Instead of having a separate eurozone parliament, why don't they simply use the existing parliament. When debating & voting on eurozone-only matters the representatives from non-euro countries could be excluded. They could call it something like "Eurozone Votes for Eurozone Laws" (EVEL).
An innovative solution, I heartily approve I must say.
George Eaton @georgeeaton 41m41 minutes ago Shadow cabinet minister tells me that almost all members would refuse to serve under Corbyn http://bit.ly/1CPXuTU
Labour members will surely step back from the brink when threatened with losing titans like Chris Leslie, Tristram Hunt and Rachel Reeves.
It's only a game-changer if these "titans" (snigger) all decide to take their ball and set up a new party. Without Unite money? Yeah, right....
Evening all. Yet another good article by @antifrank, followed by possibly the funniest comments thread of the year! Special mention to @SeanT for the drug dealer comments and @nigel4england for the Greek version of an old joke.
Jeremy Corbyn is 17 points ahead in a YouGov poll Tony Blair has suggested Labour could be left out of power for 20 years if he wins Jeremy Corbyn is ‘the Syriza of Britain’, Labour MP Tristram Hunt warns Labour has become a ‘suicide cult’, according to Darren Murphy, former special adviser to Tony Blair Rival candidate Yvette Cooper rejects the poll, saying it does not show the support she is getting MPs who nominated Jeremy Corbyn are ‘morons’, according to John McTernan, former special adviser to Tony Blair Jeremy Corbyn made a speech on his economic masterplan including plan to tax wealthy and big corporations Labour MP Margaret Beckett, who nominated Mr Corbyn, admits she wishes she hadn't Mary Creagh, who dropped out of leadership race, likens Labour to Millwall FC: 'nobody likes us, but we don't care'
Instead of having a separate eurozone parliament, why don't they simply use the existing parliament. When debating & voting on eurozone-only matters the representatives from non-euro countries could be excluded. They could call it something like "Eurozone Votes for Eurozone Laws" (EVEL).
George Eaton @georgeeaton 41m41 minutes ago Shadow cabinet minister tells me that almost all members would refuse to serve under Corbyn http://bit.ly/1CPXuTU
Labour members will surely step back from the brink when threatened with losing titans like Chris Leslie, Tristram Hunt and Rachel Reeves.
LOL!
Though genuinely why would Corbyn with a mandate of winning leadership want people like Hunt in his shadown cabinet? Did Blair put Corbyn in his shadow cabinet?
Surely if we have a Corbyn-led Labour party he should promote like-minded MPs who'd be willing to serve under his leadership anyway and relegate those that wouldn't to be part of an awkward squad backbench. We could have a shadow cabinet filled with the likes of Abbott, Skinner etc
Dennis Skinner in the shadow cabinet...now that would be a riot.
Without wishing to blow his trumpet, I have to say that these Antifrank op-ed and thoroughly researched background pieces are as good as anyone writing about politics in the broad-sheets at the moment. Many thanks - and to OGH, for cajoling Antifrank into producing them at such a surprisingly regular rate!
Very much seconded.
If we had poster of the year, Antifrank would be a shoo-in.
Thirded.
The biggest problem for centrist Labour politicians (Blairite is increasingly obselete with Tony long since gone) is that they have no central figure to rally round. Liz Kendall is at least up for a scrap, but the rest run from gunfire rather than towards it. Stella Creasy may well emerge in time, and is the best stop Watson candidate.
That's how all capitalist economies work. How much "real" work goes on in Hawaii?
Disagree: if the original money from the German tourist had been a loan, then there would have been an injection of money into a closed system, which could have repaid debts and then been withdrawn.
But it wasn't: it was stolen from the tourist for a period of time. In fact, there has been no money injected into the system.
All that has been achieved has been a netting off a debts, which could have (theoretically) been achieved in a structured manner anyway (at least if you had a central clearing house)
Just read some interesting yellow on red tweets. Abstaining labour MPs getting the full treatment.
Which considering the yellow manifesto included continuing austerity is pure opportunism.
Not at all, Mr Thompson. There was a world of difference between the "austerity" the country experienced over the last five years, when Tory policies were held in check by the Liberal Democrats. And now, when Tory policies are running on full throttle.
Just read some interesting yellow on red tweets. Abstaining labour MPs getting the full treatment.
Which considering the yellow manifesto included continuing austerity is pure opportunism.
Not at all, Mr Thompson. There was a world of difference between the "austerity" the country experienced over the last five years, when Tory policies were held in check by the Liberal Democrats. And now, when Tory policies are running on full throttle.
Easier to just shout "opportunism" of course.
Yep. We are seeing now what a restraining influence the LDs in the coalition were.
Just read some interesting yellow on red tweets. Abstaining labour MPs getting the full treatment.
Which considering the yellow manifesto included continuing austerity is pure opportunism.
Not at all, Mr Thompson. There was a world of difference between the "austerity" the country experienced over the last five years, when Tory policies were held in check by the Liberal Democrats. And now, when Tory policies are running on full throttle.
Easier to just shout "opportunism" of course.
Yep. We are seeing now what a restraining influence the LDs in the coalition were.
Resulting in the national debt doubling over the course of 5 wasted years, congratulations.
Yougov is WRONG, they used the WRONG demographic weightings on their Labour leadership poll. Normally the Labour members skew about 70/30 towards Men, but Yougov weighted it 50/50, if corrected that alone reduces Corbyn's total by 2% and makes the 2nd place too close to call, also they haven't used any turnout filters. All those corrections will have to be done now manually.
My first impression now is that Corby is ahead by far less than thought, and Burnham and Cooper are tied for second place.
In the original twitter feed, YouGov says weighting was based on guidance for Labour HQ.
Excellent piece with one exception, I can't imagine many young labour politicians thriving in the private sector.
It's not a high bar. If you have connections, can tick boxes, talk the lingo and make "savings" there'll always be a well paid place for you in a British business.
In a quango, a charity or the public sector yes, but these people have no knowledge of or interest in the private sector.
Not sure you understand what a Blairite is.
Yes I do, its a champagne socialist who despite never having worked in the private sector pretends to understand how it works. A Blairite will then go on to make good money from the public purse whilst rubbing shoulders with the real wealth creators. Some might consider law as the private sector but that depends who your clients are.
