Jason: And now you're wriggling from one post to another, like a slithery politician . In your original post you said:
"So it destroys Corbyn's defence, then. The lie that he did all that stuff to encourage peace has to be nailed."
.
I'm really grateful for your clarifiaction of my motivations, and your approval too. Thanks for that.
Got caught with your pants down.
So will Corbyn when his statement equivocating the British Army with the IRA comes to public attention.
It already has. Go back to your earlier question: why hasn't CCHQ led with it?
Two possible answers are that it clearly isn't true, or more subtly that it isn't clearly true. In other words, that the detailed facts can at least be fudged, so that Corbyn met Sinn Fein, not the IRA, and was eventually proved right that peace followed negotiations rather than military victory. Yes, he opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement but he supported the Good Friday Agreement. Yes, he supports a united Ireland but so do lots of people, and only with consent.
Now whether you personally believe that, surely you can see it is at least an arguable and defensible position, if you spread enough fudge about.
So most likely, given the facts are at best ambiguous, the official Tory campaign will be happy to leave it to their friends in the papers and social media warriors.
And if I am wrong, what is your answer to why CCHQ has not plastered the country with posters of Corbyn meeting Gerry Adams?
In answer to yur question, I am somewhat puzzled why they haven't gone after Corbyn and McDonnell far more vigorously. Unless they are leaving it until the last week, but that doesn't seem logical either.
I don't really know, and I obviously cannot speak for CCHQ, because I don't work there. What I do sense is the Left, or more precisely Corbyn's apologists, trying to airbrush this stuff away by muddying the waters. There's no ambiguity here, really. Corbyn was an IRA symapthiser, it's just a fact, and no attempt to rationalise that from the far Left - here and elsewhere - will ever change that.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Andrew Neil on Tories' social care plan: "A stealth inheritance tax of 100% on everything above £100,000."
PB Tories shouting at TV "Its not a Tax"
Viewers cant hear
A 100% Stealth tax is theft in my view
A tax is taking from your income to pay others, losing a lot of state subsidy to pay your own care (beyond support for those with assets under £100k) is not a tax whether voters like it or not
Was it a Community charge or was it a POLL TAX ?
That was a poll tax as it was levied per head on individuals to pay for local services
Why did the Conservative Party insist on calling it the Community Charge then ?
Every government and political party tries to gloss up what it does but whether it was called 'the Community Charge' or the 'Poll Tax' it was by definition a tax levied on every resident to pay for local services they may not use, irrespective of whether it was popular or not. The fact that if you have £100k+ of assets you have to pay for your own social care is by definition not a tax as the government is not taking anything from you to pay for others, just stopping a subsidy that would otherwise have paid for your care and that is true whether the new social care policy is popular or not
The Tories have completely lost control of the narrative now...
Wasn't this election supposed to be about securing a mandate for Brexit negotiations?
Likelihood is that TMay will increase her majority and with the large leads she has, could afford to take a hit in the polls to rebalance the largesse thrown at the grey vote over the past decade. It's a brave move, whether or not you agree with the actual policies.
1. There was previously a risk that the amount that you can leave to your family after taking account of your care costs for the rest of your life would be reduced to £23k. With this new proposal from the Conservatives, you can be sure that up to £100k will be available to leave to them. Do you think this is a good idea?
2. There was previously a risk that you would have to sell and leave your home to cover your care costs. That risk has now gone away, for both you and your spouse. Do you think this is a good idea?
3. In order to achieve 1 and 2 above, the Government is proposing that the value of all your assets - including your home - be included when assessing how much of a contribution you have to make to your own care costs for the rest of your life. Do you think this is fair?
All true. But until last Thursday I doubt more than 10% knew the current situation or that more than 0.1% were going to see it as an election issue. Telling people "your house is less in play than it was" is a useless defence against the blissful ignorance they were in till last Thursday when it hadn't even crossed their minds.
This is policy wonks off their reservation and finding out the real world doesnt think like them.
How many in the Tory party were involved in the decision to scrap a lifetime cap? Seems maybe about three people. Rest of party now scrambling to come up with reasons why this was a good idea (Green) or why it might be consulted on further (Boris).
It is in the manifesto and that is because the HoL would have been told you cannot make any changes as it is in the manifesto.
Regarding Isabel Oakeshott's point that it will not be implemented: she is probably correct. Even with 400 MPs, the shires will be in rebellion.
Then, the question turns to political judgement. If that will indeed be the outcome, then why go through all the negative publicity.
Please don't write in that she is some sort of a heroine. Just a lousy politician.
So, if it falls in Parliament, then we are back to square one?
Lowers the amount most people keep from all of your own house to fook all of your own house
Bill Somebody Else - the perennial Labour approach to economics.
Your on your own and now Im having your house new Tory approach to Politics
The Corbyn/IRA stuff from the Tories is starting to sound desperate. Okay, it would be a fair enough ploy as a 'final nail in the coffin' thing, but they now seem to be relying on it because they've nothing else to say. The Tories' campaign has become extremely dark. I long for a return to Dave's 'Let sunshine win the day!'
It is .I think it goes to the core of a house owning democracy and passing on that asset to your family. This concern goes across all sections of society even this who aspire to own their own home.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Jesus wept.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
What that poll probably shows is that most voters have little idea who Chuka and Yvette are, or what they would do differently from Jezza. The anti-Corbynites shot themselves in the foot by refusing to serve in the Shadow Cabinet, which predictably has meant they've not raised their own profiles, not defeated any vulnerable Tory ministers, and worst of all, have handed a ready-made alibi for Corbynites: it was the split party what lost it.
No it doesn't as those figures exclude don't knows and undecideds as with the main poll, if don't knows were included Cooper led Labour was down to just 24%
I still think I am right because excluding DKs does not exclude people who do not know how things would be different under Yvette or Chuka -- because that would exclude everyone.
Well you can always hypothesise but it is a huge piece of ammunition for Corbynistas as it shows that for the moment at least no alternative to Corbyn would be doing any better and if Corbyn improves Labour's voteshare even if he fails to win more seats he will likely be re elected by the membership if challenged and stay on and fight a second general election in 2022 even if he loses this one in 2017
Scotland at the London Sevens pulled off the comeback of the century, from 21-0 down against an 8 man NZ side (not a whinge about the ref, NZ did have 8 men on the pitch) to win. Phenomenal.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Jesus wept.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
I mean targeting Leeds East should have set off alarm bells
Ditto with West Bromwich.
The Conservative targets should be the motorway constituencies not conurbation shitholes with zero Conservative councillors.
I always have severe doubts whether London based Conservatives have any clue about parts north of the Watford Gap.
If they had they wouldn't think stopping WFA in the North but keeping it for Scottish millionaires was a good idea.
Targeting West Bromwich East made sense given the numbers and referendum result.
What didn't make sense was bloody announcing it in the media, so Tom Watson could circle the wagons.
Contrast with the stealth castration of Balls in 2015.
Certainly giving it prominence was a mistake (unless it was a diversion) and the same mistake might well have been made in Scotland.
But I don't think West Bromwich East was ever winnable - the demographics are helpful to Labour and its been trending leftwards for a generation.
Its rather the opposite to Bolsover in that respect.
Was campaigning in Bolsover also a diversion? I don't know that part of the country v well.
I think Skinner wants to die in office. If he a) wins b) lives to a great age he could become the father of the house.
Hasn't he said he doesn't want to be Father of the House?
Can he avoid the title? They have bizarre rules.
I think commonsense says it should be Winnick - if he hangs on in Walsall N - as he was elected in the Wilson landslide of 1966. But he lost his seat and re-entered parliament and the rules seem to say a break disqualifies you.
Betting-wise I'd love to know the seat(s) they're really going after in that region.
It is .I think it goes to the core of a house owning democracy and passing on that asset to your family. This concern goes across all sections of society even this who aspire to own their own home.
