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Crouching tiger, hidden dragon – politicalbetting.com

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  • eek said:

    Tres said:

    eek said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    The problem there is that we are asking France to do the impossible, you can't police 100+ miles of coast to try and work out where the people are going to depart from today.

    There are no easy (and in fact probably, no) answers here. The Times had a decent writeup on it yesterday, pick any option and the downsides are greater than the upsides.

    What we do need to do is process people quicker and (sadly) make their life's so unpleasant that they prefer to go back home.
    Or make their life so unpleasant they prefer to blow themselves up in a taxi in Liverpool.
    As I said - there are no easy (and in fact, probably, no) answers here.
    Which is why the politically wise thing to do is change the subject.

    Fortress Britain, Make Life Unpleasant... They all sound like solutions until you work out the details of what the British state would have to do to people. One dead innocent is all it would take and it's over.

    So politicians like Priti Patel are reduced to fairly impotent rage. And the same would happen to Farage if he, somehow, were in power.

    Some votes, whether hardcore antisemites, or keep 'em out racists, really aren't worth chasing.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709

    Feeling badly hungover this morning without the pleasures of imbibing even a single drop of the water of life last night, I am made slightly more cheery by reading @HYUFD this morning.

    A pity that he is only a pretend Tory and doesn't interact with the real party - would love to hear their reaction to his sneering arrogance above. It really now is "we don't need their vote" with "their" being an ever-lengthening list that apparently includes all the voters who gave them an 80 seat majority. The core Tory vote is what gave Blair two landslides love, you can't rely on it.

    Anyway, expect another u-turn on this social care proposal. Its indefensible, unworkable, and the red wall MPs are going to demolish it. At which point Little Lord Flaunteroy will be posting the direct opposite of today;s posts insisting nothing has changed.

    Even the core Tory vote which put Cameron and May into No 10 as I said live in seats worth on average £270,000. They are the voters the Tories have to retain to stay in power, the Red Wall are just a bonus
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    Wow. You really do embody the true spirit of the Tories and their disdain for working class communities. You really do underestimate the potential to lose seats in your core group.
    Plenty of working class people are home owners, especially older ones, and if they live in the South plenty will live in houses worth over £200,000.

    On the other hand plenty of students and young people rent. The former come under the Tory core vote, the latter don't
    The children inheriting from someone worth £200K will lose 43% of their inheritance. My children will lose about 2% because I am well off. If you are worth £86k you lose everything. Not exactly leveling up is it.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited November 2021
    Taz said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    "Nice to have" does explain Boris's utterly insane Railway and (quietly announced) Social Care policies - as Boris is running those policies to keep his Southern MPs happy.

    Seems quite a lot of conservative red wall mps endorse the recent railway announcements
    Have you? I've seen some get very annoyed as they discovered the cancellation of HS2E didn't solve their planning blight issues (and won't because at some point HS2E needs to be built).
    Richard Holden, probable one term MP, on Sunday politics going on about how great the govts new package is. So, at least, one is a fan.
    NW Durham wasn't really a winner anyway as it hasn't got any train service. But has he actually said what bits are great - that would be fun to watch as I can easily imagine the interview.

    The plan is great
    What bits do you like
    Well, uhh, ummm.....

    As I pointed out on Thursday / Friday if you don't read it and know nothing about trains it reads well.

    Sadly if you know anything at all, it's completely impossible as what is being offered is impossible (as it offers both faster trains AND more local services) and its based on hopes rather than actually planned and costed projects.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673
    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    We need to process applications in France, approve them, and bring these vulnerable people,here safely.

    That labour spokesman is useless.

    I think the problem is very few of them would get approved, most are young men who are obviously economic migrants. There are very few families shown unless they deliberately hide them to make it look like it is all young men coming off the boats. No way France want to have all that hassle and then have to keep them, they have enough problems of their own and I bet are glad they are taking boats out of France.
  • Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
  • HYUFD said:

    Feeling badly hungover this morning without the pleasures of imbibing even a single drop of the water of life last night, I am made slightly more cheery by reading @HYUFD this morning.

    A pity that he is only a pretend Tory and doesn't interact with the real party - would love to hear their reaction to his sneering arrogance above. It really now is "we don't need their vote" with "their" being an ever-lengthening list that apparently includes all the voters who gave them an 80 seat majority. The core Tory vote is what gave Blair two landslides love, you can't rely on it.

    Anyway, expect another u-turn on this social care proposal. Its indefensible, unworkable, and the red wall MPs are going to demolish it. At which point Little Lord Flaunteroy will be posting the direct opposite of today;s posts insisting nothing has changed.

    Even the core Tory vote which put Cameron and May into No 10 as I said live in seats worth on average £270,000. They are the voters the Tories have to retain to stay in power, the Red Wall are just a bonus
    When you relied on this core vote you won a majority of -179.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,702
    eek said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    "Nice to have" does explain Boris's utterly insane Railway and (quietly announced) Social Care policies - as Boris is running those policies to keep his Southern MPs happy.

    Seems quite a lot of conservative red wall mps endorse the recent railway announcements
    Have you? I've seen some get very annoyed as they discovered the cancellation of HS2E didn't solve their planning blight issues (and won't because at some point HS2E needs to be built).
    Richard Holden, probable one term MP, on Sunday politics going on about how great the govts new package is. So, at least, one is a fan.
    NW Durham wasn't really a winner anyway as it hasn't got any train service. But has he actually said what bits are great - that would be fun to watch.
    He just blustered about the overall investment and talked about feasibility studies into the Consett -Tyne train line and a line from South Durham to the wear valley. Also the Ashington Blyth route. None of which is relevant. But he was up against the colossal intellect that is Ian Lavery, so he got a bit of a free pass.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited November 2021
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    Wow. You really do embody the true spirit of the Tories and their disdain for working class communities. You really do underestimate the potential to lose seats in your core group.
    Plenty of working class people are home owners, especially older ones, and if they live in the South plenty will live in houses worth over £200,000.

    On the other hand plenty of students and young people rent. The former come under the Tory core vote, the latter don't
    The children inheriting from someone worth £200K will lose 43% of their inheritance. My children will lose about 2% because I am well off. If you are worth £86k you lose everything. Not exactly leveling up is it.
    Under current rules the children of those worth £200k would lose 90% not 43% and if you are worth over £23,250 you could lose everything in residential care costs, so still a drastic improvement.

  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,459
    I don't know why everyone's ganging up on HYUFD this morning. I, for one, would be very happy if the Conservative Party limited its appeal to southern, wealthy home-owners. Seems like a sensible move to me, and should be encouraged.
  • pigeon said:

    From July:

    Maintaining the current Covid restrictions through the summer would only delay a wave of hospitalisations and deaths rather than reduce them, the chief medical officer for England has warned.

    Prof Chris Whitty told a Downing Street briefing that while scientific opinion was mixed on when to lift the last remaining restrictions in the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, he believed that doing so in the summer had some advantages over releasing in the autumn.

    “At a certain point, you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you’re not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die, you may change when they happen,” he said.

    “There is quite a strong view by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal, to opening up into the autumn when schools are going back and when we’re heading into the winter period when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons,” he added.


    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/05/chris-whitty-keeping-covid-restrictions-will-only-delay-wave

    And events may well be proving him right, though the picture is complex: Germany, the Netherlands, and a number of other European countries that kept NPIs are now suffering the predicted delayed Winter wave of death, but France, Italy and Spain appear to be holding up quite well. It'll be interesting to see if they manage to avoid going down the tubes too, or if that merely happens more slowly.
    Those three countries' cases have started increasing in the same way as the more northerly ones, they are just not so far along the curve. I think the French have said they will rely on high vaccine uptake to keep people out of hospital.
  • Sandpit said:

    HYUFD said:

    Sean_F said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    Most Conservatives are not the wealthy rich in the South.
    Most Conservatives are home owners and the largest proportion of those live in the high house price South
    The high house prices are not something we should be celebrating though, rather they are becoming a massive problem.
    A problem for the country, economy and the young. Not a problem for the Tory party for another few years though.
  • eek said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    "Nice to have" does explain Boris's utterly insane Railway and (quietly announced) Social Care policies - as Boris is running those policies to keep his Southern MPs happy.

    Seems quite a lot of conservative red wall mps endorse the recent railway announcements
    Have you? I've seen some get very annoyed as they discovered the cancellation of HS2E didn't solve their planning blight issues (and won't because at some point HS2E needs to be built).
    Richard Holden, probable one term MP, on Sunday politics going on about how great the govts new package is. So, at least, one is a fan.
    NW Durham wasn't really a winner anyway as it hasn't got any train service. But has he actually said what bits are great - that would be fun to watch as I can easily imagine the interview.

    The plan is great
    What bits do you like
    Well, uhh, ummm.....

    As I pointed out on Thursday / Friday if you don't read it and know nothing about trains it reads well.

    Sadly if you know anything at all, it's completely impossible as what is being offered is impossible (as it offers both faster trains AND more local services) and its based on hopes rather than actually planned and costed projects.
    Be fair. When faced with finding a red wall Tory to defend the government's rail package, they found an MP for a constituency without any railways. So he'd know all about it.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,761
    I am sure that it is me but does the sum of this brilliant piece of economic analysis amount to the fact that the poor do not die rich but the rich do? Wow, who'd have thought?

