I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
I wonder, is OGH's email a plant designed to getting us, and people like us, discussing that and not Johnson's, and his sidekick Williamson's, politicalisation of the post of National Security Adviser in the UK.
Williamson was dire on R4 just now. If Johnson appoints on merit, he should soon be gone.
Williamson had a reputation for being an effective whip, which might be where should have stayed.
He's a terrible front line politician, combining the stiffness of May with the creepiness of Mandleson, without having the ability of either.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Scottish politics is dominated by the Independence debate. Its extremely unhealthy, leads to the neglect of various priorities and is deeply frustrating but it is what it is.
SKS probably doing his level best not to stick his hand into the meat grinder that is TERF / trans politics, but he’s probably going to have to work out a way to either thread that needle or pick a side (which will have to be the trans side, there’s no way the Labour party will wear anything else) without frightening the horses.
Societal change is not always easy & I understand the visceral response that some women have to the idea of trans-women, but TERF types are busy repeating the same tired old arguments that were used against gay people in the 70s: When you find yourself sharing political space with US Dominionist Christians it might be time to take a long hard look at yourself and ask "are we the baddies?".
If you’re using the actions of one or two sociopaths as a stick to beat an entire vulnerable community, just as the actions of paedophiles were used in the past as an excuse to repress gay people, then your arguments are deeply suspect. They ought to be able to stand up on their own, without needing the shock value of the actions of individuals that could have been prevented in far less interventionist ways.
Fundamentally it comes done to conflicting rights. Women’s refuges are about protecting people and making them *feel* safe. If they are accessible to trans people in the early stages of the process (not sure of the right terminology but no offence intended) and who still physically resemble men then that could undermine the process.
In many ways it’s a similar debate to abortion: do the rights of the woman to choose outweigh the right of the foetus to life.
Where you have conflicting rights there needs to be a dividing line. It is dispiriting that so many activists (on both sides) seem unable to recognise the perspectives of others and demand that they get 100% of what they want vs finding some acceptable middle ground.
It would be useful to know what these differences are, not in terms of labels but in terms of concrete policies and examples without using useless words like 'left' and 'right'.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
If Osborne crippled the economy why did the UK grow faster than the Eurozone in the past decade?
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
It would be useful to know what these differences are, not in terms of labels but in terms of concrete policies and examples without using useless words like 'left' and 'right'.
It would be useful to know what these differences are, not in terms of labels but in terms of concrete policies and examples without using useless words like 'left' and 'right'.
I wonder, is OGH's email a plant designed to getting us, and people like us, discussing that and not Johnson's, and his sidekick Williamson's, politicalisation of the post of National Security Adviser in the UK.
I’m not sure many people actually knew we had a NSA let alone what he/she does. I thought it was all contained within the inter working of MI5/6 GCHQ etc
The National Security Adviser role is a newish one created by the Cameron government. The new chap used to run the Scotch Whisky Association and negotiate food standards with the EU so I imagine he has been brought in to review army catering.
As Napoleon once said (attrib) “an army marches on its stomach”
For comparison, on the worst day of the outbreak in the UK, we recorded 8,600 cases, and then it fell away quite steeply. Florida is still going up fast.
A disaster is potentially unfolding there
I wonder if it's too late for Trump to get behind masks. Perhaps if they were red masks, with Make America Great Again on them.
I'm really not clear on the right wing objection to masks. You protect yourself with a gun, why not protect yourself with a mask? It has the added benefit of stopping the deep state from applying facial recognition software on you successfully. Lockdown - I completely see the objection to. Masks, not so much.
Indeed: .
Masks
Otherwise, it's a rather dystopian placebo.
Masks are not really to protect you (they’re pretty crap at that role, although there is weak evidence is they do have some effect). What masks are very effective at is protecting everybody else from you, should you happen to be infected & not realise it.
So masks are essentially communitarian. We wear them & accept a certain mild level of discomfort in order to protect those around us from the possibility of being infected by a horrible disease. The more pro-social a society is, the more likely it is that people will wear masks & the less affected by Covid-19 that society will be.
(An aside: I bet the anti-vaxx conspiracy groups are full of anti-mask types.)
Sweden is essentially communitarian and a pro-social society, but I can tell you that mask-wearing is extremely unusual here.
Admittedly I almost never use public transport so I’m missing that environment, but I do work in a busy office and visit libraries, shops, hospital, tourist attractions and other public spaces, and I see a mask-wearer maybe once a week. Still taken aback every time I see one.
