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UK PoliGAF thread of tell me about the rabbits again, Dave.
- Thread starter Chinner
- Start date
I find it tends to be best to not express (or even have) any political opinions until at least 5 years after getting into politics on a daily basis.
given that almost everything i read in politics at the moment infuriates me, i do kind of wish it would stop existing
i think '"only have some wars here and there' pretty wildly undersells the shitty situation that the planet is in but i appreciate the general gist
Compared to our history, we're still sitting pretty. Everything is always so far from perfect, not even close. But the general shittiness of how politics can be and shitty events in the world does suck, but it's all still part of a wider picture increasing standards of living, increasing life expectency, decreasing famine and poverty, painting a picture that on the whole, we're trending upwards, while even after a crisis, we're not in the best times humanity has ever had, but we're pretty close.
travisbickle
Member
Where does this pearl of wisdom come from?
It's like watching a bunch of addicts at the moment (UK financiers, not you guys)...."just 7 more billion, and I promise I'll sort it out. Give me one more chance, you know I'm good for it."
it's okay, the only people who will suffer are like, poor people who barely even count anyway
killer_clank
Member
UK unemployment rose by 48,000 to 2.67 million in the three months to December
God damn when will this shit end :'(
God damn when will this shit end :'(
When we've had about 6 months of growth unfortunately, coming out of a recession employers tend to not start to employ until they really have to so they can be absolutely sure they are moving along in the right direction along with the rest of the country.
Until the eurozone stops teetering on the cliff edge things will be tough.
They do flexible monetary policy, low interest rates and QE, its just that investors and companies are sitting on their cash because every time people switch in the news they hear about the imminent collapse of the euro zone and how the world will end as a result.
If the eurozone crises was nipped in the bud 18 months ago I believe we would have seen solid growth last year but the whole world is being dragged back by the endless inability of the EZ to come up with a credible plan once and for all.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Taking a look at the detail it looks like November was really bad, but December saw employment growth again and I expect January will as well. Don't forget that these figures are for the three months of Oct-Dec and we know that November was particularly bad on the economic front. I expect the reports will start to get better from the month after next once November is out. Some good news though:
"The 48,000 increase in unemployment was the smallest quarterly rise since last summer.
Economic inactivity, which includes students, long-term sick, people who have retired early or those who have given up looking for work, fell by 78,000 to 9.29 million, 23 per cent of the working age population."
That's the true representation of unemployment, the economic inactivity rate which has started coming down. Under Labour (in the boom times) this figure was about 8.5m all the way through as more and more people were stuck onto incapacity benefit to get them off the statistics. A lot of the rise in unemployment is actually the government putting perfectly normal people back onto the jobs market by cutting their incapacity benefits which they have claimed spuriously.
The good news is that in December the economy created 60k jobs overall, the bad news is the 90k were temporary positions for the holidays. Many of those will have carried through to January and with the decent PMIs employment growth should be quite strong, maybe 80-90k jobs created overall. Next month I think the unemployment rate will go down to 8.3% and the claimant count will stay the same. An early estimate for the month after, I think the rate will go down to 8.0% and the claimant count go down by around 10k. That depends on Feb, but signs are quite good so far into the month and we expect output growth to be strong.
well, we can argue about counterfactuals all day, but i believe that if we'd followed a more moderate programme of cuts and combined it with fiscal stimulus we'd be doing a lot better
zomgbbqftw
Banned
No, that's the public sector actually. In real terms public sector spending is 50% higher now than it was in 2002, does the public sector feel 50% better than in 2002? I don't think so. In fact because of changes to the curriculum under Labour in 2007 my school is worse now, though they recently got Academy status and will be reversing a lot of the changes and moving to IGSCE.
I would like to know which specific area you believe the cuts have effected your life personally, and remember so far the cuts have been £6bn in 2010/11 and £7bn this year in 2011/12. Where do you think those £13bn annual savings have been made and how does it effect your life (or even the life of people around you)?
When you have to borrow £150bn a year just to pay the wages not doing something credible about that isn't an option. Labour know this but chose not to say it which has completely ruined their credibility.
The overall cuts have been 3.5% it doesn't reflect too well on the public sector that after having a decade of increased spending at above inflation it cant find 3.5% especially when we subsequently read about all of the excesses.