Not if you were in residential care, before you got your home snatched to pay for your care and your children left with just £23k, now the amount they get increases to £100k
What that poll probably shows is that most voters have little idea who Chuka and Yvette are, or what they would do differently from Jezza. The anti-Corbynites shot themselves in the foot by refusing to serve in the Shadow Cabinet, which predictably has meant they've not raised their own profiles, not defeated any vulnerable Tory ministers, and worst of all, have handed a ready-made alibi for Corbynites: it was the split party what lost it.
No it doesn't as those figures exclude don't knows and undecideds as with the main poll, if don't knows were included Cooper led Labour was down to just 24%
I still think I am right because excluding DKs does not exclude people who do not know how things would be different under Yvette or Chuka -- because that would exclude everyone.
Well you can always hypothesise but it is a huge piece of ammunition for Corbynistas as it shows that for the moment at least no alternative to Corbyn would be doing any better and if Corbyn improves Labour's voteshare even if he fails to win more seats he will likely be re elected by the membership if challenged and stay on and fight a second general election in 2022 even if he loses this one in 2017
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
I'm sure you and the others would be parroting that very same line if it was, for example, Boris Johnson, or Philip Hammond, or even May herself, who had a past association with, for example, the BNP, or ETA, or any other extremist organisation. Yes, I can see it now, you'd all be saying 'ah come on, be fair, it was in the past, let sleeping dogs lie'.
Bollocks.
You would be all over it, incessantly, ever hour of the day, to damage your political opponents. And you would be RIGHT to do so.
Defending Corbyn and McDonnell over this stuff is contemptible.
The regional breakdown on the social care proposal is interesting (p8), London is most opposed by 46% to 31%, however perhaps surprisingly the proposal is backed by 38% to 36% in the South and Scotland also backs the proposal by 35% to 34%. The Midlands/Wales and the North are more split, the Midlands/Wales opposes the proposal by 40% to 37% and the North by 36% to 40% http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/wvyc3lofp5/SundayTimesResults_170519_VI_W.pdf
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Jesus wept.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
Andrew Neil on Tories' social care plan: "A stealth inheritance tax of 100% on everything above £100,000."
PB Tories shouting at TV "Its not a Tax"
Viewers cant hear
A 100% Stealth tax is theft in my view
A tax is taking from your income to pay others, losing a lot of state subsidy to pay your own care (beyond support for those with assets under £100k) is not a tax whether voters like it or not
Was it a Community charge or was it a POLL TAX ?
That was a poll tax as it was levied per head on individuals to pay for local services
Why did the Conservative Party insist on calling it the Community Charge then ?
Every government and political party tries to gloss up what it does but whether it was called 'the Community Charge' or the 'Poll Tax' it was by definition a tax levied on every resident to pay for local services they may not use, irrespective of whether it was popular or not. The fact that if you have £100k+ of assets you have to pay for your own social care is by definition not a tax as the government is not taking anything from you to pay for others, just stopping a subsidy that would otherwise have paid for your care and that is true whether the new social care policy is popular or not
True but its no different to the "bedroom tax" which was a subsidy for those wanting to remain in a house bigger than they needed..
The Corbyn/IRA stuff should be played but not overplayed. My son who's 27 doesn't remember the troubles and sees the Irish as modern day allies. The issue does have limited traction among under 35's I'd suggest. On the other hand it does fit into the narrative that Corbyn is an anti -British surrender monkey and would prefer to cancel Trident and be more than happy to hand over the Falklands to the Argies and Gibraltar to the Spanish.
of his speech to a huge crowd at Tranmere's ground. I don't think any Labour sympathiser, even ultra-sceptics, can fail to be a bit moved.
Yes he is good on the stump .He had a good reception when he came to York and spoke in the main square.It reminded me of Neil Kinnock speech in 1983 .I warn you not to grow old.Might be the same result seats wise but they both know how to move people.
@MyBurningEars I know that he doesn't want an outright ban, but my point was that it does want to impose his morality on others, he just wants to do it in the form of restrictions as opposed an outright ban. Right now there are already limits on when you can have an abortion, he wants further restrictions on top of that. That's not really having a ''private view but allowing others to do as they please''.
The liberal view isn't "allowing others to do as they please" alone but "allowing people to do as they please, so long as it doesn't harm others". Abortion is a very tricky issue precisely because of how we construe "others" - even after the debate shifted decisively away from "sanctity of life", whether an embryo qualifies for some form of personhood, what rights or ethical interests an embryo or developing foetus may possess, remain absolutely core questions.
Ultimately all sides in the abortion debate are enforcing their views on "others", for some definition of "others". If one believes that, once the interests of woman and unborn child are taken into account, that the current system is insufficiently restrictive and is unjustifiably terminating the liberties of too many of the unborn, then it follows that the system is illiberal. Restrictions can be justified under the liberal precept of "so long as it doesn't harm others" being violated.
This is a matter of degree, and depends on the definitional issue. But I think a few more of Farron's Lib Dem colleagues would find our abortion laws illiberally unrestrictive if they allowed a woman's right to choose, for any reason, up to birth. If we lived in a society which extended this further, to after-birth abortion, for any reason, including of non-disabled infants (see e.g. Giubilini and Minerva, 2012), I could imagine this being so offensive to "liberalism" that the Lib Dems would be one of its fiercest opponents. We don't know what further restrictions Farron might actually have wanted, but my guess would be an amendment of a few weeks to the time limits - a different conclusion to his Lib Dem colleagues, or to what Joe Biden might accept in the USA, but from the tone of that piece it didn't sound like he wanted something radically different. He was talking to a Christian magazine so talked-up the value of the unborn child, but still took pains to mention the downsides of making policy much more restrictive. It's true modern liberals tend to emphasise bodily autonomy while traditional conservatives emphasise the rights of the embryo, but across the West most politicians seek some kind of compromise between these two.
The fact that a person's worldview affects perception of personhood means this issue doesn't cut cleanly across party divides, which is one reason abortion has always been left as a conscience vote in the UK. (Though Canada, which once had a similar arrangement, has recently moved in the opposite direction, with Trudeau, a Catholic, requiring prospective Liberal MPs to sign up to a woman's right to choose. Some other Catholics in particular felt unable to and hence could not run.)
If you wanted a better example of how Farron's private morality affects his own liberalism, in the "let people do as they will so long as it doesn't harm others" sense (rather than your perception of it, in the sense of him not defining or weighing "others" as you would prefer) might be his opposition to adult euthanasia.
When he won the leadership I don't think many knew about these views he had - most saw him as way more to the left of the party than Clegg. His views on abortion, homosexuality, and fox hunting complicates that.
Farron didn't make a secret of his evangelical Christianity. There was a lot of discussion of the issues arising from this during the Lib Dem leadership election - not sure how closely you followed it, but there were some interesting discussions on LDV and elsewhere.
Andrew Neil on Tories' social care plan: "A stealth inheritance tax of 100% on everything above £100,000."
PB Tories shouting at TV "Its not a Tax"
Viewers cant hear
A 100% Stealth tax is theft in my view
A tax is taking from your income to pay others, losing a lot of state subsidy to pay your own care (beyond support for those with assets under £100k) is not a tax whether voters like it or not
Was it a Community charge or was it a POLL TAX ?
That was a poll tax as it was levied per head on individuals to pay for local services
Why did the Conservative Party insist on calling it the Community Charge then ?
Every government and political party tries to gloss up what it does but whether it was called 'the Community Charge' or the 'Poll Tax' it was by definition a tax levied on every resident to pay for local services they may not use, irrespective of whether it was popular or not. The fact that if you have £100k+ of assets you have to pay for your own social care is by definition not a tax as the government is not taking anything from you to pay for others, just stopping a subsidy that would otherwise have paid for your care and that is true whether the new social care policy is popular or not
True but its no different to the "bedroom tax" which was a subsidy for those wanting to remain in a house bigger than they needed..
Exactly and the 'bedroom tax' was actually ending the 'bedroom subsidy' too
And a weird thing has happened to me today - a very rare and weird thing.