    Turning to the specifics of the social care policy I have reservations about a policy that is designed to protect inheritances over the cost of care. As Robert has already pointed out such a policy simply allocates the bill somewhere else, typically to those still earning. But the desire to hand on something to your kids is deep rooted in the human psyche. I am involved in a number of cases at the moment on behalf of care homes who are having to sue the children for estate that they have distributed rather than pay the care debts the deceased left behind.

    The idea that someone else will pick up the bill is powerful. The Labour party, and indeed the SNP is built on it and they do ok. I suspect that the Tories will not be particularly harmed by it either. Of course it would be better if we had more mature and objective politicians but I refer to my earlier comments about human nature.
  • New @KekstCNC polling in today’s @thesundaytimes.

    Despite weeks of bad headlines and Europe lockdowns, the number of Brits who want the govt to protect the economy over limiting the spread of the virus is at its highest yet - a huge shift on a year ago.

    https://thetimes.co.uk/article/will-booster-jabs-stop-britains-covid-winter-from-being-as-bleak-as-europes-pxwjlqg9k



    https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1462348255619170304?s=20

    Martin Lewis made the exact point on Marr this morning
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 2,179
    The problem for the Tories now is that the proportion of voters who think Boris is a c&%# is highest among those who historically have a greater propensity to vote Conservative. In other words the rebellion is coming from core Tory voters. This could lead to some very interesting results.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    FF43 said:

    The intention, I think, is an insurance policy. Losers of one of life's lotteries, who go into slow and ruinously expensive decline in nursing homes, get supported financially while the relative winners, who are in and out (feet first) of institutions in a few months or less, can support themselves.

    So far, so sensible.

    The problem, as so often, is that the government is trying to save money while implementing this sensible policy. The £86 000 cap wasn't chosen by accident. It's a year or so of nursing home fees, which happens to be the average length of a stay. Lottery losers with fewer assets will fall back on the state under current rules once their money runs out. The net change of this policy is to protect the assets of a small number of wealthy people.

    The poor judgment is almost certainly Sunak's, not Johnson's. It doesn't matter though. Sunak is a very skilled blame-shifter.

    Most people go to residential care not nursing homes
  • I don't know why everyone's ganging up on HYUFD this morning. I, for one, would be very happy if the Conservative Party limited its appeal to southern, wealthy home-owners. Seems like a sensible move to me, and should be encouraged.

    To be fair, I am surprised Catholics and republicans have yet to be specifically excluded in the Epping manifesto this morning. It is still early I suppose.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    There is a solution and it involves building a processing facility somewhere like the Falkland Islands and locking all the boat people in it. The Government won't do it because it can't be arsed. Besides anything else, actually dealing effectively with the problem would cost a lot of money. Far easier to make tough-sounding noises, which costs nothing, and dump the burden of housing and feeding the migrants on local authorities and charities.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited November 2021

    HYUFD said:

    Feeling badly hungover this morning without the pleasures of imbibing even a single drop of the water of life last night, I am made slightly more cheery by reading @HYUFD this morning.

    A pity that he is only a pretend Tory and doesn't interact with the real party - would love to hear their reaction to his sneering arrogance above. It really now is "we don't need their vote" with "their" being an ever-lengthening list that apparently includes all the voters who gave them an 80 seat majority. The core Tory vote is what gave Blair two landslides love, you can't rely on it.

    Anyway, expect another u-turn on this social care proposal. Its indefensible, unworkable, and the red wall MPs are going to demolish it. At which point Little Lord Flaunteroy will be posting the direct opposite of today;s posts insisting nothing has changed.

    Even the core Tory vote which put Cameron and May into No 10 as I said live in seats worth on average £270,000. They are the voters the Tories have to retain to stay in power, the Red Wall are just a bonus
    When you relied on this core vote you won a majority of -179.
    Wrong.

    Tory seats held in 2019 had a median house price of £270,000.

    Given there were 317 of them and only 165 Tory seats in 1997 about half of them were Labour or LD in 1997
  • I don't know why everyone's ganging up on HYUFD this morning. I, for one, would be very happy if the Conservative Party limited its appeal to southern, wealthy home-owners. Seems like a sensible move to me, and should be encouraged.

    Ganging up? Hardly - I love a good bit of cabaret and he is doing a fine turn this morning.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    edited November 2021
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    Wow. You really do embody the true spirit of the Tories and their disdain for working class communities. You really do underestimate the potential to lose seats in your core group.
    Plenty of working class people are home owners, especially older ones, and if they live in the South plenty will live in houses worth over £200,000.

    On the other hand plenty of students and young people rent. The former come under the Tory core vote, the latter don't
    The children inheriting from someone worth £200K will lose 43% of their inheritance. My children will lose about 2% because I am well off. If you are worth £86k you lose everything. Not exactly leveling up is it.
    Under current rules the children of those worth £200k would lose 90% not 43%, so still a drastic improvement.

    That doesn't answer the point though does it. Why should my children keep nearly 100% and yet a person with £86K not be able to pass on a penny. How is that fair?

    And why shouldn't people pay for the services they receive if they can afford it? Taxpayers money should be focused upon those who can't, not those who can.

    I would like a holiday in the West Indies. If the taxpayer would be kind enough to pay for it I can leave my children some more money. is that ok with you?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,702

    eek said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    "Nice to have" does explain Boris's utterly insane Railway and (quietly announced) Social Care policies - as Boris is running those policies to keep his Southern MPs happy.

    Seems quite a lot of conservative red wall mps endorse the recent railway announcements
    Have you? I've seen some get very annoyed as they discovered the cancellation of HS2E didn't solve their planning blight issues (and won't because at some point HS2E needs to be built).
    Richard Holden, probable one term MP, on Sunday politics going on about how great the govts new package is. So, at least, one is a fan.
    NW Durham wasn't really a winner anyway as it hasn't got any train service. But has he actually said what bits are great - that would be fun to watch as I can easily imagine the interview.

    The plan is great
    What bits do you like
    Well, uhh, ummm.....

    As I pointed out on Thursday / Friday if you don't read it and know nothing about trains it reads well.

    Sadly if you know anything at all, it's completely impossible as what is being offered is impossible (as it offers both faster trains AND more local services) and its based on hopes rather than actually planned and costed projects.
    Be fair. When faced with finding a red wall Tory to defend the government's rail package, they found an MP for a constituency without any railways. So he'd know all about it.
    Well he does have a feasibility study on one from Consett to Newcastle reporting soon. So a real win for Durham NW
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    malcolmg said:

    Taz said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    We need to process applications in France, approve them, and bring these vulnerable people,here safely.

    That labour spokesman is useless.

    I think the problem is very few of them would get approved, most are young men who are obviously economic migrants. There are very few families shown unless they deliberately hide them to make it look like it is all young men coming off the boats. No way France want to have all that hassle and then have to keep them, they have enough problems of their own and I bet are glad they are taking boats out of France.
    The fact that they are mostly young men doesn't mean that they are not legitimately seeking asylum. It is young men that are at most risk of forced conscription, imprisonment etc. Similarly it is young men without families that can flee, those with families generally can only keep their heads down, or at most flee to neighbouring counties, which is where 90% of the world's refugees are.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,583
    edited November 2021
    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    Cicero said:

    The problem for the Tories now is that the proportion of voters who think Boris is a c&%# is highest among those who historically have a greater propensity to vote Conservative. In other words the rebellion is coming from core Tory voters. This could lead to some very interesting results.

    Evidence? 71% of 2019 Tory voters think Boris would be a better PM than Starmer but only 59% of 2019 Labour voters think Starmer would be a better PM than Boris

    https://redfieldandwiltonstrategies.com/latest-gb-voting-intention-15-november-2021/
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited November 2021
    Taz said:

    eek said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    "Nice to have" does explain Boris's utterly insane Railway and (quietly announced) Social Care policies - as Boris is running those policies to keep his Southern MPs happy.

    Seems quite a lot of conservative red wall mps endorse the recent railway announcements
    Have you? I've seen some get very annoyed as they discovered the cancellation of HS2E didn't solve their planning blight issues (and won't because at some point HS2E needs to be built).
    Richard Holden, probable one term MP, on Sunday politics going on about how great the govts new package is. So, at least, one is a fan.
    NW Durham wasn't really a winner anyway as it hasn't got any train service. But has he actually said what bits are great - that would be fun to watch as I can easily imagine the interview.

    The plan is great
    What bits do you like
    Well, uhh, ummm.....

    As I pointed out on Thursday / Friday if you don't read it and know nothing about trains it reads well.

    Sadly if you know anything at all, it's completely impossible as what is being offered is impossible (as it offers both faster trains AND more local services) and its based on hopes rather than actually planned and costed projects.
    Be fair. When faced with finding a red wall Tory to defend the government's rail package, they found an MP for a constituency without any railways. So he'd know all about it.
    Well he does have a feasibility study on one from Consett to Newcastle reporting soon. So a real win for Durham NW
    Yep £50,000 being spent to say it's uneconomic. But even if it wasn't it wouldn't be important enough, capacity into Newcastle is already at 100% due to the restricted options crossing the Tyne.
  • HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD you misunderstood something I posted yesterday regarding this issue. I pointed out that the £86K limit is not real because people will have to top up cost when the deemed contribution by the local authority is less than the actual costs (as it will be a lot of the time) and also people will have to pay the hotel type costs (eg food) which will be significantly more than you and I going down to Tescos so will deplete the person's assets significantly.