Jeez. I'm not repeating Phil's erroneous message which should be banned for spreading false virus info.
Face masks are clearly helpful for preventing the spread of this respiratory borne illness, both for those who have the virus and those who don't wish to catch it.
There will always be nay'sayers. There are some who think the moon landings never happened and that if you sail out beyond California you fall off the edge of the earth.
Spreading such nonsense in this case kills people.
Isn’t that what Phil is saying?
Wearing a mask protects other people not you. If everyone wears a mask everyone is safer
This is exactly what I was saying. They do protect you as well, but that protection is limited - the (weak) evidence is that you benefit from a reduction in exposure that’s worth having, but not enough to expose yourself unnecessarily.
The available evidence suggests that masks are of little to maybe limited benefit at protecting you, but pretty good at protecting others if you’re infected. Everyone should wear them when in public in order to protect the community from asymptomatic infection.
What does "in public" mean? Outdoors, and by yourself? Or whenever you go indoors "in public"? Or anywhere anytime 'just in case' ?
They are useless in protecting you or anyone else from infection unless you are within 2-3m of someone else in a confined environment. Personally, when I go shopping, I'm there for 15-20 minutes max (once or twice a week) and never go at peak times, nor get within 2m of anyone.
It's sensible risk balancing: in an area where there have been no new cases for weeks (East Hampshire, for example) and population density is low wearing them makes virtually no difference. Against that, you have the social and emotional effects of not being able to see another human smile or face, read someone's lips and body language, breathe properly, or understand them clearly. And they upset children too.
So on balance, no: I won't wear them *everywhere* in public. I wear them in a medical environment, around vulnerable people (like care homes, or doctor's surgeries) or on the tube or train. But, no: not elsewhere.
There is no need for zealotry on masks. Just common sense.
Simple really wear masks in indoor public space unless eating or drinking and outdoors when within 2 m of other people, make it mandatory to carry one problem solved.
No, that will lead to a new wave of neighbour snitching and busybody policing.
In areas of local lockdown where the risk warrants it, yes: perhaps. But, elsewhere, no. It's disproportionate. And HMG currently agrees with me on that.
Eliminating all transmission risk to virtually zero isn't the only objective. There's also another important one of returning social normality, reducing the feeling of isolation and improving people's mental health and, for that, seeing another human face is important.
I find masks bothersome, but if it means (a) it reduces infections of a dangerous and highly contagious disease and (b) wearing one allows you to do something safely that you couldn't otherwise do then, absolutely, yes. It's not difficult:
1. You are required to wear a mask in public spaces where you may come within two metres of another person, unless given specific exemption.
Reasons are given, expectations are set and the rest is detail.
SKS probably doing his level best not to stick his hand into the meat grinder that is TERF / trans politics, but he’s probably going to have to work out a way to either thread that needle or pick a side (which will have to be the trans side, there’s no way the Labour party will wear anything else) without frightening the horses.
Societal change is not always easy & I understand the visceral response that some women have to the idea of trans-women, but TERF types are busy repeating the same tired old arguments that were used against gay people in the 70s: When you find yourself sharing political space with US Dominionist Christians it might be time to take a long hard look at yourself and ask "are we the baddies?".
If you’re using the actions of one or two sociopaths as a stick to beat an entire vulnerable community, just as the actions of paedophiles were used in the past as an excuse to repress gay people, then your arguments are deeply suspect. They ought to be able to stand up on their own, without needing the shock value of the actions of individuals that could have been prevented in far less interventionist ways.
Fundamentally it comes done to conflicting rights. Women’s refuges are about protecting people and making them *feel* safe. If they are accessible to trans people in the early stages of the process (not sure of the right terminology but no offence intended) and who still physically resemble men then that could undermine the process.
Women's shelters have the absolute and total right to refuse trans-women entry. No-one is proposing any changes to legislation that would alter that.
Any women's shelter or rape crisis centre that accepts trans women has freely chosen to do so and has set their own limits on what they find acceptable.
There are anti-trans activists who repeat the claim that shelters will be forced to accept trans-women but this is not true. It is exactly the same tactic as used by anti-gay marriage proponents who kept claiming that churches would be forced to marry gay couples.
It would be useful to know what these differences are, not in terms of labels but in terms of concrete policies and examples without using useless words like 'left' and 'right'.
Yes it is. Have you read the five economic questions? All left wing questions - and we know the public is more likely to say yes than no to a leading question like that.