I have read debate on the internet and CHANGED MY OPINION! This almost never happens to anyone...
No I am not now a Corbyn fan. Don't be silly. But I do now sadly believe those who say that his sympathy with the IRA and their cause will not necessarily be immediately, clearly and obviously fatally toxic as I had previously thought.
I had assumed that 95% of people simply did not know about it. For me it alone is enough to disqualify him from any possibility of getting my vote. I was apparently woken from sleep at the age of 5 weeks by the Birmingham pub bomb. The IRA have been - all my life- the lowest scum of all That opinion has not changed today or will ever change. But the arguments downthread are - annoyingly - I think right. It's all a long time ago, can be fudged about a lot, and do not carry as much weight as I thought they should.
And so I agree that it would not be a simple case - as i previously thought - of carpeting all media with pictures of Corbyn and McConnell meeting IRA sympathiser etc.
Gah come on Tories please please step up and stop this dangerous idiot!
What will they go on next? Surely the ridiculous largesse of their spending plans, and their plans for restoring union powers will be attacked soon?
It is .I think it goes to the core of a house owning democracy and passing on that asset to your family. This concern goes across all sections of society even this who aspire to own their own home.
Not if you were in residential care, before you got your home snatched to pay for your care and your children left with just £23k, now the amount they get increases to £100k
Agreed but we are discussing the long term care in the home Which you seem to keep missing..
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
Yes there will be a whole new industry if it ever gets passed .Also in ways to avoid it.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
I'm sure you and the others would be parroting that very same line if it was, for example, Boris Johnson, or Philip Hammond, or even May herself, who had a past association with, for example, the BNP, or ETA, or any other extremist organisation. Yes, I can see it now, you'd all be saying 'ah come on, be fair, it was in the past, let sleeping dogs lie'.
Bollocks.
You would be all over it, incessantly, ever hour of the day, to damage your political opponents. And you would be RIGHT to do so.
Defending Corbyn and McDonnell over this stuff is contemptible.
British troops have often fought people who later became friends and allies, and the occasions where we have fought various peoples are often far from glorious.
Ireland is at peace, albeit an uneasy peace, for the first time in my lifetime. Raking over past injustices and atrocities is a fault of both sides. Reawakening those hatreds for short term political advantage would show May as the antethesis of a strong and stable leader.
The Corbyn/IRA stuff should be played but not overplayed. My son who's 27 doesn't remember the troubles and sees the Irish as modern day allies. The issue does have limited traction among under 35's I'd suggest. On the other hand it does fit into the narrative that Corbyn is an anti -British surrender monkey and would prefer to cancel Trident and be more than happy to hand over the Falklands to the Argies and Gibraltar to the Spanish.
It goes back to the waverer in the poll booth, though. The doubter. The realist. The indiviudal who on the surface likes much of Labour's manifesto, but didn't like the wild sums being borrowed, and didn't like the Tories' pensioner hit.
So what does it all boil down to? Who will be the most competent PM, who will be fit to represent us on the world stage, who will keep a steady and cool head over the Brexit negotiations.
It's either Theresa May, or a man who has spent most of his adult life railing against the British state, and actively and unashamedly pinning his colours to an organisation that was waging a terrorist campaign against British troops and civilians. I've not even mentioned his connections to anti-Semitism yet.
of his speech to a huge crowd at Tranmere's ground. I don't think any Labour sympathiser, even ultra-sceptics, can fail to be a bit moved.
Yes he is good on the stump .He had a good reception when he came to York and spoke in the main square.It reminded me of Neil Kinnock speech in 1983 .I warn you not to grow old.Might be the same result seats wise but they both know how to move people.
'The Labour party is a moral crusade or it is nothing'. Superb but from Harold Wilson about 50 years ago.
If the media latch onto a positive soundbite, it may get people taking and change votes. I think 'dementia tax' is OK but it's also a bit negative and depresses people, like the Remain campaign did.
I also think he has a more dynamic speaking style at rallies than EdM. By itself, that may be ineffective unless it's widely reported.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
It is .I think it goes to the core of a house owning democracy and passing on that asset to your family. This concern goes across all sections of society even this who aspire to own their own home.
Not if you were in residential care, before you got your home snatched to pay for your care and your children left with just £23k, now the amount they get increases to £100k
Agreed but we are discussing the long term care in the home Which you seem to keep missing..
The thing you keep missing is that dementia gets worse. You move from long-term care in your home to a residential home.
My mother had 2 years care in her home, and then she was in residential home for 4 years.
There are not two different groups of people; they are the same people getting iller & iller.
Hunting is coming up on the doorstep more often than I'd expected - it's seen as a marker issue and the wish to reopen the subject is seen as a hard-right preoccupation even by people with no strong views themselves.
Fox-hunting is an interesting wedge issue. There's a bit of class warfare and a bit of disdain for animal cruelty thrown in there (I think proponents of hunting generally underestimate how much of the latter and overstate how much of the former, but there's clearly a bit of both). It seems to occupy far more time and space on the political landscape than the scale of the issue really deserves. I think most people are quite happy it's now gone - it seems a political dead-end to me to try bringing it back, particularly bearing in mind how in a free vote, many MPs in a free vote will have the more "modern", urban mindset about such issues.
Most people will accept some need for control of foxes - it is only a tiny minority of people in this country who truly believe "animals are people too" and disavow any killing of animals - but hunting with hounds seems to have passed beyond the pale.
My views on animal welfare are actually rather close to Nick's! But I do have respect for the occasional Lib Dem who have been known to pop their head above the parapet and decry the fox-hunting ban as essentially illiberal (which clearly it can be seen as, depending on how you weight animal rights compared to the liberty of people to continue an ancient pursuit) and received a barracking from within their own party for it.
It is .I think it goes to the core of a house owning democracy and passing on that asset to your family. This concern goes across all sections of society even this who aspire to own their own home.
Not if you were in residential care, before you got your home snatched to pay for your care and your children left with just £23k, now the amount they get increases to £100k
Agreed but we are discussing the long term care in the home Which you seem to keep missing..
As YBardd correctly states if you need care in the home now there is a significant chance you will need residential care in the future
The regional breakdown on the social care proposal is interesting (p8), London is most opposed by 46% to 31%, however perhaps surprisingly the proposal is backed by 38% to 36% in the South and Scotland also backs the proposal by 35% to 34%. The Midlands/Wales and the North are more split, the Midlands/Wales opposes the proposal by 40% to 37% and the North by 36% to 40% http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/wvyc3lofp5/SundayTimesResults_170519_VI_W.pdf
Well it certainly isn't a disaster, plenty of DKs. Maybe she will press on anyway and explain it all better.
I accept something needs to be done, but I hate this plan, because there is no lifetime cap and frankly I would prefer a pooled risk via national insurance or some such. Will Hutton makes this point in Observer. It would be better he says to have pooled risk, but as that is not going to happen, then something happening that takes wealth out of the assets of property-owners is at least a way forward.
Mind you he warns that house prices will be at their peak in June 2017 and can only go one way with this and other policies.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
The Council already look at this kind of activity, and if they conclude (I don't know how exactly) that you sold the house to avoid care home fees, then you get billed.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
I'm sure you and the others would be parroting that very same line if it was, for example, Boris Johnson, or Philip Hammond, or even May herself, who had a past association with, for example, the BNP, or ETA, or any other extremist organisation. Yes, I can see it now, you'd all be saying 'ah come on, be fair, it was in the past, let sleeping dogs lie'.
Bollocks.
You would be all over it, incessantly, ever hour of the day, to damage your political opponents. And you would be RIGHT to do so.
Defending Corbyn and McDonnell over this stuff is contemptible.
British troops have often fought people who later became friends and allies, and the occasions where we have fought various peoples are often far from glorious.
Ireland is at peace, albeit an uneasy peace, for the first time in my lifetime. Raking over past injustices and atrocities is a fault of both sides. Reawakening those hatreds for short term political advantage would show May as the antethesis of a strong and stable leader.
