We can't afford the Fire Brigade. Or Police. Or Hospitals. Or Armed Forces. Or Human Dignity. We have to live within our means. With the emphasis on mean.
This is trivially true. You can close down every policy argument by noting that we chose the current policies. It's not particularly illuminating.
How else would you describe our political system? We vote for the one we want. Is it a dreadful way to do things? Yep. Is it the least bad of the alternatives? Yep.
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
So you'd be up for a zero based budgeting approach?
The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.
There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.
Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.
YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.
Here's the question about the YouGov model.
If, on the eve of the election, you had backed the winner in every constituency as forcasted by the Model how much money would you have made or lost? Repeat that question again excluding Scotland which I was fundamentally writing off as unable to be mathematically modelled.
I suspect the BIG price winners it picked would put you well up.
The modelling was good for Scotland, take a look at Inverness. Weird to see the Lib Dems in 4th there - the LD vote went UP there in 2015.
Mr. 43, I appreciate that post but still fail to see why/how the EU could force business closures or movement.
Mr. Bobajob, could you elaborate further please?
Their currency, their rules.
As long as we were part of the EU it wasn't a problem for them.
One reason it does become a problem for them after we're outside their jurisdiction is that it would create a potential position where London would be able to decide when to pull the plug on a European financial institution in a crisis situation. They need to take back control.
Mr. 43, I appreciate that post but still fail to see why/how the EU could force business closures or movement.
Mr. Bobajob, could you elaborate further please?
Their currency, their rules.
As long as we were part of the EU it wasn't a problem for them.
One reason it does become a problem for them after we're outside their jurisdiction is that it would create a potential position where London would be able to decide when to pull the plug on a European financial institution in a crisis situation. They need to take back control.
Britain is welcome to change its mind and stay in the European Union, but it should not expect to keep getting its EU budget rebates or complex opt-outs from EU rules, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday.
"Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, spoke about an open door. That if Britain changes its mind it would find an open door," Guy Verhofstadt told the chamber.
"I agree. But like Alice in Wonderland, not all the doors are the same. It will be a brand new door, with a new Europe, a Europe without rebates, without complexity, with real powers and with unity."
I am also now convinced that election canvassing (both doorstep and phone) samples a very skewed proportion of the population, biased towards the more elderly, the less socially active, and homeowners.
.
Except David Herdson did find it. Very late in the day.
I was sent to highly-targetted waverers and probable/firm Con households.
In hindsight, I was probably sent to broadly the right households, and the Tory vote went up, but CCHQ didn't notice that there was a huge groundswell of support for Labour in the homes and flats I didn't visit.
Every canvasser in every election has a night when they get a bad street, and are suddenly convinced of imminent defeat. When it's the candidate they need lots of tea and reassurance.
Statistically it is fad indicating a late swing. Particularly since the best analysis we have right now doesn't reveal any evidence of a late swing - the result was nailed on for a fortnight during which Mr H was out visiting lots of other streets and coming home happy of victory.
As humans we see patterns in and links between things, and work hard to find them even when they don't exist.
I found it throughout canvassing all over the constituency. Not a one-off. As it proved on the night.
I must have missed your predictions that the Tories were to lose their majority.
I posted several times that I had backed NOM and Lab Maj.
OK, kudos. I trust you enjoy this year's luxury holiday!
In the short term I would have been *a lot* better off with a Lab OM but the winnings on NOM (5.8 on BF) will at least fund some drinks on holiday.
Seriously, why do you think you picked up what almost every canvasser seems to have missed?
I did comment on this earlier just after the election, so briefly, I was in a Remain super-marginal and the Cons voters were furious at Brexit.
OK. Very hard to project from that to the national result (which tbf is a problem for any canvasser given that no seat is truly typical). The Tory vote didnt actually go down, nationally, after all?
You also have the advantage that such people are likely to be in to canvassers when they call, which doesn't negate my original assertion.
People will be furious at Brexit, but it will take time to build. Right now we're simply in the position where the shine has been taken off the original mandate and a high level of political uncertainty has muddied the water as far as where Brexit might be going.
We can't afford the Fire Brigade. Or Police. Or Hospitals. Or Armed Forces. Or Human Dignity. We have to live within our means. With the emphasis on mean.
This is trivially true. You can close down every policy argument by noting that we chose the current policies. It's not particularly illuminating.
How else would you describe our political system? We vote for the one we want. Is it a dreadful way to do things? Yep. Is it the least bad of the alternatives? Yep.
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
The treatment of disabled people is a stain on the government. fitness to work interviews and PIP assessments conducted by people not qualified to make an assessment are wicked and actively harmful. And I do speak with experience on this subject. It is not for the government to determine what constitutes dignity for the disabled, it's something that varies on a case by case basis and the government should actively assist bespoke solutions to dignity and quality of life not assume that bullying the disadvantaged into inappropriate jobs provides anything but abject misery in many cases and worse in some. The position of cutting the benefits bill whilst protecting the wealthy from taxation burden is just wrong. It's indefensible on a human level and plain wrong on an economic one. Time we stopped setting spending to the tax take and started adjusting the tax take to meet required spending. And when things are falling short term then excess wealth needs to be taken back into public use.
Mr. 43, I appreciate that post but still fail to see why/how the EU could force business closures or movement.
Mr. Bobajob, could you elaborate further please?
Their currency, their rules.
As long as we were part of the EU it wasn't a problem for them.
That "wouldn't be a problem for them" in the sense that they tried to take it & the courts prevented it? (assuming we are still talking about clearing)
"They think like housewives managing a weekly budget."
Exactly, so you need to explain clearly. Here's an example ...
"We'll borrow £50 billion to nationalise a privatised company, every year, we'll pay £1 billion in interest but make £2 billion in profit."
Housewife ... "But you'll increase the payroll by 50%, lose £2 billion a year, and increase the debt overall. We've seen it before."
In its five years as East Coast, the state-run firm returned a little more than £1bn in premiums, as well as several million in profits, to the Treasury. Detailed financial analysis from the Office of Rail Regulation shows it was one of two firms to make a net contribution to government coffers over the last two years, paying in more than it received in subsidy or indirect grants, along with Southwest Trains (run by Stagecoach).
We can't afford the Fire Brigade. Or Police. Or Hospitals. Or Armed Forces. Or Human Dignity. We have to live within our means. With the emphasis on mean.
This is trivially true. You can close down every policy argument by noting that we chose the current policies. It's not particularly illuminating.
How else would you describe our political system? We vote for the one we want. Is it a dreadful way to do things? Yep. Is it the least bad of the alternatives? Yep.
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
As a Conservative who has represented poorly and elderly people at DLA appeals and such like as well as spending a portion of my working day trying to help people navigate through officialdom I think this personal fart sniffing attack on anyone who doesn't vote Labour rather offensive.
Running the economy into a wall isn't virtuous, it's stupid.
IDS resigned because people wanted to remove a lot of the PIP stuff that helped people claim the full amount. He was a terrible leader but he's not a bad man.
Just because we disagree on how best to run the country doesn't necessarily make the other side evil.
I think too may from all sides need to remember that.