    You misunderstood my post yesterday by assuming I thought this should be covered also. I don't. I think when people can afford their care in a home they should pay for it themselves. I don't see why the taxpayer should subsidise the inheritance of the children.

    So here are the issues for you:

    a) Why should the taxpayer pay for one type of cost of the care home and not the other costs if you want to protect the inheritance?. The inheritance is going to be seriously depleted (the £86k limit will be meaningless) if the person lives to a ripe old age and if they don't (as sadly is often the case) the cost of the care home won't have been significant anyway. You stated the food cost shouldn't be covered. How do you reconcile that with your wish for inheritance of the family home if the house still needs to be sold

    b) Why should I be subsidizing the inheritance of the children of a well off person. I am happy to subsidise those in need, but why am I subsidizing people who aren't.

    c) I am relatively wealthy. £86K represents very little of my wealth so my children will inherit nearly 100% of my wealth under this scheme whereas a poor person gets nothing and an average person may get 50%. How is it fair that I gain at the cost of the less well off.
    a) Most people don't need residential care even if they need at home care, so we are only talking a minority. However the costs of living for those who are permanent residents of care homes is not the same as the actual cost of care. Taxpayers don't pay for pensioners who downsize for example.

    b) You are a LD not a Tory and one of the key points of being a Tory is preservation of wealth and assets.

    c) A poor person has few if any assets anyway but already will get their care costs paid for. An average person will still get to keep 50% of their estate whereas now they only get to keep about 10%
    Greed seems to be your motto

    It is not this conservatives one
  • Cicero said:

    The problem for the Tories now is that the proportion of voters who think Boris is a c&%# is highest among those who historically have a greater propensity to vote Conservative. In other words the rebellion is coming from core Tory voters. This could lead to some very interesting results.

    Nope. We have been assured that reliance on the core Tory vote will deliver a 1997-type result. Not only are things ok, they are better than OK. These bold new Tory policies repel the half-Tories, the swing voters, the people who weren't thinking what Michael Howard was thinking.

    With these false Tories removed the party will finally be able to have true Tory policies for true Tory voters only. And another majority of -179.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    pigeon said:

    From July:

    Maintaining the current Covid restrictions through the summer would only delay a wave of hospitalisations and deaths rather than reduce them, the chief medical officer for England has warned.

    Prof Chris Whitty told a Downing Street briefing that while scientific opinion was mixed on when to lift the last remaining restrictions in the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, he believed that doing so in the summer had some advantages over releasing in the autumn.

    “At a certain point, you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you’re not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die, you may change when they happen,” he said.

    “There is quite a strong view by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal, to opening up into the autumn when schools are going back and when we’re heading into the winter period when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons,” he added.


    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/05/chris-whitty-keeping-covid-restrictions-will-only-delay-wave

    And events may well be proving him right, though the picture is complex: Germany, the Netherlands, and a number of other European countries that kept NPIs are now suffering the predicted delayed Winter wave of death, but France, Italy and Spain appear to be holding up quite well. It'll be interesting to see if they manage to avoid going down the tubes too, or if that merely happens more slowly.
    I chatted to a contact in France on Friday

    They have changed the rules so you now need to pay for your own tests - so the number of tests has fallen

    The stat this guy is watching is the number of schools that have shut because of outbreaks of covid - this is apparently at an all time high
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    pigeon said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    There is a solution and it involves building a processing facility somewhere like the Falkland Islands and locking all the boat people in it.
    That was pretty much what we did with the Vietnamese boat people arriving in Hong Kong in the Seventies and Eighties. What stopped the flow was mostly improved conditions in Vietnam.

  • pigeon said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    There is a solution and it involves building a processing facility somewhere like the Falkland Islands and locking all the boat people in it. The Government won't do it because it can't be arsed. Besides anything else, actually dealing effectively with the problem would cost a lot of money. Far easier to make tough-sounding noises, which costs nothing, and dump the burden of housing and feeding the migrants on local authorities and charities.
    You can propose a processing facility wherever you like. You have to catch them first. As painfully funny as he in general and his GBeebies "news" channel is, the Nigel does show plenty of footage of migrants making it across unhindered, and there's reportage aplenty of the same.

    You want to process boat migrants abroad? Fine - you need to detain them. Which means we need a concerted Home Office / Police operation of the exact type we are not resourced or operationally capable of doing.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    Wow. You really do embody the true spirit of the Tories and their disdain for working class communities. You really do underestimate the potential to lose seats in your core group.
    Plenty of working class people are home owners, especially older ones, and if they live in the South plenty will live in houses worth over £200,000.

    On the other hand plenty of students and young people rent. The former come under the Tory core vote, the latter don't
    The children inheriting from someone worth £200K will lose 43% of their inheritance. My children will lose about 2% because I am well off. If you are worth £86k you lose everything. Not exactly leveling up is it.
    Under current rules the children of those worth £200k would lose 90% not 43%, so still a drastic improvement.

    That doesn't answer the point though does it. Why should my children keep nearly 100% and yet a person with £86K not be able to pass on a penny. How is that fair?

    And why shouldn't people pay for the services they receive if they can afford it? Taxpayers money should be focused upon those who can't, not those who can.

    I would like a holiday in the West Indies. If the taxpayer would be kind enough to pay for it I can leave my children some more money. is that ok with you?
    They would likely not be able to pass on a penny under current rules if they needed residential care anyway, however the policy helps far more estates overall to be passed on without risk of care costs.

    That is a fine Tory policy in terms of encouraging preservation of wealth. You are not a Tory and likely never will vote Tory, you are a LD so your opinion on this is not relevant in terms of keeping the Tory core vote.

    Social care for those with dementia is also under the broad auspices of the NHS and healthcare, a holiday in the West Indies is not
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080
    edited November 2021

    I don't know why everyone's ganging up on HYUFD this morning. I, for one, would be very happy if the Conservative Party limited its appeal to southern, wealthy home-owners. Seems like a sensible move to me, and should be encouraged.

    Far too many politicians both Conservative and Labour really do see politics in terms of vested interest, their job being to look after "our people" and do as little as possible for "their people".

    HY is simply saying in public what, in unguarded moments, I have heard Conservatives saying in private.

    Such an approach to politics does little for social cohesion and can actively hinder economic prosperity, but as long as it keeps them in power the politicians don't need to care.

    Having a political system that hands out majority power for a minority vote is, in such circumstances, both crazy and hugely damaging.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    The army bods are busy driving HGVs and ambulances...
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    The Red Wall voted for Kinnock in 1992, for Blair, for Brown, for Ed Miliband and for Corbyn in 2017 and once voted Tory in 2019 to enable Boris to get Brexit done.

    The Red Wall did not suddenly become Tory and Conservative, they simply lent Boris a vote once to deliver Brexit. They are still largely left of centre economically, if keeping their votes means taxing our core vote more in the South and seats we held in 2019 with higher property values then it is not worth it.

    As I said the plans are not that bad for the Red Wall anyway and still an improvement from current care costs
    The problem with the "these areas didn't vote Conservative in 1992 so we don't need them now" is that the Conservatives are doing much worse now than in 1992 in other areas such as university towns, posh northern suburbs and London's middle suburbia.

    You might be happy to toss the gains of 2019 away but you then need to find ways to regain the likes of Battersea, Reading East and Chester.
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Feeling badly hungover this morning without the pleasures of imbibing even a single drop of the water of life last night, I am made slightly more cheery by reading @HYUFD this morning.

    A pity that he is only a pretend Tory and doesn't interact with the real party - would love to hear their reaction to his sneering arrogance above. It really now is "we don't need their vote" with "their" being an ever-lengthening list that apparently includes all the voters who gave them an 80 seat majority. The core Tory vote is what gave Blair two landslides love, you can't rely on it.

    Anyway, expect another u-turn on this social care proposal. Its indefensible, unworkable, and the red wall MPs are going to demolish it. At which point Little Lord Flaunteroy will be posting the direct opposite of today;s posts insisting nothing has changed.

    Even the core Tory vote which put Cameron and May into No 10 as I said live in seats worth on average £270,000. They are the voters the Tories have to retain to stay in power, the Red Wall are just a bonus
    When you relied on this core vote you won a majority of -179.
    Wrong.

    Tory seats held in 2019 had a median house price of £270,000.

    Given there were 317 of them and only 165 Tory seats in 1997 about half of them were Labour or LD in 1997
    OK. So As you claim the Tory core vote is more than 165 do you wan to tell us how many seats? Apparently seats that will be core Tory can now be defined by media house price in 2019.

    So how many seats is your core, what is the average house price you need to offer as a policy to secure this, and which voters need no longer bother voting for you as they are really all traitors/LDs/Labour/UKIP/northern/poor etc?

    Please keep this going. An excellent cabaret turn this morning.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    Unspoofable
    I'll say this for HYUFD; at least he's honest. Unlike the rest of the tories on here he doesn't fake concern for the plight of the 73 median IQ, left school at 12 to work in the family scrap metal business fucking morons who voted leave and for Johnson.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,880
    IanB2 said:



    HY is simply saying in public what, in unguarded moments, I have heard Conservatives saying in private.

    I'm amused that there are Tories on here who didn't think their party in favour of protecting interests of wealthy home owners.
  • DavidL said:

    I am sure that it is me but does the sum of this brilliant piece of economic analysis amount to the fact that the poor do not die rich but the rich do? Wow, who'd have thought?

