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UK PoliGAF |OT2| - We Blue Ourselves

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K

kmag

Member
Nicktendo86 said:
So now the major conferences are now over (except for the lib dems of course, lol) I am pretty much convinced that the Tories will get above 40% at the next election. Cameron is clearly land grabbing the vacated centre left ground that Labour has left behind.

I'm also pretty sure that Ruth Davidson will have a Westminster seat before long and will be in the cabinet.
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She better pack her bags and cosy in in a shire. Because unless she's learned the backwards ways of borders farming she's got shit all chance of getting a Westminster seat up here.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
Uzzy said:
Cameron's rhetoric is very positive, and I personally think he's quite liberal in many regards, at least for a Conservative. It would be great if he could pull the rest of the Conservative party with him in a more leftward direction.

But sadly, the rhetoric from other senior figures within the Conservative party, as well as their record, doesn't exactly speak of a more liberal, moderate, centrist position. IDS, May and even Hunt had the most appaling things to say this conference, and are putting forward some real hard right policies. The 'homeowning' revolution they promise sounds great, but building some 200,000 homes that'll cost at least £250,000 won't help the millions of people who need far more affordable homes. Devolving business rates sounds good, but councils can only cut them, they have to get approval from local businesses to raise them, which will only hammer local governments budget's even further. Then there's the whole mess with cutting working tax credit for the poorest while saying they're for helping the working poor.

If Cameron's policies matched his rhetoric, that'd be great. But so far all the Tories have done are talk about how they're in the middle ground while announcing rather right wing policies.
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Well yeah. Cameron is the moderate face to hide the most viciously right wing government in recent British history.
 
M

Mr. Sam

Member
It was Osborne who claimed the Tories were making a run for the middle ground - but their policies sure as shit don't reflect that.
 
R

RedShift

Member
I'm more concerned that the Prime Minister is inviting someone who he claims hates Britain and is a serious threat to national security onto the Privy Council.

Either he doesn't care about protecting state secrets from Britain's enemies or he's just lying for political gain. I wonder which.
 
K

kitch9

Banned
IpKaiFung said:
Just want to address this point, the annual earnings of the majority of households claiming tax credits is below the annual threshold before income tax is collected. So unless VAT and NICs are also going to be adjusted (they aren't) it's a very well spun but dishonest point.
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Currently, maybe, hence the National Living Wage, another left minded policy that the Conservatives are pushing that we are yet to see how it will pan out. There's a lot with blinkers on who seem to have forgot this part of their plan is a thing.
 
K

kmag

Member
kitch9 said:
Currently, maybe, hence the National Living Wage, another left minded policy that the Conservatives are pushing that we are yet to see how it will pan out. There's a lot with blinkers on who seem to have forgot this part of their plan is a thing.
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The 'living' wage is nowhere near making the difference and it's lagged for 4 years. Tax credit cuts come in in full in April 2016, the 'living' wage of £9 (and is only for over 25's continuing a theme from the Tories that people under 25 don't exist) which doesn't come anywhere near making the difference in 2020. There is an interim rise to £7.20 next April, but again does not come anywhere near making up the difference.

The 'living' wage is a misnomer and purposefully so as it's an attempt to associate itself with the Living Wage as proposed by the Living Wage Foundation the issue is that the real Living wage is far higher than the National Living Wage as proposed by the Tories is, as the resolution foundation (currently ran by David Willetts who was a Tory Minister under Cameron in case you think the IFS is too left leaning or something) points out.

The title of the new policy – the National Living Wage – adds significant confusion to what was already a muddled debate[2] on the purpose and definitions of the various rates. The NLW is a large increase in the legal wage floor, a role that is currently played by the NMW.
The Living Wage as we know it is overseen by the Living Wage Foundation and has a very different logic underlying it. The Living Wage is calculated based on the public’s perception of what is needed for a minimum acceptable standard of living for different family types. It is a voluntary wage rate that employers are encouraged to pay to help workers and families achieve that standard, and currently stands at £7.85 outside London and £9.15 in London. It is worth emphasising that £7.85 represents an average of what is necessary across different family types. As an example, a single parent supporting two children will require a much higher wage in order to reach that minimum acceptable standard compared with a childless couple.
Crucially, the Living Wage is also calculated to take account of existing in-work support. Without this, the level of the Living Wage would need to rise.
For instance, the London Living Wage is currently £9.15. If in-work support were abolished, it would rise to £11.65.[3] None of this is reflected in the new NLW. Indeed it is a misnomer to label it a ‘Living Wage’. The government’s proposed NLW is in fact a minimum wage “premium” for those aged 25 and over (as it is accurately described in the Budget document).
Another potential source of confusion is the different months in which the NMW for 21-24s (October) and NLW (April) are increased.