Its a prime example of Yes Minister's view on opinion polling. Ask leading questions, get leading answers.
If you'd asked five questions from a right wing perspective the response may have been different.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
I saw the debate and I would say a (benign and totally asymptomatic) plague on both your houses. The 2014 result was an emphatic vote for the Union. It wasn't "No-but-Yes". However the trend to independence in the last year is real.
and gathering pace
Agreed.
Not remotely scientific, but I note a shift on my social media. I very rarely talk politics there these days, but I’ve noticed that some unexpected friends and associates have been starting to post political stuff when they haven’t previously. In particular I note that some Labour-supporting friends have now very decisively shifted to Yes, and aren’t shy on telling people about it. Very, very heartening!
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Absolutely!
Keynes didn't think we should spend as much as we could afford at all times. He thought we should spend countercyclically.
When Osborne took over the UK was not undergoing any economic shocks, there was no recession, we were simply spending too much. Cutting the deficit then was necessary.
And thank goodness it was done because now we are undergoing a recession, a shock and thankfully the roof was fixed while the sun was shining. Thankfully we went into this recession with a much smaller deficit than we went into the last one with ... Despite Browns toxic legacy.
So now we can spend. Because we must and because we can afford it. Because we had austerity we can afford it now.
Agreed, except that Osborne’s error was to clamp down on day-to-day government expenditure immediately after a deflationary bust whilst doing nothing to fill the inevitable demand gap that would result. Since the non-governmental sector was not able to expand due to debt overhang, the result was an anaemic recovery & unnecessary under-employment. The government of the day should have filled in the demand gap with an infrastructure program: Started on HS2 early, built schools, insulate council housing (which would have paid dividends in the future) etc etc.
The National Security Adviser role is a newish one created by the Cameron government. The new chap used to run the Scotch Whisky Association and negotiate food standards with the EU so I imagine he has been brought in to review army catering.
If he can eat a tin of babies' heads cold he will have earned his position.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
The overall spending envelope went up (“no austerity”)
Because of the political decision to protect healthcare, the pensions triple lock and DfID increases there was a huge amount of reduction in other areas to compensate (which in practical terms felt like austerity for many).
Ultimately the term was just political air cover for Cameron and Osborne’s spending choices
There is never any austerity when it comes to buying electoral support, throwing money at a political crisis or funding vanity projects.
So another Johnson recovery announcement, £1 billion on schools over ten years (£100m/ year) not really a lot, any idea of the UK annual schools capital budget? and yet again who’s going to build the new schools.
Fact check
760 million over the next academic year
You think a “schools building programme” can be put in place from scratch over that time period?
Fact check - govt do fund schools capital already.
Schools are being built (and knocked down) every year.
Increasing the budget by 13% *should* mean increasing the actual building by more than 13% - fixed costs *should* stay fixed.
Even if this is a 20% increase in actual building, that wouldn't stretch the construction industry very much. Schools are not exotic buildings.
If Labour look like they'll do well in England, Scottish Unionists will switch from Tory to Labour as their best hope of getting Scottish representation into the UK Government more in tune politically with most Scots and thus preserving the Union.
Me too.
Agreed, but all that’ll achieve is that the SCons and SLab swap their poor second and poor third placings. Hard to see how six-ish SLab MPs are going to “preserve the Union”. The will of the Scottish nation is becoming increasingly clear. How long is little England planning on sticking their finger in the crumbling dyke? It’s not as though you have other worries to seek.
There will only be indyref2 allowed if Starmer becomes PM, as long as we have a Tory majority government the SNP could win every MSP at Holyrood in 2021 and Boris would still block it
Does bullying make you feel good? I feel sorry for folk like you.
Go to church and pray for guidance. You have allowed darkness to infect your soul.
Oh diddums what bullying?
Besides having an independence referendum denied is great for you. This way you don't lose it, resentment simmers and when it's finally held you might actually win.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Technically, unless one envisages some future point at which government debt is zero, not all spending has to be paid for eventually. But certainly unless you want debt to explode then some semblance of sanity has to return to the public finances at some point. My guess is that Boris Johnson +economic knowledge: zero) is not the best guide to understanding the government's approach.
Boris has always been opposed to austerity (as were most experts). Boris won the 2019 election pledged to increase investment on infrastructure and public services. Since no pb Tories (or Conservative backbenchers for that matter) read their manifesto, this might come as a shock. Boris ran against Cameron and May. Boris won by being a better Corbyn than Jeremy Corbyn. And all of this while Covid-19 was just a twinkle in a Wuhan bat's eye.
