for the reputation. May is going to submit a bill asking that parliament be dissolved. Should that not go through then there is the option of going for no confidence.
Compel wrote: At which point, if agreed, on June 9th, a new 5 year term will start.
Before this 5 year term, you didn't need that 'no confidence' vote, and people could just declare an election whenever, according to whatever tides is turning that day.
Which is why May's flip, from not wanting to call a general election to recognising how bad Labour's condition currently is and suddenly wanting one, is such cowardly opportunism that I have no polite words to call her.
Kilkrazy wrote: May has called the election because this is her best chance to get a public mandate and a large majority for 5 years of conservative rule.
It's pretty obvious that Labour are going to collapse. UKIP will fall apart and a lot of their natural voters will vote Tory. The SNP will of course win Scotland and nothing outside. The pro-Brexit Tories will line up behind May and she will get most of the anti-Brexit Tories because power.
The best hope for any kind of opposition is the LDP, who probably will make some good gains in both Labour and Conservative marginal constituencies where there is a strong Remain vote (e.g Richmond-on-Thames.) Even so, I don't see them getting into position of being the second largest party.
Our best hope is that Labour don't vent enough seats that Lib Dems can't regain elsewhere (such as in London). We only need a hung parliament to ensure that proper debate and compromise is had rather than ultra right bigotry taking over and damning the country for a generation.
Which is why May's flip, from not wanting to call a general election to recognising how bad Labour's condition currently is and suddenly wanting one, is such cowardly opportunism that I have no polite words to call her.
Agreed, but there is one flip side. If Labour do really badly then they will have no choice but to rid themselves of Corbyn. Of course who they replace him with is another question (I vote for Tony Blair.... )
Kilkrazy wrote: May has called the election because this is her best chance to get a public mandate and a large majority for 5 years of conservative rule.
It's pretty obvious that Labour are going to collapse. UKIP will fall apart and a lot of their natural voters will vote Tory. The SNP will of course win Scotland and nothing outside. The pro-Brexit Tories will line up behind May and she will get most of the anti-Brexit Tories because power.
The best hope for any kind of opposition is the LDP, who probably will make some good gains in both Labour and Conservative marginal constituencies where there is a strong Remain vote (e.g Richmond-on-Thames.) Even so, I don't see them getting into position of being the second largest party.
Our best hope is that Labour don't vent enough seats that Lib Dems can't regain elsewhere (such as in London). We only need a hung parliament to ensure that proper debate and compromise is had rather than ultra right bigotry taking over and damning the country for a generation.
Which is why May's flip, from not wanting to call a general election to recognising how bad Labour's condition currently is and suddenly wanting one, is such cowardly opportunism that I have no polite words to call her.
Agreed, but there is one flip side. If Labour do really badly then they will have no choice but to rid themselves of Corbyn. Of course who they replace him with is another question (I vote for Tony Blair.... )
With Corbyn if they do not get act together they will lose badly the Labour party will take a torpedo and take on alot of water.
The lib Dems are too weak to manage much.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Just need the one bus with any old bollocks written on it if the referendum is anything go by.
Personally, I'm hoping to see Ed's tombstones wheeled out again!
On a serious note, which dodgy donor will fund the Tories this time around?
By all accounts, every man and his dog got a knighthood or an MBE when Dave resigned, so who's left for them to persuade with a knighthood for some cash?
I suspect we'll find out in Private Eye 18 months down the line, but by that time, everybody will have lost interest.
Automatically Appended Next Post: My big fear is what is going to happen to the council elections in 4 weeks' time?
The bread and butter stuff they deal with is probably more important than grandstanding about Syria or North Korea, but turnout is always low for them, and is likely to be lower as they will be overshadowed by this GE.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Just need the one bus with any old bollocks written on it if the referendum is anything go by.
Personally, I'm hoping to see Ed's tombstones wheeled out again!
On a serious note, which dodgy donor will fund the Tories this time around?
By all accounts, every man and his dog got a knighthood or an MBE when Dave resigned, so who's left for them to persuade with a knighthood for some cash?
I suspect we'll find out in Private Eye 18 months down the line, but by that time, everybody will have lost interest.
