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UK PoliGAF thread of tell me about the rabbits again, Dave.
- Thread starter Chinner
- Start date
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
This is what I was referring to earlier, BTW.
Psychotext
Member
What an utter wanker Gove is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19569429
Welsh exam board makes the right decision and he goes after them... presumably to take attention away from his complete inability to do the right thing.
Welsh exam board makes the right decision and he goes after them... presumably to take attention away from his complete inability to do the right thing.
Superimposer
This is getting weirder all the time
CHEEZMO™;42002238 said:
Done about what exactly? The bigots or Nick backing down?
It's not working for me on iPlayer... I am not happy.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
CHEEZMO;42001191 said:
At this rate, I give it 2 years before the Tories reintroduce poorhouses.
Delusibeta
Banned
Insert reference to the initial Sun article here, followed by trollface.jpg.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
JUSTICE AT LAST, THE TRUTH IS OUT
I was particularly shocked to hear about the 41 victims who could have survived if they'd been helped. How awful for their families to hear that. My thoughts and feelings go to all the families involved.
Hopefully, this whole affair will hasten the slow decline of the Murdoch press in the UK, especially The Sun, and the corrupt coppers and politicians who tried to cover it up get their much deserved comeuppance as well. But I feel that the real priority now is for the "accidental death" verdicts from the previous, flawed inquest to be quashed, and that may come as soon as tomorrow. May the Attorney General make the right decision.
I was particularly shocked to hear about the 41 victims who could have survived if they'd been helped. How awful for their families to hear that. My thoughts and feelings go to all the families involved.
Hopefully, this whole affair will hasten the slow decline of the Murdoch press in the UK, especially The Sun, and the corrupt coppers and politicians who tried to cover it up get their much deserved comeuppance as well. But I feel that the real priority now is for the "accidental death" verdicts from the previous, flawed inquest to be quashed, and that may come as soon as tomorrow. May the Attorney General make the right decision.
Typical Tory scumbag approach to the issue, treat the unemployed as lazy scroungers who need to be scared/forced into work. And GITM is right about poorhouses, though I think they may take the shape of work camps. Easier to build and maintain.CHEEZMO;42001191 said:
Pie and Beans
Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
With even the BBC waffling on about how great it was with the 70,000 'Games Makers' volunteers at the Olympics, it seemed like a short and horrible window into a dystopian future where Britain's most mentally pliable flesh-bags could just be convinced into working free for 'causes' such as sports events and any other nationlism invoking nonsense from just such special accomodation.
The GCSE thing not catching heat in the main press at all is giving me real eyebrow raising concerns. Especially with the Hillsborough shit pie soaking up peoples outrage again for like the 20th time.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
CHEEZMO™;42069579 said:
He should just invent a time machine and go back to Victorian Britain. What a mong.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Quite apart from where the funding might come from this seems like a bad idea. What's going to happen is anyone who has capital assets will sell them off all at once, probably offshore - or more likely, put them out to lease for a couple of years, then buy out the lease before the tax comes back in, redepreciate the asset and so reduce their tax liability for the next 3/5/20 years too.
This is meant to help the rest of the economy how exactly?
Visualante2
Member
Just gonna leave this here http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/29356 (in it together)
I really hope the Conservatives split off into a new hard right party and become just as irrelevant as UKIP.
I really hope the Conservatives split off into a new hard right party and become just as irrelevant as UKIP.
It's just a blame game, attack on the poorly paid. Try and make those low paid in work people be seen as the burden on the state and the reason why jobs aren't being created. Pit the poor against the slightly more poor. While the rich look down and laugh.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
Signed
Psychotext
Member
Signed, but the UK public wont care. We've been conditioned to believe that anyone using benefits is in fact a scrounger who should be despised. No matter what the facts may tell us.