It does not shock me, indeed I support it
And has anyone heard from Alastair Meeks recently
I do hope he is ok and maybe we have not been posting at the same time
Alastair and I do not agree on several issues, but he is a valuable contributor to the site
I wonder, is OGH's email a plant designed to getting us, and people like us, discussing that and not Johnson's, and his sidekick Williamson's, politicalisation of the post of National Security Adviser in the UK.
Williamson was dire on R4 just now. If Johnson appoints on merit, he should soon be gone.
Williamson had a reputation for being an effective whip, which might be where should have stayed.
He's a terrible front line politician, combining the stiffness of May with the creepiness of Mandleson, without having the ability of either.
One shouldn't judge someone on their voice, but I just can't imagine him being effective as a whip with that voice. I can't imagine him being either persuasive or threatening.
For those who claim to want more spending justifying it by the excuse of "endogenous growth theory" they never ever seem to answer the point that the UK was at full employment so should have cut spending more not less under that theory.
I wonder why that is? Is it just that they want more spending and will latch on any excuse to do it.
So another Johnson recovery announcement, £1 billion on schools over ten years (£100m/ year) not really a lot, any idea of the UK annual schools capital budget? and yet again who’s going to build the new schools.
Fact check
760 million over the next academic year
You think a “schools building programme” can be put in place from scratch over that time period?
Fact check - govt do fund schools capital already.
Schools are being built (and knocked down) every year.
Increasing the budget by 13% *should* mean increasing the actual building by more than 13% - fixed costs *should* stay fixed.
Even if this is a 20% increase in actual building, that wouldn't stretch the construction industry very much. Schools are not exotic buildings.
Of itself it isn’t going to stretch the construction industry, alongside all the other ‘projects’ it is going to stretch the available resource.
As an aside who is going to decide which schools are renewed or renovated? With the demise of the LEA who gets to choose and will the decision making process be open and above board? The fact that it appears they are going to be in recently tory won constituencies stinks to high heaven, but then labour would do the same. Time to be shut of these two parties who’s only existence is to protect and feed their paymasters.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
I saw the debate and I would say a (benign and totally asymptomatic) plague on both your houses. The 2014 result was an emphatic vote for the Union. It wasn't "No-but-Yes". However the trend to independence in the last year is real.
and gathering pace
Agreed.
Not remotely scientific, but I note a shift on my social media. I very rarely talk politics there these days, but I’ve noticed that some unexpected friends and associates have been starting to post political stuff when they haven’t previously. In particular I note that some Labour-supporting friends have now very decisively shifted to Yes, and aren’t shy on telling people about it. Very, very heartening!
There is nothing heartening about the politics of division that is typified by backward looking nationalism.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
I saw the debate and I would say a (benign and totally asymptomatic) plague on both your houses. The 2014 result was an emphatic vote for the Union. It wasn't "No-but-Yes". However the trend to independence in the last year is real.
and gathering pace
Agreed.
Not remotely scientific, but I note a shift on my social media. I very rarely talk politics there these days, but I’ve noticed that some unexpected friends and associates have been starting to post political stuff when they haven’t previously. In particular I note that some Labour-supporting friends have now very decisively shifted to Yes, and aren’t shy on telling people about it. Very, very heartening!
Under a Tory Government maybe but only a Labour government would allow indyref2
Actually in none of those polls is Yes over 50% and in 4 Yes is doing no better or even worse than the 45% it got in 2014
phew saved by our resident Scottish expert part time tank commander
HYUFD ready to power up the A68 at the first sign of referendal stirrings.
Is that Johnson’s new ground transport to help project the UK global image and to match his plane?
It's the ARTEC Boxer and is just your bog standard story of British defence procurement. The Army decided the future of battlefield mobility was 30 ton 8x8s and joined the Boxer program with France, Germany and the Netherlands in 1998. The British bailed in 2003, pissed around with various other projects that came to nothing for 14 years then rejoined (no laughing at the back) in 2017. Some may actually be delivered in time for the program' silver jubilee in 2023.
SKS probably doing his level best not to stick his hand into the meat grinder that is TERF / trans politics, but he’s probably going to have to work out a way to either thread that needle or pick a side (which will have to be the trans side, there’s no way the Labour party will wear anything else) without frightening the horses.