Fox, come on, please. This is surely about the man's character and his fitness to be a PM. His cause was their cause, and as I keep saying, he unashamedly rubbed shoulders with an organisation that was murdering British troops and British civilians.
Look, if he was genuinely interested in peace, why would he do that? It's not the same as in an official capacity, and all that stupid bs about the Queen shaking McGuiness' hand is an example of that.
He chose a side, he sought out the IRA and the Republican movement, which had nothing to do with official Labour party policy at the time. It surely can't be that much of a coincidence either that the IRA also have a Marxist outlook as their world view.
I'm getting other posters accusing me of being a liar and worse, 'unhinged', yet I am not the one defending his actions. They are.
FWIW, if you believe the polls, YouGov tables make very interesting reading. Amongst the age groups:
1. Biggest movement towards Labour is amongst 25-49 years olds (Labour's lead doubling from 8% to 16% in course of a few days) - no sign so far of weakening of the Tory vote with pensioners. 2. Greatest degree of opposition to the social care plans is... drumroll... also amongst 25-49 year olds!
Well well. Some people are mercenary fuckers who care more about Gran's money than they do about Gran. Who'd-a-thunk it?
Glad you mentioned Gran because it may well be the twenty something grandkids are in these days of sky high house prices more interested in the inheritance than their own parents are. As Andrew Marr I think mentioned £100K doesn't go far divided among 8 grandchildren.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
The Council already look at this kind of activity, and if they conclude (I don't know how exactly) that you sold the house to avoid care home fees, then you get billed.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
That is awful. And awfully sad. The worst side effect of our entitlement 'Bill Somebody' culture...
Yougov is showing a clear swing to Labour from 18 to 24 year olds and 25 to 49 year olds compared to 2015 but a big swing to the Tories among 50 to 64 year olds and 65+ year olds.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
The Council already look at this kind of activity, and if they conclude (I don't know how exactly) that you sold the house to avoid care home fees, then you get billed.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
The Government will have to draft something pretty clever to avoid loopholes where people do precisely what was suggested: equity release + give to the kids. If you do it soon enough and have no care needs for several years how are they gonna show it was a disposal for avoiding care costs? Obviously there are IHT issues with this.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
The Council already look at this kind of activity, and if they conclude (I don't know how exactly) that you sold the house to avoid care home fees, then you get billed.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
The Government will have to draft something pretty clever to avoid loopholes where people do precisely what was suggested: equity release + give to the kids. If you do it soon enough and have no care needs for several years how are they gonna show it was a disposal for avoiding care costs? Obviously there are IHT issues with this.
\Indeed, a fairly obvious strategy is for Gran to sell the family home and buy a flat costing £99k a few months before starting care
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
The 'valuation' doesn't exist, does it?
There is a bill that gets paid from the proceeds of the actual sale price. The care charge would be like any other secured charge on a property.
It could lead to a contrived situation where people sell for a ridiculously low price to avoid the bill with side deals cut between buyer and seller.
Upon reflection, I think the Tories would be wise to link the asset protection/exemption to average house prices.
That could be done nationally, regionally or by local authority.
It can't be added to stamp duty because that is already prohibitively high for many movers and down sizers.
The regional breakdown on the social care proposal is interesting (p8), London is most opposed by 46% to 31%, however perhaps surprisingly the proposal is backed by 38% to 36% in the South and Scotland also backs the proposal by 35% to 34%. The Midlands/Wales and the North are more split, the Midlands/Wales opposes the proposal by 40% to 37% and the North by 36% to 40% http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/wvyc3lofp5/SundayTimesResults_170519_VI_W.pdf
Well it certainly isn't a disaster, plenty of DKs. Maybe she will press on anyway and explain it all better.
I accept something needs to be done, but I hate this plan, because there is no lifetime cap and frankly I would prefer a pooled risk via national insurance or some such. Will Hutton makes this point in Observer. It would be better he says to have pooled risk, but as that is not going to happen, then something happening that takes wealth out of the assets of property-owners is at least a way forward.
Mind you he warns that house prices will be at their peak in June 2017 and can only go one way with this and other policies.
It is not a disaster but it is clearly no vote winner either. However it seems to be going down worst in London which is the only UK region where Labour is seeing a small, 0.5% swing from the Tories in the Yougov breakdown since 2015. I expect there will have to be some adjustments to it though if she is to proceed
It may well be turnout which helps the Tories on the day, 63% are certain to vote, that would be 3% down on the 66% in 2015 if still just above the 59% in 2001 which was the lowest in decades
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
The 'valuation' doesn't exist, does it?
There is a bill that gets paid for from the proceeds of the actual sale price. The care charge would be like any other secured charge on a property.
It could lead to a contrived situation where people sell for a ridiculously low price to avoid the bill with side deals cut between buyer and seller.
Upon reflection, I think the Tories would be wise to link the asset protection/exemption to average house prices.
That could be done nationally, regionally or by local authority.
It can't be added to stamp duty because that is already prohibitively high for many movers and down sizers.
So a big dip in house prices could suddenly increase the government's exposure to care costs by billions of pounds.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
The Council already look at this kind of activity, and if they conclude (I don't know how exactly) that you sold the house to avoid care home fees, then you get billed.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
The Government will have to draft something pretty clever to avoid loopholes where people do precisely what was suggested: equity release + give to the kids. If you do it soon enough and have no care needs for several years how are they gonna show it was a disposal for avoiding care costs? Obviously there are IHT issues with this.
\Indeed, a fairly obvious strategy is for Gran to sell the family home and buy a flat costing £99k a few months before starting care
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Jesus wept.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
"Anti Irish feeling" what the fuck?!
Corbyn cannot bring himself to condemn the IRA because he was/is an IRA supporter.
On PB there's this false narrative that if Labour does really badly, Corbyn will go easily. The reality is, is no matter what it'll be hard to shift Corbyn. Labour needs to produce a coherent alternative to Corbynism, ideologically to the membership in order to replace him. One of the biggest issues with Cooper, Burnham, etc is that no or knew what they stood for.
Then as Southam has stated, there's the unions.
The people who should be most worried about where this election is going are the moderates in the Labour Party.
Again, as I literally said in the post the idea it will be easy to shift Corbyn in the event of a massive loss in regard to vote share is a fallacy argument.
Corbyn will correctly be severely criticised for having agreed to an election being held at a time of maximum disadvantage to the party he pretends to lead.
Looks like, like Survation, Yougov is also saying that the North and London going big time with Labour. Midlands / Wales no where near as bad as was two weeks back.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Jesus wept.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
"Anti Irish feeling" what the fuck?!
Corbyn cannot bring himself to condemn the IRA because he was/is an IRA supporter.
For three weeks, we hardly read about Corbyn / IRA because it was not needed. Now the alt-Right is going full steam on this.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
The 'valuation' doesn't exist, does it?
There is a bill that gets paid for from the proceeds of the actual sale price. The care charge would be like any other secured charge on a property.
It could lead to a contrived situation where people sell for a ridiculously low price to avoid the bill with side deals cut between buyer and seller.
Upon reflection, I think the Tories would be wise to link the asset protection/exemption to average house prices.
That could be done nationally, regionally or by local authority.
It can't be added to stamp duty because that is already prohibitively high for many movers and down sizers.
So a big dip in house prices could suddenly increase the government's exposure to care costs by billions of pounds.
Depends on which average price they use, I suppose.
These costs will be arrears rather than current running costs.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
The Council already look at this kind of activity, and if they conclude (I don't know how exactly) that you sold the house to avoid care home fees, then you get billed.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
The Government will have to draft something pretty clever to avoid loopholes where people do precisely what was suggested: equity release + give to the kids. If you do it soon enough and have no care needs for several years how are they gonna show it was a disposal for avoiding care costs? Obviously there are IHT issues with this.