"QE is not harmless. We just don't understand how harmful it is, yet." IanB2
What is your timing on this - which government will be in office (nearly said in power) when it bites us?
To be honest I have no more idea of the consequences of QE than the experts. It would appear that the slow poison of QE is responsible for the economic distortions - particularly rising asset prices in relation to income - that underlie the building social discontent.
The argument for QE was always that taking the short-term correction (aka recession/depression) would have been worse. History will tell, I guess. But it always seemed unlikely that a 'magic solution' had no unintended consequences.
In terms of the economy, I remain convinced that we are heading for a sustained period of inflation above interest rates. Of all the solutions to the debt crisis, it is the least unattractive to the politicians, provided they can keep a lid on society meanwhile (which tbf is starting to look like a big IF). If you want an investment tip, buy INXG, then sit and wait.
Mr. 43, I appreciate that post but still fail to see why/how the EU could force business closures or movement.
My point is that the EU authorities don't need to force business movement. It's going to happen anyway. They can slow it down by extending certification to the UK and they can speed it up by announcing that any bank that doesn't move the bulk of its operations will fall outside its regulatory regime.
Edit The link Mr Eagles posted suggests they will do the second just as quickly as it doesn't cause sudden dislocation. Which is understandable. Several EU countries, particularly France, want a slice of the lucrative London business. The cost of Brexit includes the loss of London as a predominant world financial centre under all scenarios I believe.
We can't afford the Fire Brigade. Or Police. Or Hospitals. Or Armed Forces. Or Human Dignity. We have to live within our means. With the emphasis on mean.
This is trivially true. You can close down every policy argument by noting that we chose the current policies. It's not particularly illuminating.
How else would you describe our political system? We vote for the one we want. Is it a dreadful way to do things? Yep. Is it the least bad of the alternatives? Yep.
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
I think you need to calm down.
Your posts are highly emotional and increasingly irrational. The Conservatives are trying to put the country on a sustainable footing.
Britain is welcome to change its mind and stay in the European Union, but it should not expect to keep getting its EU budget rebates or complex opt-outs from EU rules, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday.
"Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, spoke about an open door. That if Britain changes its mind it would find an open door," Guy Verhofstadt told the chamber.
"I agree. But like Alice in Wonderland, not all the doors are the same. It will be a brand new door, with a new Europe, a Europe without rebates, without complexity, with real powers and with unity."
Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.
YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.
"How can pollsters improve their results? One possibility could be to ask each respondent how politically engaged they are, how often they watch QT, Newsnight, News at Ten etc and weight their responses accordingly, skewed heavily towards the politically disinterested. Maybe they should exclude the politically engaged from political opinion polls altogether.
It may not be popular with the , but their considered view is considerably less important than that of the bloke down the pub"
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
So you'd be up for a zero based budgeting approach?
The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.
There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.
We need to cut the deficit. To do that we need to expand the economy. To do that we need to invest in the things that will allow it to expand.
Let me give you a direct example of what I would do. The Tories have slashed Corporation Tax to an absurdly low level but have done nothing to get tax-dodging outfits like Starfucks paying both their taxes and their employees a wage they can afford to live on.
As a radical alternative, offer Corporation Tax cuts to companies who pay their dues and who pay the living wage to their workers. Because if you want people spending £5 on coffee they need money in their pockets which they won't have if you pay them £7.50 an hour. We need to encourage these businesses to become citizens as well as corporations. As big capitalists of the past have been. Even Henry Ford got that to sell cars people have to be bale to afford them.
Capitalism was replaced by bankism. We need it back.
Britain is welcome to change its mind and stay in the European Union, but it should not expect to keep getting its EU budget rebates or complex opt-outs from EU rules, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday.
"Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, spoke about an open door. That if Britain changes its mind it would find an open door," Guy Verhofstadt told the chamber.
"I agree. But like Alice in Wonderland, not all the doors are the same. It will be a brand new door, with a new Europe, a Europe without rebates, without complexity, with real powers and with unity."
Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.
YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.
I was concerned by ICM's decision to discount Labour vote share from the results because "Labour always underperform". Pollsters should always go with the data even if they are instinctively doubtful. It's better to take the hit for reasons that only become apparent later, than attempt to second guess the data. People pay pollsters for their data analysis, not their soothsaying skills.
But Labour underperforming and kids not voting is data.
A proposed law that would require landlords to make homes fit for human habitation would be an unnecessary regulatory burden, a Conservative MP has argued.
A proposed law that would require landlords to make homes fit for human habitation would be an unnecessary regulatory burden, a Conservative MP has argued.
In hindsight, I was probably sent to broadly the right households, and the Tory vote went up, but CCHQ didn't notice that there was a huge groundswell of support for Labour in the homes and flats I didn't visit.
That's a classic problem of canvassing returns - you get a reasonably good idea of your own support, but not of the opposition's support. Given that the Conservative vote went up in most seats, it's perhaps not surprising that they thought they were doing better than turned out to be the case.
What's more surprising is that it appears that Labour also greatly under-estimated their own support. (I know one analyst who works with Labour and who was expecting a bigger Tory majority than most of the models listed in Mike's header piece.) The explanation might very simply be that it wasn't the traditional voters who bumped up the Labour total, so Labour's own canvassing also missed them.
How the hell did Jonny Bairstow get away with that?
'cos he's lucky. Unlike Roy at the moment for whom that would have been a couple of mm closer to the stumps and be given out.
Cant understand why they didn't introduce the rule that a side doesn't lose a review when it is Umpires Call for this tournament rather than wait until afterwards. Joke really
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
So you'd be up for a zero based budgeting approach?
The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.
There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.
We need to cut the deficit. To do that we need to expand the economy. To do that we need to invest in the things that will allow it to expand.
Let me give you a direct example of what I would do. The Tories have slashed Corporation Tax to an absurdly low level but have done nothing to get tax-dodging outfits like Starfucks paying both their taxes and their employees a wage they can afford to live on.
As a radical alternative, offer Corporation Tax cuts to companies who pay their dues and who pay the living wage to their workers. Because if you want people spending £5 on coffee they need money in their pockets which they won't have if you pay them £7.50 an hour. We need to encourage these businesses to become citizens as well as corporations. As big capitalists of the past have been. Even Henry Ford got that to sell cars people have to be bale to afford them.
Capitalism was replaced by bankism. We need it back.
People should get their Thermos flask from the back of the cupboard and make their coffee/tea at home to take with them when they go out, thus saving on expenditure and making Starbucks unnecessary.
Alternatively why not drink the more healthy option - water. Let them drink water.
Britain is welcome to change its mind and stay in the European Union, but it should not expect to keep getting its EU budget rebates or complex opt-outs from EU rules, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday.
"Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, spoke about an open door. That if Britain changes its mind it would find an open door," Guy Verhofstadt told the chamber.
"I agree. But like Alice in Wonderland, not all the doors are the same. It will be a brand new door, with a new Europe, a Europe without rebates, without complexity, with real powers and with unity."
Edit: do Remainers still want to re-join that, with even bigger budget contributions, and no Schengen opt-out?
Yes. There would be short term pain, but the long term gain would be worth it.