    Turning to the specifics of the social care policy I have reservations about a policy that is designed to protect inheritances over the cost of care. As Robert has already pointed out such a policy simply allocates the bill somewhere else, typically to those still earning. But the desire to hand on something to your kids is deep rooted in the human psyche. I am involved in a number of cases at the moment on behalf of care homes who are having to sue the children for estate that they have distributed rather than pay the care debts the deceased left behind.

    The idea that someone else will pick up the bill is powerful. The Labour party, and indeed the SNP is built on it and they do ok. I suspect that the Tories will not be particularly harmed by it either. Of course it would be better if we had more mature and objective politicians but I refer to my earlier comments about human nature.

    I feel like I have to point this out all the time, but the cap will only affect a small number of people.

    First, because it is only care costs (and not hotel costs) and, secondly, because most people do not go into care for very long.

    As a result, the cap is not a major redistribution of costs, but rather, an attempt to identify that particular group of people and give everyone an opportunity to insure against being one of those people.
  • Taz said:

    eek said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    "Nice to have" does explain Boris's utterly insane Railway and (quietly announced) Social Care policies - as Boris is running those policies to keep his Southern MPs happy.

    Seems quite a lot of conservative red wall mps endorse the recent railway announcements
    Have you? I've seen some get very annoyed as they discovered the cancellation of HS2E didn't solve their planning blight issues (and won't because at some point HS2E needs to be built).
    Richard Holden, probable one term MP, on Sunday politics going on about how great the govts new package is. So, at least, one is a fan.
    NW Durham wasn't really a winner anyway as it hasn't got any train service. But has he actually said what bits are great - that would be fun to watch as I can easily imagine the interview.

    The plan is great
    What bits do you like
    Well, uhh, ummm.....

    As I pointed out on Thursday / Friday if you don't read it and know nothing about trains it reads well.

    Sadly if you know anything at all, it's completely impossible as what is being offered is impossible (as it offers both faster trains AND more local services) and its based on hopes rather than actually planned and costed projects.
    Be fair. When faced with finding a red wall Tory to defend the government's rail package, they found an MP for a constituency without any railways. So he'd know all about it.
    Well he does have a feasibility study on one from Consett to Newcastle reporting soon. So a real win for Durham NW
    Yes, a feasibility study which states that if we invest [spin forecasting pen here for value] money then we could have a railway to Consett. Subject to business case. Subject to treasury reapproval.

    Frankly I'm amazed that such a detailed plan wasn't included in the IRP along with all the other uncosted fanatasies.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087

    pigeon said:

    From July:

    Maintaining the current Covid restrictions through the summer would only delay a wave of hospitalisations and deaths rather than reduce them, the chief medical officer for England has warned.

    Prof Chris Whitty told a Downing Street briefing that while scientific opinion was mixed on when to lift the last remaining restrictions in the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, he believed that doing so in the summer had some advantages over releasing in the autumn.

    “At a certain point, you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you’re not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die, you may change when they happen,” he said.

    “There is quite a strong view by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal, to opening up into the autumn when schools are going back and when we’re heading into the winter period when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons,” he added.


    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/05/chris-whitty-keeping-covid-restrictions-will-only-delay-wave

    And events may well be proving him right, though the picture is complex: Germany, the Netherlands, and a number of other European countries that kept NPIs are now suffering the predicted delayed Winter wave of death, but France, Italy and Spain appear to be holding up quite well. It'll be interesting to see if they manage to avoid going down the tubes too, or if that merely happens more slowly.
    Those three countries' cases have started increasing in the same way as the more northerly ones, they are just not so far along the curve. I think the French have said they will rely on high vaccine uptake to keep people out of hospital.
    OTOH the French are so frightened of allowing the child casedemic to propagate that they've put masking back into classrooms again - which presents an ideal opportunity for the disease to rip through the community later in the Winter as NPIs become progressively more useless - and I dare say they also have a significantly larger proportion of anti-vaxxers (and also those for whom the vaccines haven't worked very well) who haven't caught Covid. The proportion of the French population that has been vaccinated so far is only about 2% higher than ours and, given that they got started on children a lot earlier than we did, that likely implies a lower percentage of coverage amongst adults.

    Of course, if their cases also start taking off like a rocket over the next month or so, then one thing they do have counting in their favour relative to the UK is a better healthcare system. It's looking as if the UK will be able to make it through to Christmas without a new raft of bloody rules, which is vital to put-upon businesses, but when the flu really gets going later in the Winter then it's still possible that the anguished screaming from the decrepit NHS will grow so loud that the Government finds it impossible to ignore. The French have more breathing room in that regard.
  • Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    Taz said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    "Nice to have" does explain Boris's utterly insane Railway and (quietly announced) Social Care policies - as Boris is running those policies to keep his Southern MPs happy.

    Seems quite a lot of conservative red wall mps endorse the recent railway announcements
    Have you? I've seen some get very annoyed as they discovered the cancellation of HS2E didn't solve their planning blight issues (and won't because at some point HS2E needs to be built).
    Richard Holden, probable one term MP, on Sunday politics going on about how great the govts new package is. So, at least, one is a fan.
    NW Durham wasn't really a winner anyway as it hasn't got any train service. But has he actually said what bits are great - that would be fun to watch as I can easily imagine the interview.

    The plan is great
    What bits do you like
    Well, uhh, ummm.....

    As I pointed out on Thursday / Friday if you don't read it and know nothing about trains it reads well.

    Sadly if you know anything at all, it's completely impossible as what is being offered is impossible (as it offers both faster trains AND more local services) and its based on hopes rather than actually planned and costed projects.
    Be fair. When faced with finding a red wall Tory to defend the government's rail package, they found an MP for a constituency without any railways. So he'd know all about it.
    Well he does have a feasibility study on one from Consett to Newcastle reporting soon. So a real win for Durham NW
    Yes, a feasibility study which states that if we invest [spin forecasting pen here for value] money then we could have a railway to Consett. Subject to business case. Subject to treasury reapproval.

    Frankly I'm amazed that such a detailed plan wasn't included in the IRP along with all the other uncosted fanatasies.
    If they put it in the IRP then there would be 649 other rail schemes (1 for every constituency) and the scam would be obvious
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    On the plus side. you are only a tube journey away from the West End. no such compensation if you live in the equivalent grim suburbs of Birmingham.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,080

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited November 2021

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Feeling badly hungover this morning without the pleasures of imbibing even a single drop of the water of life last night, I am made slightly more cheery by reading @HYUFD this morning.

    A pity that he is only a pretend Tory and doesn't interact with the real party - would love to hear their reaction to his sneering arrogance above. It really now is "we don't need their vote" with "their" being an ever-lengthening list that apparently includes all the voters who gave them an 80 seat majority. The core Tory vote is what gave Blair two landslides love, you can't rely on it.

    Anyway, expect another u-turn on this social care proposal. Its indefensible, unworkable, and the red wall MPs are going to demolish it. At which point Little Lord Flaunteroy will be posting the direct opposite of today;s posts insisting nothing has changed.

    Even the core Tory vote which put Cameron and May into No 10 as I said live in seats worth on average £270,000. They are the voters the Tories have to retain to stay in power, the Red Wall are just a bonus
    When you relied on this core vote you won a majority of -179.
    Wrong.

    Tory seats held in 2019 had a median house price of £270,000.

    Given there were 317 of them and only 165 Tory seats in 1997 about half of them were Labour or LD in 1997
    OK. So As you claim the Tory core vote is more than 165 do you wan to tell us how many seats? Apparently seats that will be core Tory can now be defined by media house price in 2019.

    So how many seats is your core, what is the average house price you need to offer as a policy to secure this, and which voters need no longer bother voting for you as they are really all traitors/LDs/Labour/UKIP/northern/poor etc?

    Please keep this going. An excellent cabaret turn this morning.
    £270,000 is the median house price in the seats the Tories held in 2019 (almost all of which May won in 2017 which enabled them to stay in government).

    Now Brexit has been done (which needed a majority and the Red Wall) retaining those would be enough to stay in power, the Red Wall seats are just a bonus
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,766
    pigeon said:

    pigeon said:

    From July:

    Maintaining the current Covid restrictions through the summer would only delay a wave of hospitalisations and deaths rather than reduce them, the chief medical officer for England has warned.

    Prof Chris Whitty told a Downing Street briefing that while scientific opinion was mixed on when to lift the last remaining restrictions in the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, he believed that doing so in the summer had some advantages over releasing in the autumn.

    “At a certain point, you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you’re not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die, you may change when they happen,” he said.

    “There is quite a strong view by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal, to opening up into the autumn when schools are going back and when we’re heading into the winter period when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons,” he added.


    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/05/chris-whitty-keeping-covid-restrictions-will-only-delay-wave

    And events may well be proving him right, though the picture is complex: Germany, the Netherlands, and a number of other European countries that kept NPIs are now suffering the predicted delayed Winter wave of death, but France, Italy and Spain appear to be holding up quite well. It'll be interesting to see if they manage to avoid going down the tubes too, or if that merely happens more slowly.
    Those three countries' cases have started increasing in the same way as the more northerly ones, they are just not so far along the curve. I think the French have said they will rely on high vaccine uptake to keep people out of hospital.
    OTOH the French are so frightened of allowing the child casedemic to propagate that they've put masking back into classrooms again - which presents an ideal opportunity for the disease to rip through the community later in the Winter as NPIs become progressively more useless - and I dare say they also have a significantly larger proportion of anti-vaxxers (and also those for whom the vaccines haven't worked very well) who haven't caught Covid. The proportion of the French population that has been vaccinated so far is only about 2% higher than ours and, given that they got started on children a lot earlier than we did, that likely implies a lower percentage of coverage amongst adults.