Societal change is not always easy & I understand the visceral response that some women have to the idea of trans-women, but TERF types are busy repeating the same tired old arguments that were used against gay people in the 70s: When you find yourself sharing political space with US Dominionist Christians it might be time to take a long hard look at yourself and ask "are we the baddies?".
If you’re using the actions of one or two sociopaths as a stick to beat an entire vulnerable community, just as the actions of paedophiles were used in the past as an excuse to repress gay people, then your arguments are deeply suspect. They ought to be able to stand up on their own, without needing the shock value of the actions of individuals that could have been prevented in far less interventionist ways.
Fundamentally it comes done to conflicting rights. Women’s refuges are about protecting people and making them *feel* safe. If they are accessible to trans people in the early stages of the process (not sure of the right terminology but no offence intended) and who still physically resemble men then that could undermine the process.
Women's shelters have the absolute and total right to refuse trans-women entry. No-one is proposing any changes to legislation that would alter that.
Any women's shelter or rape crisis centre that accepts trans women has freely chosen to do so and has set their own limits on what they find acceptable.
There are anti-trans activists who repeat the claim that shelters will be forced to accept trans-women but this is not true. It is exactly the same tactic as used by anti-gay marriage proponents who kept claiming that churches would be forced to marry gay couples.
Fair enough. It’s not a debate I’ve paid any attention to whatsoever (beyond converting one of the gents at my office to a unisex facility). That’s the only claim I’m aware of but I’ve not checked at all whether it’s accurate or fair.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Absolutely!
Keynes didn't think we should spend as much as we could afford at all times. He thought we should spend countercyclically.
When Osborne took over the UK was not undergoing any economic shocks, there was no recession, we were simply spending too much. Cutting the deficit then was necessary.
And thank goodness it was done because now we are undergoing a recession, a shock and thankfully the roof was fixed while the sun was shining. Thankfully we went into this recession with a much smaller deficit than we went into the last one with ... Despite Browns toxic legacy.
So now we can spend. Because we must and because we can afford it. Because we had austerity we can afford it now.
Agreed, except that Osborne’s error was to clamp down on day-to-day government expenditure immediately after a deflationary bust whilst doing nothing to fill the inevitable demand gap that would result. Since the non-governmental sector was not able to expand due to debt overhang, the result was an anaemic recovery & unnecessary under-employment. The government of the day should have filled in the demand gap with an infrastructure program: Started on HS2 early, built schools, insulate council housing (which would have paid dividends in the future) etc etc.
But here we are. Better late than never, eh?
What demand gap?
The economy was growing faster than rivals and we had full employment for most of the last decade. What demand gap are you banging on about?
So another Johnson recovery announcement, £1 billion on schools over ten years (£100m/ year) not really a lot, any idea of the UK annual schools capital budget? and yet again who’s going to build the new schools.
Fact check
760 million over the next academic year
You think a “schools building programme” can be put in place from scratch over that time period?
Fact check - govt do fund schools capital already.
Schools are being built (and knocked down) every year.
Increasing the budget by 13% *should* mean increasing the actual building by more than 13% - fixed costs *should* stay fixed.
Even if this is a 20% increase in actual building, that wouldn't stretch the construction industry very much. Schools are not exotic buildings.
Of itself it isn’t going to stretch the construction industry, alongside all the other ‘projects’ it is going to stretch the available resource.
You aren’t expecting huge slump in demand post Covid? Office building will be near zero, for starters.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
If Osborne crippled the economy why did the UK grow faster than the Eurozone in the past decade?
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
The euro-zone was crippled by the Euro & the restrictions placed on governments by the Bundesbank, sorry, the ECB.
The UK labour market has been "full", but the majority of jobs added were minimum-wage & very low-productivity. To take one tiny example: you can employ people to wash cars, or you can invest in a mechanised car wash & employ the same people to do something more productive (like build schools say, if you need more school buildings, but whatever...) elsewhere. Which would be better for the economy? The latter obviously. Yet the UK is full of people washing cars & the mechanised car washes have gone out of business. Which tells you that wage pressure is completely absent.
In some ways the UK economy has gone backwards in the decade.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
Every Scottish constituency can be modeled as a simplistic linear model based on national voteshare.
In the North and North East of Scotland the swings available are Labour-SNP and LD-Con. The only constituency where that didn't happen was Banff where Lab vote went Con.