My point is this would be a permanent long-term arrangement. But with even less immigration and border control, and even higher budget contributions. Forever.
Interestingly, your words reflect exactly mine on leaving the EU.
Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.
YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.
I was concerned by ICM's decision to discount Labour vote share from the results because "Labour always underperform". Pollsters should always go with the data even if they are instinctively doubtful. It's better to take the hit for reasons that only become apparent later, than attempt to second guess the data. People pay pollsters for their data analysis, not their soothsaying skills.
But Labour underperforming and kids not voting is data.
The ICM Labour underperforming adjustment is on top of the kids not voting adjustment. The second you can make a case for. You go for what people have typically done in the past rather than what they say they will do this time. The risk with modelling on past behaviour is that it doesn't pick up on change, when the whole point of polling is to identify change.
Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.
YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.
"How can pollsters improve their results? One possibility could be to ask each respondent how politically engaged they are, how often they watch QT, Newsnight, News at Ten etc and weight their responses accordingly, skewed heavily towards the politically disinterested. Maybe they should exclude the politically engaged from political opinion polls altogether.
It may not be popular with the , but their considered view is considerably less important than that of the bloke down the pub"
YouGov did this apparently. The chatterati didn't like it
Yes, right after the election I got a YouGov poll that, as well as asking how I voted, asked a shedload of Qs clearly designed to measure political engagement - what news programmes I watched, what aspects of the campaign I was aware of, etc, whether I had ever visited a long list of news/political websites. Some of the Qs I cant remember right now were clever, coming at engagement in directions I wouldn't have expected.
My guess is that they have some sort of "engagement index" made up of a composite of all these answers.
The Survation out yesterday had to double-weight the Sun readers to get a balanced sample, which is a fairly big clue as to which paper the unengaged read, if they read one. Indeed, surely the days of weighting by newspaper preference are over? It used to be a good metric on which to categorise people - YouGov still regularly asks which newspaper websites I have visited, but since I end up visiting most of them now and again, the data must be a lot less revealing.
After WW2 UK debt was 250% of GDP. How did Labour reduce it? By SPENDING on homes, NHS, public services
Austerity doesnt work
Did we really increase spending compared to paying for a 5million strong Armed Forces and the war economy backing that up?
And rebuilding places reduced to rubble? I'm not sure comparing 2017 to 1945 is all that useful.
I posted on here yesterday that reducing the armed forces to that needed to defend the UK's waters and airspace could be considered as an option. Oversea military adventures cost a lost of money and a lot of our soldiers get badly injured.
In predictable fashion, I got told off for even suggesting it.
A proposed law that would require landlords to make homes fit for human habitation would be an unnecessary regulatory burden, a Conservative MP has argued.
Go on, have a guess which MP that was.
Phillip c*nt davies. Hope he loses his seat next time.
Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.
YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.
I was concerned by ICM's decision to discount Labour vote share from the results because "Labour always underperform". Pollsters should always go with the data even if they are instinctively doubtful. It's better to take the hit for reasons that only become apparent later, than attempt to second guess the data. People pay pollsters for their data analysis, not their soothsaying skills.
But Labour underperforming and kids not voting is data.
The ICM Labour underperforming adjustment is on top of the kids not voting adjustment. The second you can make a case for. You go for what people have typically done in the past rather than what they say they will do this time. The risk with modelling on past behaviour is that it doesn't pick up on change, when the whole point of polling is to identify change.
In any kind of science people should not go into the experiment looking for a particular answer. The fact that the pollsters are looking for the "right" answer rather than the answer is quite disgraceful really. Too much ego
A proposed law that would require landlords to make homes fit for human habitation would be an unnecessary regulatory burden, a Conservative MP has argued.
Go on, have a guess which MP that was.
Phillip c*nt davies. Hope he loses his seat next time.
Brilliant article from Alastair Meeks yesterday. And pretty much bang on the money. The fantasist Brexit right has - through its delusion and mendacity - instituted a sustained period of precipitous national decline and opened the door to the populist left. That's some achievement.
Alastair asks where are all the centrist politicians to save us from this fate. The answer is that our electoral system has emasculated them. First past the post is utterly destructive.
Reportedly, May is not contemplating changing her approach to the Brexit negotiations. We'll have to see what that means, but if she is in denial of the new reality, this administration will not last long.
I quite agree about the electoral collapse of the centre. But I also blame the Conservative campaign in 2015 for deliberately targeting their coalition partners. Given Cameron is himself something of a centrist, this was a moral and strategic blunder.
On every level May is the wrong person to be fronting Brexit. She is inflexible, not particularly bright, unimaginative, distant and a prisoner of her backbenches. We desperately need a cross-party consensus that takes us to the softest Brexit possible - the one that Hammond seems to be pushing for. We won't get it. The Tory right and the labour left will see to it. I agree with Alastair Meeks that we are more than likely totally and utterly screwed. David Cameron's weakness in 2012/13 and his fear of Ed Miliband (!!!!) will cost this country a much higher sum than anything inflicted on us by the great crash.
You are confusing "what we desperately need" - in other words what you would like, with what the electorate voted for a year ago. Apart from a few sulkng fools on here most people just want it over and done with, only the lib dems disagree and they're an irrelevance.
Nope - on a personal level I will be fine. The country, though, is heading for an absolute shellacking thanks to the delusions and lies of the privileged, very wealthy, establishment right wingers who led the Leave and Remain campaigns last year. If you think that people are now just going to forget Brexit and get on with it, let me tell you about some magic beans I have for sale at a very reasonable price, they do extraordinary things ...
You've lost the plot mate
So because there were right wingers in support of both Leave and Remain, both were the wrong course?
Britain is welcome to change its mind and stay in the European Union, but it should not expect to keep getting its EU budget rebates or complex opt-outs from EU rules, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday.
"Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, spoke about an open door. That if Britain changes its mind it would find an open door," Guy Verhofstadt told the chamber.
"I agree. But like Alice in Wonderland, not all the doors are the same. It will be a brand new door, with a new Europe, a Europe without rebates, without complexity, with real powers and with unity."
Edit: do Remainers still want to re-join that, with even bigger budget contributions, and no Schengen opt-out?
Yes. There would be short term pain, but the long term gain would be worth it.
My point is this would be a permanent long-term arrangement. But with even less immigration and border control, and even higher budget contributions. Forever.
Yes. You are quite correct. It is not as good a position as we now have, but I still think it would be better than the position we will shortly be in.
Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.
YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.
"How can pollsters improve their results? One possibility could be to ask each respondent how politically engaged they are, how often they watch QT, Newsnight, News at Ten etc and weight their responses accordingly, skewed heavily towards the politically disinterested. Maybe they should exclude the politically engaged from political opinion polls altogether.
It may not be popular with the , but their considered view is considerably less important than that of the bloke down the pub"
YouGov did this apparently. The chatterati didn't like it
Yes, right after the election I got a YouGov poll that, as well as asking how I voted, asked a shedload of Qs clearly designed to measure political engagement - what news programmes I watched, what aspects of the campaign I was aware of, etc, whether I had ever visited a long list of news/political websites. Some of the Qs I cant remember right now were clever, coming at engagement in directions I wouldn't have expected.