I don't know what you mean about wealth creators, but I understand capitalism pretty well, where accumulating wealth is ridiculously easy if you are already loaded. Unless you are an idiot, it is almost impossible to lose money when you've got it.
Remarkably easy to lose money through bad investments.
"The reason was simple: India was governed for the benefit of Britain. Britain's rise for 200 years was financed by its depredations in India."
This is manifestly untrue. Gross fixed capital formation in the UK in 1770 was £4m. Remittances from India to the UK were £386,000 a year between 1770 and 1784, and the usual reinvestment rate was about 40% in this time period. So less than 4% of British investment was financed by India. Plus you must deduct off of that the cost of the numerous bailouts the East India Company received from the British taxpayer, in addition to the cost to the Royal Navy that was used to aid John Company.
The rise of Great Britain as an industrial power was first financed by the agricultural revolution and cottage industry, and then by vast profits of industry, thanks to the genius of British inventions.
Of course, I'm unsurprised at the BBC pushing this anti-British claptrap.
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
You know, I'm experiencing two incompatible emotions simultaneously and it's weird. On the one hand, car-crash politics like this is absorbing and enthralling to watch, albeit with a slight guilty tinge, as if watching a car crash.
On the other, I'm depressed about the situation with Osborne running untrammelled, with no-one and nothing to hold him back (which is a bit weird, because I tended to defend his Budgets in the previous five years). The Lib Dems have experienced near-obliteration, and the Labour Party are frantically masturbating in a corner rather than bother to try to be an alternative Government. The SNP are near-irrelevant to not-Scotland, UKIP and the Greens aren't options and have also descended into self-parody. Overall, it's a bit dangerous from a democratic point of view.
Osborne's latest Budget has been a massive disappointment to me. Yeah, I know it was a masterpiece of political strategy and positioning, but in terms of being good economics or good for the country ... not really. - I've already whinged about the effects on students (near-ignored by the press - and after the comments by LiaMT last night, I'm even more down about it: according to his interpretation of the precedents, no reasonable person can have any expectation that the repayment threshold on this and previous student loan systems will not go down, and, by implication, no reasonable person can have any expectation that the Government will keep to their undertaking to write off the debt after 30 years, or refrain from raising the repayment rate from 9% to any arbitrary figure. So the effective cost of any degree cannot be remotely predictable by any reasonable person) - I've shaken my head over the slamming of SMEs - And the emasculation of the Low Pay Commission and making the setting of the level of the minimum wage an explicitly political football from now onwards rather than assessed in the best interests of maximising pay while minimising the effects on unemployment, underemployment and lessening growth ... that's particularly disappointing, Especially as, in debates elsewhere, I laid into Miliband's foolishness and short-sightedness in promising to do just that - but to a lower degree. We should get away with it reasonably well while the economy's growing (yeah, there'll be some tens of thousands of extra people unemployed who would otherwise have had a job, more companies that won't be able to expand, and so what, but this should be hard to tell against the profile of a rising economy), but when the next downturn hits, it'll exacerbate the unemployment effects significantly. And, of course, from now on, the parties will have to engage in a bidding war on minimum wage levels.
Meanwhile the current person in pole position for the Labour Party's leadership believes that depreciation is a Government subsidy of tens of billions per year and if the Government buys things from someone, it's subsidising them.
A finely reasoned argument from Antifrank.What he omitted was how the new leader will respond,specifically Jeremy Corbyn who has already held out the hand of friendship to LizKendall and called for a wide sharing of common values,one of which is the need to decentralise power.The powerful contribution Liz Kendall has made on devolution makes her the obvious candidate to take the agenda forward as shadow of communities and local government.The question over the other figures on the right is the same and the fine leadership principle of Lynton B.Johnson will apply.Will the new leader prefer them "inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in".Chuka Ummuna and Caroline Flint could then be accomodated.Others,possibly over-promoted, the new leader may view as more appropriate for the backbenchers. In the event of a Cooper or Burnham victory,should the new leader try to exclude Jeremy Corbyn the Labour arguments will continue.I would suggest he make an excellent Minister Without Portfolio outwith of collective cabinet responsibility.
Yougov is WRONG, they used the WRONG demographic weightings on their Labour leadership poll. Normally the Labour members skew about 70/30 towards Men, but Yougov weighted it 50/50, if corrected that alone reduces Corbyn's total by 2% and makes the 2nd place too close to call, also they haven't used any turnout filters. All those corrections will have to be done now manually.
My first impression now is that Corby is ahead by far less than thought, and Burnham and Cooper are tied for second place.
In the original twitter feed, YouGov says weighting was based on guidance for Labour HQ.
It's either YG got the wrong info, or the NS is wrong.
Given recent history, I'm going to take the NS (with their inside connections to Labour) info rather than YG's.
"This Saturday David Miliband will become leader of the Labour Party." Dan Hodges 2010. His opinion is worthless.
In that case, I hope Hodges being right on Ed Miliband is never mentioned on PB ever again, or that Labour supporters should listen to people like Dan Hodges.
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
- I've already whinged about the effects on students (near-ignored by the press - and after the comments by LiaMT last night, I'm even more down about it: according to his interpretation of the precedents, no reasonable person can have any expectation that the repayment threshold on this and previous student loan systems will not go down, and, by implication, no reasonable person can have any expectation that the Government will keep to their undertaking to write off the debt after 30 years, or refrain from raising the repayment rate from 9% to any arbitrary figure. So the effective cost of any degree cannot be remotely predictable by any reasonable person)
That's wrong. You just need to look at first principles, not at the precise details of the mechanism.
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong, and it looked like a significant number of people wouldn't repay their loan. So they adjusted the figures to reassert the principle that Parliament voted for: that those who benefit from degrees should pay the cost (a not unreasonable principle).
What a lot of these Westminster commentators don't realise is, it's not that Labour members don't want to win elections. Sure they want to win in 5 years time, but they also think that equally important is Labour doing their bloody job as an Opposition in the meantime. I.e. making the argument against austerity day in day out, rather than just being silent like they were for most of the last 5 years or, worse, actively waving through cuts to poor people.
You know, I'm experiencing two incompatible emotions simultaneously and it's weird. On the one hand, car-crash politics like this is absorbing and enthralling to watch, albeit with a slight guilty tinge, as if watching a car crash.