You know that and I know that and anybody with an interest in electoral behaviour and psephology (eg PBers) knows that, but the other 99% of the population don’t know that. Which is why SLab muddying the waters will always work to some extent. Some poor Unionist mugs will be persuaded to switch from SCon to SLab in the wrong seats. I cannot claim that this keeps me awake at night 😊
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
I saw the debate and I would say a (benign and totally asymptomatic) plague on both your houses. The 2014 result was an emphatic vote for the Union. It wasn't "No-but-Yes". However the trend to independence in the last year is real.
and gathering pace
Agreed.
Not remotely scientific, but I note a shift on my social media. I very rarely talk politics there these days, but I’ve noticed that some unexpected friends and associates have been starting to post political stuff when they haven’t previously. In particular I note that some Labour-supporting friends have now very decisively shifted to Yes, and aren’t shy on telling people about it. Very, very heartening!
I note a similar shift on Brexit. The anti-EU jibes..... straight bananas and so on have stopped. The jibes are anti Brexit and anti Johnson now. The Magic Money Tree is just starting to feature, too.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
There is fluidity between SNP and Labour and also between SNP and Conservatives. The Tories had their relative success under Ruth Davidson in significant part because of switchers from SNP to Tory. These people had voted SNP after the 2014 referendum and presumably don't object to independence in principle. (I think we discussed this before and you disputed my claim).
Back to SNP/Labour supporters. A chunk of these previous SNP supporters may switch to Labour in a 2024 election if they prefer a Labour rather than a Conservative government at Westminster and if they are dissatisfied with the SNP at the time of the election.
“... and also between SNP and Conservatives. The Tories had their relative success under Ruth Davidson in significant part because of switchers from SNP to Tory“
Nope. Ruthie’s 2017 (ahem) “triumph” (ie. not losing quite as badly as usual) was down to SLD to SCon swings, not SNP to SCon. The SNP’s problem that year was abstentions.
SKS probably doing his level best not to stick his hand into the meat grinder that is TERF / trans politics, but he’s probably going to have to work out a way to either thread that needle or pick a side (which will have to be the trans side, there’s no way the Labour party will wear anything else) without frightening the horses.
Societal change is not always easy & I understand the visceral response that some women have to the idea of trans-women, but TERF types are busy repeating the same tired old arguments that were used against gay people in the 70s: When you find yourself sharing political space with US Dominionist Christians it might be time to take a long hard look at yourself and ask "are we the baddies?".
If you’re using the actions of one or two sociopaths as a stick to beat an entire vulnerable community, just as the actions of paedophiles were used in the past as an excuse to repress gay people, then your arguments are deeply suspect. They ought to be able to stand up on their own, without needing the shock value of the actions of individuals that could have been prevented in far less interventionist ways.
Fundamentally it comes done to conflicting rights. Women’s refuges are about protecting people and making them *feel* safe. If they are accessible to trans people in the early stages of the process (not sure of the right terminology but no offence intended) and who still physically resemble men then that could undermine the process.
Women's shelters have the absolute and total right to refuse trans-women entry. No-one is proposing any changes to legislation that would alter that.
Any women's shelter or rape crisis centre that accepts trans women has freely chosen to do so and has set their own limits on what they find acceptable.
There are anti-trans activists who repeat the claim that shelters will be forced to accept trans-women but this is not true. It is exactly the same tactic as used by anti-gay marriage proponents who kept claiming that churches would be forced to marry gay couples.
You're right about the law as it stands, insofar as sex is a protected characteristic in the EA2010 and it is therefore possible to discriminate on grounds of sex, including in cases where a male has legally changed their sex by getting a GRC.
Stonewall will lobby Government for reform of the Equality Act, to include ‘gender identity’ as a protected characteristic and to remove the use of the terms ‘gender reassignment’ and ‘transsexual’ from the Act. Removing current ambiguities in the Act will ensure that all trans people, including those who identify as non-binary, are unequivocally protected and included. It will also signal to trans employees and service users, as well as public bodies and employers, that discrimination of trans people is not acceptable.
In addition, Stonewall will advocate for the removal of all instances of permitted discrimination of trans people from the Act, as well as for updates to the explanatory notes and statutory codes of practice accordingly. Stonewall will lobby political parties in England, Scotland and Wales to include full equality for trans people, and the reform of the Equality Act, as part of their political commitments.
Combine this change with it becoming much easier to legally change sex with self-ID, and you absolutely end up with a situation with women's shelters forced to accept trans women (i.e. men, including 'intact' ones).