My guess is that they have some sort of "engagement index" made up of a composite of all these answers.
The Survation out yesterday had to double-weight the Sun readers to get a balanced sample, which is a fairly big clue as to which paper the unengaged read, if they read one. Indeed, surely the days of weighting by newspaper preference are over? It used to be a good metric on which to categorise people - YouGov still regularly asks which newspaper websites I have visited, but since I end up visiting most of them now and again, the data must be a lot less revealing.
I cannot believe I made this point time and time again, but didn't bet based on YouGov's results, very poor from moi, would have made a packet
We can't afford the Fire Brigade. Or Police. Or Hospitals. Or Armed Forces. Or Human Dignity. We have to live within our means. With the emphasis on mean.
This is trivially true. You can close down every policy argument by noting that we chose the current policies. It's not particularly illuminating.
How else would you describe our political system? We vote for the one we want. Is it a dreadful way to do things? Yep. Is it the least bad of the alternatives? Yep.
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
I think you need to calm down.
Your posts are highly emotional and increasingly irrational. The Conservatives are trying to put the country on a sustainable footing.
Dacre is definitely not doing that. The Tories do enable and play to a feeling that he endengers, and are very much in hoc to him and murdoch's toxic viewpoint.
Despite his other faults, Corbyn does not play to the tune of Murdoch or Dacre. To his credit.
Refurbs always compromise compartmentation. Fire, like most things in life, takes the path of least resistance. So fire spreads through holes and voids created by retro fitted services.
All true.
However, there is a report in the Guardian of a resident who escaped from the 17th floor, with his 68 year old mother: “I went back inside the house, looked out the window. I started looking down the window – I had to really pull myself out to look down the window, from the 17th floor, and I see the fire blazing, and coming up really fast, because of the cladding – the cladding was really flammable, and it just caught up like a matchstick.”...
Another resident confirms that there wasn't a building wide fire alarm system: “We saw the fire engines, so we were looking outside at what’s going on. There was no fire alarms anywhere, because we don’t have a kind of integrated fire system – it’s just everyone’s house for itself..."
Had there been smoke detection on escape routes, and a central fire alarm system, it seems plausible that most people would have got out in time.
Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.
YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.
I was concerned by ICM's decision to discount Labour vote share from the results because "Labour always underperform". Pollsters should always go with the data even if they are instinctively doubtful. It's better to take the hit for reasons that only become apparent later, than attempt to second guess the data. People pay pollsters for their data analysis, not their soothsaying skills.
But Labour underperforming and kids not voting is data.
The ICM Labour underperforming adjustment is on top of the kids not voting adjustment. The second you can make a case for. You go for what people have typically done in the past rather than what they say they will do this time. The risk with modelling on past behaviour is that it doesn't pick up on change, when the whole point of polling is to identify change.
In any kind of science people should not go into the experiment looking for a particular answer. The fact that the pollsters are looking for the "right" answer rather than the answer is quite disgraceful really. Too much ego
Back when I was a Physics student at Uni, we were told in the labs that if we went looking for a particular result then we would always find it.
After WW2 UK debt was 250% of GDP. How did Labour reduce it? By SPENDING on homes, NHS, public services
Austerity doesnt work
Did we really increase spending compared to paying for a 5million strong Armed Forces and the war economy backing that up?
And rebuilding places reduced to rubble? I'm not sure comparing 2017 to 1945 is all that useful.
I posted on here yesterday that reducing the armed forces to that needed to defend the UK's waters and airspace could be considered as an option. Oversea military adventures cost a lost of money and a lot of our soldiers get badly injured.
In predictable fashion, I got told off for even suggesting it.
I disagree because making ourselves weak as a former great power would surely make us a target.
And our armed forces can be a force for good. Have to be used correctly.
Britain is welcome to change its mind and stay in the European Union, but it should not expect to keep getting its EU budget rebates or complex opt-outs from EU rules, the European Parliament's Brexit coordinator said on Wednesday.
"Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, the new French president, spoke about an open door. That if Britain changes its mind it would find an open door," Guy Verhofstadt told the chamber.
"I agree. But like Alice in Wonderland, not all the doors are the same. It will be a brand new door, with a new Europe, a Europe without rebates, without complexity, with real powers and with unity."
Edit: do Remainers still want to re-join that, with even bigger budget contributions, and no Schengen opt-out?
Yes. There would be short term pain, but the long term gain would be worth it.
My point is this would be a permanent long-term arrangement. But with even less immigration and border control, and even higher budget contributions. Forever.
Yes. You are quite correct. It is not as good a position as we now have, but I still think it would be better than the position we will shortly be in.
After WW2 UK debt was 250% of GDP. How did Labour reduce it? By SPENDING on homes, NHS, public services
Austerity doesnt work
Did we really increase spending compared to paying for a 5million strong Armed Forces and the war economy backing that up?
And rebuilding places reduced to rubble? I'm not sure comparing 2017 to 1945 is all that useful.
I posted on here yesterday that reducing the armed forces to that needed to defend the UK's waters and airspace could be considered as an option. Oversea military adventures cost a lost of money and a lot of our soldiers get badly injured.
In predictable fashion, I got told off for even suggesting it.
You didn't get told off, but I did disagree with you.
Reflecting on your points from yesterday and before, I think the political differences between you and me are now so large as to be unbridgeable.
Pollsters need to do a lot of thinking after this election. I include Survation and YouGov (in its polling) in this, because I'm not at all convinced that they were right for the right reasons.
YouGov's model, on the other hand, was supernaturally good. Outside Scotland, its accuracy was uncanny. This clearly was right for the right reasons and we need to pay much more attention to such models in future.
"How can pollsters improve their results? One possibility could be to ask each respondent how politically engaged they are, how often they watch QT, Newsnight, News at Ten etc and weight their responses accordingly, skewed heavily towards the politically disinterested. Maybe they should exclude the politically engaged from political opinion polls altogether.
It may not be popular with the , but their considered view is considerably less important than that of the bloke down the pub"
YouGov did this apparently. The chatterati didn't like it
Yes, right after the election I got a YouGov poll that, as well as asking how I voted, asked a shedload of Qs clearly designed to measure political engagement - what news programmes I watched, what aspects of the campaign I was aware of, etc, whether I had ever visited a long list of news/political websites. Some of the Qs I cant remember right now were clever, coming at engagement in directions I wouldn't have expected.
My guess is that they have some sort of "engagement index" made up of a composite of all these answers.
The Survation out yesterday had to double-weight the Sun readers to get a balanced sample, which is a fairly big clue as to which paper the unengaged read, if they read one. Indeed, surely the days of weighting by newspaper preference are over? It used to be a good metric on which to categorise people - YouGov still regularly asks which newspaper websites I have visited, but since I end up visiting most of them now and again, the data must be a lot less revealing.
If the unengaged views are becoming more important, then the pollsters job is getting more difficult. The unengaged are more likely to vote only when something particular gets their attention and that is difficult to predict.
