UK PoliGAF thread of tell me about the rabbits again, Dave.

CyclopsRock said:
That'll be quite interesting, actually - the more nailed down their policy, the more they'll be held to account (I hope) when they talk about opposing this cut or that reduction in funding etc. If they do sign up to the idea of eliminating the deficit entirely in the next parliament, they'll need to be able to explain where the extra money is coming from - "too far, too fast" won't cut it then (though admittedly, he has basically stopped saying that now anyway).
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Sppech done and guess what, tax and spend! With a few Tory policies rebranded. How can anyone take them seriously?
 
WayneMorse said:
Hand guns should be legalised and licensed, Nigel Farage has said

muh guns.
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Nicktendo86 said:
That ukip-tea party comparison keeps getting stronger. Fucking nutters, anyone who votes for them just because they are not labour or the Tories should be ashamed IMHO.
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@Torygraph

Should guns be legalised
B9ykVo1l.png


the fuck‽
 
zomgbbqftw said:
Is it?
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Arguably yes (depending on growth, employment, trade balance and so on). The Scandinavians seem to not do so badly with it (though it beats me why for example the Swedes are so miserable and the Norwegians so happy with basically the same-shaped economy).

So it is sort of viable.

Whether it will ever fly electorally or practically in the UK is a different matter, and personally I tend not to prefer it, but that's different from whether it is viable.
 
Wages certainly havent risen much at all in a lot of key careers, while the few have seen truly out of the ordinary jumps. Its all incredibly uneven.

Not a huge fan of Labour right now as they don't have the hunger and passion I'd want from a party thirsting for power again, but glad to see the 50p tax back on the agenda. The ridiculous "y u h8 businesses tho?" rebuttal is that wonderful utopian assumption the super rich were paying that 5p to the pound forward by employing more people and spending on UK industry only things.
 
phisheep said:
Arguably yes (depending on growth, employment, trade balance and so on). The Scandinavians seem to not do so badly with it (though it beats me why for example the Swedes are so miserable and the Norwegians so happy with basically the same-shaped economy).

So it is sort of viable.

Whether it will ever fly electorally or practically in the UK is a different matter, and personally I tend not to prefer it, but that's different from whether it is viable.
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Well exactly. I don't know whether it is electorally viable (probably is, if framed correctly), but to say that it isn't a viable way to run an economy is absurd.

If the argument is that the specifics of Labour's 'tax and spend' approach is unviable then perhaps there is some merit to that, though quite how different it actually will be to the Conservative approach is very, very questionable.
 
Comres poll for the Independent shows Labour's cut to one point.

33% Labour
32% Conservative
14% UKIP
9% Lib Dems

Other polls held seem to show quite a swing away from Labour since Ed Balls announced their iteration to reintroduce a 50% tax rate.
 
Dan27 said:
Comres poll for the Independent shows Labour's cut to one point.

33% Labour
32% Conservative
14% UKIP
9% Lib Dems

Other polls held seem to show quite a swing away from Labour since Ed Balls announced their iteration to reintroduce a 50% tax rate.
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Odd as every report I've read said it is a great political move but stupid economicly. Labour should be leagues ahead in the polls, the fact they are not and in fact the Tories are getting closer MUST be worrying them. Expect !ore back of fag packets nonsense headline grabbing policies in the coming months.
 
Dan27 said:
Comres poll for the Independent shows Labour's cut to one point.

33% Labour
32% Conservative
14% UKIP
9% Lib Dems

Other polls held seem to show quite a swing away from Labour since Ed Balls announced their iteration to reintroduce a 50% tax rate.
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I don't know why Miliband is keeping on Balls even though I'm pretty sure he's the biggest detriment to Labour's popularity. I guess Darling could come back on after the Scottish referendum.
 
Yougov has Labour's lead at only 2% too.

I don't think they can bring back Darling. I think it'd be good for them and the country, but it would be awful electorally, I think. The electorate is complex, but I think most people don't want a return to the Brown years - and it'd be hard to sell Miliband as a candidate for change when he was in the Treasury and Darling was the chancellor in the Brown government.

One of their big problems was the post-Blair cull they did of the Blairites. They lost a lot of young talent then, and it's hard to make that back up quickly, especially given how many seats they lost in 2010 (the Conservatives, on the other hand, had a huge new intake in 2010, a lot of whom are very on board with the modernising programme and will be running the cabinet in 20 years.) Labout don't really have that intake. Chuka? Hohoho.
 
Also the simple fact is that Labour isn't really announcing exciting policies, an energy price freeze and cutting welfare for under-25s isn't gonna get you elected. Why don't they run on reversing the disgraceful privatization of the NHS? Or re nationalizing the railways or utilities, you know, actual left wing policies?
 
