War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
I'd vote for him over all other Prime Ministers since Thatcher, maybe earlier.
EDIT: obviously you don't vote for PMs, but you get the gist.
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UK PoliGAF thread of tell me about the rabbits again, Dave.
- Thread starter Chinner
- Start date
I'd vote for him over all other Prime Ministers since Thatcher, maybe earlier.
EDIT: obviously you don't vote for PMs, but you get the gist.
CyclopsRock
Member
Everyone called Anthony Blair "Tony", so I don't see why not! I also call Osborne "Gidders".
Edit: Only when we're in the backroom of the clubhouse, obviously.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
lol
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22039361
And by "better" I suspect he means "would have gotten a comfortable majority"(which is true)
Blair/Brown hatred still there I see
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22039361
And by "better" I suspect he means "would have gotten a comfortable majority"(which is true)
Blair/Brown hatred still there I see
Captain_Spanky
Member
This is the front page of Daily Mail Online today.
Stay classy Daily Mail
Stay classy Daily Mail
PJV3
Member
I don't think he would have done any/much better.
Wasn't his polling bad at the end, which Brown initially turned around (until he fudged the early election buisness)
Blair would have lost 2010.
Brown would have lost in 2012 if he'd won the non election in 2008.
Blair is deluded about himself, odious shit.
radioheadrule83
Banned
Great face off (on C4 News) between Owen Jones, columnist at the Independent, and Ruth Porter - of the Institute of Economic Affairs over Gideon's ham-fisted wade in to the Philpott discussion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiEEwfikiVk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiEEwfikiVk
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Ugh, Owen Jones talks such garbage. Can't even bring myself to watch
You really think so? Don't forget that Cameron's election pitch was mostly doom & gloom, constantly talking about austerity. I think Blair probably would have overcome that. I mean hey, it would have been lies about sunshine & lollypops, but it probably would have worked.
Hell, under Blair there probably wouldn't have even been a run on a british bank. Blair's not a good person, but he's a fantastic "leader". He would have given the political assurences to northern rock savers Brown dumbfoundingly never did to prevent a panic.
You really think so? Don't forget that Cameron's election pitch was mostly doom & gloom, constantly talking about austerity. I think Blair probably would have overcome that. I mean hey, it would have been lies about sunshine & lollypops, but it probably would have worked.
Hell, under Blair there probably wouldn't have even been a run on a british bank. Blair's not a good person, but he's a fantastic "leader". He would have given the political assurences to northern rock savers Brown dumbfoundingly never did to prevent a panic.
radioheadrule83
Banned
I don't follow his work, but he is SPOT ON in that video
Owen Jones also has a good rumble in this weeks Spectator podcast where him and some other dude go at it for 20 mins. Its worth listening to if you enjoy that sort of stuff.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
Owen Jones is a good guy. One of those prats who think they can change Labour from the inside and can be a bit liberal at times, but he's better than most.
Y'all should read his book. I've heard great things about it and gave it a skim and it seemed good. Been meaning to pick it up myself but dat backlog.
Y'all should read his book. I've heard great things about it and gave it a skim and it seemed good. Been meaning to pick it up myself but dat backlog.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
CHEEZMO™;52774524 said:
I hope it's better then his obnoxious appearences on Question Time. :/
PJV3
Member
It is good, give it a watch.
PJV3
Member
Yep, people were sick of Blair in 07, the tories were polling in the 40s and Cameron was more popular. and this is before the financial meltdown.
As soon as he announced his resignation labour retook the lead. Blairites live in a fantasy land.
Thatcher and Blair are two people with serious god complexes, they both went when their time was up, they just cant accept it.
fizzelopeguss
Banned
Blair ain't serious, it's just a (quality) pop at brown from out of the blue.
PJV3
Member
Who knows, I just wish Blair and Thatcher had been wiped out in an election.
CyclopsRock
Member
Thatcher pretty much went dark after being PM, didn't she? None of this charity director, UN envoy bollocks.
Also, i think Cameron gets bonus points by dint of his already being PM and not fucking it up - in fact, in terms of international politics I think he has done a great job. From EU negotiations to Libya, he's had a fairly decisive and successful set of goals and aims.