In assessing the overall impact of the NLW, the earnings boost needs to be weighed against the major cuts to working-age support that were also announced at the Budget. For many low to middle income families the extra earnings they receive will be greatly outweighed by the hit to their in-work support. Put simply, the £4 billion wage boost implied by the NLW will not compensate for the £12 billion cut to benefits.
Moreover, the patterns of losses (and gains) play out very differently by household type. Those not on tax credits should gain, for example a single person working full time on the current NMW can expect to be better off to the tune of more than £2,000 come 2020. In contrast, a couple with three children, both earning the NMW, with one working full-time and the other part-time, could be £250 worse off as a result of cuts and freezes in in-work support. And for those who are already earning more than the NLW but with low weekly wages, the squeeze is even tighter. A single parent of one child, working part-time on £9.35, is set to see their annual income fall by £1,000.


If the aim of these reforms is to reward working but low-earning families, we can’t overlook the far-reaching impact of the cuts and freezes to tax credits and benefits.
The NLW isn’t as effectively targeted at low-income households as in-work support. Many of today’s NMW-earners are in households in the top half of the income distribution. To protect the living standards of those at the bottom, a rising wage floor must be a complement to, not a substitute for, in-work support.
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The idea that whatever the rhetoric is that this Tory government is somehow coming out with left leaning or centralist policies is bullshit, we're seeing one of the biggest redistriibutions rightwards ever.
 
K

kitch9

Banned
kmag said:
The 'living' wage is nowhere near making the difference and it's lagged for 4 years. Tax credit cuts come in in full in April 2016, the 'living' wage of £9 (and is only for over 25's continuing a theme from the Tories that people under 25 don't exist) which doesn't come anywhere near making the difference in 2020. There is an interim rise to £7.20 next April, but again does not come anywhere near making up the difference.

The 'living' wage is a misnomer and purposefully so as it's an attempt to associate itself with the Living Wage as proposed by the Living Wage Foundation the issue is that the real Living wage is far higher than the National Living Wage as proposed by the Tories is, as the resolution foundation (currently ran by David Willetts who was a Tory Minister under Cameron in case you think the IFS is too left leaning or something) points out.




The idea that whatever the rhetoric is that this Tory government is somehow coming out with left leaning or centralist policies is bullshit, we're seeing one of the biggest redistriibutions rightwards ever.
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I'd love to know how as it all seems to be going the other way for me and everyone else I know running businesses. I'm not talking a bit of a tax rise for me, it's huge! They've raised the threshold which saves me a few hundred quid then clobbered the dividend earnings for a few thousand! With regards the National Living Wage, I'm going to reserve judgement until I see how it pans out.

I grew up in the eighties in a mining town so I know what hard times can be like, might be rose tinted glasses but nowadays hardship isn't particularly hard. Can't remember seeing kids going to school for a shower in hot water with shoes battered falling off their feet like used to be common back then, I'm not saying that we should go back to that in the welfare system but things definitely seem a lot better than they used to be, even with the proliferation of social media ensuring that we all know about every specific particular case of hardship these days.
 
R

ruttyboy

Member
kitch9 said:
I'd love to know how as it all seems to be going the other way for me and everyone else I know running businesses. I'm not talking a bit of a tax rise for me, it's huge! They've raised the threshold which saves me a few hundred quid then clobbered the dividends for a few thousand!
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Unlucky, guess you're in the 2% ;-)
 
K

kitch9

Banned
godelsmetric said:
So why are you cheering on the party that did that in the first place and wants to do the same thing again?
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If we had welfare then like we had now it wouldn't have been as bad as it was is my point. The debate over what happened and who's fault it was is one that I don't think needs to be had again.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
kitch9 said:
If we had welfare then like we had now it wouldn't have been as bad as it was is my point. The debate over what happened and who's fault it was is one that I don't think needs to be had again.
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I mean, it's not like there's much of a debate over what happened and whose fault it was.
 
I

It's Reyn Time!

Member
godelsmetric said:
Because the same party who was in power then is in power now and they have exactly the same goals. Those who don't learn from history, etc. etc.
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But that was in the past, stop living in the past. Things are different now because I don't see it on my street. And you can't believe the lefty media, and social media just highlights individual stories, not the whole picture. Sure, it's a whole lot of individual stories, but they're just lefty loons.

Dude, doesn't matter how loudly you 'ring that bell', he will never, ever hear it because he doesn't want to.
 
