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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Reality check for Osborne’s ambitions
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Reality check for Osborne’s ambitions
Can it really be only a month since the Chancellor George Osborne was swaggering around Manchester stealing Labour policy clothes and putting himself at the head of the queue to be next Tory leader? A Telegraph sketch of his Tory conference speech recounted – tongue in cheek — Osborne’s journey from “omnishambles to omnipotence”
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"You may have guessed you have been reading the thoughts of an Osbosceptic. I find the whiny voice and the expression permanently half way between a smirk and a sneer deeply unattractive."
No, I've guessed I've been reading the thoughts of a Labour hack, whose deeply unattractive 'opinions' seem to come straight from Labour Party HQ.
As usual.
Might as well have one from Craig Oliver, for balance.
http://order-order.com/2015/11/06/vazilicious-keiths-sweet-hypocrisy/
But this is nothing more than a hit peice with the merest of nods toward the purpose of this site. It doesn't belong here.
I can't recall a similar decision - when if ever did we last do this at a single airport?
That the Egyptians are playing silly buggers only hurts themselves - and I say this as someone who is very fond of the place in general and would love to go there again at a safer point.
Undoing Gordon Brown's free pile of cash to almost every family in the country is going to be difficult and politically unpopular, but now is the time to do it just after the election and with almost full employment offering better options for those affected.
The reality is that Osborne still has a grating voice and a punchable face.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2015/07/11/pax-osbornia-recasting-the-political-landscape-into-the-2030s/
Anyway, Tax Credits or whatever. Just draw the graph of what you wish to achieve as a net result of tax and benefits. Unless the intention is pathological the most elegant way to achieve it is: tax all income, make benefits universal.
Some hope.
On a potential Osborne vs Corbyn race, I don't think the approval ratings are definitive; Even if they find Osborne repulsive, the voters are going to be scared Corbyn is going to bollocks up the economy, a problem Osborne is unlikely to have.
The optimism point Don raises I discount entirely. Labour moaned endlessly about people not being optimistic about our prospects through 2010-2015 and how that would hit the Tories, and I believed them, and it ended up being nonsense. It's the same argument now, and maybe this time it will work out, 10 years of semi or full tory rule and a different economic situation and all that, but it is quite clearly just a stock response with no analysis behind it, the same as any recovery not being a 'real' recovery.
When people on here write about recipients losing £1300 a month (what does that work out as a pre-tax salary?) from tax credits alone (housing benefit and so forth still to come) I am gob smacked. Why, in Gods name, are people having their life choices subsidised by an seemingly ever shrinking pool of net taxpayers to that amount?
The notion that no-one on a low income should ever lose out from any government change is complete nonsense and needs to be called out as such. Yes, some families will lose. That's what happens when you have to make cuts. The government should take the fight to Labour on that basis and not allow them or their fellow travellers to set the terms of the debate.
Stopped reading right there. Thank you and good night Mr Brind.
Portugal's government faces defeat in a confidence vote on Tuesday:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/60522
I suppose if your main business is already based in the UK you may decide to take a chance that they won't make you do anything too destructive, but they're also trying to make it apply to overseas companies that have an address in the UK, so international companies with offices in the UK are going to need to close them.
Right. Either we think we need to reduce the deficit or we don't. If we do, welfare has to be hit, and many people will be worse off, though how much is a matter of considerable debate. If we don't, then of course no-one needs to worry about ever being worse off, but if we are to reduce spending then some people will obviously be worse off. I don't deny that the latest measures have hit Osborne and the Tories politically, but I struggle to understand why, as Labour told everyone the Tories would cut things and people would be worse off, and apparently no one noticed.
Personally I hope Labour go anti austerity and pro tax rises, while the Tories go pro restraint (I use that as a term on the basis that if they do eliminate the deficit it won't be austerity, ie, cuts, thereafter), we can have a nice clear dividing line and see if the public put their votes where their mouths are, by actually voting for an opposite platform if they don't like this one, rather than simply switching between similar entities if they dislike Osborne.
This piece seems to still be fighting the austerity battle, which is fine so long as Labour commit to it. Their attacking of cuts while still needing to cut in their own plans last time was unconvincing. So if they come out and say, we will not cut, and so we need to tax us all more to pay for the things we want, that is ok. Otherwise, Corbyn's lot are right you might as well go for the one's who admit they want to cut things, rather than those who pretend they don't.
The government's defence of this policy has been terrible - George and IDS need to do it themselves, and get people talking about absolute numbers. Say that we are sorry that we need to stop borrowing and cutting the income subsidy to a family of five where one person works part time from 20k to £19k is not unreasonable, given he or she can work more hours to earn money.
The important bit is to get the numbers out there, Gordon Brown style, have every minister in every interview repeat several times that we are subsidising part time workers £20k a year. That's the way to get the public on side with the reforms, they are still mostly ignorant at the scale of tax credit payments.