\Indeed, a fairly obvious strategy is for Gran to sell the family home and buy a flat costing £99k a few months before starting care
Lots of people will give away surplus capital or income to heirs. Far fewer would actually put themselves in financial jeopardy to do so. Give your assets away, and you lose all control over your future.
of his speech to a huge crowd at Tranmere's ground. I don't think any Labour sympathiser, even ultra-sceptics, can fail to be a bit moved.
Yes he is good on the stump .He had a good reception when he came to York and spoke in the main square.It reminded me of Neil Kinnock speech in 1983 .I warn you not to grow old.Might be the same result seats wise but they both know how to move people.
'The Labour party is a moral crusade or it is nothing'. Superb but from Harold Wilson about 50 years ago.
If the media latch onto a positive soundbite, it may get people taking and change votes. I think 'dementia tax' is OK but it's also a bit negative and depresses people, like the Remain campaign did.
I also think he has a more dynamic speaking style at rallies than EdM. By itself, that may be ineffective unless it's widely reported.
Yes very true the local Itv news gives him fair coverage when he has visited Yorkshire and shows the crowds.Less do the BBC who always seems to find Labour voters who are negative.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Jesus wept.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
"Anti Irish feeling" what the fuck?!
Corbyn cannot bring himself to condemn the IRA because he was/is an IRA supporter.
For three weeks, we hardly read about Corbyn / IRA because it was not needed. Now the alt-Right is going full steam on this.
Panic stations ?
They've given up trying to attack our manifesto now it is clear that Labour's policies are way more popular than the Conservatives'.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
The Council already look at this kind of activity, and if they conclude (I don't know how exactly) that you sold the house to avoid care home fees, then you get billed.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
That's absolutely horrible. Stories like that make me wonder about how modern society has become both so materialistic and so willing to look to the state to solve problems, that people can just steal from and then abandon their own parents.
The liberal view isn't "allowing others to do as they please" alone but "allowing people to do as they please, so long as it doesn't harm others
Well I didn't exactly say that the liberal view was ''allowing others to do as they please.'' I was replying to the context of your statement in regard to their being a difference between one's private views and the imposition of said views on others. If anything, I'd have thought that my views on Fox Hunting would have conveyed that I obviously think others shouldn't be able to do anything that they want, which is why I didn't see the need to reassert the same point again.
Abortion is a tricky issue yes, but not within liberal circles generally, where most liberals are steadfastly pro-choice. The trouble is, is that within liberalism the majority belief is that we generally start construing the unborn as 'others' after a certain time limit - we don't view the unborn as 'others' generally (from conception), that is a socially conservative position. Thus, it's difficult to argue how restrictions on abortion can be considered as 'liberal' within the context of modern liberalism, given what the liberal views of 'others' actually is. Farron's view of what qualifies as 'others' is a socially conservative view, and because the basis is a socially conservative one, arguing that the restrictions are 'liberal' is very difficult. Not only that, but a key component of modern social liberalism is a woman's bodily autonomy, more so than a view of the unborn as 'others' under twenty-four weeks. Feminist thought is a lot more relevant to social liberalism today than religious views of life are, and shapes to what extent liberals err on the side of the mother and on the side of the unborn. To generally go against the grain of the mainstream feminist thought and still call yourself a 'liberal' is a pretty difficult thing to do, given how much notions of gender equality and the social, economic, and political equality of women plays a part in shaping left wing ideologies.
As for abortion after 24 weeks, well I'm bemused as to why that is a discussion point as I never argued that abortion should be available for nine months. At that point the unborn are seen as ''others'', but the difference between that view and a socially conservative one, is that a woman has been given 24 weeks to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, and thus a significant amount of bodily autonomy. Farron's position is one that seeks to reduce that autonomy in some way because of, seemingly, a religious view of life.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
I'm sure you and the others would be parroting that very same line if it was, for example, Boris Johnson, or Philip Hammond, or even May herself, who had a past association with, for example, the BNP, or ETA, or any other extremist organisation. Yes, I can see it now, you'd all be saying 'ah come on, be fair, it was in the past, let sleeping dogs lie'.
Bollocks.
You would be all over it, incessantly, ever hour of the day, to damage your political opponents. And you would be RIGHT to do so.
Defending Corbyn and McDonnell over this stuff is contemptible.
British troops have often fought people who later became friends and allies, and the occasions where we have fought various peoples are often far from glorious.
Ireland is at peace, albeit an uneasy peace, for the first time in my lifetime. Raking over past injustices and atrocities is a fault of both sides. Reawakening those hatreds for short term political advantage would show May as the antethesis of a strong and stable leader.
Fox, come on, please. This is surely about the man's character and his fitness to be a PM. His cause was their cause, and as I keep saying, he unashamedly rubbed shoulders with an organisation that was murdering British troops and British civilians.
Look, if he was genuinely interested in peace, why would he do that? It's not the same as in an official capacity, and all that stupid bs about the Queen shaking McGuiness' hand is an example of that.
He chose a side, he sought out the IRA and the Republican movement, which had nothing to do with official Labour party policy at the time. It surely can't be that much of a coincidence either that the IRA also have a Marxist outlook as their world view.
I'm getting other posters accusing me of being a liar and worse, 'unhinged', yet I am not the one defending his actions. They are.
Why was John Major secretly negotiating with the IRA ?
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Jesus wept.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
"Anti Irish feeling" what the fuck?!
Corbyn cannot bring himself to condemn the IRA because he was/is an IRA supporter.
For three weeks, we hardly read about Corbyn / IRA because it was not needed. Now the alt-Right is going full steam on this.
Panic stations ?
They've given up trying to attack our manifesto now it is clear that Labour's policies are way more popular than the Conservatives'.
All they can do now is play the man not the ball.
They aren't more popular. 44% think the Conservatives' policies are sensible, 36% don't. The figure for Labour is 30/50%.
32% think the Conservatives' promises are unaffordable. 39% don't. The figures for Labour are 51%, 30%.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Jesus wept.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
"Anti Irish feeling" what the fuck?!
Corbyn cannot bring himself to condemn the IRA because he was/is an IRA supporter.
He can't condemn them because he knows he would be condemning himself. After all, he was the one supporting their cause.
It's going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out in the next few weeks. His apologists think it should be all quietly swept under a carpet, his adversaries (me included) think it should be on every election leaflet and every front page of the right wing press from now until election day.
Some say most of the voting public already have this priced in, and that most people know about his associations with the IRA - or rather that is what they are hoping. Let's put this theory to the test over the next few weeks and let's see if any of those prepared to hold their noses and vote Labour really understand what the leader of that party is.
of his speech to a huge crowd at Tranmere's ground. I don't think any Labour sympathiser, even ultra-sceptics, can fail to be a bit moved.
Yes he is good on the stump .He had a good reception when he came to York and spoke in the main square.It reminded me of Neil Kinnock speech in 1983 .I warn you not to grow old.Might be the same result seats wise but they both know how to move people.
'The Labour party is a moral crusade or it is nothing'. Superb but from Harold Wilson about 50 years ago.
If the media latch onto a positive soundbite, it may get people taking and change votes. I think 'dementia tax' is OK but it's also a bit negative and depresses people, like the Remain campaign did.
I also think he has a more dynamic speaking style at rallies than EdM. By itself, that may be ineffective unless it's widely reported.
Yes very true the local Itv news gives him fair coverage when he has visited Yorkshire and shows the crowds.Less do the BBC who always seems to find Labour voters who are negative.
The BBC are shit scared. Always begging to have their charter renewed. Anyway, their news and current affairs are full of Tories.
The fact that a person's worldview affects perception of personhood means this issue doesn't cut cleanly across party divides, which is one reason abortion has always been left as a conscience vote in the UK. (Though Canada, which once had a similar arrangement, has recently moved in the opposite direction, with Trudeau, a Catholic, requiring prospective Liberal MPs to sign up to a woman's right to choose. Some other Catholics in particular felt unable to and hence could not run.)
If you wanted a better example of how Farron's private morality affects his own liberalism, in the "let people do as they will so long as it doesn't harm others" sense (rather than your perception of it, in the sense of him not defining or weighing "others" as you would prefer) might be his opposition to adult euthanasia.