They do seem to be straddling this rather awkward territory wherein they're basically alienating everyone.

I get more and more convinced that a Tory majority in 2015 could happen every day.
 
WayneMorse said:
Also the simple fact is that Labour isn't really announcing exciting policies, an energy price freeze and cutting welfare for under-25s isn't gonna get you elected. Why don't they run on reversing the disgraceful privatization of the NHS? Or re nationalizing the railways or utilities, you know, actual left wing policies?
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Because it costs too much money vs the votes they will obtain from announcing said policies?

None of the parties have announced their Election manifests - but the spotlight is clearly on Labour to counter the fastest growth in a long time, rapid rate of falling unemployment and to also shed the remnants of the Blair/Brown governments that racked up the level of debt that made the current coalition enforced such widespread cuts.

The fact that polls since the 50% tax rate announcement has seen a mini-slump of support for Labour means that the electorate are shying away from supporting the tax and spend policies of New Labour - people aren't going to fall for that. The opposition need new ideas to capture the imagination of the voters they need to win the next election - and I for one doubt they can come up with any.
 
WayneMorse said:
Also the simple fact is that Labour isn't really announcing exciting policies, an energy price freeze and cutting welfare for under-25s isn't gonna get you elected. Why don't they run on reversing the disgraceful privatization of the NHS? Or re nationalizing the railways or utilities, you know, actual left wing policies?
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Why would neoliberals propose left wing policies?
 
Dan27 said:
Blair/Brown governments that racked up the level of debt that made the current coalition enforced such widespread cuts.
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They weren't made to cut anything, in fact Cameron ran on keeping Labour's spending levels up until the financial crisis. Labour didn't even spend that much in terms of deficit to GDP ratio compared to John Major up until 2008, and even paid off the last of the wartime debt.

And besides austerity is BS because you end up having to spend more to pay off the debt due to shrinking tax pools from a sluggish economy, there's nothing wrong with moderate inflation from government spending as long as it's used to stimulate the economy, and besides it's hardly believable that the government actually cares about cutting the deficit when they spend billions on useless programs like Trident and a multi-million pound funeral for a certain former PM.
 
WayneMorse said:
They weren't made to cut anything, in fact Cameron ran on keeping Labour's spending levels up until the financial crisis. Labour didn't even spend that much in terms of deficit to GDP ratio compared to John Major up until 2008, and even paid off the last of the wartime debt.
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Yes, people misremember the early years of New Labour. I am no fan of New Labour, but they kept - by and large - to Major's proposed spending levels (which the Tories themselves admit was electioneering not reality) for the early periods. I actually think Brown was a decent enough Chancellor; he was right on big calls like the Euro, for example. New Labour just became so complicated and fucked up, particularly through Iraq, that they became essentially ungovernable.
 
Dan27 said:
made the current coalition enforced such widespread cuts.
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Hahaha WHAT. Cuts are what they always want, what they always have wanted, and always will. The oh noes deficit oh cripes debt oh dear whining is just a cover to carry out ~austerity~ and they're now cementing it as permanent and the new normal. Say bye bye to the last vestiges of the social programmes that have been under attack for decades as they finish off dismantling them, and sell our public services off at bargain bin prices to their old classmates who will give them a nice consultancy job once they're out of office.

Anything to make it impossible for people to survive outside of whoring yourself to Capital. Anything to keep a mass army of labour in reserve so immiseration and the race to the bottom can be carried out quicker and more effectively and undermine the bargaining power of labour ever further.
Poverty is that state and condition in society where the individual has no surplus labour in store, or, in other words, no property or means of subsistence but what is derived from the constant exercise of industry in the various occupations of life. Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society, without which nations and communities could not exist in a state of civilization. It is the lot of man. It is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of wealth.
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It's like a modern day form of the Inclosure Acts and you, like a peasant talking about how well the new fence is coming along, are supporting policies that are working directly against you and your class.

You got duped by a bunch of used car salesmen.

Dont know why I wrote this as nobody will actually give a fuck.

edit: actually fuck it I'm unsubbing this thread. I've had enough of reading a bunch of working class people carry water for their class enemies even as they enact policies designed to attack them.
 
vcassano1 said:
Yes, people misremember the early years of New Labour. I am no fan of New Labour, but they kept - by and large - to Major's proposed spending levels (which the Tories themselves admit was electioneering not reality) for the early periods. I actually think Brown was a decent enough Chancellor; he was right on big calls like the Euro, for example. New Labour just became so complicated and fucked up, particularly through Iraq, that they became essentially ungovernable.
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There's a pretty strong body of evidence to suggest that Brown's rejection from the Euro stems almost entirely from a blow in the proxy-war between him and Blair - that he basically did it to spite the PM. For which we should all, of course, be eternally grateful!