K

kitch9

Banned
It's Reyn Time! said:
But that was in the past, stop living in the past. Things are different now because I don't see it on my street. And you can't believe the lefty media, and social media just highlights individual stories, not the whole picture. Sure, it's a whole lot of individual stories, but they're just lefty loons.

Dude, doesn't matter how loudly you 'ring that bell', he will never, ever hear it because he doesn't want to.
Click to expand...

You can't believe social media from any direction, sorry. There's always an agenda. You should know I've spent the last decade working on social housing estates all over the North of the UK as well as new housing estates that have large percentage social housing on them.

I'm not basing anything on just my street in the slightest.

Also the seventies and eighties were a complete nightmare for productivity in the UK, the rest of the world was marching on whilst the unions were wasting millions of working hours striking over stuff like the wrong bog paper in the toilets. I digress, that is a particularly complex debate I really can't be arsed with.
 
phisheep

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
godelsmetric said:
I mean, it's not like there's much of a debate over what happened and whose fault it was.
Click to expand...

Well, actually there is. It isn't anywhere near so simple as Tory government decided to shut all the mines out of whim caprice and sheer nastiness.

Massive overcapacity and overseas competition had a great deal to do with it - and you do know I hope that more mines were closed under Labour than under Conservatives? Industrial capacity was an enormous problem all round Europe during post-war rebuilding, and the causes are probably as many and as varied as the causes of WWI, and as little reduceable to soundbites - and this was in everything: mines, heavy industry, car manufacture, fibres, cloth etc etc (agriculture came later).

I had the privilege of meeting Sir Bob Haslam once - one of the very few people to rise from the very bottom to the very top of an industry (started as a pit boy in the days we still had pit boys), and he had a tough old job trying to manage the terminal decline of an entire industry - and sure as hell he was not motivated by the proverbial nasty streak.
 
K

kitch9

Banned
phisheep said:
Well, actually there is. It isn't anywhere near so simple as Tory government decided to shut all the mines out of whim caprice and sheer nastiness.

Massive overcapacity and overseas competition had a great deal to do with it - and you do know I hope that more mines were closed under Labour than under Conservatives? Industrial capacity was an enormous problem all round Europe during post-war rebuilding, and the causes are probably as many and as varied as the causes of WWI, and as little reduceable to soundbites - and this was in everything: mines, heavy industry, car manufacture, fibres, cloth etc etc (agriculture came later).

I had the privilege of meeting Sir Bob Haslam once - one of the very few people to rise from the very bottom to the very top of an industry (started as a pit boy in the days we still had pit boys), and he had a tough old job trying to manage the terminal decline of an entire industry - and sure as hell he was not motivated by the proverbial nasty streak.
Click to expand...

Some of the stuff that was happening down those mines at the demand of the unions was insane looking back.
 
PJV3

PJV3

Member
kitch9 said:
You can't believe social media from any direction, sorry. You should know I've spent the last decade working on social housing estates all over the North of the UK as well as new housing estates that have large percentage social housing on them.

I'm not basing anything on just my street in the slightest.

Also the seventies and eighties were a complete nightmare for productivity in the UK, the rest of the world was marching on whilst the unions were wasting millions of working hours striking over stuff like the wrong bog paper in the toilets. I digress, that is a particularly complex debate I really can't be arsed with.
Click to expand...

The 70s is complicated period, yes unions were out of control at a local level, but we had plenty of shit management as well.
 
K

kitch9

Banned
PJV3 said:
The 70s is complicated period, yes unions were out of control at a local level, but we had plenty of shit management as well.
Click to expand...

Miners were digging for months to get to coal faces a couple of hundred yards in size using slow antiquated and dangerous machines that the unions refused to allow to be upgraded. Meanwhile, thousands of homes on the surface were cracking heavily and sinking into the ground as they were effectively sat on a massive worms nest of pointless tunnels snaking everywhere.

Nothing could be done about it, we needed coal at any cost and the unions knew it.

Until Thatcher...
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
phisheep said:
Well, actually there is. It isn't anywhere near so simple as Tory government decided to shut all the mines out of whim caprice and sheer nastiness.

Massive overcapacity and overseas competition had a great deal to do with it - and you do know I hope that more mines were closed under Labour than under Conservatives? Industrial capacity was an enormous problem all round Europe during post-war rebuilding, and the causes are probably as many and as varied as the causes of WWI, and as little reduceable to soundbites - and this was in everything: mines, heavy industry, car manufacture, fibres, cloth etc etc (agriculture came later).

I had the privilege of meeting Sir Bob Haslam once - one of the very few people to rise from the very bottom to the very top of an industry (started as a pit boy in the days we still had pit boys), and he had a tough old job trying to manage the terminal decline of an entire industry - and sure as hell he was not motivated by the proverbial nasty streak.
Click to expand...