When he won the leadership I don't think many knew about these views he had - most saw him as way more to the left of the party than Clegg. His views on abortion, homosexuality, and fox hunting complicates that.
Farron didn't make a secret of his evangelical Christianity. There was a lot of discussion of the issues arising from this during the Lib Dem leadership election - not sure how closely you followed it, but there were some interesting discussions on LDV and elsewhere.
I didn't follow the leadership campaign that closely.
I knew that Farron was a Christian prior to 2015, but I didn't know he was an evangelical Christian - that's something I only found about fairly recent.
I don't think the issue is a party-political one, but it is an ideological one. That's why the Left are generally more pro-choice, and the Right more pro-life.
The trouble with Farron's liberalism is that it appears to be shaped solely by his religious views in a period where liberalism is highly shaped by a secular view of society and individuals - and religious morality is generally a socially conservative morality.
A good rhetorical point. It can however be turned the other way around. If the Tories are OK with the concept of wealth confiscation in particular circumstances, it rather undercuts their opposition to the more general case of higher taxes for the wealthy.
For now, they can rely on the vote for us, at least we're competent argument - but as Major found, that too can eventually be turned against you.
of his speech to a huge crowd at Tranmere's ground. I don't think any Labour sympathiser, even ultra-sceptics, can fail to be a bit moved.
Yes he is good on the stump .He had a good reception when he came to York and spoke in the main square.It reminded me of Neil Kinnock speech in 1983 .I warn you not to grow old.Might be the same result seats wise but they both know how to move people.
'The Labour party is a moral crusade or it is nothing'. Superb but from Harold Wilson about 50 years ago.
If the media latch onto a positive soundbite, it may get people taking and change votes. I think 'dementia tax' is OK but it's also a bit negative and depresses people, like the Remain campaign did.
I also think he has a more dynamic speaking style at rallies than EdM. By itself, that may be ineffective unless it's widely reported.
Yes very true the local Itv news gives him fair coverage when he has visited Yorkshire and shows the crowds.Less do the BBC who always seems to find Labour voters who are negative.
The BBC are shit scared. Always begging to have their charter renewed. Anyway, their news and current affairs are full of Tories.
Start with a letter A: Andrew Neil.
Andrew Neil is tough on everyone equally so no wonder lefties in comparison to the rest of the BBC think he is a Tory.
Try going through the rest of the alphabet. Blank for B to M, N for Neil, Andrew, blank for O to Z.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
Anyonebothered by Jezzas views on Irish Republicanism or the military is already voting Tory. For most of us, including people like me who had family serving in NI in the Seventies and Eighties it is history and best left there.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Jesus wept.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
"Anti Irish feeling" what the fuck?!
Corbyn cannot bring himself to condemn the IRA because he was/is an IRA supporter.
For three weeks, we hardly read about Corbyn / IRA because it was not needed. Now the alt-Right is going full steam on this.
Panic stations ?
They've given up trying to attack our manifesto now it is clear that Labour's policies are way more popular than the Conservatives'.
All they can do now is play the man not the ball.
They aren't more popular. 44% think the Conservatives' policies are sensible, 36% don't. The figure for Labour is 30/50%.
32% think the Conservatives' promises are unaffordable. 39% don't. The figures for Labour are 51%, 30%.
Sensible does not equate with popular. Nor does affordability.
Give people the top 10 pledges from each manifesto and ask them which they prefer.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
The Council already look at this kind of activity, and if they conclude (I don't know how exactly) that you sold the house to avoid care home fees, then you get billed.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
The Government will have to draft something pretty clever to avoid loopholes where people do precisely what was suggested: equity release + give to the kids. If you do it soon enough and have no care needs for several years how are they gonna show it was a disposal for avoiding care costs? Obviously there are IHT issues with this.
\Indeed, a fairly obvious strategy is for Gran to sell the family home and buy a flat costing £99k a few months before starting care
Lots of people will give away surplus capital or income to heirs. Far fewer would actually put themselves in financial jeopardy to do so. Give your assets away, and you lose all control over your future.
If you're diagnosed with dementia what future do you have?
A good rhetorical point. It can however be turned the other way around. If the Tories are OK with the concept of wealth confiscation in particular circumstances, it rather undercuts their opposition to the more general case of higher taxes for the wealthy.
For now, they can rely on the vote for us, at least we're competent argument - but as Major found, that too can eventually be turned against you.
It's not wealth confiscation. Nothing is being confiscated, some of the wealth that someone has saved through their life is being spent on themselves at the end of their life.
That the left can't understand the difference between someone's wealth being spent on their own care and being taken to spend on others is the big divide between left and right.
Surely the elephant in the room re: social care is how these homes are going to be valued? Who will be doing the valuation, is there an appeal process, etc etc? What about the effects of sudden house price increases/decreases?
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
I presume this is already happening as local councils can put a 'charge' on a property for repaying social care bills.
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
So if I take a 100% equity loan on my £500k house, hand it all to the kids and then spend 20 years in care, how do the council get their money back?
The Council already look at this kind of activity, and if they conclude (I don't know how exactly) that you sold the house to avoid care home fees, then you get billed.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
The Government will have to draft something pretty clever to avoid loopholes where people do precisely what was suggested: equity release + give to the kids. If you do it soon enough and have no care needs for several years how are they gonna show it was a disposal for avoiding care costs? Obviously there are IHT issues with this.
\Indeed, a fairly obvious strategy is for Gran to sell the family home and buy a flat costing £99k a few months before starting care
I agree; and I mentioned a couple of days ago that I think one of the (many) unintended consequences of this policy will be the impact on the housing market and the demand for smaller properties from the elderly. On balance it may be a good thing, but the shift in the market may be sudden and catch a few people out.
I see YouGov specifically asks about the IRA issue:
"Some people have accused Jeremy Corbyn of having been sympathetic towards the IRA in the past and having been too friendly towards groups involved in terrorism. Jeremy Corbyn has said that violence on all sides was wrong, and that he spoke to figures involved with the IRA because he wanted to open a dialogue and find a peaceful solution." They ask if respondents think the criticism is fair or unfair?"
36% say they think it's fair, 36% think it's unfair, the rest don't have an opinion. There are no significant differences by class or region (some have thought there was a strong Midlands view, but not so), but men are far more criticial (46-36) than women (27-37). Mainly Conservative voters seem seriously bothered (67% vs 10 for Lab, 32 for LD). There aren't very many don't knows, suggesting that the criticism, valid or not, is largely priced in.
of his speech to a huge crowd at Tranmere's ground. I don't think any Labour sympathiser, even ultra-sceptics, can fail to be a bit moved.
Yes he is good on the stump .He had a good reception when he came to York and spoke in the main square.It reminded me of Neil Kinnock speech in 1983 .I warn you not to grow old.Might be the same result seats wise but they both know how to move people.
Yes, I liked EdM but I think Corbyn is a more effective leader - even as a candidate in 2015 I struggled to remember what we were really about. Jeremy does the gut appeal without the nasty verbal abuse that Scargill and others on the left have sometimes gone in for. I know all his drawbacks but I've not wavered in my affection for him.
We're seeing the effect of stump campaigning in a similar way to when he was standing for leader. Obviously the whole electorate is a harder sell than potential members, but talking to huge crowds does get reported in the local media and by word of mouth, and it shouldn't be understimated. Contrasted with Therea's bloodless campaign it really stands out.
The Corbyn/IRA stuff should be played but not overplayed. My son who's 27 doesn't remember the troubles and sees the Irish as modern day allies. The issue does have limited traction among under 35's I'd suggest. On the other hand it does fit into the narrative that Corbyn is an anti -British surrender monkey and would prefer to cancel Trident and be more than happy to hand over the Falklands to the Argies and Gibraltar to the Spanish.
It goes back to the waverer in the poll booth, though. The doubter. The realist. The indiviudal who on the surface likes much of Labour's manifesto, but didn't like the wild sums being borrowed, and didn't like the Tories' pensioner hit.