    Of course, if their cases also start taking off like a rocket over the next month or so, then one thing they do have counting in their favour relative to the UK is a better healthcare system. It's looking as if the UK will be able to make it through to Christmas without a new raft of bloody rules, which is vital to put-upon businesses, but when the flu really gets going later in the Winter then it's still possible that the anguished screaming from the decrepit NHS will grow so loud that the Government finds it impossible to ignore. The French have more breathing room in that regard.
    There's compulsory masking in schools in Los Angeles too, which I also find incomprehensible.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    rkrkrk said:

    IanB2 said:



    HY is simply saying in public what, in unguarded moments, I have heard Conservatives saying in private.

    I'm amused that there are Tories on here who didn't think their party in favour of protecting interests of wealthy home owners.
    but does it work? Speaking as a non-destitute home owner who has voted for them in the past I wouldn't touch them with a bp, irrespective of the size of the care home discount on offer
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,702
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Feeling badly hungover this morning without the pleasures of imbibing even a single drop of the water of life last night, I am made slightly more cheery by reading @HYUFD this morning.

    A pity that he is only a pretend Tory and doesn't interact with the real party - would love to hear their reaction to his sneering arrogance above. It really now is "we don't need their vote" with "their" being an ever-lengthening list that apparently includes all the voters who gave them an 80 seat majority. The core Tory vote is what gave Blair two landslides love, you can't rely on it.

    Anyway, expect another u-turn on this social care proposal. Its indefensible, unworkable, and the red wall MPs are going to demolish it. At which point Little Lord Flaunteroy will be posting the direct opposite of today;s posts insisting nothing has changed.

    Even the core Tory vote which put Cameron and May into No 10 as I said live in seats worth on average £270,000. They are the voters the Tories have to retain to stay in power, the Red Wall are just a bonus
    When you relied on this core vote you won a majority of -179.
    Wrong.

    Tory seats held in 2019 had a median house price of £270,000.

    Given there were 317 of them and only 165 Tory seats in 1997 about half of them were Labour or LD in 1997
    OK. So As you claim the Tory core vote is more than 165 do you wan to tell us how many seats? Apparently seats that will be core Tory can now be defined by media house price in 2019.

    So how many seats is your core, what is the average house price you need to offer as a policy to secure this, and which voters need no longer bother voting for you as they are really all traitors/LDs/Labour/UKIP/northern/poor etc?

    Please keep this going. An excellent cabaret turn this morning.
    £270,000 is the median house price in the 318 seats the Tories won in 2017 which enabled them to stay in government.

    Now Brexit has been done (which needed a majority and the Red Wall) retaining those 318 would be enough to stay in power, the Red Wall seats are just a bonus
    You should realise you had already won a fair few red wall seats and there are a decent chunk of them in that 318.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,702
    IshmaelZ said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    On the plus side. you are only a tube journey away from the West End. no such compensation if you live in the equivalent grim suburbs of Birmingham.
    Brum does have decent buses.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    darkage said:

    I was thinking that the sleaze scandal could be the low point for the tories; I didn't expect things to get worse but they are proving me wrong. This is a mad policy as it completely skewers people with inheritences below £100k; so your average person on the street.

    Surely it would be better to raise the total amount payable (say to £150k) but then taper the contribution to care costs based on the total value of the estate, so people would only contribute on average 50% towards it, and with the wealthy paying more. Whats the argument against that?

    The vast majority of people will have care costs well below £100k.

    This is effectively catastrophe insurance which is frequently provided at the government level.

    Does catastrophe insurance offer more protection to the rich? Yes. But that’s only incidental. It’s designed to offer 100% protection regardless of wealth
    I am not sure if this post has blinded me with science, or baffled me with bull**** .
    It's one or the other.
    It shouldn’t really have blinded you at all!

    I haven’t looked at the details of the proposal, but going on the comments here, the government expects people to contribute to the cost of care up to a certain point and then will cover costs beyond that.

    So someone who has an asset pool of £200k (excluding the minimum that people are allowed to keep for simplicity) has to pay half their estate before they hit the cap. Someone with a £1m asset pool only has to pay 10% of their estate before they hit the cap.

    Now I would argue that both individuals are contributing the same cost so it is fair. Someone else could argue that the rich person benefits more because they get to keep more money and therefore it is unfair. It really comes down to how you view private property.

    The people who are being protected are the unlucky few who have long term dementia which means you can need expensive care for far longer than the typical 12-18 month stay. Hence “catastrophe insurance”
  • Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Feeling badly hungover this morning without the pleasures of imbibing even a single drop of the water of life last night, I am made slightly more cheery by reading @HYUFD this morning.

    A pity that he is only a pretend Tory and doesn't interact with the real party - would love to hear their reaction to his sneering arrogance above. It really now is "we don't need their vote" with "their" being an ever-lengthening list that apparently includes all the voters who gave them an 80 seat majority. The core Tory vote is what gave Blair two landslides love, you can't rely on it.

    Anyway, expect another u-turn on this social care proposal. Its indefensible, unworkable, and the red wall MPs are going to demolish it. At which point Little Lord Flaunteroy will be posting the direct opposite of today;s posts insisting nothing has changed.

    Even the core Tory vote which put Cameron and May into No 10 as I said live in seats worth on average £270,000. They are the voters the Tories have to retain to stay in power, the Red Wall are just a bonus
    When you relied on this core vote you won a majority of -179.
    Wrong.

    Tory seats held in 2019 had a median house price of £270,000.

    Given there were 317 of them and only 165 Tory seats in 1997 about half of them were Labour or LD in 1997
    OK. So As you claim the Tory core vote is more than 165 do you wan to tell us how many seats? Apparently seats that will be core Tory can now be defined by media house price in 2019.

    So how many seats is your core, what is the average house price you need to offer as a policy to secure this, and which voters need no longer bother voting for you as they are really all traitors/LDs/Labour/UKIP/northern/poor etc?

    Please keep this going. An excellent cabaret turn this morning.
    £270,000 is the median house price in the 318 seats the Tories won in 2017 which enabled them to stay in government.

    Now Brexit has been done (which needed a majority and the Red Wall) retaining those 318 would be enough to stay in power, the Red Wall seats are just a bonus
    You should realise you had already won a fair few red wall seats and there are a decent chunk of them in that 318.
    No they didn't. More lies from you non-Tories. Yerra NON-BELIEVER!!!!!
  • Actually in the Great Northern War the Swedes did very well invading Russia in Winter. Once winter has set in the ground is frozen and movement becomes relatively easy. Getting caught at the beginning of winter, or in the thaw, is what gets you into serious trouble.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Taz said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    On the plus side. you are only a tube journey away from the West End. no such compensation if you live in the equivalent grim suburbs of Birmingham.
    Brum does have decent buses.
    Yes, but where do they go to, was my point? Other bits of Brum.
  • United sack Ole.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Jonathan said:

    Professor Luke Pollard of Oxford Vaccine Group has just said on Marr that without vaccines we would have had around 300,000 UK deaths to date

    Sobering thought

    Indeed. We’ve had about 150,000 covid related deaths. Doubly sobering.
    Not necessarily (although I’ve no desire to get into a sterile with/from argument)
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 2,179
    edited November 2021
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    You are quite right, are his views typical of many southern Tories ? and labour, it it were sensible, should be taking hthis view and hammering it home in the red wall repeatedly. Especially during the election.

    His path leads to a lab/snp/lib dem coalition which will probably see electoral reform and an Indy ballot.
    A coalition of chaos in other words
    That is some brass neck you have there. Most people in this country think the Conservatives are in complete chaos, when they are not organized to cheat and lie that is, So actually "better anything than the current shiftless bunch of chancers" is rapidly becoming a majority view.
  • Goddamnit, I loved chanting Ole’s at the wheel.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Actually in the Great Northern War the Swedes did very well invading Russia in Winter. Once winter has set in the ground is frozen and movement becomes relatively easy. Getting caught at the beginning of winter, or in the thaw, is what gets you into serious trouble.

    Both Napoleon and AH set off pretty much on midsummer day.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,458
    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    Wow. You really do embody the true spirit of the Tories and their disdain for working class communities. You really do underestimate the potential to lose seats in your core group.
    Plenty of working class people are home owners, especially older ones, and if they live in the South plenty will live in houses worth over £200,000.

    On the other hand plenty of students and young people rent. The former come under the Tory core vote, the latter don't
    The children inheriting from someone worth £200K will lose 43% of their inheritance. My children will lose about 2% because I am well off. If you are worth £86k you lose everything. Not exactly leveling up is it.
    Under current rules the children of those worth £200k would lose 90% not 43%, so still a drastic improvement.

    That doesn't answer the point though does it. Why should my children keep nearly 100% and yet a person with £86K not be able to pass on a penny. How is that fair?

    And why shouldn't people pay for the services they receive if they can afford it? Taxpayers money should be focused upon those who can't, not those who can.

    I would like a holiday in the West Indies. If the taxpayer would be kind enough to pay for it I can leave my children some more money. is that ok with you?
    They would likely not be able to pass on a penny under current rules if they needed residential care anyway, however the policy helps far more estates overall to be passed on without risk of care costs.