So the CAB aren't giving out free advice anymore?
Cant they look at what they do and find a cheaper way of doing it or is that simply too much like hard work?
this is your best response? lol, okay.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Absolute bollocks. We have moved to a more moderate programme of cuts already and the fiscal stimulus did get larger, what happened? We got put on negative watch.
What is your reasoning behind thinking this? Right now the number of people employed in the public sector is 5.99m, how do you think it would help if that figure was slightly higher. What fiscal stimulus would you go for, Obama 1 or Obama 2, the first was basically building roads to nowhere and bridges across rivers no one crossed and the second was basically a massive tax cut for big business. The first didn't work, the second may yet work, though we need to see what happens when the stimulus is turned off and if the employment gains are sustained without the helpful tax environment.
Seriously, Britain has very little room to manoeuvre, the deficit was so very, very high and the government finances in such bad shape that investor confidence was wavering. In 2009/10 we paid an average interest rate of 3.8% for 10y Gilts, in 2011/12 the average has been about 2.4% all because we have some kind of plan. The other terrible mess left behind by the previous government was the move from production to consumption, in their 13 years of government we moved from having a mostly balanced economy where we produced and exported almost as much as we consumed and imported, by the end of their 13 years we had a huge current account deficit and a massively negative balance of trade.
That kind of structural failing doesn't get fixed overnight, it takes years of the right kind of tax incentives and years of patience to fix that kind of damage. If the current lot continue to make the right moves on this we think they can get back to a decent current account surplus by the end of 2017/18, a mere 7 years after they began the programme. That's actually pretty fast as well.
Anyway, you might be a Labour spouting propogandist, I don't know. You certainly have all of their lines parroted pretty well, but I hope you read something other than the Morning Star from now on...
better than your non response!
for someone accusing another (erroneously, i might add) of parroting a party line, you're spouting an impressive amount of tory hogwash
look, we're not going to agree on this. you're in finance and a tory voter, i trust your analysis about as far as i can throw it, and being a weak academic type that's not very far. vice versa for your opinion of me, i'm sure.
i could sit here and disagree constructively with your post but you're just going to turn around at the end of it and announce that i'm wrong and type out another post disagreeing with me
and ultimately it's not actually going to have any effect on the situation
so if it's all the same to you, i'm not going to bother
look, we're not going to agree on this. you're in finance and a tory voter, i trust your analysis about as far as i can throw it, and being a weak academic type that's not very far. vice versa for your opinion of me, i'm sure.
i could sit here and disagree constructively with your post but you're just going to turn around at the end of it and announce that i'm wrong and type out another post disagreeing with me
and ultimately it's not actually going to have any effect on the situation
so if it's all the same to you, i'm not going to bother
travisbickle
Member
What does this even mean?
No, to me it feels 57.5% better. In 1997 it was 32% worse and presently it's 83% good.
"I'm going to insult you instead of arguing because you'll prove me wrong"
That;s the problem with Labour supporters, when the party lines don't wash they dont know where to go.
The problem with what the Labour party spout it doesn't even work on a common sense level let alone economic level, its only the brownites in the Labour party that still trot out the same lines nonsense but even they only do it for the unions benefit.
That will be Green then, where all the socialists are now
Fact:
Political parties don't really matter that much. There isn't anarchism vs communism vs neo-liberalism.
All 3 parties are just different flavours of liberalism: neo (Conservatives), classical/social (Lib Dems), social/socialist (Labour).
They'd ALL be doing the same thing right now, or our bonds would be fucking ridiculous and borrowing costs would sky-rocket. I really don't think Labour actually believe the shit they're spouting, it's populist suicide.
The thing that DOES matter is the politicians, some are better than others. Osbourne is a better economist than Balls or Umunna, and while Darling was good, he was at loggerheads with Brown which caused hesitation.
Cameron leaves Osbourne to it. He leaves Osbourne to the economy while he does his big society, anti-binge drinking stuff or whatever. I believe that when it comes to the economy too many cooks spoil the broth, and that's certainly something the coalition is avoiding (Alexander/Cable play a supporting role rather than an oppositional one apart from a few cases (BSkyB, some QE stuff)
Political parties don't really matter that much. There isn't anarchism vs communism vs neo-liberalism.