Refurbs always compromise compartmentation. Fire, like most things in life, takes the path of least resistance. So fire spreads through holes and voids created by retro fitted services.
All true.
However, there is a report in the Guardian of a resident who escaped from the 17th floor, with his 68 year old mother: “I went back inside the house, looked out the window. I started looking down the window – I had to really pull myself out to look down the window, from the 17th floor, and I see the fire blazing, and coming up really fast, because of the cladding – the cladding was really flammable, and it just caught up like a matchstick.”...
Another resident confirms that there wasn't a building wide fire alarm system: “We saw the fire engines, so we were looking outside at what’s going on. There was no fire alarms anywhere, because we don’t have a kind of integrated fire system – it’s just everyone’s house for itself..."
Had there been smoke detection on escape routes, and a central fire alarm system, it seems plausible that most people would have got out in time.
Fires in highrise spread in all sorts of unpredictable ways. It often spreads externally by a blowtorch effect driven by the winds at greater height. Like most great tragedies, it'll be a number of things that add up to make things worse.
So... if I got paid for some writing in euros that could become subject to EU regulation/oversight?
It was often said that if Scotland left the UK they could use the pound, not in a currency union but as a tradeable commodity. What's the difference here?
[Not arguing, I'm just after clarification because it sounds really odd to me].
In hindsight, I was probably sent to broadly the right households, and the Tory vote went up, but CCHQ didn't notice that there was a huge groundswell of support for Labour in the homes and flats I didn't visit.
That's a classic problem of canvassing returns - you get a reasonably good idea of your own support, but not of the opposition's support. Given that the Conservative vote went up in most seats, it's perhaps not surprising that they thought they were doing better than turned out to be the case.
What's more surprising is that it appears that Labour also greatly under-estimated their own support. (I know one analyst who works with Labour and who was expecting a bigger Tory majority than most of the models listed in Mike's header piece.) The explanation might very simply be that it wasn't the traditional voters who bumped up the Labour total, so Labour's own canvassing also missed them.
Theresa May's job was to let the British public down gently on the undeliverable promises made by Leave. Instead she doubled down on the rhetoric:
The more common position was the one cultivated by Boris Johnson – blithe pretence that economic benefits of EU membership would still be available; that a cost incurred by departure was really a prize; that the cake could be had, eaten and given to the NHS all at once.
May’s task was to explain to the British public that this option did not exist, but she ducked the challenge. Instead she concocted a hard and impenetrable Brexit line [...] EU leaders were not forewarned. They have taken May at her word, and are now ready to negotiate on the assumption that the UK is still wedded to the wild course of action advertised by its prime minister last autumn. A hung parliament suggests that the UK is not.
Corbyn is one of very few politicians who doesn't care one way or the other about Brexit, but he won't get the Conservatives and the country out of its hole
Labour has benefited from studied avoidance of Brexit detail. This was one of many areas where Corbyn’s capabilities were misjudged by his critics. Before the general election, it looked as though his acquiescence to article 50 would alienate remainers without seducing leavers. Instead, he avoided meltdown in areas where the appetite for Brexit was strong, while persuading anxious pro-Europeans that he shared their emotional recoil from May’s nationalistic culture-warrior alignment with Ukippery.
[...] Labour has become the repository for hopes that May’s brand of Brexit can be removed from the shelves, but the party’s manifesto commits to quitting the EU on terms scarcely less severe. Meanwhile, the Conservative position is spongier than it seems.
Leavers find it difficult to accept a soft Brexit because it implies no Brexit is better
The case for any kind of semi-detached compromise is politically awkward for leavers. It smuggles in recognition that Britain’s interests are served by intimacy with the giant trading bloc on its doorstep. But then it would be madness to surrender a seat at the table where the terms of trade are settled. The logic of less Brexit being good is that no Brexit is even better.
After WW2 UK debt was 250% of GDP. How did Labour reduce it? By SPENDING on homes, NHS, public services
Austerity doesnt work
Did we really increase spending compared to paying for a 5million strong Armed Forces and the war economy backing that up?
And rebuilding places reduced to rubble? I'm not sure comparing 2017 to 1945 is all that useful.
I posted on here yesterday that reducing the armed forces to that needed to defend the UK's waters and airspace could be considered as an option. Oversea military adventures cost a lost of money and a lot of our soldiers get badly injured.
In predictable fashion, I got told off for even suggesting it.
I disagree because making ourselves weak as a former great power would surely make us a target.
And our armed forces can be a force for good. Have to be used correctly.
We are already a target of people who an army cannot fight. Some of "The Enemy" grew up here. Our former enemies were the Soviets and the Nazis. The new ones are religious zealots.
The UK is no longer a great power. In spite of all the rhetoric it is becoming more inward looking.
Refurbs always compromise compartmentation. Fire, like most things in life, takes the path of least resistance. So fire spreads through holes and voids created by retro fitted services.
All true.
However, there is a report in the Guardian of a resident who escaped from the 17th floor, with his 68 year old mother: “I went back inside the house, looked out the window. I started looking down the window – I had to really pull myself out to look down the window, from the 17th floor, and I see the fire blazing, and coming up really fast, because of the cladding – the cladding was really flammable, and it just caught up like a matchstick.”...
Another resident confirms that there wasn't a building wide fire alarm system: “We saw the fire engines, so we were looking outside at what’s going on. There was no fire alarms anywhere, because we don’t have a kind of integrated fire system – it’s just everyone’s house for itself..."
Had there been smoke detection on escape routes, and a central fire alarm system, it seems plausible that most people would have got out in time.
it'll be a number of things that add up to make things worse.
An old rule of thumb is it usually takes at least three things to crash a plane.....
Any seasoned Rupert watchers know how he operates ever since he defeated SOGAT,NGA and the feared SLADE organisation in concert with Mrs Thatcher and a few hired hit men,one of whom was a senior figure in the trade union movement.He always,always,has his man on the inside.Enter Michael Gove,Murdoch's man in the Tory cabinet and, as the pillows talk, Dacre has his woman in the cabinet too .
OK I have a ridiculous theory, after you have read this you will understand why I only got an O Level pass in economics.
In regard to tax surely the only thing that matters is the tax take, not the tax rate.
I propose to abandon all forms of tax apart from VAT.
Scrap Income tax, corporation tax, NI contributions both employer and employee, maybe not council tax but it would be on the table. All indirect taxation such as P11d, insurance premium tax etc to go as well
Increase VAT to 25%, possibly even 30%, for all apart from those on low incomes/unemployed/disability benefits. This would be easy to do with a simple card, if I can pay for something by waving my phone at a PDQ then this would be easy to implement.
All (well almost all) of that extra money in peoples pockets and on companies bottom line would filter it's way back into the economy, would create more and better paid jobs and allow for better public services. Auto enrolment has ensured companies and employees have to pay into a pension, now they could increase the level of payment so that in years to come the state pension would not be necessary.
I wonder how much tax could be raised by this, more to the point what would the total tax take be? All those billions currently offshore would come back, no more tax dodging, the economy would be awash with money.
I suspect (!) there is an obvious flaw in my plan and no doubt you lot will take great delight in pointing it out to me, but I would vote for me!