Even short of legal change, trans activists have been shameless in trying to bully others into their way of thinking. Witness what happened to Vancouver Rape Relief.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
If Osborne crippled the economy why did the UK grow faster than the Eurozone in the past decade?
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
The euro-zone was crippled by the Euro & the restrictions placed on governments by the Bundesbank, sorry, the ECB.
The UK labour market has been "full", but the majority of jobs added were minimum-wage & very low-productivity. To take one tiny example: you can employ people to wash cars, or you can invest in a mechanised car wash & employ the same people to do something more productive (like build schools say, if you need more school buildings, but whatever...) elsewhere. Which would be better for the economy? The latter obviously. Yet the UK is full of people washing cars & the mechanised car washes have gone out of business. Which tells you that wage pressure is completely absent.
In some ways the UK economy has gone backwards in the decade.
Right, right now we are getting somewhere.
So despite the UK growing faster than other developed nations for the past decade, despite the UK having full employment for most of the past decade you still want more spending as you think the government is better at getting growth than the free market. Is that it? So you just want spend, spend, spend in all circumstances.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
There is fluidity between SNP and Labour and also between SNP and Conservatives. The Tories had their relative success under Ruth Davidson in significant part because of switchers from SNP to Tory. These people had voted SNP after the 2014 referendum and presumably don't object to independence in principle. (I think we discussed this before and you disputed my claim).
Back to SNP/Labour supporters. A chunk of these previous SNP supporters may switch to Labour in a 2024 election if they prefer a Labour rather than a Conservative government at Westminster and if they are dissatisfied with the SNP at the time of the election.
“... and also between SNP and Conservatives. The Tories had their relative success under Ruth Davidson in significant part because of switchers from SNP to Tory“
Nope. Ruthie’s 2017 (ahem) “triumph” (ie. not losing quite as badly as usual) was down to SLD to SCon swings, not SNP to SCon. The SNP’s problem that year was abstentions.
We disagree about whether it's SNP abstentions or straight SNP to CON switchers in the constituencies that the Tories won in 2017. I don't have time to dig out the figures again. The LD and Labour votes had already collapsed in 2015 so there was little voteshare there to squeeze. These seats were SNP/Con fights.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
If Osborne crippled the economy why did the UK grow faster than the Eurozone in the past decade?
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
The euro-zone was crippled by the Euro & the restrictions placed on governments by the Bundesbank, sorry, the ECB.
The UK labour market has been "full", but the majority of jobs added were minimum-wage & very low-productivity. To take one tiny example: you can employ people to wash cars, or you can invest in a mechanised car wash & employ the same people to do something more productive (like build schools say, if you need more school buildings, but whatever...) elsewhere. Which would be better for the economy? The latter obviously. Yet the UK is full of people washing cars & the mechanised car washes have gone out of business. Which tells you that wage pressure is completely absent.
In some ways the UK economy has gone backwards in the decade.
Right, right now we are getting somewhere.
So despite the UK growing faster than other developed nations for the past decade, despite the UK having full employment for most of the past decade you still want more spending as you think the government is better at getting growth than the free market. Is that it? So you just want spend, spend, spend in all circumstances.
I think that coming off a deflationary bust is a great time for a government to spend on infrastructure projects.
When the labour market is tight & wages are growing, well that’s a very different story.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
“In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. ”
Huh? Low hanging fruit in Glasgow?? A “whole crop”???
The location of this Unionist orchard escapes me.
The most “marginal” Glasgow seat is Glasgow North East. It requires an SNP to SLab swing of 3.75. After that, it gets increasingly difficult. Where exactly is this “whole crop” that is going to save the Union?
USA really struggling to get people to behave, as predicted months ago. Same with India and Brazil, where high population density and poor sanitation combine to make huge infection numbers sadly inevitable.
HYUFD disagrees with you. At least in India, because they do not have enough old people.
India still has a death rate per head below the global average
India's death rate is a complete unknown because even at the best of times most deaths go unreported.
India has 85 million over 65s, it is sadly very vulnerable to a wide spread outbreak.
We need to stop giving out figurative medals, it is very early days.
Not remotely scientific, but I note a shift on my social media. I very rarely talk politics there these days, but I’ve noticed that some unexpected friends and associates have been starting to post political stuff when they haven’t previously. In particular I note that some Labour-supporting friends have now very decisively shifted to Yes, and aren’t shy on telling people about it. Very, very heartening!