In car crash terms, Labour have been pretty spectacular. But for more style and action, and an even more impeccable sense of timing, NI21 did FAR better. That was really something to behold. They still exist and the not-quite-corpse is showing signs of twitching, apparently - but I'd be surprised if Labour manage to blow themselves up even half as well.
Been glad to see you posting more actively lately, you've picked up on some interesting stuff and it's refreshing to hear non-partisan voices.
Could JC expel Blair (as a "war criminal") from the Labour Party if the Chilcott report is critical of him?
Could he not? It's quite possible that, should he loose the right of the party, that expelling Blair is one of the actions required to stop him loosing the left and finding his position completely untenable.
A Corbyn led Labour might well expel Blair from the party.
Nah, will never happen.
Not unless the Chilcott report is published.
So, Blair's safe then.
Just imagine if Chilcott ever ran a major govt department....
It is a semi serious point, though. Could JC expel Blair (as a "war criminal") from the Labour Party if the Chilcott report is critical of him?
I would have thought that the party leadership could expel any member they don't wish to associate with. Maybe Labour have a process to follow (as with the LDs and Handycock) rather than summary expulsion, but it is surely possible on the back of an official criticism from a Judge.
As was mentioned downthread, perhaps Leader Corbyn could pack him off to The Hague as well?
Re Rob Ford. Important to remember that for Labour activists, losing repeatedly may feel bad, but winning feels bad too. The Iraq war began twelve years ago, but its disastrous course is still a millstone around "Blairites", who really should not allow themselves to be called that any more. They think they wasted their last government by moving in the general right-ward direction and it's hard to disagree. Blair and Cameron are both "free markets plus the NHS" with some distinctions on welfare, but one party is much happier with the social outcome than the other and quite right too.
Douglas Carswell MP @DouglasCarswell 21h21 hours ago I love the growing disconnect between ppl who actually join political parties and the pundits who tell us how politics must be
I see the BBC starting to panic over corbyn,they put it top story for six o'clock news.
@Plato: My comment on Franco-British union downthread was intended as a reply to you but I didn't have space to attach the "reply" bit to it. Apologies if you missed it, thought you'd find it interesting re the France/Britain cultural difference.
Would Corbyn even last that long [in regard to Corbyn expelling Blair]? Seems there a lot of people determined they'll get rid before he's even begun. In the Miliband years, there was no real concerted effort to get rid of him, or even a candidate to rally round.
@Danny565 There is a chasm between the leadership and members/activists on this, that is clear. While many members/activists may be anti-austerity, the Labour party establishment is not. They probably believe in a more moderate form of austerity than the government - they certainly would have made cuts had they been elected in May. And tbh, to the wider public being anti-cuts strengthens Labour's image of economic incompetence, making them sound unrealistic, and unwilling to make difficult decisions. Labour members may disagree with the Conservative narrative on this, but at this stage it's useless trying to counter it because it's been set. Labour should have attempted to counter it 2008/9 - it's been more than seven years now. I've more critical of Kendall as time has gone on but the one thing she is right on, is that Labour can't fight the battles of the past, and have to be a party on the future. Fighting the battle of austerity is one of the past, because the argument has already been settled, and was settled years ago.
Could JC expel Blair (as a "war criminal") from the Labour Party if the Chilcott report is critical of him?
Could he not? It's quite possible that, should he loose the right of the party, that expelling Blair is one of the actions required to stop him loosing the left and finding his position completely untenable.
I doubt he would though: it would be a declaration of war on the right of the party. But it would be an interesting stance if he felt strong enough. It all depends on how critical Chilcott is.
A Corbyn led Labour might well expel Blair from the party.
Nah, will never happen.
Not unless the Chilcott report is published.
So, Blair's safe then.
Just imagine if Chilcott ever ran a major govt department....
It is a semi serious point, though. Could JC expel Blair (as a "war criminal") from the Labour Party if the Chilcott report is critical of him?
I would have thought that the party leadership could expel any member they don't wish to associate with. Maybe Labour have a process to follow (as with the LDs and Handycock) rather than summary expulsion, but it is surely possible on the back of an official criticism from a Judge.
As was mentioned downthread, perhaps Leader Corbyn could pack him off to The Hague as well?
To be clear I was meaning "could" in the sense of "would he do that" rather than "technically can he do it". I'm sure that he can do it.
Douglas Carswell MP @DouglasCarswell 21h21 hours ago I love the growing disconnect between ppl who actually join political parties and the pundits who tell us how politics must be
Carswell's the same guy who mocked Labour 'electing' Corbyn after the NS story came out on the 'leaked poll'.
- I've already whinged about the effects on students (near-ignored by the press - and after the comments by LiaMT last night, I'm even more down about it: according to his interpretation of the precedents, no reasonable person can have any expectation that the repayment threshold on this and previous student loan systems will not go down, and, by implication, no reasonable person can have any expectation that the Government will keep to their undertaking to write off the debt after 30 years, or refrain from raising the repayment rate from 9% to any arbitrary figure. So the effective cost of any degree cannot be remotely predictable by any reasonable person)
That's wrong. You just need to look at first principles, not at the precise details of the mechanism.
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong, and it looked like a significant number of people wouldn't repay their loan. So they adjusted the figures to reassert the principle that Parliament voted for: that those who benefit from degrees should pay the cost (a not unreasonable principle).
Well, they're still getting nowhere near unless they increase it to about 15%, reduce the threshold to c. 13k, and remove the 30-year write-off cap.
And if they could get their sums so wrong - when there were loads of online calculators and anyone with half a brain could run up a spreadsheet to give the repayment totals under various assumptions - then it really doesn't bode well for running the entire economy. Also given that big chunks of people weren't going to be paying of the debts under the £3k fees regime and with a £15k threshold, it does seem a stretch to posit that they assumed most would, in fact, end up paying off the debts. When anyone with a spreadsheet could (and did) point out that only those who ended up with starting salaries in the £45k range (and went up from there) would succeed in doing so.
In fact, this was a key point of arguing against Miliband's stupid "reduce the fees to £6k" pledge - only those who started off earning £40k+ would see any difference.
Although, to be fair, it would mean that a larger chunk of the nominal residual student debt was paid off, so maybe Ed was right after all - if the intention was that the degrees were repaid. (For the avoidance of doubt, I do not believe Ed was right)
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
It still deserves criticism, no?