Also, i think Cameron gets bonus points by dint of his already being PM and not fucking it up - in fact, in terms of international politics I think he has done a great job. From EU negotiations to Libya, he's had a fairly decisive and successful set of goals and aims.
Turning his tour of arab spring countries into a giant advertisement for British arms dealers wasn't.
CyclopsRock
Member
Well, I was talking about whether he was successful at fulfilling his aims, and I think that - even if you don' think we should be selling guns - he was. As it happens, I have no problem at all with us selling guns.
He has failed large sections of the population. He isn't a good PM, I suppose if you are conservative he is since has addressed every conservative bug bear.
So not a good PM but a successful PM if you are a tory.
PJV3
Member
I think Thatchers health went pretty soon after leaving office, she was in the lords for a while but didn't do much.
I'm not seeing anything outside of Libya that Cameron has done of note. The EU stuff is more likely to impress sceptics, but I think he and the other leaders have let this crisis go on for too long, partly driven hy their own populations.
Domestically the only policy I like really is the idea of rebalancing the economy, if he and Cable pull that off, then he will at least leave one positive legacy. His greatest skill has been in framing the questions to be debated, he's blindsided the LibDems and took control of the Scotland question.
CyclopsRock
Member
I was talking about his international performance. You can tell this, because I said...
I don't think you have to be a sceptic to like what he did in the EU budget talks. It's patently ridiculous to ask the member states to contribute more money to the EU when literally all of them are cutting budgets domestically. It's not really all that democratic, either, since the people elected to define the EU budgets - the MEPs - are not the same people responsible for actually paying for it, that being the national governments. In their rush to be more generous, MEPs could very well end up causing greater cuts (or borrowing) at home, neither of which they're responsible for. So I think what Cameron did there was pretty good, whether you're a fan of the EU itself or not.
PJV3
Member
Because he was cutting at home I also agreed he had to take that stance over the EU budget. But, and it's a big but, if we and the Eurozone had worked with the US stimulus plan, a lot of this bollocks could've been avoided.
It's a Europe wide lack of vision and chaotic austerity fetish that's to blame, so I'm not just blaming Cameron in that regard.
Little Old Man
Member
There's two aspects to rebalancing the economy. Firstly there's the take that the coalition have, i.e. more high end manufacturing/production, less reliant on the service sector. What I want to see much more off is the start of efforts to have the economy less centred around London and the South East. A mammoth task for sure, but an important one.
PJV3
Member
I think they are using Hestletine's plan to stimulate the regions, I still think you need real committed government strategy, but that's a bit too 1940s for this lot.
If they truly can rebalance the economy away from the service industry it'd be fantastic. But it's almost an impossible task at this point in time and would require a lot of Govt effort, something which ideologically they are against.
I wish them the best in that regard though, because relying on the service industry as we do now is unsustainable and results in crappier jobs for most.
I wish them the best in that regard though, because relying on the service industry as we do now is unsustainable and results in crappier jobs for most.
PJV3
Member
The EU is a real hindrance in this area, but as you say it's the same free market approach the tories believe in anyway.
Indeed, I was for the eu wide bank transaction levy so hopefully some of the banks would fuck off to NYC.
Although it would shorten my employment prospect considerably as the financial industry is where I have worked for most of my working life.
Thats another thing, if we are removed from the EU the right will destroy all employment laws currently in favour of the employee in the name of competing with states like china, india etc where employment rights are non existent.
Say goodbye to paid holidays, unfair dismissals and anything else remotely good.
Say goodbye to paid holidays, unfair dismissals and anything else remotely good.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
Or you could just vote in UKIP.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
Well illegal immigrants aren't being interned in camps so not quite yet they aren't.
PJV3
Member
Erm
The government is still pushing through the employee share scheme.
£2000 of shares and companies can buy your employment rights. I think the Lords rejected it, but it's still gonna happen.
Everything is up for grabs except holiday entitlement, which is EU protected.
Erm
The government is still pushing through the employee share scheme.
£2000 of shares and companies can buy your employment rights. I think the Lords rejected it, but it's still gonna happen.
Yeah I know, but it would get even worse without some employment laws being devolved to Brussels.