Visualante2
Member
Sure but it seems quite demonstrable that these placements are replacing the jobs and overtime of paid staff. Benefits or not paid workers should support it and the fact that the big unions are attacking workfare as a top 5 priority will hopefully change some of those deep seeded attitudes.
I read the other day that some pizza franchise has fired a ton of people, and then later announced a partnership for 100 workfare placements with the job centre. Probably leading to food apprenticeships paid at like £2.60 an hour. A quarter of Holland and Barrett's workforce were unpaid workfare people working alongside paid staff.
I read the other day that some pizza franchise has fired a ton of people, and then later announced a partnership for 100 workfare placements with the job centre. Probably leading to food apprenticeships paid at like £2.60 an hour. A quarter of Holland and Barrett's workforce were unpaid workfare people working alongside paid staff.
Signed, and co-signed.
So, anyone think Maggie Thatcher should be brought up on charges re: the whole Hillsborough cover-up?
I'm gonna piss on her grave when she dies regardless, but one more public humiliation for her would warm the cockles of many people's hearts.
I don't she will. Irvine Patnick absolutely must.
Just like how every squatter is a trust fund kid who's made arty life choices.
...oops!
http://www.newleftproject.org/index...iminalising_squatting_privatising_empty_space
Also, a group called CLASS (Centre for Labour and Social Studies) has produced a free PDF called 'Why Inequality Matters', summarising findings from the book The Spirit Level. It's well worth a read for anybody that's ever though that inequality is not a problem per se or who agrees with Peter Mandelson circa 2008 that we should be intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes.
The UK is third only to the USA and Portugal among Western nations regarding both inequality and the health and social problems measured.
Available here: http://classonline.org.uk/docs/Why_Inequality_Matters.pdf
radioheadrule83
Banned
CHEEZMO™;42069579 said:
I went to a conference the other day about child poverty, and the care and education needed to look after those who are born into it. It should be a matter of great personal shame to us all that we have one of the worst poverty divides in the Western world. We also have the worst social mobility in the Western world.
Your kids have better chances if they're brought up in Denmark or Australia. For over 50% of children, their prospects can be determined by their parents' wealth.. and IQ tests across various socio-economic groups show that by age 7-11, the damage has already been done to some kids - even those who had previously shown amazing potential. The tories have apparently accepted research that shows addressing this gap and intervening early is important, and that this gap is costing the economy something like 25 billion pounds a year (and rising) in resulting consequences. Interestingly, in countries like Finland, which don't have our social problems, the crime problems, the health problems, the educational problems -- the gap between rich and poor is much smaller...
Now let's ask ourselves: how does Liam Fox's idea affect 'the gap'?
Too much of our countries wealth is locked inside the M25, and yet we even have great poverty there too. I'd like to see us take a step back from the hard right American-capitalist-style mentality of only looking after ourselves.
I don't understand why tax can't be seen as an investment like any other. If you're doing business here and make a large proportion of your money here, then the people of this country, and this country's welfare are your lifeblood. By lifting up others you stand a better chance of lifting yourself further. I don't really care about the UK being a premier force in the world, I'd rather we were a morally responsible country that aspired to be a great place to live. If our rich sit on their money and only want to feather their own nests with it - fuck them, let them go elsewhere. I'd rather we struggled without them.
I sympathise with the idea that the top rate might be too much for some, or that people in certain fringe circumstances get caught up and punished by the thresholds... I sympathise with the idea that complex tax codes encourage fiddling and encourage tax exiles, but we do have a horrendous rich-poor divide in this country and a concentration of wealth that causes problems. Those problems cost money to address. I personally feel that the best hope for simplifying the tax code in the long term is narrowing that gap and fighting that inequality.
I suspect I'm mostly preaching to the choir here.