Perhaps, but the article implies the British created the practice in India. But, yes, we should have abolished the Indian cultural practice, as we did with widow-burning.
I see the BBC starting to panic over corbyn,they put it top story for six o'clock news.
@Plato: My comment on Franco-British union downthread was intended as a reply to you but I didn't have space to attach the "reply" bit to it. Apologies if you missed it, thought you'd find it interesting re the France/Britain cultural difference.
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
It still deserves criticism, no?
Perhaps, but the article implies the British created the practice in India. But, yes, we should have abolished the Indian cultural practice, as we did with widow-burning.
It doesn't imply that, on a fair reading. It says the British used the practice in India. And for every Indian cultural practice like widow-burning, there is a British cultural practice like overseeing famines.
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
It still deserves criticism, no?
Perhaps, but the article implies the British created the practice in India. But, yes, we should have abolished the Indian cultural practice, as we did with widow-burning.
It doesn't imply that, on a fair reading. It says the British used the practice in India. And for every Indian cultural practice like widow-burning, there is a British cultural practice like overseeing famines.
I believe firing from cannons was "only" used during the Indian Mutiny. It's fair to say that the British lost all interest in following the rules of war after Cawnpore Well. That doesn't excuse it of course.
You think British culture embraces overseeing famines? How odd. I think we do share blame for the famine in Assam in '44(?), and doubtless you'd bring up the dire response to the Irish potato famine. I'd hardly call it part of our culture.
I think some people have a taste for loathing and denigrating their own country, which I find incomprehensible.
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong,
You are shitting me right, anyone could have worked that wouldn't happen in 5 minutes with an 80s Casio calculator.
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong,
You are shitting me right, anyone could have worked that wouldn't happen in 5 minutes with an 80s Casio calculator.
That was Charles, not me. If it helps, I've done a quick spreadsheet based on the MoneySavingExpert assumptions (RPI average of 3% per year, but income growth of the graduate beating RPI by 2% pa 'cos of enhanced earning potential (thus pay rises of 5% every year).
Under those rather positive assumptions, if you took a graduate with the full tuition fees loans (ie almost all of them) and a full maintenance loan, and had them start off on the median UK income of 26kpa (jumping straight to the median salary of all workers in the UK as a starting salary because of enhanced earning potential), you'd have to:
1 - Reduce the threshold to £10,600 per year in line with income tax. 2 - Increase the repayment rate from 9% of income over the threshold to 19% 3 - Remove the 30-year cap and work for 49 years (ie to age 70) ... to pay back the student loan.
That took me about ten minutes to work out with a standard home computer and copy of Excel. It does seem to invalidate the assertion that the Government assumed the monies would be routinely paid back. Either that, or they were staggeringly incompetent ... and students had better bloody brace themselves, because if I can work this out, so can Osborne!
EDIT - Sorry, the graduate would have to continue to work for two thirds of year 50; they still owe 1900 at the end of year 49)
On the topic of student debts, my ~ £10k debt that went up to £12k and now sits around ~ £8k is a whole different kettle of fish to the ~ £40k debts that today's students are leaving with.
Would Corbyn even last that long [in regard to Corbyn expelling Blair]? Seems there a lot of people determined they'll get rid before he's even begun. In the Miliband years, there was no real concerted effort to get rid of him, or even a candidate to rally round.
I don't get how this works.
They get 47 MPs to vote to cause a re-election. They then put this in front of the activists who have just voted for him (presumably he would restand).
Surely human nature on behalf of the activists would be to say "didn't you hear us the first time"? The only way they could prevent this would be if they chose not to nominate him the second time round - but that would be an extraordinarily demotivating step for the activist base.
The only way it works if he is such an unmitigated disaster in year 1 (I believe this can only occur at the next conference anyway) that people realise that he's no good. But that seems unlikely - I suspect he will poll well with a hard line as it is superficially attractive.
And if they could get their sums so wrong - when there were loads of online calculators and anyone with half a brain could run up a spreadsheet to give the repayment totals under various assumptions - then it really doesn't bode well for running the entire economy.
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
It still deserves criticism, no?
Perhaps, but the article implies the British created the practice in India. But, yes, we should have abolished the Indian cultural practice, as we did with widow-burning.
Possibly we should. We didn't treat the French very nicely during the 14th century either and, to be fair they weren't very nice to us, (locking the population of Winchelsea in their church and setting fire to it was just one of their noted actions). However, beating ourselves up for actions that took place a long, long time ago in completely different social and moral climates is just silly.
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
It still deserves criticism, no?
Perhaps, but the article implies the British created the practice in India. But, yes, we should have abolished the Indian cultural practice, as we did with widow-burning.
It doesn't imply that, on a fair reading. It says the British used the practice in India. And for every Indian cultural practice like widow-burning, there is a British cultural practice like overseeing famines.
If you're describing famines as a cultural practice, then it's clear you're not interested in having a sensible discussion.
And if they could get their sums so wrong - when there were loads of online calculators and anyone with half a brain could run up a spreadsheet to give the repayment totals under various assumptions - then it really doesn't bode well for running the entire economy.
Wasn't it a LibDem policy...?
Lol!
I don't think they really proposed the Browne Review
Basically, the system was configured to become a graduate tax in all but name, so that graduates who benefited would contribute, and the State would also contribute (as it's a positive externality).
Reduce the threshold and you start hitting more and more those who didn't benefit after all, making the premise on which they took up the offer more and more invalidated ...
Would Corbyn even last that long [in regard to Corbyn expelling Blair]? Seems there a lot of people determined they'll get rid before he's even begun. In the Miliband years, there was no real concerted effort to get rid of him, or even a candidate to rally round.
I don't get how this works.
They get 47 MPs to vote to cause a re-election. They then put this in front of the activists who have just voted for him (presumably he would restand).
Surely human nature on behalf of the activists would be to say "didn't you hear us the first time"? The only way they could prevent this would be if they chose not to nominate him the second time round - but that would be an extraordinarily demotivating step for the activist base.
The only way it works if he is such an unmitigated disaster in year 1 (I believe this can only occur at the next conference anyway) that people realise that he's no good. But that seems unlikely - I suspect he will poll well with a hard line as it is superficially attractive.