So what does it all boil down to? Who will be the most competent PM, who will be fit to represent us on the world stage, who will keep a steady and cool head over the Brexit negotiations.
It's either Theresa May, or a man who has spent most of his adult life railing against the British state, and actively and unashamedly pinning his colours to an organisation that was waging a terrorist campaign against British troops and civilians. I've not even mentioned his connections to anti-Semitism yet.
I rest my case.
Here's a thing. And I am entirely serious.
CHANGE OF MIND KLAXON
I sent my postal vote yesterday. I voted Tory, even though Starmer will win easily here.
But this morning I thought: if I had that vote again, today, I might go Labour (for the first time in my life). Why? Even though I detest many of Corbyn's policies, and think they will be economically damaging?
Because I also detest many of TMay's proposals, and I think they will be economically damaging.
But the big difference between them is that Corbyn will almost certainly deliver Soft Brexit. We will stay in the Single Market, and it will be something off-the-shelf like EFTA. This is what I, and probably the majority of the country, would like. By contrast TMay will deliver the Hardest Brexit, and she's kept that absurd, pernicious tens of thousands of net migrants pledge, which she almost certainly can't deliver, and which, if she did deliver, would destroy our university sector.
That's how bad the Tory manifesto was: I despise Corbyn, but right now I am a Don't Know (if you discount the fact I've already voted). Well done Nick Timothy.
Nick Timothy was also the advocate of brining back grammar schools.
Fox, come on, please. This is surely about the man's character and his fitness to be a PM. His cause was their cause, and as I keep saying, he unashamedly rubbed shoulders with an organisation that was murdering British troops and British civilians.
Look, if he was genuinely interested in peace, why would he do that? It's not the same as in an official capacity, and all that stupid bs about the Queen shaking McGuiness' hand is an example of that.
He chose a side, he sought out the IRA and the Republican movement, which had nothing to do with official Labour party policy at the time. It surely can't be that much of a coincidence either that the IRA also have a Marxist outlook as their world view.
I'm getting other posters accusing me of being a liar and worse, 'unhinged', yet I am not the one defending his actions. They are.
Why was John Major secretly negotiating with the IRA ?
For peace, not because he was agreeing with them.
Jeremy Corbyn wasn't negotiating with the IRA for peace, he was supporting them and OPPOSED the peace process. He wasn't talking to the Unionist, he wasn't talking to both sides, he wasn't backing peace, he was backing one side and spoke in the House of Commons against the peace process and voted against the peace process.
A good rhetorical point. It can however be turned the other way around. If the Tories are OK with the concept of wealth confiscation in particular circumstances, it rather undercuts their opposition to the more general case of higher taxes for the wealthy.
For now, they can rely on the vote for us, at least we're competent argument - but as Major found, that too can eventually be turned against you.
It's not wealth confiscation. Nothing is being confiscated, some of the wealth that someone has saved through their life is being spent on themselves at the end of their life.
That the left can't understand the difference between someone's wealth being spent on their own care and being taken to spend on others is the big divide between left and right.
If that's such a big philosophical divide, why does not it apply more generally to healthcare; education etc ? And why is this particular thing not a matter for pooled risk ? Sound like a fairly desperate attempt to provide philosophical underpinnings to what is a policy of financial expedience.
Comments
I don't really know, and I obviously cannot speak for CCHQ, because I don't work there. What I do sense is the Left, or more precisely Corbyn's apologists, trying to airbrush this stuff away by muddying the waters. There's no ambiguity here, really. Corbyn was an IRA symapthiser, it's just a fact, and no attempt to rationalise that from the far Left - here and elsewhere - will ever change that.
Stirring up anti Irish feeling for very short term political purposes would show how petty May is.
Pointing out that Jeremy Corbyn wanted the IRA to win, and would doubtless have made excuses for them if they'd blown up scores of his own constituents in their bombing campaign, isn't "stirring up anti-Irish feeling." It's calling a scumbag a scumbag. I mean, honestly.
I think commonsense says it should be Winnick - if he hangs on in Walsall N - as he was elected in the Wilson landslide of 1966. But he lost his seat and re-entered parliament and the rules seem to say a break disqualifies you.
Betting-wise I'd love to know the seat(s) they're really going after in that region.
Bollocks.
You would be all over it, incessantly, ever hour of the day, to damage your political opponents. And you would be RIGHT to do so.
Defending Corbyn and McDonnell over this stuff is contemptible.
http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/wvyc3lofp5/SundayTimesResults_170519_VI_W.pdf
And the valuation itself will be a big piece of work - revaluaing homes for Council Tax purposes in England was moved into the "too hard" column by Osborne.
Ultimately all sides in the abortion debate are enforcing their views on "others", for some definition of "others". If one believes that, once the interests of woman and unborn child are taken into account, that the current system is insufficiently restrictive and is unjustifiably terminating the liberties of too many of the unborn, then it follows that the system is illiberal. Restrictions can be justified under the liberal precept of "so long as it doesn't harm others" being violated.
This is a matter of degree, and depends on the definitional issue. But I think a few more of Farron's Lib Dem colleagues would find our abortion laws illiberally unrestrictive if they allowed a woman's right to choose, for any reason, up to birth. If we lived in a society which extended this further, to after-birth abortion, for any reason, including of non-disabled infants (see e.g. Giubilini and Minerva, 2012), I could imagine this being so offensive to "liberalism" that the Lib Dems would be one of its fiercest opponents. We don't know what further restrictions Farron might actually have wanted, but my guess would be an amendment of a few weeks to the time limits - a different conclusion to his Lib Dem colleagues, or to what Joe Biden might accept in the USA, but from the tone of that piece it didn't sound like he wanted something radically different. He was talking to a Christian magazine so talked-up the value of the unborn child, but still took pains to mention the downsides of making policy much more restrictive. It's true modern liberals tend to emphasise bodily autonomy while traditional conservatives emphasise the rights of the embryo, but across the West most politicians seek some kind of compromise between these two.
If you wanted a better example of how Farron's private morality affects his own liberalism, in the "let people do as they will so long as it doesn't harm others" sense (rather than your perception of it, in the sense of him not defining or weighing "others" as you would prefer) might be his opposition to adult euthanasia. Farron didn't make a secret of his evangelical Christianity. There was a lot of discussion of the issues arising from this during the Lib Dem leadership election - not sure how closely you followed it, but there were some interesting discussions on LDV and elsewhere.
And a weird thing has happened to me today - a very rare and weird thing.
I have read debate on the internet and CHANGED MY OPINION! This almost never happens to anyone...
No I am not now a Corbyn fan. Don't be silly. But I do now sadly believe those who say that his sympathy with the IRA and their cause will not necessarily be immediately, clearly and obviously fatally toxic as I had previously thought.
I had assumed that 95% of people simply did not know about it. For me it alone is enough to disqualify him from any possibility of getting my vote. I was apparently woken from sleep at the age of 5 weeks by the Birmingham pub bomb. The IRA have been - all my life- the lowest scum of all That opinion has not changed today or will ever change. But the arguments downthread are - annoyingly - I think right. It's all a long time ago, can be fudged about a lot, and do not carry as much weight as I thought they should.
And so I agree that it would not be a simple case - as i previously thought - of carpeting all media with pictures of Corbyn and McConnell meeting IRA sympathiser etc.
Gah come on Tories please please step up and stop this dangerous idiot!
What will they go on next? Surely the ridiculous largesse of their spending plans, and their plans for restoring union powers will be attacked soon?
Crapping myself :-(
Certainly, Equity withdrawal is taking place for other reasons too - funding holiday of lifetime, gift for the kids to get first mortgage etc.
Ireland is at peace, albeit an uneasy peace, for the first time in my lifetime. Raking over past injustices and atrocities is a fault of both sides. Reawakening those hatreds for short term political advantage would show May as the antethesis of a strong and stable leader.