CyclopsRock
Member
I think most people - like me - aren't against what you describe because we don't want to see people lifted up. It's because it doesn't work. Or, rather, the methods we've been using don't. For example, during the Labour years, spending on education literally doubled in real terms. Are schools now double as good? Are kids double as smart? Over that same period of time, our international standing in education has gone down consistently (in 1980 we were about 16th, we're now 39th. In fact, our increase in education standards [in which the world in general is increasing, thus our getting-better-but-slower-than-everyone-else] was faster between 1980-1995 than 1995-present). There's a similar story with the NHS. Our public spending is now over half of our entire GDP. We have a lot of problems in the UK, but I think it's hard to suggest it's because we aren't spending enough money. In the wrong place and the wrong ways, perhaps, but I don't really think it is sustainable to spend 51% of one's GDP publicly. So people like me (ie apparantly the only fiscal conservative in UK PoliGAF, based upon most people here's hatred for the Tories!) don't view government spending as "investment" because the government tends to spend money in horribly, horribly inefficient ways, and every pound that it spends inefficiently is a pound that the person that actually earned the money hasn't been able to spend, almost certainly more efficiently (and in a way that doesn't distort markets).
That said, this isn't a defense of Fox's suggestion- I think there are far, far more effectively tax cuts to be made that'd help the economy far more than a Cap Gains cut.
CyclopsRock
Member
I'd also note that criminalising squatting is not criminalising homelessness. It's like saying that criminalising thievery is criminalising starvation if the person in question is stealing bread for their starving family. I understand entirely that the options available to homeless people are extremely limited, and it's definitely a problem that needs solving - but that doesn't mean we need to leverage emotionally charged, and inaccurate, statements like "criminalising homelessness". The further from the truth our rhetoric spreads, the harder it is to get at the real issue.
radioheadrule83
Banned
A large part of what I was saying is that we only have to spend so much in health and education because the wealth divide is too great in this country.
If we commit to solving that problem, provide the support, encouragement and opportunities needed to the worst off in society now, and narrow that divide, more kids from a wider spectrum of SEGs can reach a level of sustainable affluence. As they grow up - our spending on welfare and costly remedies in the education, justice and health departments can come down.
As I say, in other countries where the gap is narrower, they don't have anywhere near our level of spending, and they don't need it. Tax cuts funded by welfare cuts now will just plunge the worst off in society into deeper problems, affect their prospects and ultimately continue the cycle of poverty, and the cycles of involuntary (and voluntary) indolence that some people are born into. Children are the most important asset we have, but essentially - we're neglecting them. The people living at the sharp end in our society aren't the problem, they're people who are living as a symptom of THE problem.
Even if we created more jobs in this climate - as long as that gap exists, and continues to widen - government will be costly and our problems will worsen.
edit: At the conference I attended last week, I was told that some politicians on both sides now know that you can't just throw money at the problem. They know - as you say - that doubling spending in education doesn't necessarily double results. But as I say - this gap is costing us an estimated 25bln+every year in welfare, health, policing and lost tax receipts. It shouldn't be possible to have ghettos in our society and have kids growing up hungry, or living in a prospects post code lottery -- but that's what happens. We can't gentrify the entire country, if vulnerable adults can't be helped as much as we'd like, then we should at least aspire to help their children escape the same fate. I like that the tories are decentralising some things from government, and leaving more to local authorities, because I think councils need to be given more power to work with the people and businesses in their own community... but I do want accountability, and if they continue to cut back too far, in a way that targets the already stricken, I just don't see how that can help.
Personally, I'd be more content to see a pothole now and then, enjoy fewer niceties or subsidies, pay more tax - than see some of the roughest areas in our towns and cities get any worse in the decades to come.
But the Tories don't care about wealth divides or inequality, they never have, not since the Thatcher days when Greed was Good. They're called the Nasty Party for a reason.
While saying that, I must iterate that I do have a certain level of sympathy with CyclopsRock's fiscal conservatism (except that I don't acknowledge earnings paid as taxes as "MY money", it's money owed to the state for allowing me to live in this country at relative liberty and peace, just like earnings paid as rent or water rates aren't really your money either - it's money owed to others in lieu of services) - governments DO tend to spend money inefficiently, but especially THIS one.