As for their spending, I think the problem was that the deficit to GDP ratio was fairly high for a country undergoing what was nominally at least a huge boom. The Thatcher and Major years each had a recession or two that necessarily increased their deficit-to-GDP ratios, but New Labour were unencumbered by that; As we saw, that wasn't problematic as long as that continued, but a lot of that extra spending came not from infrastructural projects but current government spending - which is the hardest thing to cut when when there *is* a recession and suddenly your debt-to-GDP ratio goes through the roof.
 
ONS reporting GDP up by 0.7% in the last quarter. 1.9% growth for the calendar year, however the country is still 1.3% below it's pre-recession peak.
 
Dan27 said:
ONS reporting GDP up by 0.7% in the last quarter. 1.9% growth for the calendar year, however the country is still 1.3% below it's pre-recession peak.
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Growth in all sectors but construction, which isn't so bad.

Also, I just found this: http://ukgeneralelection2015.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/yougov-polling-26th-27th-jan.html

For the lazy, here's what it says:

YOUGOV

North of England

LAB 50%
CON 27%
UKIP 14%
LD 6%
GREENS 1%

Rest of the South

CON 42%
LAB 24%
UKIP 18%
LD 11%
GREENS 3%
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Now, the north/south Labour/Tory divide isn't all that interesting, but what IS quite interesting to me is that the UKIP vote isn't all that different in the North and the South. Obviously Labour are, relatively, stronger in the north than the Tories are in the south, but that difference - 8% - is approximately outweighed by the increase in Lib Dems (5% more) and Greens (2% more - total of 7% for non Lib-Tor-UKIP parties). This leaves 1% point difference between them, which happens to be actually 1% more than the national difference in that poll (37% vs 35%). Ergo? Obviously nothing's for sure, but I think it's reasonable to think that the Tories aren't bleeding that many more votes to UKIP than Labour are.
 
Decent GDP figures. Oil and gas took another 0.1% off the headline rate, we're up to a 1% difference since 2010 and a 1.2% difference since 2009. It also goes a long way to explaining the productivity losses since 2009 as oil and gas is a highly productive area of the economy with just 10,000 people contributing around 2% of national output. Losses in this area are devastating to productivity. Excluding oil and gas, we're just 0.5% off our pre-recession peak, but factoring in population growth, we're about 1.6% off our pre-recession peak per-capita GDP so there is still some way to go before the economic gains really start to feed through into people's wages.
 
Once more, the DUP (councillor):

Guy Spence ‏@GuySpence
Katy Perry's satanic performance at the Grammys was ridiculous. Folk who glorify evil have nothing positive to offer anyone esp young people
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That's always been Cable's role though - to go out to do a speech or interview saying 'but we're left wing too!!' The Lob Dems.... aah, I'll miss them when they're gone!
 
CyclopsRock said:
That's always been Cable's role though - to go out to do a speech or interview saying 'but we're left wing too!!' The Lob Dems.... aah, I'll miss them when they're gone!
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With sex scandals coming out, their inability or sheer unwillingness to deal with them, cable's interviews and them already sucking up to labour in case of a hung parliament next time just shows what a waste of time party they are. I have no idea what they believe in and what they represent.
 
Anybody see Question Time last night?

Perhaps I exagerate but Emily Thornberry was getting pretty demolished.

I haven't seen someone get so trounced since Nick Griffin was on.

I hadn't seen Mark Littlewood before but he's a good panelist; he didn't waffle on, answered questions fairly directly. He also looks like a better fed Geobbels.
 
No, you're not exaggerating.

Emily Thornberry was just insufferable.

An audience member asked a question on where the panelists stand on citizenship and rights. Littlewood delivered a clear and relatively concise answer that I found myself nodding my head to even if I'm not a big adherent of his free market principles in general. Then Thornberry was asked and she banged on about parliamentary procedures.

"I would welcome a debate on blah blah blah..." No "I think this" or "I think that". An embarrassing performance delivered only by someone as remarkably trained as she was in her lawyer days to waffle and say nothing of worth. If this is the best Labour could offer for the week as a panelist, then fuck me. Miliband's in some shite.
 
UtterlyPerplexed said:
No, you're not exaggerating.

Emily Thornberry was just insufferable.

An audience member asked a question on where the panelists stand on citizenship and rights. Littlewood delivered a clear and relatively concise answer that I found myself nodding my head to even if I'm not a big adherent of his free market principles in general. Then Thornberry was asked and she banged on about parliamentary procedures.