    That is a fine Tory policy in terms of encouraging preservation of wealth. You are not a Tory and likely never will vote Tory, you are a LD so your opinion on this is not relevant in terms of keeping the Tory core vote.

    Social care for those with dementia is also under the broad auspices of the NHS and healthcare, a holiday in the West Indies is not
    OK let's take that line by line:

    1st para: You are right they wouldn't be able to inherit, but why are you making it easier for me to pass on my wealth? Surely I am the sort of person who should be paying for my care as I can easily afford it.

    2nd para: What difference does it make how I vote. This is about what is right, not focusing on just your supporters. A government governs for all. And I have voted Tory once and I am not a tribal LD. I vote according to my conscience and have voted against the LDs on several occasions (admittedly normally for Indies).

    3rd para: I think you are missing the point. The state is taking money from the taxpayer and effectively giving it to my children who don't need it when I die. Hence my example. I would like to go to the West Indies. If everyone can chip in I can go and leave my children more money. How is that different?
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087
    Foxy said:

    pigeon said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    There is a solution and it involves building a processing facility somewhere like the Falkland Islands and locking all the boat people in it.
    That was pretty much what we did with the Vietnamese boat people arriving in Hong Kong in the Seventies and Eighties. What stopped the flow was mostly improved conditions in Vietnam.
    Ah, but did the Vietnamese boat people have anywhere else realistic to go?

    Make it impossible for those attempting the Channel crossing to successfully land and remain in the UK and they'll eventually give up and find somewhere else that's comfortable (like Germany or the Netherlands) to stop and try to settle instead.

    Let us not be naive about all of this: the French are perfectly happy to see the back of the Channel migrants because they become our problem instead. Irregular migration within Europe is just one giant game of pass the parcel, in which nobody wants the parcels. If the UK Government wants all those uncomfortable headlines and bad publicity to go away then it should stop being nice and play the game as well, so that other people end up lumbered with the parcels instead.

    The evidence would suggest that, in point of fact, the Government is actually quite relaxed about receiving the parcels, because the alternative - shelling out enough cash to intercept all the migrants in the Channel, and building and manning a massive offshoring facility to dump them all in - is considered more trouble than simply deploying tough rhetoric, which costs nothing. Money talks.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    You are quite right, are his views typical of many southern Tories ? and labour, it it were sensible, should be taking hthis view and hammering it home in the red wall repeatedly. Especially during the election.

    His path leads to a lab/snp/lib dem coalition which will probably see electoral reform and an Indy ballot.
    A coalition of chaos in other words
    Like we avoided when we elected Dave in 2015? You really are on fire this morning.

    Shouldn't you be getting ready for church?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673
    edited November 2021

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
  • IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
    I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over.
    Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular.
    The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    kjh said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD you misunderstood something I posted yesterday regarding this issue. I pointed out that the £86K limit is not real because people will have to top up cost when the deemed contribution by the local authority is less than the actual costs (as it will be a lot of the time) and also people will have to pay the hotel type costs (eg food) which will be significantly more than you and I going down to Tescos so will deplete the person's assets significantly.

    You misunderstood my post yesterday by assuming I thought this should be covered also. I don't. I think when people can afford their care in a home they should pay for it themselves. I don't see why the taxpayer should subsidise the inheritance of the children.

    So here are the issues for you:

    a) Why should the taxpayer pay for one type of cost of the care home and not the other costs if you want to protect the inheritance?. The inheritance is going to be seriously depleted (the £86k limit will be meaningless) if the person lives to a ripe old age and if they don't (as sadly is often the case) the cost of the care home won't have been significant anyway. You stated the food cost shouldn't be covered. How do you reconcile that with your wish for inheritance of the family home if the house still needs to be sold

    b) Why should I be subsidizing the inheritance of the children of a well off person. I am happy to subsidise those in need, but why am I subsidizing people who aren't.

    c) I am relatively wealthy. £86K represents very little of my wealth so my children will inherit nearly 100% of my wealth under this scheme whereas a poor person gets nothing and an average person may get 50%. How is it fair that I gain at the cost of the less well off.
    You’re not “gaining at [someone else’s] cost”.

    You are very unlikely to benefit from this policy. But if you do (and I hope you don’t because that means you are in a bad place) then you are protected by the society to which you have contributed in your working life
  • malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
    "take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
  • Andy_CookeAndy_Cooke Posts: 4,793
    I thought I'd have a look at the lower quartile of house prices.

    A quarter of all home owners are below this level, so they're a not inconsiderable chunk of the vote (especially as home-owners tend to be more asset rich than non-house-owners, so alienating them would be politically unwise for the Tories).

    It's also hard to tell what level to look at. As the human mind does toggle at 50% ("most of my house value goes" versus "I keep most of it"), I thought I'd look there. Others may have different levels. It's also not far off the point where the new proposals merge with the old ones (ie below that point, the new proposals make you worse off than the old proposals). It looks like about £175,000

    (It's also valid that comparing to current rules means both proposals are better, but people tend not to care as much about that, especially if they're not very aware at the time. Just ask Theresa May in 2017)

    A total of 316 constituencies have lower quartile house prices above that (in some cases, not by much). This would not be enough to hold on to power, but making more than a quarter of home owners feel worse off might not make the difference. At least, that's the calculation the Tories have to bear in mind.

    Oh, and quite a few of those 316 are in other hands already. All the Lib Dem constituencies in England are amongst them, and all the London constituencies (of which 49 are Labour) are amongst them. As are quite a few others.

    So it could certainly be a significant electoral burden on the Conservatives. The average home owner might be fine, but in a lot of constituencies, at least a quarter of them could well be significantly pissed off.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673
    Foxy said:

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    The army bods are busy driving HGVs and ambulances...
    They are making an arse of it in Scotland for sure, not allowed to drive real ambulances and just bringing vanloads of walking wounded who snarl things up and stop the real ambulances getting through, those of course are the ones who have not crashed. Thank god there are only a handful of them.
  • pigeon said:


    Ah, but did the Vietnamese boat people have anywhere else realistic to go?

    Vietnamese refugees landed all over South East Asia. The UK only took a tiny proportion of the total, see:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indochina_refugee_crisis#Indochinese_resettled_and_repatriated
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673

    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
    I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over.
    Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular.
    The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
    The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited November 2021

    I thought I'd have a look at the lower quartile of house prices.

    A quarter of all home owners are below this level, so they're a not inconsiderable chunk of the vote (especially as home-owners tend to be more asset rich than non-house-owners, so alienating them would be politically unwise for the Tories).

    It's also hard to tell what level to look at. As the human mind does toggle at 50% ("most of my house value goes" versus "I keep most of it"), I thought I'd look there. Others may have different levels. It's also not far off the point where the new proposals merge with the old ones (ie below that point, the new proposals make you worse off than the old proposals). It looks like about £175,000

    (It's also valid that comparing to current rules means both proposals are better, but people tend not to care as much about that, especially if they're not very aware at the time. Just ask Theresa May in 2017)

    A total of 316 constituencies have lower quartile house prices above that (in some cases, not by much). This would not be enough to hold on to power, but making more than a quarter of home owners feel worse off might not make the difference. At least, that's the calculation the Tories have to bear in mind.

    Oh, and quite a few of those 316 are in other hands already. All the Lib Dem constituencies in England are amongst them, and all the London constituencies (of which 49 are Labour) are amongst them. As are quite a few others.

    So it could certainly be a significant electoral burden on the Conservatives. The average home owner might be fine, but in a lot of constituencies, at least a quarter of them could well be significantly pissed off.

    Well tough.

    If staying in power requires taking most of the property wealth of our core vote in the South in care costs contrary to our 2019 manifesto then there is no point staying in power anyway, we may as well go into opposition.

    Not that such a policy would stop seat loss anyway, simply there would be southern seats lost to the LDs as Tory voters go ReformUK in protest to save a few Red Wall seats
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
    "take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
    Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.

  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    DavidL said:

    I am sure that it is me but does the sum of this brilliant piece of economic analysis amount to the fact that the poor do not die rich but the rich do? Wow, who'd have thought?

    Turning to the specifics of the social care policy I have reservations about a policy that is designed to protect inheritances over the cost of care. As Robert has already pointed out such a policy simply allocates the bill somewhere else, typically to those still earning. But the desire to hand on something to your kids is deep rooted in the human psyche. I am involved in a number of cases at the moment on behalf of care homes who are having to sue the children for estate that they have distributed rather than pay the care debts the deceased left behind.

    The idea that someone else will pick up the bill is powerful. The Labour party, and indeed the SNP is built on it and they do ok. I suspect that the Tories will not be particularly harmed by it either. Of course it would be better if we had more mature and objective politicians but I refer to my earlier comments about human nature.

    IANAL and certainly not a Scottish law expert, but could an executor legally make distributions before debts are settled?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    IshmaelZ said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half
    HYUFD said:

    Taz said:

    Martin Lewis on Marr absolutely savaging this proposal, damning its inherent unfairness with a soft voice. It punishes the north and the poor far more than the wealthy rich in the south, he is saying.

    The Tories are supposed to be the party of the wealthy rich in the South.

    They are our core vote. The Red Wall lent us their votes in 2019 mainly to get Brexit done and beat Corbyn, if retaining their support means massive loss of property wealth from estates from our core vote in the South then what is the point? We may as well have a Labour government.