Okay, but to accept the Tory line on why the 80s happened like they did is like saying 'Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, therefore the Iraq invasion was a justified response'.
 
phisheep

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
godelsmetric said:
Well you're cheering on the same lot now, which suggests that whatever happened in the 80s you don't think it was a particularly bad thing.
Click to expand...

Sounds to me that is exactly what you are doing too?

That aside, the Conservative party now isn't "the same lot" as it was in the 1980s - not by a long way. Neither is Labour for that matter. And I can't see it is any help to debate to keep harking back to the 1980s as if the sins of the fathers are visited unto the whateverth generation.
 
U

Uzzy

Member
godelsmetric said:
Well you're cheering on the same lot now, which suggests that whatever happened in the 80s you don't think it was a particularly bad thing.
Click to expand...

Which part? The part where a disgusting industry that chewed up lives while pumping out horrendous levels of CO2 and other environment destroying stuff was shut down? Cause that's a pretty good thing, even if that was probably the furthest thing from Thatcher's mind at the time. Leaving all those workers and communities to rot after the destruction of their livelihoods, however, was abhorrent.

Every time the debate harks back to the 80s, I have a feeling that some people actually want us to start coal mining again, with all the death and misery that'd cause.
 
C

Coriolanus

Banned
kitch9 said:
Also the seventies and eighties were a complete nightmare for productivity in the UK, the rest of the world was marching on whilst the unions were wasting millions of working hours striking over stuff like the wrong bog paper in the toilets. I digress, that is a particularly complex debate I really can't be arsed with.
Click to expand...

Indeed. The world was doing just fine during the 70's. UK was the bizarre one being held back.

Surely the economic progress the world started seeing in the 80's wasn't due to outside factors either.
 
K

kitch9

Banned
godelsmetric said:
Well you're cheering on the same lot now, which suggests that whatever happened in the 80s you don't think it was a particularly bad thing.
Click to expand...

Do you still chant "Thatcher, Thatcher milk snatcher" outside the school gates? If so you should know things have moved on. Time to let go of that battered old drum my friend.
 
T

tomtom94

Member
Right so now that we've had our monthly not-debate about Thatcher, some news on the EU referendum:

"Vote leave - take control."

The message of a new, cross-party campaign vying to get the UK to leave the EU could hardly be clearer.

On Friday, the group, which contains politicians and, crucially, financial backers from across the political spectrum, launches officially.

The date of the actual referendum on our membership of the EU is not yet set, but it is becoming clear who will shape up on each side.

This new campaign, Vote Leave, is funded by major Conservative donor and City millionaire Peter Cruddas, John Mills, Labour's biggest private financial backer, and Stuart Wheeler, for years a Tory donor but more recently a supporter of UKIP.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34478008


as my room-mate said, they have kind of screwed up at the first hurdle with that slogan haven't they
 
T

tomtom94

Member
Watson is in big trouble over accusing Lord Brittan, the BBC are running with the story as well. Seems to be a growing backlash against the police trusting potential victims of sexual abuse unconditionally.

In other news, the Telegraph unironically used the headline "Time to put Britain first again" on their front page.
 
K

kmag

Member
tomtom94 said:
Watson is in big trouble over accusing Lord Brittan, the BBC are running with the story as well. Seems to be a growing backlash against the police trusting potential victims of sexual abuse unconditionally.

In other news, the Telegraph unironically used the headline "Time to put Britain first again" on their front page.
Click to expand...

Politically perhaps, though the public is still largely onside with any witchhunts regarding this.

Legally he's fine though, it would be a different story if Brittan was still alive.
 
M

Moosichu

Member
tomtom94 said:
Watson is in big trouble over accusing Lord Brittan, the BBC are running with the story as well. Seems to be a growing backlash against the police trusting potential victims of sexual abuse unconditionally.

In other news, the Telegraph unironically used the headline "Time to put Britain first again" on their front page.
Click to expand...

There are still police investigations going on. Tom Watson did nothing wrong in this particular case, at all. There have already been three successful prosecutions based on information he passed onto the police. Of course the BBC are running with it, they are protecting themselves.
 
Jezbollah

Jezbollah

Member
tomtom94 said:
Watson is in big trouble over accusing Lord Brittan, the BBC are running with the story as well. Seems to be a growing backlash against the police trusting potential victims of sexual abuse unconditionally.
Click to expand...

The official Met Police release on this and their apology in the way they approached their initial investigations came out on the same day as the Cameron Pig related "revelations". One of these stories got all the attention..
 