Automatically Appended Next Post: My big fear is what is going to happen to the council elections in 4 weeks' time?
The bread and butter stuff they deal with is probably more important than grandstanding about Syria or North Korea, but turnout is always low for them, and is likely to be lower as they will be overshadowed by this GE.
And that's a damn shame in my book.
True but if true. Can we not send foreign Aid to NK?
Umm its only gonna get spent on wine, cheese of missile tests.
Kilkrazy wrote: It's pretty obvious that Labour are going to collapse. UKIP will fall apart and a lot of their natural voters will vote Tory. The SNP will of course win Scotland and nothing outside.
See, this is I think is a massive opportunity for the SNP.
They are perfectly placed to become THE opposition. If Labour collapses, thats going to leave a political vacuum. There are going to be plenty of left leaning people across England crying out for a new left wing party to rally behind. The SNP could be that party, if they would only expand their horizons and seek more broad support in England and Wales. And yes, I do appreciate the irony in suggesting that a Nationalist Party that seeks independence should campaign for support in a country it wants to secede from.
If they do go ahead with this Indy Ref 2.0, and still lose once again, then they need to accept defeat, abandon that goal and stop sniping and whining from the sidelines. They should step up and engage fully in the UK. If you can't leave it, change it. If the Tories truly are as bad as people in this thread like to suggest, then another 5 years of unfettered Tory government with a shrivelled husk of a Labour opposition will be the perfect opportunity for a new Left Wing party to ruse from Labour's ashes.
See, this is I think is a massive opportunity for the SNP.
They are perfectly placed to become THE opposition. If Labour collapses, thats going to leave a political vacuum. There are going to be plenty of left leaning people across England crying out for a new left wing party to rally behind. The SNP could be that party, if they would only expand their horizons and seek more broad support in England and Wales. And yes, I do appreciate the irony in suggesting that a Nationalist Party that seeks independence should campaign for support in a country it wants to secede from.
I don't think it would be that ironic. It could serve to demonstrate that there are portions of the populace outside Scotland who would support Scottish independence. It's easy for the Tories to ignore the SNP and their calls of independence when they're limited to the 50 odd seats of Scotland but if they start to get gains in other parts of the UK?
See, this is I think is a massive opportunity for the SNP.
They are perfectly placed to become THE opposition. If Labour collapses, thats going to leave a political vacuum. There are going to be plenty of left leaning people across England crying out for a new left wing party to rally behind. The SNP could be that party, if they would only expand their horizons and seek more broad support in England and Wales. And yes, I do appreciate the irony in suggesting that a Nationalist Party that seeks independence should campaign for support in a country it wants to secede from.
I don't think it would be that ironic. It could serve to demonstrate that there are portions of the populace outside Scotland who would support Scottish independence. It's easy for the Tories to ignore the SNP and their calls of independence when they're limited to the 50 odd seats of Scotland but if they start to get gains in other parts of the UK?
You're completely missing the point. I'm suggesting that left leaning voters in england might vote for the SNP not in support of Scottish independence, but because they genuinely like the SNPs policies and principles (besides independence) and want the SNP to represent them not in holyrood, but in Westminster.
I'm suggesting that if they fail to achieve their raison d'être, (Scottish independence) after not one but TWO referendums, then they should abandon that raison d'être in favour of a new one: Rebranding themselves as Labours spiritual successor not just in Scotland but in England and wales too , and seeking to become a British party, not just a Scottish one.
That is a thing. There's a lot of people who vote SNP in Scotland (especially because of the transferable vote thing), who don't want Scottish independence but are very supportive of their local SNP candidates.
Speaking generally and inspecifically.
People don't vote Tory, because they're rich scumbag lawyers and toffs from old money.
People don't vote Labour, because they're rich scumbag pawns of union bosses that have bribed their way to power.
People don't vote lib-dem because their airie fairy dreamer types who don't know what real life actually is like.
Meanwhile, the SNP guy, is the guy you see walking his dog down the park, who always stops for a chat, who is dealing with the same problems you are, whose kid is just out of drug rehab and wants to do right by their community.
And that's what they vote for, potentially irrespective of their opinions on independence or not.
...almost a full time job keeping that going eh ?