    Not that I think these plans are that bad for the Red Wall anyway, even in the Red Wall most estates will move from about 90% of property value going on care costs to only about half

    You were down to your core in 97 and 2001. You cannot win on your core vote alone.


    Even seats the Tories held in 2019 (ie not the Red Wall but also containing large numbers of seats Blair won in 1997 and 2001) have a median house price of £270,000 as I have already posted.

    They will benefit from Boris' proposals a great deal and they are the seats we largely won from 2010-2017 and the key seats the Tories need to stay in government. The Red Wall is nice to have and gave us a big majority in 2019 to get Brexit done but it is not essential. After all the Red Wall voted for Brown, Ed Miliband and Corbyn in 2017
    You are quite the most absurd conservative I have ever come across in my decades of involvement with the party

    To dismiss the red wall seats 'as nice to have' is madness and disrespectful to all those in these areas who voted conservative for the first time

    Your attitude would result in the end of the conservative party as a national party as it is eradicated in Scotland, lose it red wall seats and dozens of south seats to the lib dems

    Indeed your views could be considered eccentric if it wasn't for the fact you represent the party and hope to be a conservative mp, God forbid
    You are quite right, are his views typical of many southern Tories ? and labour, it it were sensible, should be taking hthis view and hammering it home in the red wall repeatedly. Especially during the election.

    His path leads to a lab/snp/lib dem coalition which will probably see electoral reform and an Indy ballot.
    A coalition of chaos in other words
    Like we avoided when we elected Dave in 2015? You really are on fire this morning.

    Shouldn't you be getting ready for church?
    Went at 8am
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    Charles said:

    FF43 said:

    The intention, I think, is an insurance policy. Losers of one of life's lotteries, who go into slow and ruinously expensive decline in nursing homes, get supported financially while the relative winners, who are in and out (feet first) of institutions in a few months or less, can support themselves.

    So far, so sensible.

    The problem, as so often, is that the government is trying to save money while implementing this sensible policy. The £86 000 cap wasn't chosen by accident. It's a year or so of nursing home fees, which happens to be the average length of a stay. Lottery losers with fewer assets will fall back on the state under current rules once their money runs out. The net change of this policy is to protect the assets of a small number of wealthy people.

    The poor judgment is almost certainly Sunak's, not Johnson's. It doesn't matter though. Sunak is a very skilled blame-shifter.

    Most people go to residential care not nursing homes
    All 'homes' are 'care' homes. Some have registered nurses in full time attendance. Most do not.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    malcolmg said:



    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up,

    They don't conveniently arrive in aircraft sized batches though and the only way to get unwilling people on long flights is in Rendition Class. This government doesn't have the guts for that.

  • TazTaz Posts: 10,702
    malcolmg said:

    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
    I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over.
    Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular.
    The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
    The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
    Yup, London takes bright people from all over the country as the opportunities are not available locally. It needs to do more to recompense the rest of the nation for it.
  • malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
    "take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
    Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.

    Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
    "take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
    Offshoring is not particularly complex, but it requires effort and a lot of money. It's not even as if the British Government necessarily requires co-operation from a third party, given our collection of far-flung territories which provide an ideal opportunity to intern irregular migrants somewhere further away from the UK than where they started. The Falklands are at the other end of the globe, are almost the size of Northern Ireland and have a total population equivalent to a small market town, so it's hardly as if there isn't anywhere practical with room to build a facility.

    The Government simply finds it easier to make harsh sounding noises for show, whilst doing virtually nothing practical to address the situation. That's all.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    rcs1000 said:

    pigeon said:

    pigeon said:

    From July:

    Maintaining the current Covid restrictions through the summer would only delay a wave of hospitalisations and deaths rather than reduce them, the chief medical officer for England has warned.

    Prof Chris Whitty told a Downing Street briefing that while scientific opinion was mixed on when to lift the last remaining restrictions in the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, he believed that doing so in the summer had some advantages over releasing in the autumn.

    “At a certain point, you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you’re not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die, you may change when they happen,” he said.

    “There is quite a strong view by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal, to opening up into the autumn when schools are going back and when we’re heading into the winter period when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons,” he added.


    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/05/chris-whitty-keeping-covid-restrictions-will-only-delay-wave

    And events may well be proving him right, though the picture is complex: Germany, the Netherlands, and a number of other European countries that kept NPIs are now suffering the predicted delayed Winter wave of death, but France, Italy and Spain appear to be holding up quite well. It'll be interesting to see if they manage to avoid going down the tubes too, or if that merely happens more slowly.
    Those three countries' cases have started increasing in the same way as the more northerly ones, they are just not so far along the curve. I think the French have said they will rely on high vaccine uptake to keep people out of hospital.
    OTOH the French are so frightened of allowing the child casedemic to propagate that they've put masking back into classrooms again - which presents an ideal opportunity for the disease to rip through the community later in the Winter as NPIs become progressively more useless - and I dare say they also have a significantly larger proportion of anti-vaxxers (and also those for whom the vaccines haven't worked very well) who haven't caught Covid. The proportion of the French population that has been vaccinated so far is only about 2% higher than ours and, given that they got started on children a lot earlier than we did, that likely implies a lower percentage of coverage amongst adults.

    Of course, if their cases also start taking off like a rocket over the next month or so, then one thing they do have counting in their favour relative to the UK is a better healthcare system. It's looking as if the UK will be able to make it through to Christmas without a new raft of bloody rules, which is vital to put-upon businesses, but when the flu really gets going later in the Winter then it's still possible that the anguished screaming from the decrepit NHS will grow so loud that the Government finds it impossible to ignore. The French have more breathing room in that regard.
    There's compulsory masking in schools in Los Angeles too, which I also find incomprehensible.
    It’s very comprehensible. You’ve got a stupid f*ckwit as Governor
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    I am sure that it is me but does the sum of this brilliant piece of economic analysis amount to the fact that the poor do not die rich but the rich do? Wow, who'd have thought?

    Turning to the specifics of the social care policy I have reservations about a policy that is designed to protect inheritances over the cost of care. As Robert has already pointed out such a policy simply allocates the bill somewhere else, typically to those still earning. But the desire to hand on something to your kids is deep rooted in the human psyche. I am involved in a number of cases at the moment on behalf of care homes who are having to sue the children for estate that they have distributed rather than pay the care debts the deceased left behind.

    The idea that someone else will pick up the bill is powerful. The Labour party, and indeed the SNP is built on it and they do ok. I suspect that the Tories will not be particularly harmed by it either. Of course it would be better if we had more mature and objective politicians but I refer to my earlier comments about human nature.

    IANAL and certainly not a Scottish law expert, but could an executor legally make distributions before debts are settled?
    In England they can if they don't mind being personally liable for distributions they are subsequently found to have made wrongfully. This is a fairly academic point in the frequent case where exors and beneficiaries are the same people.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746


    I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over.
    Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular.
    The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.

    Living in London is what you make of it. There are unlimited professional and social opportunities but you need to find them and make the most of them. If you largely sit at home looking at the internet and watching TV then there is no point at all living there; you may as well move to a town with cheap housing and good scenery; a decision I made myself a decade ago and don't regret.
    However, if I could make a completely objective decision about where to live I would go for a second tier city in the Midlands or north of England - affordable in terms of housing, but lots more professional and social opportunities than living in a town.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    Taz said:

    malcolmg said:

    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
    I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over.
    Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular.
    The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
    The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
    Yup, London takes bright people from all over the country as the opportunities are not available locally. It needs to do more to recompense the rest of the nation for it.
    Always has done of course. Ref. a certain Mr R Whittington!
    Indeed in the Middle Ages, and probably into the 17th Century sanitation, and hence life expectancy, in London was so poor, and indeed life-threatening, that 'immigration' from the countryside was the only way of maintaining the place.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    I am sure that it is me but does the sum of this brilliant piece of economic analysis amount to the fact that the poor do not die rich but the rich do? Wow, who'd have thought?

    Turning to the specifics of the social care policy I have reservations about a policy that is designed to protect inheritances over the cost of care. As Robert has already pointed out such a policy simply allocates the bill somewhere else, typically to those still earning. But the desire to hand on something to your kids is deep rooted in the human psyche. I am involved in a number of cases at the moment on behalf of care homes who are having to sue the children for estate that they have distributed rather than pay the care debts the deceased left behind.

    The idea that someone else will pick up the bill is powerful. The Labour party, and indeed the SNP is built on it and they do ok. I suspect that the Tories will not be particularly harmed by it either. Of course it would be better if we had more mature and objective politicians but I refer to my earlier comments about human nature.

    IANAL and certainly not a Scottish law expert, but could an executor legally make distributions before debts are settled?
    You've got whole sets of issues there - with various different tricks used to minimise assets before the person enters the care home.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Charles said:

    pigeon said:

    From July:

    Maintaining the current Covid restrictions through the summer would only delay a wave of hospitalisations and deaths rather than reduce them, the chief medical officer for England has warned.

    Prof Chris Whitty told a Downing Street briefing that while scientific opinion was mixed on when to lift the last remaining restrictions in the government’s roadmap out of lockdown, he believed that doing so in the summer had some advantages over releasing in the autumn.

    “At a certain point, you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you’re not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die, you may change when they happen,” he said.

    “There is quite a strong view by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal, to opening up into the autumn when schools are going back and when we’re heading into the winter period when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons,” he added.