I don't think they would nominate him the second time round - people are already regretting it now, let alone if they had a second opportunity. Tbh, I think all the Labour establishment care about is getting re-elected, not appeasing an activist base which they will regard as (a. deluded (b. harbouring ideas too left-wing to win an election.
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong,
You are shitting me right, anyone could have worked that wouldn't happen in 5 minutes with an 80s Casio calculator.
Indeed, the tuition fees fiasco has been an absolute f*ck up. And to bring this back to the topic of the thread, any opposition worth their salt would have pursued the Government mercilessly over it on the grounds of egregious budgetary failure as well as issues of 'fairness'. Unfortunately, Ed Miliband was in charge. And things don't look much brighter for now ...
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong,
You are shitting me right, anyone could have worked that wouldn't happen in 5 minutes with an 80s Casio calculator.
That was Charles, not me. If it helps, I've done a quick spreadsheet based on the MoneySavingExpert assumptions (RPI average of 3% per year, but income growth of the graduate beating RPI by 2% pa 'cos of enhanced earning potential (thus pay rises of 5% every year).
Under those rather positive assumptions, if you took a graduate with the full tuition fees loans (ie almost all of them) and a full maintenance loan, and had them start off on the median UK income of 26kpa (jumping straight to the median salary of all workers in the UK as a starting salary because of enhanced earning potential), you'd have to:
1 - Reduce the threshold to £10,600 per year in line with income tax. 2 - Increase the repayment rate from 9% of income over the threshold to 19% 3 - Remove the 30-year cap and work for 49 years (ie to age 70) ... to pay back the student loan.
That took me about ten minutes to work out with a standard home computer and copy of Excel. It does seem to invalidate the assertion that the Government assumed the monies would be routinely paid back. Either that, or they were staggeringly incompetent ... and students had better bloody brace themselves, because if I can work this out, so can Osborne!
EDIT - Sorry, the graduate would have to continue to work for two thirds of year 50; they still owe 1900 at the end of year 49)
They also wrongly assumed that lots of new universities would set their fees between £4,500 and £6,000, when in the event virtually every course at virtually every university charges £9,000, increasing the government's liability considerably, of course.
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong,
You are shitting me right, anyone could have worked that wouldn't happen in 5 minutes with an 80s Casio calculator.
Indeed, the tuition fees fiasco has been an absolute f*ck up. And to bring this back to the topic of the thread, any opposition worth their salt would have pursued the Government mercilessly over it on the grounds of egregious budgetary failure as well as issues of 'fairness'. Unfortunately, Ed Miliband was in charge. And things don't look much brighter for now ...
Yeah, see the rest of my comment on that! I'm nervous because Osborne has a great deal of power and he's demonstrated that political manouevring is more important to him than ... well, anything else.
I'm really really hoping that he'll realise that the opposition is hopelessly fragmented and disorganised and just get on with sensible stuff instead. Reducing corporation tax was a good one (see incidence of corporation tax, and empirically measured effects of various taxes on economic growth); I'd really like to see alignment of NI with Income Tax. But I'm not sure what political benefit he'd see in it.
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
It still deserves criticism, no?
Perhaps, but the article implies the British created the practice in India. But, yes, we should have abolished the Indian cultural practice, as we did with widow-burning.
It doesn't imply that, on a fair reading. It says the British used the practice in India. And for every Indian cultural practice like widow-burning, there is a British cultural practice like overseeing famines.
If you're describing famines as a cultural practice, then it's clear you're not interested in having a sensible discussion.
My view is that people like Robert Clive and Warren Hastings were no better than pirates. But, they were no worse than the Mughals and their successors, who were their rival imperialists and who oppressed the poor, blew people from cannon, presided over famines etc.
British rule did improve markedly in the nineteenth century. Religious tolerance was one benefit. A reasonably impartial legal and judicial system was another. Famine relief was another still. The Bengal Famine was the first to cause major loss of life for nearly 70 years. It was brought on by the loss of Burmese rice production to the Japanese.
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong,
You are shitting me right, anyone could have worked that wouldn't happen in 5 minutes with an 80s Casio calculator.
Indeed, the tuition fees fiasco has been an absolute f*ck up. And to bring this back to the topic of the thread, any opposition worth their salt would have pursued the Government mercilessly over it on the grounds of egregious budgetary failure as well as issues of 'fairness'. Unfortunately, Ed Miliband was in charge. And things don't look much brighter for now ...
Yeah, see the rest of my comment on that! I'm nervous because Osborne has a great deal of power and he's demonstrated that political manouevring is more important to him than ... well, anything else.
I'm really really hoping that he'll realise that the opposition is hopelessly fragmented and disorganised and just get on with sensible stuff instead. Reducing corporation tax was a good one (see incidence of corporation tax, and empirically measured effects of various taxes on economic growth); I'd really like to see alignment of NI with Income Tax. But I'm not sure what political benefit he'd see in it.
I see Corbyn is planning to abolish tuition fees. Not sure if this will include a wiping clean of existing student debts, but if it did then he would get fox jr's vote.
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong,
You are shitting me right, anyone could have worked that wouldn't happen in 5 minutes with an 80s Casio calculator.
That was Charles, not me. If it helps, I've done a quick spreadsheet based on the MoneySavingExpert assumptions (RPI average of 3% per year, but income growth of the graduate beating RPI by 2% pa 'cos of enhanced earning potential (thus pay rises of 5% every year).
Under those rather positive assumptions, if you took a graduate with the full tuition fees loans (ie almost all of them) and a full maintenance loan, and had them start off on the median UK income of 26kpa (jumping straight to the median salary of all workers in the UK as a starting salary because of enhanced earning potential), you'd have to:
1 - Reduce the threshold to £10,600 per year in line with income tax. 2 - Increase the repayment rate from 9% of income over the threshold to 19% 3 - Remove the 30-year cap and work for 49 years (ie to age 70) ... to pay back the student loan.
That took me about ten minutes to work out with a standard home computer and copy of Excel. It does seem to invalidate the assertion that the Government assumed the monies would be routinely paid back. Either that, or they were staggeringly incompetent ... and students had better bloody brace themselves, because if I can work this out, so can Osborne!