All 3 parties are just different flavours of liberalism: neo (Conservatives), classical/social (Lib Dems), social/socialist (Labour).
They'd ALL be doing the same thing right now, or our bonds would be fucking ridiculous and borrowing costs would sky-rocket. I really don't think Labour actually believe the shit they're spouting, it's populist suicide.
The thing that DOES matter is the politicians, some are better than others. Osbourne is a better economist than Balls or Umunna, and while Darling was good, he was at loggerheads with Brown which caused hesitation.
Cameron leaves Osbourne to it. He leaves Osbourne to the economy while he does his big society, anti-binge drinking stuff or whatever. I believe that when it comes to the economy too many cooks spoil the broth, and that's certainly something the coalition is avoiding (Alexander/Cable play a supporting role rather than an oppositional one apart from a few cases (BSkyB, some QE stuff)
who cares? point is you believe the Labour line hook line and sinker
radioheadrule83
Banned
To be fair, you like to make out the country got absolutely nothing for the spending excesses, and thats your pejorative - but its not my experience at all.
From '97 onwards I certainly saw improvements right across Liverpool.. I can't speak for other cities, but the investment and regeneration from then up until 2008 was unprecedented to me. I can remember when some of the estates around Scotland road near the city center were derelict, Granby street was a mess for years.. they boarded up old properties around Lark lane and the national express route into the city and painted them over with clever and inventive window scenes to make them less ugly to look at, the Paradise Street project paved the way for the new Liverpool One shopping center, completely transforming town towards the waterfront... I mean, its a completely different city now than when I was a kid, and that wouldn't have been possible without investment. In the long term, I can't help but feel a lot of that was definitely for the best.
I went to two high schools in the Maghull area, and both of those are vastly improved since I attended - both in terms of behavioural figures and in terms of facilities -- I know this because I've got family putting their kids through the schools now. There are classes taking place at the more deprived one I attended that just weren't possible when I was there... and when I attended Maricourt, it was a good school, but its even better now -- they run CISCO and Microsoft accredited quals from the sixth form, they've responded to their musical pedigree (ties to the band Gomez, Heidi Range from the Sugarbabes - she was in my class btw
) by building a new music block, they have improved sporting facilities. When I attended University in Lancashire, it wasn't actually a University at that point - it was a College of Higher Education, with its graduates travelling to Lancaster for their degrees. Now the campus is bigger, with two huge new faculties built on the grounds, improved sports facilities and a lake to drain away the ground water that was causing some of the buildings to sink (I'm talking at a rate of mm per year!)... it's vastly improved.That University also has ties with Aintree Hospital / Fazackerly Hospital now, which is where I was born, the hospital is bigger and better than it was before.
I'm betting people here can think of similar instances of how areas in London, Leeds, Manchester or Birmingham have improved... and this is all before we take into account the jobs generated -- look down on public sector work as you might, it employs people and makes a large proportion of people economically active that otherwise wouldn't be, and a lot of them do jobs that keep this country running and keep it protected.
I think we did get something for our money, just like you can get nice things on your credit card... it's just that you've got to pay the bill eventually, and we're in a position now where we are having to cut things in order to have money to do that.
What is frustrating to me, is how eager this government seem to be to turn the clock back on progress by swinging the scythe, when ideally, they'd be prioritising the cuts better and making sure the more beneficial things were saved... I'm not convinced they're doing that. The money being lost in avoidance and evasion is eye watering compared to the money they're actually spending employing people. I know we've discussed that that's difficult to deal with without driving people away, but it doesn't make it any less annoying. Likewise, the money we pissed down the drain on Iraq and the money we piss away on defence in general is eye watering too... I say this as an employee in Defence. I think the people in the MOD and armed services do a great and under-appreciated job, but I feel like we are becoming recklessly invested in war economy like the Americans... if you do that, before long, war becomes an addiction itself.
A lot of cuts coming down the pike now are necessary, but I'd just like to see them turn that ruthless eye a bit more on what goes on in London. Not just whitehall, but what they let people get away with in the City. They seem to be overlooking a lot of waste and a lot of unnecessary losses, while pushing for arbitrary targetted cuts that affect everyone else, arbitrary figures - like your £7bln - how do you / your sector / politicians arrive at numbers like that exactly? Are you sure, for example, that we got the best money we could have from the Northern Rock / Virgin Money deal?