As to the premise of the article, it makes sense to phase cuts in tax credits in more slowly than originally planned. It certainly doesn't make sense to any government to operate on the basis that it will never make a change to benefits if it leaves anyone worse off. Clearly, the welfare bill has to be reduced if this country is to eliminate the budget deficit.
Assuming this was a bomb then we must be grateful that the target was Russian. Putin with his real 'swagger' (not a cheapshot made up one) set himself up for a fall.
Fortunately for Labour it would appear significant numbers are at a tipping point where these latest changes are regarded as unfair, there's momentum against them, and this is seen in how there have been Tory voices against them as well (for policy and political reasons).
And why the welfare bills where it impacts on the young but not on the oldies although I should add that I benefit from that? That's Osborne buying votes.
Really? how fascinating. Perhaps you can go back to posting D.Spart comments at the bottom of Guardian stories now, or something similar.
I wouldn't disagree on the pensions point. There is no justification at all for the Triple Lock.
It's just gone from tim claiming Osborne would lose the last election to Don claiming Osborne will lose the next.
The only question is which was more wrong in their predictions...
Whatever optimism that Osborne and Cameron generated to secure their narrow victory in May seems to be melting away, according to Ipsos Mori polling reported in the Evening Standard under the headline “Britain’s sunny view of the future goes as economic clouds gather.”
What has been happening to Labour since September, Corbyn has managed to encourage big swings in local elections away from his party. The hounding of MPs continues, and the public divisions haven't gone away either. It is unlikely that Osborne would be unduly worried about the state of the Labour party as a serious opposition.
The weekly whinges about Don Brind's articles are boring - people don't like them, they don't have to read them. Or, better, they can write interesting pieces putting alternative views.
But now for work.
The triple lock on the state pension was introduced by the Liberal Democrats in Government.
http://www.libdems.org.uk/pensions-triple-lock
I'm not sure that this is really as generous as people think, TBH. The basic state pension is low anyway, so increasing it at a slightly higher rate than you might otherwise is not unreasonable, for a while at least.
Press Association @PA 1m1 minute ago
#Breaking Jeremy Corbyn's head of policy Andrew Fisher suspended from Labour Party pending report by its ruling National Executive Committee
The thought of JCorbyn being PM and having to deal with an alleged act of terrorism, just chills me to the bone.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/20/labour-mps-demand-answers-jeremy-corbyn-andrew-fisher
Vote Class War, indeed.
Good evening to all.
Samuel Johnson
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34709254
"Mr Fisher was Policy Officer for the civil service union, the Public and Commercial Services Union, working in the office of its General Secretary, Mark Serwotka, who was prevented from voting for Jeremy Corbyn during this year’s leadership contest, presumably because he had previously expressed support for parties to the left of Labour. Previously, Fisher worked for the current Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell."
That's automatic explusion unless it's whitewashed.
I understand from a pilot source that a call went out yesterday to airlines and pretty much every spare passenger plane in the UK was made available for the airliftt from Sharm today. Now the Egyptians have turned all the empty planes around and we all wait some more. If they are delayed too long they'll run into things like crew hours limits which make things worse.
It is fair to say that the public like the idea of strivers, hard working families and responsible behaviour.
It is also fair to say that they don't like the idea of work avoidance, people being handsomely rewarded for doing the bare minimum, people having large families they can't support and people drawing out heavily without making enough contribution.
If Osborne can focus on the latter group, and supply much improved communication of the reform, then the public will buy it.
It is possible. There are some very obvious elements within the claim load that make it achievable.
Departure was similar. A single Nissen hut with no AC (ambient temperature 44 celsius and 90%+ humidity) with literally no-one there. The commercial airline plane landed, I got on (only passenger), the plane turned around and took off.
http://ecowatch.com/2015/11/06/donald-trump-saturday-night-live/
I mean really. It may be hard, but not exactly a showstopper is it.
Ed's team should have remembered that "setting ambitions in stone" is a metaphorical expression!
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/28/corbyn-adviser-andrew-fisher-backed-non-labour-candidates-three-times
Looks as if he is a serial offender, backing candidates outside The Labour Party not just 2015, but also 2010. The toast is burning.
The perverse part of me still wants to go - and stuff two fingers up to the terrorists. But as I have no reason to believe that Hurghada airport is any safer than Sharm - or at least, no confidence that the Egyptian authorities can afford to admit the reality and thereby kill their tourism - the practical side wins out. I think pb.com has had enough of real time bullet-by-bullet blogging on the Arabian beaches for one year.
And on a practical level, being about the only tourist left in Egypt would mean you were such an obvious target.
For every hawker and beggar in the country.
They could probably get 20k people out from Sharm to Cyprus in a couple of days if they had to. I've been told that the back of a Herc isn't quite business class but if the job needs doing...
UK's record current account deficit would throw economy into jeopardy as investors flee for exits after a 'Leave' vote"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11979631/Brexit-vote-would-trigger-a-run-on-the-pound-warns-Bank-of-America.html