Radiohead is right - the reason the benefits bill has only risen during these last two years is that more people are getting poorer and asking for help in tough economic times. When things get better, that should fix itself - should. But who knows when that will happen, especially under THIS shower of shite Chancellor and his cronies, now blatantly espousing "take from the poor to give to the rich" policies that would make old King John proud. They're the Anti-Robin Hood.
More likely, they're actually political lightweights given power that they were not ready for, like a four-year-old on training wheels trying to ride a motorbike, and they're forced to rely on trendy American-style Neo-libertarian dogma and Objectivist ideals to come up with any sort of coherent message for the voters. Except that, of course, Neo-libertarian Objectivism doesn't work in the real world, full of real people with real lives and real families, as opposed to their idealized Victorian-era picture book fantasies.
Of course, we knew this, all of us, in our hearts. And yet, we allowed the press to make us hate Gordon Brown just enough to let these fantasists into power. I don't even really blame the Lib Dems for their part in it; they're a political party after all, one dedicated to showing that consensus politics CAN work, that sharing power CAN produce good results. Well, it did produce one good result - it revealed the darker side of the Liberal Democrats to all who cared to peer deeply into the looking-glass, including themselves. This will be a very interesting conference season, for that and many other reasons besides.
But seriously, these fools should have been removed before the Olympics even happened. I guess we really do get the government we deserve.
While saying that, I must iterate that I do have a certain level of sympathy with CyclopsRock's fiscal conservatism (except that I don't acknowledge earnings paid as taxes as "MY money", it's money owed to the state for allowing me to live in this country at relative liberty and peace, just like earnings paid as rent or water rates aren't really your money either - it's money owed to others in lieu of services) - governments DO tend to spend money inefficiently, but especially THIS one.
Radiohead is right - the reason the benefits bill has only risen during these last two years is that more people are getting poorer and asking for help in tough economic times. When things get better, that should fix itself - should. But who knows when that will happen, especially under THIS shower of shite Chancellor and his cronies, now blatantly espousing "take from the poor to give to the rich" policies that would make old King John proud. They're the Anti-Robin Hood.
More likely, they're actually political lightweights given power that they were not ready for, like a four-year-old on training wheels trying to ride a motorbike, and they're forced to rely on trendy American-style Neo-libertarian dogma and Objectivist ideals to come up with any sort of coherent message for the voters. Except that, of course, Neo-libertarian Objectivism doesn't work in the real world, full of real people with real lives and real families, as opposed to their idealized Victorian-era picture book fantasies.
Of course, we knew this, all of us, in our hearts. And yet, we allowed the press to make us hate Gordon Brown just enough to let these fantasists into power. I don't even really blame the Lib Dems for their part in it; they're a political party after all, one dedicated to showing that consensus politics CAN work, that sharing power CAN produce good results. Well, it did produce one good result - it revealed the darker side of the Liberal Democrats to all who cared to peer deeply into the looking-glass, including themselves. This will be a very interesting conference season, for that and many other reasons besides.
But seriously, these fools should have been removed before the Olympics even happened. I guess we really do get the government we deserve.