"I would welcome a debate on blah blah blah..." No "I think this" or "I think that". An embarrassing performance delivered only by someone as remarkably trained as she was in her lawyer days to waffle and say nothing of worth. If this is the best Labour could offer for the week as a panelist, then fuck me. Miliband's in some shite.
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I was genuinely laughing, best episode of QT I've seen for ages. I reckon you could make a five minute montage of Emily Thornberry sighing, rolling her eyes and generally looking dazed.

For now, here is her succinct and eloquent answer to the question "Should foreign born criminals be able to have their citizenship revoked?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsPG25nZeY8
 
So, with everything going on in the world at the moment the best attack Miliband had at pmq's was to point out the lack of women on Cameron's front bench? Seriously? Packed his benth with women for this week to 'prove' his point as well. Is this really the highest priority for our opposition, gender equality in the conservative party? What a joke.
 
Wow these floods show just how incompetent Cameron actually is. Can't believe he thought blaming them on Labour would work.

God forbid if the houses flooded were owned by important people like execs at Goldman Sachs or Barclay's.
 
WayneMorse said:
Wow these floods show just how incompetent Cameron actually is. Can't believe he thought blaming them on Labour would work.

God forbid if the houses flooded were owned by important people like execs at Goldman Sachs or Barclay's.
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How is it Cameron's fault we have had the most rainfall in over 200 years and the environment agency spend £20 mill on maintaining rivers last year compared to £592 mil on staff?
 
It does seem that the Environment Agency's priorities were wrong, but one has to acknowledge that a) this is easier said in hindsight, though of course this is the third year in a row in which Somerset has seen significant flooding, and they haven't all be the wettest year on record and b) this is an inevitable consequence of devolving responsibility for certain issues to nominally "non-political" bodies - which is basically just a byword for "unaccountable." The government doesn't control it, and no one elects them.
 
CyclopsRock said:
It does seem that the Environment Agency's priorities were wrong, but one has to acknowledge that a) this is easier said in hindsight, though of course this is the third year in a row in which Somerset has seen significant flooding, and they haven't all be the wettest year on record and b) this is an inevitable consequence of devolving responsibility for certain issues to nominally "non-political" bodies - which is basically just a byword for "unaccountable." The government doesn't control it, and no one elects them.
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True, they do like to make a quango then wash their hands of responsibility.
 
CyclopsRock said:
It does seem that the Environment Agency's priorities were wrong, but one has to acknowledge that a) this is easier said in hindsight, though of course this is the third year in a row in which Somerset has seen significant flooding, and they haven't all be the wettest year on record and b) this is an inevitable consequence of devolving responsibility for certain issues to nominally "non-political" bodies - which is basically just a byword for "unaccountable." The government doesn't control it, and no one elects them.
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The government sets the priorities of the agency, both major parties love quangos because they can pass the buck, pretending it's nothing to do with them. If the people want traditional flood protection it isn't going to happen, it will take billions that no party is going to spend.

It's all about natural buffering nowadays, Salt Marsh, slow river flow etc. nice, cheap and most years functional.
 
PJV3 said:
The government sets the priorities of the agency, both major parties love quangos because they can pass the buck, pretending it's nothing to do with them. If the people want traditional flood protection it isn't going to happen, it will take billions that no party is going to spend.

It's all about natural buffering nowadays, Salt Marsh, slow river flow etc. nice, cheap and most years functional.
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It's really not an issue I know a great deal about, but from my limited understanding, when the environment agency was created about 20 years ago, they took a slightly more "hands off" approach that would encourage a more natural environment - good for biodiversity, good for natural habitats for animals and all that lark. The problem, though, is that this isn't natural land. 500 years ago or so, it was all marsh land and some Dutch engineers help craft it into useful agricultural land, and since then it has required human "interference", if you like, to ensure it doesn't flood. Obviously this year is particularly bad in terms of the weather, but my understanding is that in an attempt to be more "natural", the environment agency has effectively stopped doing all the things that have been done for centuries, like dredging the rivers to make sure there's enough spare capacity in them to carry away what would be the marshy water through the drainage system without flooding over its banks.

That's just my understanding from reading a few articles from irked Somersetters though, so perhaps they're just looking for scarecrows.

Edit: Further, I see no problem with what Gove did to the Ofsted woman at all. You can call it "politicising" if you like (though they obviously already are - Labour absolutely stuffed the quangos with their people in 97 and it's never swung back the other way; they're still overwhelmingly steared by people who are politicially aligned to Labour by their own estimation) but I don't think there's anything wrong with the elected government of the day putting people into jobs in otherwise unaccountable agencies. That's the only, limited, slither of democracy at play in most of these agencies, and I'm all for it (and I have no problem with labour installing its own people in 97 either, my only problem is that the Tories and Lib Dems didn't do the same in 2010).
 
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