Presumably a lot of the 'North Sea job losses' don't show up in Scotland as many of the workers have returned to their homes elsewhere in the UK/Europe?
Indeed, mainly sub-contractors which further muddies the waters.
IR35 tax dodgers. If you aren't an employee, you don't have a job to lose.
Of course, they can always fold their 'company' as another tax dodge.
I sometimes wonder about all these pbers who get repeatedly asked to complete opinion polls. I was going to say that I'd never been asked, but in truth no pollster would get as far as asking before being brought to an abrupt halt.
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
So you'd be up for a zero based budgeting approach?
The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.
There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.
We need to cut the deficit. To do that we need to expand the economy. To do that we need to invest in the things that will allow it to expand.
Let me give you a direct example of what I would do. The Tories have slashed Corporation Tax to an absurdly low level but have done nothing to get tax-dodging outfits like Starfucks paying both their taxes and their employees a wage they can afford to live on.
As a radical alternative, offer Corporation Tax cuts to companies who pay their dues and who pay the living wage to their workers. Because if you want people spending £5 on coffee they need money in their pockets which they won't have if you pay them £7.50 an hour. We need to encourage these businesses to become citizens as well as corporations. As big capitalists of the past have been. Even Henry Ford got that to sell cars people have to be bale to afford them.
Capitalism was replaced by bankism. We need it back.
People should get their Thermos flask from the back of the cupboard and make their coffee/tea at home to take with them when they go out, thus saving on expenditure and making Starbucks unnecessary.
Alternatively why not drink the more healthy option - water. Let them drink water.
I shudder to think what dire state our economy would be in if people didn't spend money unnecessarily on all manner of overpriced tat at every available opportunity.
"first brexit sowed division then it made it ungovernable"
New York Times.
Roger, it grieves me immensely, but I'm coming round to the idea that Brexit is going to turn into a clusterfuck. I still believe it would have been the right thing for us, full EU was never a good fit for us, but due to the sheer incompetence of politicians on all sides, it's just undeliverable. We're governed by aresholes.
Another resident confirms that there wasn't a building wide fire alarm system: “We saw the fire engines, so we were looking outside at what’s going on. There was no fire alarms anywhere, because we don’t have a kind of integrated fire system – it’s just everyone’s house for itself..."
"first brexit sowed division then it made it ungovernable"
New York Times.
Roger, it grieves me immensely, but I'm coming round to the idea that Brexit is going to turn into a clusterfuck. I still believe it would have been the right thing for us, full EU was never a good fit for us, but due to the sheer incompetence of politicians on all sides, it's just undeliverable. We're governed by aresholes.
"Despite his other faults, Corbyn does not play to the tune of Murdoch or Dacre. To his credit."
Very true. However hr retains his Trotskyite beliefs. Snowball was the nicer of the two pigs in Animal Farm but ...
I voted Labour when Foot was the leader - he was sometimes away with the fairies (as all politicians are), but he was pragmatic and a patriot. Jezza is neither. I liked Neil Kinnock, he faced them down when necessary. I only switched to the LDs when Blair came in, but at least, he was a very competent politician.
Labour is now virtually a party for the young and the middle-class 'intellectuals' who can sometimes look down on others. the Tories eat babies occasionally but have outbreaks of guilt about it from time to time.
The LDs are floundering in an identity crisis.
I will survive a Jezza government, but I fear his self-righteous fervour. When and if it goes wrong, they will demonise anybody handy - the gnomes of Zurich, Brexit, the voting system, Farmer Jones, and because they know that only they are right, it will be right to punish the miscreants.
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
So you'd be up for a zero based budgeting approach?
The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.
There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.
We need to cut the deficit. To do that we need to expand the economy. To do that we need to invest in the things that will allow it to expand.
Let me give you a direct example of what I would do. The Tories have slashed Corporation Tax to an absurdly low level but have done nothing to get tax-dodging outfits like Starfucks paying both their taxes and their employees a wage they can afford to live on.
As a radical alternative, offer Corporation Tax cuts to companies who pay their dues and who pay the living wage to their workers. Because if you want people spending £5 on coffee they need money in their pockets which they won't have if you pay them £7.50 an hour. We need to encourage these businesses to become citizens as well as corporations. As big capitalists of the past have been. Even Henry Ford got that to sell cars people have to be bale to afford them.
Capitalism was replaced by bankism. We need it back.
While we have 40% leaving school at 16 without the required GCSE's there will always be a massive market in unskilled low paid work, such as you mention.
Until there is International agreement the huge multi-nationals will use the countries that offer the lowest CT, really the argument should be do we try and copy Ireland and go lower to get more Companies to pitch their tent here.
What we have to do is improve the diabolical State Education performance to which politicians and teaching professionals seem in total denial and somehow provide more skilled jobs for a better educated workforce. At present there is a huge low-skilled market and great competition in that market = low pay.
I sometimes wonder about all these pbers who get repeatedly asked to complete opinion polls. I was going to say that I'd never been asked, but in truth no pollster would get as far as asking before being brought to an abrupt halt.
Mr. Eagles, if we're outside the EU, how can the EU forcibly remove business from the UK?
Not making a political point, genuinely unclear on this. The story was covered [I use the term loosely] on the news last night but in such a superficial way the actual legality or mechanism involved was never specified.
Also, the EU has always wanted to harm the city or tax it for its own purposes.
Well if you read the my post and the article is explains it clearly
The bulk of euro-denominated derivatives transactions are cleared at clearing houses in Britain. EU regulators — including the European Central Bank — are concerned they will no longer have oversight of key transactions in their currency after Brexit takes effect.
This is what you voted for.
Brexit = making us all poorer
Depends if the participants are EU based or not.
If they are mainly US or UK (or the Virgin Islands) they don't have to care whether the EU has oversight or not.
This tower block fire is going to be very bad for the Conservative government...
Certainly makes London look bad
Letting loose the lunatics - wasn't the greatest of ideas Giving them plans and money to squander - Should have been the worst of our fears The dream life luxury living was a pleasant No. 10 whim, But somewhere down the line of production They left out human beings
They were gonna build communities It was going to be pie in the sky - But the piss stench hallways and broken down lifts Say the planners dream went wrong
If people were made to live in boxes God would have given them string To tie around their selves at bed time And stop their dreams falling through the ceiling
And the public school boy computers - Keep spewing out our future - The house in the country designs the 14th floor Old Mrs. Smith don't get out much more - Coitus interruptus 'cause of next doors rows Your washing gets nicked when the lights go out - Baby's scream in the nightmare throng But planners just get embarrassed when their plans GO WRONG!
OK I have a ridiculous theory, after you have read this you will understand why I only got an O Level pass in economics.
In regard to tax surely the only thing that matters is the tax take, not the tax rate.
I propose to abandon all forms of tax apart from VAT.
Scrap Income tax, corporation tax, NI contributions both employer and employee, maybe not council tax but it would be on the table. All indirect taxation such as P11d, insurance premium tax etc to go as well
Increase VAT to 25%, possibly even 30%, for all apart from those on low incomes/unemployed/disability benefits. This would be easy to do with a simple card, if I can pay for something by waving my phone at a PDQ then this would be easy to implement.