CyclopsRock
Member
The thing is, we agree entirely on the problem, it's just the solution where we differ. I agree that inequality causes problems and welfare being cut would lead to further disparity and social decay. I agree that it costs us a lot, and agree that we shouldn't have ghettos in our society. But where this leads you to the solution of more pot holes, more tax and presumably more spending, I see the opposite. I look at what's happened in the last 15 years in trying to solve the problem with more potholes and more tax and I see that it isn't working. That's why I support the idea of radical reform of schooling, and radical reform of the NHS, and reform of the way students pay for their further education, and reform of the welfare system. Obviously not unavowadly - bad reform is bad reform, even if it's cheaper. But it seems to me that there are a lot of ideas out there that would be both cheaper and superior. Besides which, as an avid fan of the free market, I look at what happened under Thatcher and see that her supply-side, market-freeing reforms lead to great growth, greater employment and less people on benefits. The benefits system we have now is awful and encourages people to stay out of work, not because it's too generous, but because it's so complex and so fragmented. For a lot of people, depending on what benefits they get and the exact conditions of these, the marginal tax rate of going to work can be as high as 110% - ie, it can actually cost people MORE to go to work than it would to stay on benefits. More frequently it's around 70-90% - it's not the people's fault, or even the economy's, it's the system's fault, and it's the system that needs to change. These sorts of changes are the ones that often don't even need more money, or often need only a little more money. If IDS's universal system works as it is intended, it'll ensure that this doesn't happen - that it's always worth going to work rather than staying at home. It'll cost more money because it actually ends up with people getting more in benefits, but I'm OK with that, because I actually think it'll work. It's not about saving money anyway, it's about saving lives in an existential way.
BBC: MSPs hear UK welfare reforms 'force blind man to beg'
Even for the Tories this is shocking. Luckily Holyrood is passing laws that will limit the damage these reforms do in Scotland. Looks like there are going to be a lot of vulnerable people in England getting screwed though.
Even for the Tories this is shocking. Luckily Holyrood is passing laws that will limit the damage these reforms do in Scotland. Looks like there are going to be a lot of vulnerable people in England getting screwed though.
Psychotext
Member
That's horrible. 
Clay Davis
Member
That's horrible.
it's more horrifying that he worked, paid his taxes and when he's unable to work he's told there's no help.
what are the chances of more stories like this being revealed over the next few days and weeks?
To be fair my work sees me visiting a lot of council estates and into the homes there and the uk has a massive problem of widespread benefits dependency and I don't see how you can break that without making the benefits system itself hard work.
If most of us here lost our jobs I think we'd do everything in our power to get another as soon as possible and maybe not even claim benefits until we had to, but there's thousands and thousands out there who do everything in their power not to work and game the system. The system needs to be hard to game so only those who really need it get it.
I do see a lot of people who are damn unemployable who will spend their lives in the dole queue and it saddens me.
CyclopsRock
Member
Or, indeed, years, if we don't ensure we cut the deficit. Obviously this isn't a good place to save money - there are plenty of other places to save it - but the 'never getting money out of the pot you pay into' is only going to keep being a bigger and bigger problem, the more we saddle tomorrows children with more and more of our debt. This is, of course, compounded by an ageing population and less workers per retiree than previously.
...somehow I think you either completely missed his point, or completely ignored it to make a point.
These so-called "welfare reforms" are just plain ol' thievery from the most vulnerable in our society, no doubt. And before you go on about benefit inflation, it's not unemployed peoples' fault that working peoples' wages aren't rising fast enough to keep up with COL - why don't you blame your bosses for that? They're the once who decide your wages!
Also, I think a very large amount of debt forgiveness is inevitable. Fuck the deficit.
I've no problem with people who need it receiving benefits, but I do have a problem with people being on benefits and nothing being expected of them in return. There was a recent issue where the government was going to arrange voluntary work experience for those on benefits where people could go and work for an employer for free for a few weeks whilst still getting benefits and there was a massive uproar with leftie crazies screaming it was against peoples human rights and what do you know all the big companies who signed up to the scheme backed out and its now flat on its ass.
I didn't get many qualifications in school, and I ended up with one A level before dropping out of education, but what I did do was take any low paid job I could get when I was a teenager. I ended up working on Saturdays for 9 hours for £15.00 a day whilst at school and I didn't do it for the money as it was quite frankly ridiculous, what it gave me which was more valuable than anything was numerous glowing employer references on my CV at 18.
By 18 I'd secured a job in an electronics factory, by 19 I was training to be a technician for the machines they used, and by 21 I was earning £30K a year with a company car..... 14 years later I'm a director of my own business and have numerous investment properties.