    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/05/chris-whitty-keeping-covid-restrictions-will-only-delay-wave

    And events may well be proving him right, though the picture is complex: Germany, the Netherlands, and a number of other European countries that kept NPIs are now suffering the predicted delayed Winter wave of death, but France, Italy and Spain appear to be holding up quite well. It'll be interesting to see if they manage to avoid going down the tubes too, or if that merely happens more slowly.
    I chatted to a contact in France on Friday

    They have changed the rules so you now need to pay for your own tests - so the number of tests has fallen

    The stat this guy is watching is the number of schools that have shut because of outbreaks of covid - this is apparently at an all time high
    The other key stat is number of inpatients, the per 100k rate in France is about the same as the UK despite ostensibly having 25-40% of the case rate for the last few weeks.

    Worse still the case rate is following an exponential growth curve again and hospitals are already pretty full.

    Once again we come back to NPIs being a displacement activity but without any real reason for that displacement. NPIs are never going prevent infections, not in the long run. The moment that vaccines became freely available was also when NPIs needed to be done away with. The government here took that sensible approach and we will probably end up being one a handful of European countries that stays out of lockdown this winter.

    I'm just worried that even after this Europe will cling onto NPIs in April and keep the vaccine passports and masks to continue displacing infections for no real reason.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    eek said:

    Charles said:

    DavidL said:

    I am sure that it is me but does the sum of this brilliant piece of economic analysis amount to the fact that the poor do not die rich but the rich do? Wow, who'd have thought?

    Turning to the specifics of the social care policy I have reservations about a policy that is designed to protect inheritances over the cost of care. As Robert has already pointed out such a policy simply allocates the bill somewhere else, typically to those still earning. But the desire to hand on something to your kids is deep rooted in the human psyche. I am involved in a number of cases at the moment on behalf of care homes who are having to sue the children for estate that they have distributed rather than pay the care debts the deceased left behind.

    The idea that someone else will pick up the bill is powerful. The Labour party, and indeed the SNP is built on it and they do ok. I suspect that the Tories will not be particularly harmed by it either. Of course it would be better if we had more mature and objective politicians but I refer to my earlier comments about human nature.

    IANAL and certainly not a Scottish law expert, but could an executor legally make distributions before debts are settled?
    You've got whole sets of issues there - with various different tricks used to minimise assets before the person enters the care home.
    Yes; we're starting to wonder about that. Although it might be a bit late.
  • malcolmg said:

    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
    I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over.
    Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular.
    The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
    The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
    The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient.
    I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
    "take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
    Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.

    Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
    Think of the employment for islanders and no distractions to processing , nowhere to run away to hide etc. Could all be done lickety split.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673
    Dura_Ace said:

    malcolmg said:



    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up,

    They don't conveniently arrive in aircraft sized batches though and the only way to get unwilling people on long flights is in Rendition Class. This government doesn't have the guts for that.

    They can be detained on MOD property till enough to fill a plane. Agree these wobbly jellies have no backbone to resolve the issue though.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
    "take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
    Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.

    Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
    Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.

    The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
  • TresTres Posts: 2,161
    pigeon said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
    "take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
    Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.

    Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
    Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.

    The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
    The key obstacle is that it is 8,000 miles away I would have thought.
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,702
    malcolmg said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    malcolmg said:



    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up,

    They don't conveniently arrive in aircraft sized batches though and the only way to get unwilling people on long flights is in Rendition Class. This government doesn't have the guts for that.

    They can be detained on MOD property till enough to fill a plane. Agree these wobbly jellies have no backbone to resolve the issue though.
    There will be too many angry Owen Jones types on Twitter and a few awkward hashtags. They seem scared of that
  • TazTaz Posts: 10,702

    malcolmg said:

    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
    I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over.
    Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular.
    The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
    The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
    The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient.
    I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
    Stop it, stop it, You’re making me cry. Shall we start a just giving page ?
  • pigeon said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    Foxy said:

    Taz said:

    Lots of talk on the migrant crisis this morning on the news. Labour should grab the initiative, be bold, and propose something close to open borders. There is a lot of political will for it in the progressive side.

    Labour's shadow home secretary only solution is better negotiations with France, more foreign aid and Dubs amendment, but not one practical proposal that will stop the dangerous crossings

    Though this governments proposals haven't exactly stopped the crossings, have they?
    And that is the problem that seems intractable as nobody has a workable solution
    Its just that you attacked Labour for "not one practical proposal" to make them stop. The same is true of this government and even more specifically this Home Secretary.

    You can't stop boats by force. Desperate people do desperate things. Even if we properly funded the Royal Navy and the Border Force and actually tried to stop boats with resources that don't currently exist, they will still get through. Hard to stop little boats with big boats 24 hours a day.

    Ironically the practical thing we could do is entirely in her remit. So many of these boats are coming because they make it across and people can scurry off unhindered. If we had a significantly stepped-up force waiting for them to land to detain the migrants then the message would get through.

    We don't. Because we can't. Because despite all the rhetoric we have savaged the police and the border force so that they simply cannot control things. Not enough resources. If we wanted to at least try and stop it we could. We don't because the Tories only know how to cut.
    What are all the army bods doing. Get them out of the barracks and lined up along the south coast every night, not take long to sort it out.
    Thank you Priti.

    P.S. I assume you are arming them.
    Surely the army have guns already. just get them to nearest airfield where RAF have the engines warmed up, take them to somewhere else and process them there. Any genuine asylum seekers will end up back in UK, the roasters will end up elsewhere. Making it like going on a very extended holiday with hotels waiting , spending money etc is not working for sure.
    "take them to somewhere else" - glad to see you've got a fully worked out solution there.
    Not my choice but earlier suggestion of Falklands Isles sounds reasonable, perhaps one of the UK tax havens.

    Why do you think it will be easier for a few thousand people living on some small barren islands in the South Atlantic to accommodate and process refugees than a wealthy country of 65 million people?
    Because a hut on a windswept hillside twenty miles from Port Stanley would be a rather less attractive location in which to end up than a flat in Rochdale. If it's made abundantly clear that boat arrivals won't be allowed to stay then it will become pointless for any more people to pay the traffickers to buy them a dinghy, and the crossings will stop. This benefits future waves of migrants, because they'll save their money and can try settling in a continental country instead, benefits the majority of the UK electorate that doesn't want the migrants, and deprives the traffickers of their livelihood.

    The key obstacle, of course, is that the islanders evidently wouldn't be asked to pay for any of this, it would be down to the Treasury, and it would rather wave the people through than part with the cash. If offshoring were cheap it would already have been done.
    OK so you process them on the Falkland Islands. For now we ignore the question of what the Falkland Islanders might want (even though we fought a war forty years ago to defend their sovereign rights). Most of them turn out to be refugees (because most of them are refugees). What next? They stay on the Falklands, where they rapidly outnumber the native population? We bring them back to the UK anyway? What exactly?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,673

    malcolmg said:

    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
    I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over.
    Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular.
    The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
    The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
    The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient.
    I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
    They get disproportionate amounts spent on them , we are not stupid, only last week it was shown London annually had 5 x the amount spent on just transport as NE England. There are shedloads of the same stuff that could be shown as well, if Londoners were not leeching off the rest of the country they would be paying far more taxes.
  • Taz said:

    malcolmg said:

    IanB2 said:

    Charles said:

    murali_s said:

    People calling London a "shitheap". Surely some mistake? London is a great World City - arguable the best city in the World. Places like Scunthorpe, Hartlepool, Middlesborough are the real shitheaps - miserable places with miserable uneducated bigotted trash who reside there?

    What a disgusting post

    Ordinary hard working people with families live in these areas and are the salt of the earth

    Who on earth do you think you are
    Are you going to call out Yduffer for calling London a shit heap though? (you don't have to, of course, because we all know it isn't).
    The difference is between calling London a shitheap (I live in London but prefer the country, but it’s not a shitheap IMV) and being offensive about the people who live there.

    There are parts of central London which are absolutely world class - I really enjoy visits. And not just the bustling bits, there are some genuinely quiet neighbourhoods inside the circle line But the surrounding endless grim suburbia is seriously grim. Some of it painfully so, made worse by the absurd money that is asked of people to live there.
    When Charles says 'London' he's thinking of the view over Regent's Park from St John's Wood, not of Ilford or Edmonton or Peckham or Hounslow.
    I'd rather live in Peckham than St John's Wood. I virtually do live in Peckham in fact, SE15 is just a couple of streets over.
    Suburbia isn't grim, it's an oasis of parks and gardens, with thriving communities, friendly neighbours, decent schools, independent shops and restaurants, a plethora of activities for children, a thriving arts scene and reasonable commutes to work in Central London. It's only over priced because it's popular.
    The only thing that could improve London? If we could spend more of our money on London and less on subsidising people whose main leisure activity is sagging off London.
    The old chestnut that London funds the rest of the country rather than the reality that it sucks the life blood out of it and no matter how much is spent there compared to the rest of the country the selfish arseholes are never happy. Full of me me me parasites and bloodsuckers.
    The numbers speak for themselves. Londoners pay thousands of pounds more in tax than they receive back in government spending. That's just a fact, sorry if it's inconvenient.
    I'm very happy. I don't even mind subsidising the rest of the country. I'm not from London, I still have plenty of love for the rest of the UK, including the country of my birth (the same one as yours). I'm just sick of being told how awful we are and what a shit hole I live in by people who are taking my money.
    Stop it, stop it, You’re making me cry. Shall we start a just giving page ?
    Who needs Just Giving when you've got HMRC?
This discussion has been closed.