All (well almost all) of that extra money in peoples pockets and on companies bottom line would filter it's way back into the economy, would create more and better paid jobs and allow for better public services. Auto enrolment has ensured companies and employees have to pay into a pension, now they could increase the level of payment so that in years to come the state pension would not be necessary.
I wonder how much tax could be raised by this, more to the point what would the total tax take be? All those billions currently offshore would come back, no more tax dodging, the economy would be awash with money.
I suspect (!) there is an obvious flaw in my plan and no doubt you lot will take great delight in pointing it out to me, but I would vote for me!
Not so much Laffer Curve as Laffer Flatearth!
VAT is 20% currently. Even assuming no change in buying habits, it woudl need to go up Waaaaaaay more than to 30% to replace ALL TAXES
It would be cheaper to drive to Calais once a month to do grocery shopping in your world. For anyone north of about...oooh...Leeds
We don't have to vote for misery. The war against dignity has been waged by that fucker Dacre aided and abetted by that fucker Duncan Smith. I don't care about "we can't afford it" arguments - we can't afford NOT to treat people with compassion and dignity because very soon it will be us that are old and ill and demented and I don't want to be treated like shit as this generation has been.
to me its very simple. Too many Conservatives has lost their mind. Utterly disconnected from what this country represents, utterly divorced from understanding of people less fortunate than themselves. Its not the party thats to blame, just the sociopathic wing who preach Christian Values whilst stomping their boot on the throat of the disabled because they're "scroungers".
This tower block fire is going to be very bad for the Conservative government...
Tragically it may well be the defining moment that the establishments mistreatment of the people is writ large. Everything that is wrong with the UK in one awful conflagration. Civil unrest a real possibility if criminal negligence by those who should protect us is shown. Very very dangerous times.
"first brexit sowed division then it made it ungovernable"
New York Times.
Roger, it grieves me immensely, but I'm coming round to the idea that Brexit is going to turn into a clusterfuck. I still believe it would have been the right thing for us, full EU was never a good fit for us, but due to the sheer incompetence of politicians on all sides, it's just undeliverable. We're governed by aresholes.
That was obvious in advance though, surely?
Yes and no. They're tribal politicians, so I expected some wankery, but it is blatantly obvious now that there was never any plan, on any side,as to what to do if Leave won. Plus, our politicians left, right, and centre are fucking useless.
I'm amazed at how quickly some posters can confidently diagnose the underlying causes while this awful fire is still burning.
To be fair, a few posters have linked to complaints from residents that warned the buildings were a deathtrap haven't they? I wouldn't have thought they were motivated by much more than that
Comments
The fundamental issue is that a wealthy country such as the UK *should* be able to provide a decent support network for those who are less fortunate. This should be entirely possible with the current resources that the government has.
There is a vast amount of money wasted, too many vested interested and it's only the "easy" stuff that gets cut.
You also have the advantage that such people are likely to be in to canvassers when they call, which doesn't negate my original assertion.
People will be furious at Brexit, but it will take time to build. Right now we're simply in the position where the shine has been taken off the original mandate and a high level of political uncertainty has muddied the water as far as where Brexit might be going.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SGkPQqosDbVL9tSX_uMNaXPGiW2z02z2fchDezlyNss/htmlview
Time we stopped setting spending to the tax take and started adjusting the tax take to meet required spending. And when things are falling short term then excess wealth needs to be taken back into public use.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-only-publicly-owned-railway-7188623
Austerity doesnt work
Running the economy into a wall isn't virtuous, it's stupid.
IDS resigned because people wanted to remove a lot of the PIP stuff that helped people claim the full amount. He was a terrible leader but he's not a bad man.
Just because we disagree on how best to run the country doesn't necessarily make the other side evil.
I think too may from all sides need to remember that.
The argument for QE was always that taking the short-term correction (aka recession/depression) would have been worse. History will tell, I guess. But it always seemed unlikely that a 'magic solution' had no unintended consequences.
In terms of the economy, I remain convinced that we are heading for a sustained period of inflation above interest rates. Of all the solutions to the debt crisis, it is the least unattractive to the politicians, provided they can keep a lid on society meanwhile (which tbf is starting to look like a big IF). If you want an investment tip, buy INXG, then sit and wait.
Your posts are highly emotional and increasingly irrational. The Conservatives are trying to put the country on a sustainable footing.
Can the EU prevent this?
It may not be popular with the , but their considered view is considerably less important than that of the bloke down the pub"
http://aboutasfarasdelgados.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/the-problem-with-opinion-polls-polls.html?m=1
YouGov did this apparently. The chatterati didn't like it
London clears nearly three times the volume of US $ - 'their currency their rules'?
Let me give you a direct example of what I would do. The Tories have slashed Corporation Tax to an absurdly low level but have done nothing to get tax-dodging outfits like Starfucks paying both their taxes and their employees a wage they can afford to live on.
As a radical alternative, offer Corporation Tax cuts to companies who pay their dues and who pay the living wage to their workers. Because if you want people spending £5 on coffee they need money in their pockets which they won't have if you pay them £7.50 an hour. We need to encourage these businesses to become citizens as well as corporations. As big capitalists of the past have been. Even Henry Ford got that to sell cars people have to be bale to afford them.
Capitalism was replaced by bankism. We need it back.
I am delighted we voted to Leave it, and we will despite this desperate rearguard action by the bitter-Enders.
A proposed law that would require landlords to make homes fit for human habitation would be an unnecessary regulatory burden, a Conservative MP has argued.
Go on, have a guess which MP that was.
What's more surprising is that it appears that Labour also greatly under-estimated their own support. (I know one analyst who works with Labour and who was expecting a bigger Tory majority than most of the models listed in Mike's header piece.) The explanation might very simply be that it wasn't the traditional voters who bumped up the Labour total, so Labour's own canvassing also missed them.
And rebuilding places reduced to rubble? I'm not sure comparing 2017 to 1945 is all that useful.
Do they know something we don't?
People should get their Thermos flask from the back of the cupboard and make their coffee/tea at home to take with them when they go out, thus saving on expenditure and making Starbucks unnecessary.
Alternatively why not drink the more healthy option - water. Let them drink water.
They are just stating the obvious IMO.
Interestingly, your words reflect exactly mine on leaving the EU.
My guess is that they have some sort of "engagement index" made up of a composite of all these answers.
The Survation out yesterday had to double-weight the Sun readers to get a balanced sample, which is a fairly big clue as to which paper the unengaged read, if they read one. Indeed, surely the days of weighting by newspaper preference are over? It used to be a good metric on which to categorise people - YouGov still regularly asks which newspaper websites I have visited, but since I end up visiting most of them now and again, the data must be a lot less revealing.
In predictable fashion, I got told off for even suggesting it.
That was not accidental
Despite his other faults, Corbyn does not play to the tune of Murdoch or Dacre. To his credit.
However, there is a report in the Guardian of a resident who escaped from the 17th floor, with his 68 year old mother:
“I went back inside the house, looked out the window. I started looking down the window – I had to really pull myself out to look down the window, from the 17th floor, and I see the fire blazing, and coming up really fast, because of the cladding – the cladding was really flammable, and it just caught up like a matchstick.”...