EDIT - Sorry, the graduate would have to continue to work for two thirds of year 50; they still owe 1900 at the end of year 49)
They also wrongly assumed that lots of new universities would set their fees between £4,500 and £6,000, when in the event virtually every course at virtually every university charges £9,000, increasing the government's liability considerably, of course.
Why they made that assumption when they already had the experience of the initial introduction of fees behind them is beyond comprehension. If the first time around even the most flea-bitten, third-rate, ex-poly felt they had to charge the full amount (and could get away with it) what was going to be different? The incompetence of our political masters and their civil service advisors is truly beyond laughable.
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
It still deserves criticism, no?
Perhaps, but the article implies the British created the practice in India. But, yes, we should have abolished the Indian cultural practice, as we did with widow-burning.
It doesn't imply that, on a fair reading. It says the British used the practice in India. And for every Indian cultural practice like widow-burning, there is a British cultural practice like overseeing famines.
If you're describing famines as a cultural practice, then it's clear you're not interested in having a sensible discussion.
My view is that people like Robert Clive and Warren Hastings were no better than pirates. But, they were no worse than the Mughals and their successors, who were their rival imperialists and who oppressed the poor, blew people from cannon, presided over famines etc.
British rule did improve markedly in the nineteenth century. Religious tolerance was one benefit. A reasonably impartial legal and judicial system was another. Famine relief was another still. The Bengal Famine was the first to cause major loss of life for nearly 70 years. It was brought on by the loss of Burmese rice production to the Japanese.
War and famine are evil twins; whether Bengal in 43, Ethiopia in the eighties, Cambodia in the seventies, Biafra in the sixties etc etc.
The government response to the Bengal famine was inadequate, but in large part this was because India was a federal state and other provinces refused the export of food. An overreliance on free market solutions was a major factor too.
You know, I'm experiencing two incompatible emotions simultaneously and it's weird. On the one hand, car-crash politics like this is absorbing and enthralling to watch, albeit with a slight guilty tinge, as if watching a car crash.
In car crash terms, Labour have been pretty spectacular. But for more style and action, and an even more impeccable sense of timing, NI21 did FAR better. That was really something to behold. They still exist and the not-quite-corpse is showing signs of twitching, apparently - but I'd be surprised if Labour manage to blow themselves up even half as well.
Been glad to see you posting more actively lately, you've picked up on some interesting stuff and it's refreshing to hear non-partisan voices.
Thanks, MBE!
It's all down to how much free time I can get (very hard to post during the day, due to work) - and whether I feel I've got anything at all worthwhile to say rather than just read!
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong,
You are shitting me right, anyone could have worked that wouldn't happen in 5 minutes with an 80s Casio calculator.
That was Charles, not me. If it helps, I've done a quick spreadsheet based on the MoneySavingExpert assumptions (RPI average of 3% per year, but income growth of the graduate beating RPI by 2% pa 'cos of enhanced earning potential (thus pay rises of 5% every year).
Under those rather positive assumptions, if you took a graduate with the full tuition fees loans (ie almost all of them) and a full maintenance loan, and had them start off on the median UK income of 26kpa (jumping straight to the median salary of all workers in the UK as a starting salary because of enhanced earning potential), you'd have to:
1 - Reduce the threshold to £10,600 per year in line with income tax. 2 - Increase the repayment rate from 9% of income over the threshold to 19% 3 - Remove the 30-year cap and work for 49 years (ie to age 70) ... to pay back the student loan.
That took me about ten minutes to work out with a standard home computer and copy of Excel. It does seem to invalidate the assertion that the Government assumed the monies would be routinely paid back. Either that, or they were staggeringly incompetent ... and students had better bloody brace themselves, because if I can work this out, so can Osborne!
EDIT - Sorry, the graduate would have to continue to work for two thirds of year 50; they still owe 1900 at the end of year 49)
They also wrongly assumed that lots of new universities would set their fees between £4,500 and £6,000, when in the event virtually every course at virtually every university charges £9,000, increasing the government's liability considerably, of course.
Why they made that assumption when they already had the experience of the initial introduction of fees behind them is beyond comprehension. If the first time around even the most flea-bitten, third-rate, ex-poly felt they had to charge the full amount (and could get away with it) what was going to be different? The incompetence of our political masters and their civil service advisors is truly beyond laughable.
You know, I'm experiencing two incompatible emotions simultaneously and it's weird. On the one hand, car-crash politics like this is absorbing and enthralling to watch, albeit with a slight guilty tinge, as if watching a car crash.
In car crash terms, Labour have been pretty spectacular. But for more style and action, and an even more impeccable sense of timing, NI21 did FAR better. That was really something to behold. They still exist and the not-quite-corpse is showing signs of twitching, apparently - but I'd be surprised if Labour manage to blow themselves up even half as well.
Been glad to see you posting more actively lately, you've picked up on some interesting stuff and it's refreshing to hear non-partisan voices.
Thanks, MBE!
It's all down to how much free time I can get (very hard to post during the day, due to work) - and whether I feel I've got anything at all worthwhile to say rather than just read!
You are right to raise the issue of tuition fees. In effect graduates of Generation rent are going to be paying an extra 9% income tax. They are going to be very keen supporters of Corbyn.
British rule did improve markedly in the nineteenth century. Religious tolerance was one benefit. A reasonably impartial legal and judicial system was another. Famine relief was another still.
You know, I'm experiencing two incompatible emotions simultaneously and it's weird. On the one hand, car-crash politics like this is absorbing and enthralling to watch, albeit with a slight guilty tinge, as if watching a car crash.
In car crash terms, Labour have been pretty spectacular. But for more style and action, and an even more impeccable sense of timing, NI21 did FAR better. That was really something to behold. They still exist and the not-quite-corpse is showing signs of twitching, apparently - but I'd be surprised if Labour manage to blow themselves up even half as well.
Been glad to see you posting more actively lately, you've picked up on some interesting stuff and it's refreshing to hear non-partisan voices.
Thanks, MBE!
It's all down to how much free time I can get (very hard to post during the day, due to work) - and whether I feel I've got anything at all worthwhile to say rather than just read!
You are right to raise the issue of tuition fees. In effect graduates of Generation rent are going to be paying an extra 9% income tax. They are going to be very keen supporters of Corbyn.