It irks me people can get benefits for years and nothing is asked back, and potentially incredibly beneficial schemes like the work experience scheme get dropped because of short sighted idiots.
Once you are on benefits you get trapped as you can't really take any kind of part-time work to try to boost your CV because any pay you receive gets deducted from your benefits, so people end up being restricted to only applying for decent paying full time jobs where they find they are competing with others who are currently in work and much more attractive to employers.... People can't seem to start work from scratch and build their way up the employment ladder in the current system.
As an employer if a potential employee sat in front of me and said I'm currently on benefits but I signed myself up for voluntary work so I could build my CV to impress the likes of you I would be massively impressed but sadly it never seems to happen, and alas thanks to the human rights brigade it appears it never will.
CyclopsRock
Member
Yeah, I pretty much ignored it. I was doing an impression of a politician on Qustion Time ("I'm really glad you've asked about equipment for our troops in Afghanistan, because this Coalition Government's tuition fee hike is going to destroy further education in this country!") The minutiae of the welfare system doesn't interest me enormously. I was making a serious point, though, amongst the facetiousness - that the problem of people putting more in than you get out (and the disenfranchisement and general unfairness of that) is only going to get worse, the higher our deficit goes. If you take a look a few posts above, you'll see I support giving more, not less, money to benefit claimants, but structured in a way that means it's always worth going to work (unlike now, where it's either financially ridiculous to do so, or a massive increase in effort for a minimal return).
As for debt forgiveness, that's laughable, and I get confused because the people that suggest it are usually the same people saying we should maintain the deficit. Well, who's going to lend us money when we've demonstrated our unwillingness to pay bond holders for their investment in our country? We could wipe the entire debt tomorrow, but we'd have to immediately cut our budget by £125bn overnight, because no one would lend us the shortfall between our tax revenues and spending. £125bn makes the coalition cuts look like chicken feed.
See I'm all for benefits claimants who have been out of work for 6 months or more getting to keep their full benefits for a few months if they find part-time work with some kind of penalty for getting sacked for misconduct say such as taking away the extra benefit they got paid whilst working.
Bony Manifesto
Member
I think the biggest thing to do would be for the government to live up to its promise of "making work pay". Even ignoring comparisons to the benefits system entirely, working a full-time, minimum-wage job does not come close to paying a living wage, and that's always going to be the elephant in the room when politicians are making speeches about how much better off people will be if they were to get off benefits and into work.
And the notion that you can start on the bottom rung and work your way up might be true in some cases, but there's so many jobs on the lowest rung that have absolutely no future prospects, and wouldn't even help you get another job (having a year or two cleaning toilets in a small local business on your CV is only ever going to help you to get another job cleaning toilets).
travisbickle
Member
Take a look again at your employment history.
You worked in a factory at 18, I assume being paid minimum wage or just above? Then you were given training by said company? Did you pay to complete the training? or was it free? employer funded?
Psychotext
Member
Lefties and human rights aside, you do realise that scheme had major, major ramifications for the rest of us right? I personally know two directors who hire only trainees because they get a grant from the government for them. These trainees were originally used to replace long term permanent staff, and as soon as they were able to, the trainees themselves were fired and replaced with more trainees so as to continue getting cheap staff / grants.
Now imagine the same thing, but with workers you can get for less than minimum wage. Do you really think that companies aren't going to take advantage of that, to the detriment of fully paid staff? Don't even bother saying that those staff wont be as good... because frankly most of the businesses I deal with at the moment just don't care. They're all about cutting costs, even if it means their service and reputation goes down the drain.
There are plenty of voluntary opportunities out there for the unemployed without the government needing to take it upon themselves to make an entire underclass of forced labourers.
Edit - For what it's worth, I'm also a director, and oddly enough I also worked for a pittance when I was younger (though I did get qualifications). £1.92 per hour for my first proper job.