I'm curious to know whether the hundreds of thousands that they're nudging towards 'voluntary' redundancy will count towards unemployment figures. Because they should imo.
lol, you're a real character
Beyond looking nice Liverpool One is shit.
The Lord of Westminster basically bought up loads of public land where One stands now and privatised it. It's one of the only open city centres in the free world that you can be escorted off without committing an offence.
What did waterfront regeneration do for Liverpool? It didn't give any jobs beyond some part time shit at a Topman. What Liverpool needed was investment in infrastructure, more investment in John Lennon so it could compete with Manchester for regional travel, more investment in daycare facilities, youth clubs and schools.
It didn't need a shiny shopping mall.
radioheadrule83
Banned
Sounds like a lot of London then.
I think its done a lot for the collective psychology of the city actually. It's not just designer shops and topman, although on the face of it - I can see it certainly looks like that. It's introduced a place where people can meet and sit in the sun of a lunch-time, it's got tonnes of restaurants to try and a cinema with IMAX... you know I used to travel to Manchester just to go see IMAX? It's a nicer place for people to go and spend time of both a day and evening... I actually miss having the green space of Chevasse Park, but what has replaced it looks great and over time the apartments and business space around it will fill up.
When I think back to how it was before the project began, the state of it before the Paradise St project began, it was so much worse, not majorly run down, but certainly grafitti'd, with crappy unused shop-space and roads uncared for... I think when you have nothing to look at, nothing to respect, that feeds into how people act in a city -- and even the way people act in and around Liverpool, as I say - of both an evening and the day - seems improved to me now. I can only ever be in favour of the kind of regeneration I've witnessed up until 2008 there... it was actually quite amazing.
And while I take your point that John Lennon airport could do with expansion and investment, I take the view that its better to invest in improving the city first so people might actually want to fly in rather than just spend a load of money so the people in the area can take their money and fly away with it.
I can't speak of youth clubs and daycare facilities, but I do certainly feel that schools around the city have been improved in certain cases.
My problem with Liverpool One is that it is remarkably unscouse.
It doesn't fit in with the funny, charming, rough but endearing people, it's just a further proliferation of sterile design and identikit shopping centres seen EVERYWHERE in the country.
It could have been done differently and in a way that was more fitting with the city, maybe similarly to Affleck's Palace in Manchester.
/dad's a scouser, I was born/brought up in Warrington
I will admit though that as far as identikit shopping centres go, Liverpool One is the best I've seen
It doesn't fit in with the funny, charming, rough but endearing people, it's just a further proliferation of sterile design and identikit shopping centres seen EVERYWHERE in the country.
It could have been done differently and in a way that was more fitting with the city, maybe similarly to Affleck's Palace in Manchester.
/dad's a scouser, I was born/brought up in Warrington
I will admit though that as far as identikit shopping centres go, Liverpool One is the best I've seen
zomgbbqftw
Banned
I don't like the look of dem brown folk...
radioheadrule83
Banned
I know what you mean... I'm living in Bristol at the moment, and Cabot Circus is similar, it could have been made by the same people and it wouldn't surprise me.
I'm not sure how I'd feel about 100% scouse architecture! My brother is a bricky and a self-confessed cowboy!
It's not all boring identikit stuff all the time. Every now and then we do get something a bit weird and pointless turn up like this:
(with fisheye lens - http://www.liverpool-360.co.uk/images/do-ho-suh.jpg)
I'm not sure how I'd feel about 100% scouse architecture! My brother is a bricky and a self-confessed cowboy!
It's not all boring identikit stuff all the time. Every now and then we do get something a bit weird and pointless turn up like this:
(with fisheye lens - http://www.liverpool-360.co.uk/images/do-ho-suh.jpg)
Nicktendo86
Member
Well from my perspective growing up on Bethnal Green, one of the poorest/most deprived areas of Tower Hamlets, one of the poorest/most deprived boroughs in London, I really didn't see any improvements under Labour.