Very true, but if Fox Jnr, Cooke Jnr and Llama Jnr aren't going to be paying some other people are. I wonder who. It won't just be Fox, Cooke and Llama that's for sure I hope it won't be Smith and Jones who left education without a degree, or whose children have.
You know, I'm experiencing two incompatible emotions simultaneously and it's weird. On the one hand, car-crash politics like this is absorbing and enthralling to watch, albeit with a slight guilty tinge, as if watching a car crash.
In car crash terms, Labour have been pretty spectacular. But for more style and action, and an even more impeccable sense of timing, NI21 did FAR better. That was really something to behold. They still exist and the not-quite-corpse is showing signs of twitching, apparently - but I'd be surprised if Labour manage to blow themselves up even half as well.
Been glad to see you posting more actively lately, you've picked up on some interesting stuff and it's refreshing to hear non-partisan voices.
Thanks, MBE!
It's all down to how much free time I can get (very hard to post during the day, due to work) - and whether I feel I've got anything at all worthwhile to say rather than just read!
You are right to raise the issue of tuition fees. In effect graduates of Generation rent are going to be paying an extra 9% income tax. They are going to be very keen supporters of Corbyn.
Very true, but if Fox Jnr, Cooke Jnr and Llama Jnr aren't going to be paying some other people are. I wonder who. It won't just be Fox, Cooke and Llama that's for sure I hope it won't be Smith and Jones who left education without a degree, or whose children have.
Oh, they are paying, And I was quite content with the setup until Osborne messed things around. Fox jnr, Cooke jnr and Llama jnr would be paying a far greater proportion of those costs than previous generations did, and the remaining chunk was being picked up by the general populace as a population with doctors, engineers, scientists and lawyers is one that's better off for everyone. Those who benefit directly pay the most; those who benefit indirectly also contribute.
Moniker DC.. Before you diss Dan Hodges too much, I do recall him saying that Ed Miliband would never be Prime Minister... It was of course in concordance with those of us though that EICAWNBPM.
I think Dan must have also been correct so his opinion is not worthless.
Comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11754888/Tony-Blair-Labour-could-spend-20-years-out-of-power-if-Jeremy-Corbyn-wins-live.html
Were the tories this bad in 2001 or 2005? I guess they probably were.
http://news.sky.com/story/1523577/key-westminster-figures-in-child-abuse-documents
The biggest problem for centrist Labour politicians (Blairite is increasingly obselete with Tony long since gone) is that they have no central figure to rally round. Liz Kendall is at least up for a scrap, but the rest run from gunfire rather than towards it. Stella Creasy may well emerge in time, and is the best stop Watson candidate.
But it wasn't: it was stolen from the tourist for a period of time. In fact, there has been no money injected into the system.
All that has been achieved has been a netting off a debts, which could have (theoretically) been achieved in a structured manner anyway (at least if you had a central clearing house)
Not unless the Chilcott report is published.
So, Blair's safe then.
Easier to just shout "opportunism" of course.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/623907497716416512
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-33618621
Last week I was working on a case where one side had £2m in costs. So it's hardly infeasible.
Dan Hodges 2010.
His opinion is worthless.
This is manifestly untrue. Gross fixed capital formation in the UK in 1770 was £4m. Remittances from India to the UK were £386,000 a year between 1770 and 1784, and the usual reinvestment rate was about 40% in this time period. So less than 4% of British investment was financed by India. Plus you must deduct off of that the cost of the numerous bailouts the East India Company received from the British taxpayer, in addition to the cost to the Royal Navy that was used to aid John Company.
The rise of Great Britain as an industrial power was first financed by the agricultural revolution and cottage industry, and then by vast profits of industry, thanks to the genius of British inventions.
Of course, I'm unsurprised at the BBC pushing this anti-British claptrap.
EDIT: The rampant level of bias in that piece is revealed by the criticism of Britain for sentencing people to death by strapping them to the front of cannons. This was an old Indian custom before Britain got there, and we simply continued the indigenous practice.
On the one hand, car-crash politics like this is absorbing and enthralling to watch, albeit with a slight guilty tinge, as if watching a car crash.
On the other, I'm depressed about the situation with Osborne running untrammelled, with no-one and nothing to hold him back (which is a bit weird, because I tended to defend his Budgets in the previous five years). The Lib Dems have experienced near-obliteration, and the Labour Party are frantically masturbating in a corner rather than bother to try to be an alternative Government. The SNP are near-irrelevant to not-Scotland, UKIP and the Greens aren't options and have also descended into self-parody. Overall, it's a bit dangerous from a democratic point of view.
Osborne's latest Budget has been a massive disappointment to me. Yeah, I know it was a masterpiece of political strategy and positioning, but in terms of being good economics or good for the country ... not really.
- I've already whinged about the effects on students (near-ignored by the press - and after the comments by LiaMT last night, I'm even more down about it: according to his interpretation of the precedents, no reasonable person can have any expectation that the repayment threshold on this and previous student loan systems will not go down, and, by implication, no reasonable person can have any expectation that the Government will keep to their undertaking to write off the debt after 30 years, or refrain from raising the repayment rate from 9% to any arbitrary figure. So the effective cost of any degree cannot be remotely predictable by any reasonable person)
- I've shaken my head over the slamming of SMEs
- And the emasculation of the Low Pay Commission and making the setting of the level of the minimum wage an explicitly political football from now onwards rather than assessed in the best interests of maximising pay while minimising the effects on unemployment, underemployment and lessening growth ... that's particularly disappointing, Especially as, in debates elsewhere, I laid into Miliband's foolishness and short-sightedness in promising to do just that - but to a lower degree.
We should get away with it reasonably well while the economy's growing (yeah, there'll be some tens of thousands of extra people unemployed who would otherwise have had a job, more companies that won't be able to expand, and so what, but this should be hard to tell against the profile of a rising economy), but when the next downturn hits, it'll exacerbate the unemployment effects significantly. And, of course, from now on, the parties will have to engage in a bidding war on minimum wage levels.
Meanwhile the current person in pole position for the Labour Party's leadership believes that depreciation is a Government subsidy of tens of billions per year and if the Government buys things from someone, it's subsidising them.
In the event of a Cooper or Burnham victory,should the new leader try to exclude Jeremy Corbyn the Labour arguments will continue.I would suggest he make an excellent Minister Without Portfolio outwith of collective cabinet responsibility.