So what does it all boil down to? Who will be the most competent PM, who will be fit to represent us on the world stage, who will keep a steady and cool head over the Brexit negotiations.
It's either Theresa May, or a man who has spent most of his adult life railing against the British state, and actively and unashamedly pinning his colours to an organisation that was waging a terrorist campaign against British troops and civilians. I've not even mentioned his connections to anti-Semitism yet.
I rest my case.
If the media latch onto a positive soundbite, it may get people taking and change votes. I think 'dementia tax' is OK but it's also a bit negative and depresses people, like the Remain campaign did.
I also think he has a more dynamic speaking style at rallies than EdM. By itself, that may be ineffective unless it's widely reported.
My mother had 2 years care in her home, and then she was in residential home for 4 years.
There are not two different groups of people; they are the same people getting iller & iller.
Most people will accept some need for control of foxes - it is only a tiny minority of people in this country who truly believe "animals are people too" and disavow any killing of animals - but hunting with hounds seems to have passed beyond the pale.
My views on animal welfare are actually rather close to Nick's! But I do have respect for the occasional Lib Dem who have been known to pop their head above the parapet and decry the fox-hunting ban as essentially illiberal (which clearly it can be seen as, depending on how you weight animal rights compared to the liberty of people to continue an ancient pursuit) and received a barracking from within their own party for it.
I accept something needs to be done, but I hate this plan, because there is no lifetime cap and frankly I would prefer a pooled risk via national insurance or some such. Will Hutton makes this point in Observer. It would be better he says to have pooled risk, but as that is not going to happen, then something happening that takes wealth out of the assets of property-owners is at least a way forward.
Mind you he warns that house prices will be at their peak in June 2017 and can only go one way with this and other policies.
I saw many sad thing when my mother was dying of Parkinson's.
But the saddest of all were the people whose families had shafted them, and sold the house.
They had taken the money and left their mother or father defenceless and moneyless and alone, grappling with monstrosity of our social care system.
They were usually so sick they couldn’t understand what had happened to them, where they were, where their children were or why they had no money any more.
Look, if he was genuinely interested in peace, why would he do that? It's not the same as in an official capacity, and all that stupid bs about the Queen shaking McGuiness' hand is an example of that.
He chose a side, he sought out the IRA and the Republican movement, which had nothing to do with official Labour party policy at the time. It surely can't be that much of a coincidence either that the IRA also have a Marxist outlook as their world view.
I'm getting other posters accusing me of being a liar and worse, 'unhinged', yet I am not the one defending his actions. They are.
77% of over 65s are certain to vote, 66% of 50-64s, 59% of 25-49s and 50% of 18-24s
http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/wvyc3lofp5/SundayTimesResults_170519_VI_W.pdf
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/06/08/general-election-2015-how-britain-really-voted/
There is a bill that gets paid from the proceeds of the actual sale price. The care charge would be like any other secured charge on a property.
It could lead to a contrived situation where people sell for a ridiculously low price to avoid the bill with side deals cut between buyer and seller.
Upon reflection, I think the Tories would be wise to link the asset protection/exemption to average house prices.
That could be done nationally, regionally or by local authority.
It can't be added to stamp duty because that is already prohibitively high for many movers and down sizers.
http://tinyurl.com/laurmzv
You would have to do it long before the need for care arises.
Corbyn cannot bring himself to condemn the IRA because he was/is an IRA supporter.
Panic stations ?
These costs will be arrears rather than current running costs.
All they can do now is play the man not the ball.
Re you're first point:
The liberal view isn't "allowing others to do as they please" alone but "allowing people to do as they please, so long as it doesn't harm others
Well I didn't exactly say that the liberal view was ''allowing others to do as they please.'' I was replying to the context of your statement in regard to their being a difference between one's private views and the imposition of said views on others. If anything, I'd have thought that my views on Fox Hunting would have conveyed that I obviously think others shouldn't be able to do anything that they want, which is why I didn't see the need to reassert the same point again.
Abortion is a tricky issue yes, but not within liberal circles generally, where most liberals are steadfastly pro-choice. The trouble is, is that within liberalism the majority belief is that we generally start construing the unborn as 'others' after a certain time limit - we don't view the unborn as 'others' generally (from conception), that is a socially conservative position. Thus, it's difficult to argue how restrictions on abortion can be considered as 'liberal' within the context of modern liberalism, given what the liberal views of 'others' actually is. Farron's view of what qualifies as 'others' is a socially conservative view, and because the basis is a socially conservative one, arguing that the restrictions are 'liberal' is very difficult. Not only that, but a key component of modern social liberalism is a woman's bodily autonomy, more so than a view of the unborn as 'others' under twenty-four weeks. Feminist thought is a lot more relevant to social liberalism today than religious views of life are, and shapes to what extent liberals err on the side of the mother and on the side of the unborn. To generally go against the grain of the mainstream feminist thought and still call yourself a 'liberal' is a pretty difficult thing to do, given how much notions of gender equality and the social, economic, and political equality of women plays a part in shaping left wing ideologies.
As for abortion after 24 weeks, well I'm bemused as to why that is a discussion point as I never argued that abortion should be available for nine months. At that point the unborn are seen as ''others'', but the difference between that view and a socially conservative one, is that a woman has been given 24 weeks to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, and thus a significant amount of bodily autonomy. Farron's position is one that seeks to reduce that autonomy in some way because of, seemingly, a religious view of life.
32% think the Conservatives' promises are unaffordable. 39% don't. The figures for Labour are 51%, 30%.
It's going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out in the next few weeks. His apologists think it should be all quietly swept under a carpet, his adversaries (me included) think it should be on every election leaflet and every front page of the right wing press from now until election day.
Some say most of the voting public already have this priced in, and that most people know about his associations with the IRA - or rather that is what they are hoping. Let's put this theory to the test over the next few weeks and let's see if any of those prepared to hold their noses and vote Labour really understand what the leader of that party is.
Start with a letter A: Andrew Neil.
I knew that Farron was a Christian prior to 2015, but I didn't know he was an evangelical Christian - that's something I only found about fairly recent.
I don't think the issue is a party-political one, but it is an ideological one. That's why the Left are generally more pro-choice, and the Right more pro-life.
The trouble with Farron's liberalism is that it appears to be shaped solely by his religious views in a period where liberalism is highly shaped by a secular view of society and individuals - and religious morality is generally a socially conservative morality.
Winter Fuel Payments for millionaires, protect the capital assets of the wealthy in care, give £100k earners a free ride at university.
The Corbyn Tories.
It can however be turned the other way around. If the Tories are OK with the concept of wealth confiscation in particular circumstances, it rather undercuts their opposition to the more general case of higher taxes for the wealthy.
For now, they can rely on the vote for us, at least we're competent argument - but as Major found, that too can eventually be turned against you.
Try going through the rest of the alphabet. Blank for B to M, N for Neil, Andrew, blank for O to Z.
Give people the top 10 pledges from each manifesto and ask them which they prefer.
That the left can't understand the difference between someone's wealth being spent on their own care and being taken to spend on others is the big divide between left and right.
Panic stations ?
I don't think ivory poachers are any more popular than the |IRA.
What were the Tories thinking when they dropped their commitment to ban the ivory trade ?
"Elephant killers" could work as a response to "IRA lovers".
We're seeing the effect of stump campaigning in a similar way to when he was standing for leader. Obviously the whole electorate is a harder sell than potential members, but talking to huge crowds does get reported in the local media and by word of mouth, and it shouldn't be understimated. Contrasted with Therea's bloodless campaign it really stands out.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/20/labour-manifesto-keep-planned-tory-benefit-cuts-resolution-foundation
Jeremy Corbyn wasn't negotiating with the IRA for peace, he was supporting them and OPPOSED the peace process. He wasn't talking to the Unionist, he wasn't talking to both sides, he wasn't backing peace, he was backing one side and spoke in the House of Commons against the peace process and voted against the peace process.
Sound like a fairly desperate attempt to provide philosophical underpinnings to what is a policy of financial expedience.