Another resident confirms that there wasn't a building wide fire alarm system:
“We saw the fire engines, so we were looking outside at what’s going on. There was no fire alarms anywhere, because we don’t have a kind of integrated fire system – it’s just everyone’s house for itself..."
Had there been smoke detection on escape routes, and a central fire alarm system, it seems plausible that most people would have got out in time.
Plus Labour had to cut back on the NHS to fund defence.
And our armed forces can be a force for good. Have to be used correctly.
Reflecting on your points from yesterday and before, I think the political differences between you and me are now so large as to be unbridgeable.
Shame, but thank you for replying.
Like most great tragedies, it'll be a number of things that add up to make things worse.
So... if I got paid for some writing in euros that could become subject to EU regulation/oversight?
It was often said that if Scotland left the UK they could use the pound, not in a currency union but as a tradeable commodity. What's the difference here?
[Not arguing, I'm just after clarification because it sounds really odd to me].
Theresa May's job was to let the British public down gently on the undeliverable promises made by Leave. Instead she doubled down on the rhetoric:
The more common position was the one cultivated by Boris Johnson – blithe pretence that economic benefits of EU membership would still be available; that a cost incurred by departure was really a prize; that the cake could be had, eaten and given to the NHS all at once.
May’s task was to explain to the British public that this option did not exist, but she ducked the challenge. Instead she concocted a hard and impenetrable Brexit line [...] EU leaders were not forewarned. They have taken May at her word, and are now ready to negotiate on the assumption that the UK is still wedded to the wild course of action advertised by its prime minister last autumn. A hung parliament suggests that the UK is not.
Corbyn is one of very few politicians who doesn't care one way or the other about Brexit, but he won't get the Conservatives and the country out of its hole
Labour has benefited from studied avoidance of Brexit detail. This was one of many areas where Corbyn’s capabilities were misjudged by his critics. Before the general election, it looked as though his acquiescence to article 50 would alienate remainers without seducing leavers. Instead, he avoided meltdown in areas where the appetite for Brexit was strong, while persuading anxious pro-Europeans that he shared their emotional recoil from May’s nationalistic culture-warrior alignment with Ukippery.
[...] Labour has become the repository for hopes that May’s brand of Brexit can be removed from the shelves, but the party’s manifesto commits to quitting the EU on terms scarcely less severe. Meanwhile, the Conservative position is spongier than it seems.
Leavers find it difficult to accept a soft Brexit because it implies no Brexit is better
The case for any kind of semi-detached compromise is politically awkward for leavers. It smuggles in recognition that Britain’s interests are served by intimacy with the giant trading bloc on its doorstep. But then it would be madness to surrender a seat at the table where the terms of trade are settled. The logic of less Brexit being good is that no Brexit is even better.
Halfway through I told the pollster I was 10/10 politically engaged even though he didn't ask it :>
New York Times.
The UK is no longer a great power. In spite of all the rhetoric it is becoming more inward looking.
Things were (rightly) very austere in the 1940s under Labour.
We didn't waste money on things like Starbucks or eating out. Make do and mend era.
In regard to tax surely the only thing that matters is the tax take, not the tax rate.
I propose to abandon all forms of tax apart from VAT.
Scrap Income tax, corporation tax, NI contributions both employer and employee, maybe not council tax but it would be on the table. All indirect taxation such as P11d, insurance premium tax etc to go as well
Increase VAT to 25%, possibly even 30%, for all apart from those on low incomes/unemployed/disability benefits. This would be easy to do with a simple card, if I can pay for something by waving my phone at a PDQ then this would be easy to implement.
All (well almost all) of that extra money in peoples pockets and on companies bottom line would filter it's way back into the economy, would create more and better paid jobs and allow for better public services. Auto enrolment has ensured companies and employees have to pay into a pension, now they could increase the level of payment so that in years to come the state pension would not be necessary.
I wonder how much tax could be raised by this, more to the point what would the total tax take be? All those billions currently offshore would come back, no more tax dodging, the economy would be awash with money.
I suspect (!) there is an obvious flaw in my plan and no doubt you lot will take great delight in pointing it out to me, but I would vote for me!
Not so much Laffer Curve as Laffer Flatearth!
Of course, they can always fold their 'company' as another tax dodge.
I still believe it would have been the right thing for us, full EU was never a good fit for us, but due to the sheer incompetence of politicians on all sides, it's just undeliverable. We're governed by aresholes.
"Despite his other faults, Corbyn does not play to the tune of Murdoch or Dacre. To his credit."
Very true. However hr retains his Trotskyite beliefs. Snowball was the nicer of the two pigs in Animal Farm but ...
I voted Labour when Foot was the leader - he was sometimes away with the fairies (as all politicians are), but he was pragmatic and a patriot. Jezza is neither. I liked Neil Kinnock, he faced them down when necessary. I only switched to the LDs when Blair came in, but at least, he was a very competent politician.
Labour is now virtually a party for the young and the middle-class 'intellectuals' who can sometimes look down on others. the Tories eat babies occasionally but have outbreaks of guilt about it from time to time.
The LDs are floundering in an identity crisis.
I will survive a Jezza government, but I fear his self-righteous fervour. When and if it goes wrong, they will demonise anybody handy - the gnomes of Zurich, Brexit, the voting system, Farmer Jones, and because they know that only they are right, it will be right to punish the miscreants.
Boxer, the horse, had better watch out.
Until there is International agreement the huge multi-nationals will use the countries that offer the lowest CT, really the argument should be do we try and copy Ireland and go lower to get more Companies to pitch their tent here.
What we have to do is improve the diabolical State Education performance to which politicians and teaching professionals seem in total denial and somehow provide more skilled jobs for a better educated workforce. At present there is a huge low-skilled market and great competition in that market = low pay.
It was always true that no Brexit is better than any Brexit, but the headbangers wanted it anyway.
Meanwhile, Farage is apparently unhappy about the current state of Brexit.
Shame.
If they are mainly US or UK (or the Virgin Islands) they don't have to care whether the EU has oversight or not.
Giving them plans and money to squander -
Should have been the worst of our fears
The dream life luxury living was a pleasant No. 10 whim,
But somewhere down the line of production
They left out human beings
They were gonna build communities
It was going to be pie in the sky -
But the piss stench hallways and broken down lifts
Say the planners dream went wrong
If people were made to live in boxes
God would have given them string
To tie around their selves at bed time
And stop their dreams falling through the ceiling
And the public school boy computers -
Keep spewing out our future -
The house in the country designs the 14th floor
Old Mrs. Smith don't get out much more -
Coitus interruptus 'cause of next doors rows
Your washing gets nicked when the lights go out -
Baby's scream in the nightmare throng
But planners just get embarrassed when their plans GO WRONG!
It would be cheaper to drive to Calais once a month to do grocery shopping in your world. For anyone north of about...oooh...Leeds
Civil unrest a real possibility if criminal negligence by those who should protect us is shown.
Very very dangerous times.