EDIT Also I'm absolutely disgusted by that law, hard fought rights are worth 2k in a worthless company. Every company will adopt this aswell so nobody has a choice, it'll be interesting if they dock job seekers allowance for refusing to go to a job that gives up your rights for 2k.
I suspect they will.
CyclopsRock
Member
How do you "balance" an economy away from the service industry, though? What do you balance it towards? Not heavy industry - not with our labour costs and our insano energy costs. One of the main reasons why the US's manufacturing industry is actually on the rise is because of the massively cheap Shale energy. We're going in the opposite direction - businesses aren't exempt from green energy taxes (Which makes sense, since heavy industry is the overwhelmingly largest users of energy, but it does make it crazy expensive). If you think about the next 20, 40, 60 years, and ask yourself 'is the UK going to be more phyical-manufacture centric or less?', it's hard to answer that question with "more", in all honestly.
The only way that could become true, I think, is if India, China, Malaysia etc become dramatically more expensive to the point that their costs are no different to ours. I do think they'll become more expensive, by quite some way, but as expensive as ours? I can't see why they would, without extreme effort by their governments to do that, and I don't know why they'd do that. In fact, the Chinese government has been playing the monetary markets precisely to keep that from happening, so clearly their intent so far has been to keep Chinese exports as cheap as possible. From there, though, there's still South America and Africa, both of which have let to be leveraged by the West for cheap production in the same scale that Asia has. I just think that there are so many places with cheaper costs than us that it's going to take a long. long time before the world reaches an equilibrium where production and shipping costs make it financially viable to produce stuff here again. And this is also ignoring the fact that a lot of the work that China and India etc currently do is the type of work that's going to be "outsourced" more and more to robots, rather than being "insourced" back to the UK.
Of course, the other way this might happen is if the UK suddenly leaves the EU and puts up enormous tariffs and/or bombs the pound so as to make foreign imports unaffordable so as to stimulate domestic demand, but this would a) increase the cost of living enormously for everyone, hitting the poorest the hardest, b) risk a lot of our service industry which is healthy, profitable and exportable because suddenly we'd need all hands on deck just to ensure a lack of scarcity of certain resources (not to mention the fact that we'd hardly be self-sufficient, agriculturally, with 80+ million people) and c) condemn another generation to a similar lack of choice as they have now, only on the physical labour side rather than the service side.
The reality is that the low-end manufacturing jobs are gone, and they're never coming back. They'll filter around the cheapest corners of the world before being entirely automated. We have to look up, not down, to find jobs for the future. Massive tax cuts for engineering firms, robotics firms, pharmaceutical firms (Though we already have the 2nd largest pharma industry in the world) to encourage firms to set up offices here instead of yet another German or Japanese city. Let the private sector guide education more, at least at university level - One of the UK's largest industry is the creative industries, and it certainly isn't one that's come about through careful government planning. It only employs around 5% of people in the country, but represents 10% of our exports, because we're actually really good at it but, by and large, our educational institutions are pretty bad for it. It's only recently that they've generally been picking up, and it's almost entirely thanks to the private sector getting aggressively involved in them.
People say "we don't make anything anymore" - fuck that. I do! Our creative industry is one of the few that's kept growing for the last 5 years. In my ~5 years in the animation industry, I'd say around half of my clients are based overseas.
I mean, shit, we're the island that produced Genesis! And now it seems, I'm falling - I'm falling for her! She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah! It takes control, and slowly tears you apaaaart!
tl;dr - The government doesn't know what industries are going to be important in 20 years. No one does. As such, trying to specifically direct industry in direction X or Y is dangerous; They just need to get out of the way and listen to the private sector when it gives advice on how to education the population for specific jobs in the future.
The only way that could become true, I think, is if India, China, Malaysia etc become dramatically more expensive to the point that their costs are no different to ours. I do think they'll become more expensive, by quite some way, but as expensive as ours? I can't see why they would, without extreme effort by their governments to do that, and I don't know why they'd do that. In fact, the Chinese government has been playing the monetary markets precisely to keep that from happening, so clearly their intent so far has been to keep Chinese exports as cheap as possible. From there, though, there's still South America and Africa, both of which have let to be leveraged by the West for cheap production in the same scale that Asia has. I just think that there are so many places with cheaper costs than us that it's going to take a long. long time before the world reaches an equilibrium where production and shipping costs make it financially viable to produce stuff here again. And this is also ignoring the fact that a lot of the work that China and India etc currently do is the type of work that's going to be "outsourced" more and more to robots, rather than being "insourced" back to the UK.