Given recent history, I'm going to take the NS (with their inside connections to Labour) info rather than YG's.
The *intention* of the scheme was that students would repay the cost of their degree over a period of time, unless this would cause significant hardship.
The government got their calculations wrong, and it looked like a significant number of people wouldn't repay their loan. So they adjusted the figures to reassert the principle that Parliament voted for: that those who benefit from degrees should pay the cost (a not unreasonable principle).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33622298
"Car hack uses digital-radio broadcasts to seize control"
(Looks guiltily away).
Been glad to see you posting more actively lately, you've picked up on some interesting stuff and it's refreshing to hear non-partisan voices.
As was mentioned downthread, perhaps Leader Corbyn could pack him off to The Hague as well?
I love the growing disconnect between ppl who actually join political parties and the pundits who tell us how politics must be
@Danny565 There is a chasm between the leadership and members/activists on this, that is clear. While many members/activists may be anti-austerity, the Labour party establishment is not. They probably believe in a more moderate form of austerity than the government - they certainly would have made cuts had they been elected in May. And tbh, to the wider public being anti-cuts strengthens Labour's image of economic incompetence, making them sound unrealistic, and unwilling to make difficult decisions. Labour members may disagree with the Conservative narrative on this, but at this stage it's useless trying to counter it because it's been set. Labour should have attempted to counter it 2008/9 - it's been more than seven years now. I've more critical of Kendall as time has gone on but the one thing she is right on, is that Labour can't fight the battles of the past, and have to be a party on the future. Fighting the battle of austerity is one of the past, because the argument has already been settled, and was settled years ago.
And if they could get their sums so wrong - when there were loads of online calculators and anyone with half a brain could run up a spreadsheet to give the repayment totals under various assumptions - then it really doesn't bode well for running the entire economy. Also given that big chunks of people weren't going to be paying of the debts under the £3k fees regime and with a £15k threshold, it does seem a stretch to posit that they assumed most would, in fact, end up paying off the debts. When anyone with a spreadsheet could (and did) point out that only those who ended up with starting salaries in the £45k range (and went up from there) would succeed in doing so.
In fact, this was a key point of arguing against Miliband's stupid "reduce the fees to £6k" pledge - only those who started off earning £40k+ would see any difference.
Although, to be fair, it would mean that a larger chunk of the nominal residual student debt was paid off, so maybe Ed was right after all - if the intention was that the degrees were repaid.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I do not believe Ed was right)
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33621278
You think British culture embraces overseeing famines? How odd. I think we do share blame for the famine in Assam in '44(?), and doubtless you'd bring up the dire response to the Irish potato famine. I'd hardly call it part of our culture.
I think some people have a taste for loathing and denigrating their own country, which I find incomprehensible.
You are shitting me right, anyone could have worked that wouldn't happen in 5 minutes with an 80s Casio calculator.
If it helps, I've done a quick spreadsheet based on the MoneySavingExpert assumptions (RPI average of 3% per year, but income growth of the graduate beating RPI by 2% pa 'cos of enhanced earning potential (thus pay rises of 5% every year).
Under those rather positive assumptions, if you took a graduate with the full tuition fees loans (ie almost all of them) and a full maintenance loan, and had them start off on the median UK income of 26kpa (jumping straight to the median salary of all workers in the UK as a starting salary because of enhanced earning potential), you'd have to:
1 - Reduce the threshold to £10,600 per year in line with income tax.
2 - Increase the repayment rate from 9% of income over the threshold to 19%
3 - Remove the 30-year cap and work for 49 years (ie to age 70)
... to pay back the student loan.
That took me about ten minutes to work out with a standard home computer and copy of Excel. It does seem to invalidate the assertion that the Government assumed the monies would be routinely paid back. Either that, or they were staggeringly incompetent ... and students had better bloody brace themselves, because if I can work this out, so can Osborne!
EDIT - Sorry, the graduate would have to continue to work for two thirds of year 50; they still owe 1900 at the end of year 49)
They get 47 MPs to vote to cause a re-election. They then put this in front of the activists who have just voted for him (presumably he would restand).
Surely human nature on behalf of the activists would be to say "didn't you hear us the first time"? The only way they could prevent this would be if they chose not to nominate him the second time round - but that would be an extraordinarily demotivating step for the activist base.
The only way it works if he is such an unmitigated disaster in year 1 (I believe this can only occur at the next conference anyway) that people realise that he's no good. But that seems unlikely - I suspect he will poll well with a hard line as it is superficially attractive.
I don't think they really proposed the Browne Review
Basically, the system was configured to become a graduate tax in all but name, so that graduates who benefited would contribute, and the State would also contribute (as it's a positive externality).
Reduce the threshold and you start hitting more and more those who didn't benefit after all, making the premise on which they took up the offer more and more invalidated ...
I'm nervous because Osborne has a great deal of power and he's demonstrated that political manouevring is more important to him than ... well, anything else.
I'm really really hoping that he'll realise that the opposition is hopelessly fragmented and disorganised and just get on with sensible stuff instead. Reducing corporation tax was a good one (see incidence of corporation tax, and empirically measured effects of various taxes on economic growth); I'd really like to see alignment of NI with Income Tax. But I'm not sure what political benefit he'd see in it.
As Al Murray says:
"If we didn't have rules where would we be?"
"That's right - France!"
"And if we had too many rules where would we be?"
"Germany!"
British rule did improve markedly in the nineteenth century. Religious tolerance was one benefit. A reasonably impartial legal and judicial system was another. Famine relief was another still. The Bengal Famine was the first to cause major loss of life for nearly 70 years. It was brought on by the loss of Burmese rice production to the Japanese.
The government response to the Bengal famine was inadequate, but in large part this was because India was a federal state and other provinces refused the export of food. An overreliance on free market solutions was a major factor too.
It's all down to how much free time I can get (very hard to post during the day, due to work) - and whether I feel I've got anything at all worthwhile to say rather than just read!
2010 DAVID MILIBAND VOTERS
Burnham 32%
Cooper 29%
Kendall 21%
Corbyn 19%
2010 ED MILIBAND VOTERS
Corbyn 56%
Burnham 21%
Cooper 16%
Kendall 7%
Those who benefit directly pay the most; those who benefit indirectly also contribute.
I think Dan must have also been correct so his opinion is not worthless.