Nicktendo86

Nicktendo86

Member
Moosichu said:
There are still police investigations going on. Tom Watson did nothing wrong in this particular case, at all. There have already been three successful prosecutions based on information he passed onto the police. Of course the BBC are running with it, they are protecting themselves.
Click to expand...

He allowed the most disgusting allegations about people who have later proved to be innocent get out into the media and repeated the accusations, even using parliamentary privilege to do so. He played judge, jury and executioner and has been eerily silent since cases have dropped.

Funny how the people he has smeared seem to all be Tories as well. Corbyn fanatics like to scream that the media are smearing Corbyn for repeating words he has actually said whilst say nothing about his deputy who has actually smeared innocent people.
 
M

Moosichu

Member
Nicktendo86 said:
He allowed the most disgusting allegations about people who have later proved to be innocent get out into the media and repeated the accusations, even using parliamentary privilege to do so. He played judge, jury and executioner and has been eerily silent since cases have dropped.

Funny how the people he has smeared seem to all be Tories as well. Corbyn fanatics like to scream that the media are smearing Corbyn for repeating words he has actually said whilst say nothing about his deputy who has actually smeared innocent people.
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There are implicated Labour MPs. And who has been proven innocent? No cases have been dropped.

It's definitely a cross party issue. Zac Goldsmith has been trying to help uncover it all as well and signed the original lettercalling for an inquiry with Tom Watson .
 
P

Par Score

Member
lynne-featherstone-gay-marriage-facebook.jpg


That's right Lynne, you came up with same-sex marriage, and nobody else! Certainly not the thousands of LGBT campaigners who'd been pushing the issue for years, and certainly not Labour who had managed to get Civil Partnerships on the books a decade ago.

Fuck the Lib Dems forever, I really hope they're consigned to the dustbin of history.
 
M

Moosichu

Member
PJV3 said:
Watson and Danczuck really need to lay off on the kiddy fiddling stuff, any evidence is long gone. I get the frustration with the authorities and trying to force it into the open, but nobody will get to the bottom of it. I prefer guilty men to get away with it than have innocent people dragged through the mud.


http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/09/freedom-of-information-commission-not-very-free-with-its-information

Fuck these people.
Click to expand...

They have.


The police are still in the middle of their investigation, they have repeated time and time again that there are many lines of enquiry and pieces of evidence that have been gathered which aren't yet in the public domain.

An abuse survivor also attempted suicide due to the distress watching the Panorama episode caused them and the episode was hugely criticised by the Met.

The main thing Tom Watson did was bring this into the public eye and passed on all the information he was sent onto the police, which has already led to some prosecutions.
 
M

Maledict

Member
Par Score said:
lynne-featherstone-gay-marriage-facebook.jpg


That's right Lynne, you came up with same-sex marriage, and nobody else! Certainly not the thousands of LGBT campaigners who'd been pushing the issue for years, and certainly not Labour who had managed to get Civil Partnerships on the books a decade ago.

Fuck the Lib Dems forever, I really hope they're consigned to the dustbin of history.
Click to expand...

Um, sorry but she is correct. Lynne Featherstone was the MP who pushed gay marriage through. If it hadn't been for her it wouldn't have happened - full stop. It wasn't in the coalition agreement, it wasn't part of the manifesto's, and it *only* happened because as minister she pushed for it incredibly hard.

Seriously, I'm hardly their biggest fans but Lynne Featherstone *is* the reason we have gay marriage right now in this country. There's a reason why MPs from other parties have acknowledged her in this, and even the gay press. Her wording is a bit dumb, definitely, but her roel and place at the centre of this *is* being ignored by history and the press and that's wrong.
 
PJV3

PJV3

Member
Moosichu said:
They have.


The police are still in the middle of their investigation, they have repeated time and time again that there are many lines of enquiry and pieces of evidence that have been gathered which aren't yet in the public domain.

An abuse survivor also attempted suicide due to the distress watching the Panorama episode caused them and the episode was hugely criticised by the Met.

The main thing Tom Watson did was bring this into the public eye and passed on all the information he was sent onto the police, which has already led to some prosecutions.
Click to expand...

I was under the impression that most of the evidence had conveniently been lost. I haven't paid too much attention to it recently I admit.
 
M

Moosichu

Member
PJV3 said:
I was under the impression that most of the evidence had conveniently been lost. I haven't paid too much attention to it recently I admit.
Click to expand...

Some of it has. But their is evidence of the evidence being lost on purpose (which would be a crime in and of itself), and John Mann MP has tweeted that he has seen physical evidence that Panorama suppressed a wider paedophile investigation in 1984 for example.
 
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