I left primary school in 1997 just as Labour got in and saw a pretty gradual decline in my estate. The place felt abandoned to be honest, there were no improvements and crime seemed to get worse with blatant drug deals happening just around the corner from the Chinese take away police would go to for their dinner! But there are improvements now. The area I have recently moved to (Bow) has a lot of development going on and they are building loads of nice new flats.
I left primary school in 1997 just as Labour got in and saw a pretty gradual decline in my estate. The place felt abandoned to be honest, there were no improvements and crime seemed to get worse with blatant drug deals happening just around the corner from the Chinese take away police would go to for their dinner! But there are improvements now. The area I have recently moved to (Bow) has a lot of development going on and they are building loads of nice new flats.
J Tourettes
Banned
Bow's being gentrified, can't move around there without bumping into some middle class out of towners.
To be fair, you like to make out the country got absolutely nothing for the spending excesses, and thats your pejorative - but its not my experience at all.
From '97 onwards I certainly saw improvements right across Liverpool.. I can't speak for other cities, but the investment and regeneration from then up until 2008 was unprecedented to me. I can remember when some of the estates around Scotland road near the city center were derelict, Granby street was a mess for years.. they boarded up old properties around Lark lane and the national express route into the city and painted them over with clever and inventive window scenes to make them less ugly to look at, the Paradise Street project paved the way for the new Liverpool One shopping center, completely transforming town towards the waterfront... I mean, its a completely different city now than when I was a kid, and that wouldn't have been possible without investment. In the long term, I can't help but feel a lot of that was definitely for the best.
I went to two high schools in the Maghull area, and both of those are vastly improved since I attended - both in terms of behavioural figures and in terms of facilities -- I know this because I've got family putting their kids through the schools now. There are classes taking place at the more deprived one I attended that just weren't possible when I was there... and when I attended Maricourt, it was a good school, but its even better now -- they run CISCO and Microsoft accredited quals from the sixth form, they've responded to their musical pedigree (ties to the band Gomez, Heidi Range from the Sugarbabes - she was in my class btw
That University also has ties with Aintree Hospital / Fazackerly Hospital now, which is where I was born, the hospital is bigger and better than it was before.
I'm betting people here can think of similar instances of how areas in London, Leeds, Manchester or Birmingham have improved... and this is all before we take into account the jobs generated -- look down on public sector work as you might, it employs people and makes a large proportion of people economically active that otherwise wouldn't be, and a lot of them do jobs that keep this country running and keep it protected.
I think we did get something for our money, just like you can get nice things on your credit card... it's just that you've got to pay the bill eventually, and we're in a position now where we are having to cut things in order to have money to do that.
What is frustrating to me, is how eager this government seem to be to turn the clock back on progress by swinging the scythe, when ideally, they'd be prioritising the cuts better and making sure the more beneficial things were saved... I'm not convinced they're doing that. The money being lost in avoidance and evasion is eye watering compared to the money they're actually spending employing people. I know we've discussed that that's difficult to deal with without driving people away, but it doesn't make it any less annoying. Likewise, the money we pissed down the drain on Iraq and the money we piss away on defence in general is eye watering too... I say this as an employee in Defence. I think the people in the MOD and armed services do a great and under-appreciated job, but I feel like we are becoming recklessly invested in war economy like the Americans... if you do that, before long, war becomes an addiction itself.
A lot of cuts coming down the pike now are necessary, but I'd just like to see them turn that ruthless eye a bit more on what goes on in London. Not just whitehall, but what they let people get away with in the City. They seem to be overlooking a lot of waste and a lot of unnecessary losses, while pushing for arbitrary targetted cuts that affect everyone else, arbitrary figures - like your £7bln - how do you / your sector / politicians arrive at numbers like that exactly? Are you sure, for example, that we got the best money we could have from the Northern Rock / Virgin Money deal?
I'm curious to know whether the hundreds of thousands that they're nudging towards 'voluntary' redundancy will count towards unemployment figures. Because they should imo.
Just so you know, all the refurb and regeneration of the council owned houses in Liverpool has not come from Government money.
The energy companies are being forced to provide the money for that as refurbing and fully insulating the houses buys them green points, and if they get enough green points they avoid MASSIVE fines.
Ever sit and look at your electric bill and wonder why its a fortune and nobody does anything about it?