Of course, the other way this might happen is if the UK suddenly leaves the EU and puts up enormous tariffs and/or bombs the pound so as to make foreign imports unaffordable so as to stimulate domestic demand, but this would a) increase the cost of living enormously for everyone, hitting the poorest the hardest, b) risk a lot of our service industry which is healthy, profitable and exportable because suddenly we'd need all hands on deck just to ensure a lack of scarcity of certain resources (not to mention the fact that we'd hardly be self-sufficient, agriculturally, with 80+ million people) and c) condemn another generation to a similar lack of choice as they have now, only on the physical labour side rather than the service side.
The reality is that the low-end manufacturing jobs are gone, and they're never coming back. They'll filter around the cheapest corners of the world before being entirely automated. We have to look up, not down, to find jobs for the future. Massive tax cuts for engineering firms, robotics firms, pharmaceutical firms (Though we already have the 2nd largest pharma industry in the world) to encourage firms to set up offices here instead of yet another German or Japanese city. Let the private sector guide education more, at least at university level - One of the UK's largest industry is the creative industries, and it certainly isn't one that's come about through careful government planning. It only employs around 5% of people in the country, but represents 10% of our exports, because we're actually really good at it but, by and large, our educational institutions are pretty bad for it. It's only recently that they've generally been picking up, and it's almost entirely thanks to the private sector getting aggressively involved in them.
People say "we don't make anything anymore" - fuck that. I do! Our creative industry is one of the few that's kept growing for the last 5 years. In my ~5 years in the animation industry, I'd say around half of my clients are based overseas.
I mean, shit, we're the island that produced Genesis! And now it seems, I'm falling - I'm falling for her! She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah! It takes control, and slowly tears you apaaaart!
tl;dr - The government doesn't know what industries are going to be important in 20 years. No one does. As such, trying to specifically direct industry in direction X or Y is dangerous; They just need to get out of the way and listen to the private sector when it gives advice on how to education the population for specific jobs in the future.
Miles Quaritch
Member
CHEEZMO™;53575446 said:
Goddamn.
Despicable story. Hopefully it will be picked up by the mainstream medi...oh who am I kidding.
Nicktendo86
Member
There has to be more to this.. Surely? I mean, that is just too ridiculous. I've heard bad things about ATOS but bleeding hell.CHEEZMO;53575446 said:
PJV3
Member
Even I did a double take, and I know what money grabbing cunts ATOS are.
I hope it's a mistake or something.
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
- a healthcare professional recorded that a claimant could bend his right knee fully. His right leg was amputated at the mid-thigh. He doesn't have a fucking right knee!
---
see I just plain don't believe that would be upheld at an appeal so it's a temporary inconvenience rather than a long term withdrawal of benefits.
Do you have any experience with ATOS cheezmo?
---
see I just plain don't believe that would be upheld at an appeal so it's a temporary inconvenience rather than a long term withdrawal of benefits.
Do you have any experience with ATOS cheezmo?
CHEEZMO
Obsidian fan
Thankfully, not personally. And given their even-worse record on mental health issues I don't think I'd even plan on doing so.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
I've had a bit of experience with them (at least since a bunch of people left my company to work for them). Seems to me like they are reasonably good on the upper management side (maybe a bit too full of themselves, but what company isn't?) and reasonably good at the lower levels, but they almost totally lack the sensible middle tier - the staff sergeants and RSMs - that make an organisation tick and prevent problems from being problems in the first place by the application of common sense and authority.
PJV3
Member
The documentary about them wasn't flattering, targets set from above and pressure being applied on the assessment teams, how can you have pre determined targets for illness.
It may have changed since then, it was a few years ago.
So... it's OK then?
I hope you've never been the victim of a Kafkaesque bureaucracy before, but when you're later exonerated by it, you don't get back the time that was wasted feeling depressed, anxious, or exasperated.