My one man focus group on FB is Blue Wall Peter (see Dura Ace postings passim). He is entirely and unfailingly representative of Northern smoothbrain leaver thinking. His output on FB has gone from 40% EU nonsense, 40% poppy nonsense and 20% deformed kids to 50% Johnson/Cummings pisstakes, 50% NHS/Carers/'key' workers nonsense. At this juncture the deformed kids can get to fuck apparently.
So another Johnson recovery announcement, £1 billion on schools over ten years (£100m/ year) not really a lot, any idea of the UK annual schools capital budget? and yet again who’s going to build the new schools.
Fact check
760 million over the next academic year
You think a “schools building programme” can be put in place from scratch over that time period?
Fact check - govt do fund schools capital already.
Schools are being built (and knocked down) every year.
Increasing the budget by 13% *should* mean increasing the actual building by more than 13% - fixed costs *should* stay fixed.
Even if this is a 20% increase in actual building, that wouldn't stretch the construction industry very much. Schools are not exotic buildings.
Of itself it isn’t going to stretch the construction industry, alongside all the other ‘projects’ it is going to stretch the available resource.
As an aside who is going to decide which schools are renewed or renovated? With the demise of the LEA who gets to choose and will the decision making process be open and above board? The fact that it appears they are going to be in recently tory won constituencies stinks to high heaven, but then labour would do the same. Time to be shut of these two parties who’s only existence is to protect and feed their paymasters.
Actually the red wall seats are exactly where the investment is needed
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Agreed.
Strong Unionism is quite rare in Scotland. An immovable core of 20-25% of the electorate. The 2014 vote was won by “soft” Unionist and floating voters, who, when it comes to normal elections, vote on other issues and basic competence/attitudes towards leaders.
SKS probably doing his level best not to stick his hand into the meat grinder that is TERF / trans politics, but he’s probably going to have to work out a way to either thread that needle or pick a side (which will have to be the trans side, there’s no way the Labour party will wear anything else) without frightening the horses.
Societal change is not always easy & I understand the visceral response that some women have to the idea of trans-women, but TERF types are busy repeating the same tired old arguments that were used against gay people in the 70s: When you find yourself sharing political space with US Dominionist Christians it might be time to take a long hard look at yourself and ask "are we the baddies?".
If you’re using the actions of one or two sociopaths as a stick to beat an entire vulnerable community, just as the actions of paedophiles were used in the past as an excuse to repress gay people, then your arguments are deeply suspect. They ought to be able to stand up on their own, without needing the shock value of the actions of individuals that could have been prevented in far less interventionist ways.
Fundamentally it comes done to conflicting rights. Women’s refuges are about protecting people and making them *feel* safe. If they are accessible to trans people in the early stages of the process (not sure of the right terminology but no offence intended) and who still physically resemble men then that could undermine the process.
In many ways it’s a similar debate to abortion: do the rights of the woman to choose outweigh the right of the foetus to life.
Where you have conflicting rights there needs to be a dividing line. It is dispiriting that so many activists (on both sides) seem unable to recognise the perspectives of others and demand that they get 100% of what they want vs finding some acceptable middle ground.
Charles this is a very un-self aware post from you. You and your party has spent the last 4 years proclaiming that compromise is undemocratic and that only a 100% victory is good enough. You now try and take the moral high ground by saying that both sides of the trans debate wont find acceptable middle ground?
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
There is fluidity between SNP and Labour and also between SNP and Conservatives. The Tories had their relative success under Ruth Davidson in significant part because of switchers from SNP to Tory. These people had voted SNP after the 2014 referendum and presumably don't object to independence in principle. (I think we discussed this before and you disputed my claim).
Back to SNP/Labour supporters. A chunk of these previous SNP supporters may switch to Labour in a 2024 election if they prefer a Labour rather than a Conservative government at Westminster and if they are dissatisfied with the SNP at the time of the election.
“... and also between SNP and Conservatives. The Tories had their relative success under Ruth Davidson in significant part because of switchers from SNP to Tory“
Nope. Ruthie’s 2017 (ahem) “triumph” (ie. not losing quite as badly as usual) was down to SLD to SCon swings, not SNP to SCon. The SNP’s problem that year was abstentions.
We disagree about whether it's SNP abstentions or straight SNP to CON switchers in the constituencies that the Tories won in 2017. I don't have time to dig out the figures again. The LD and Labour votes had already collapsed in 2015 so there was little voteshare there to squeeze. These seats were SNP/Con fights.
Completely incorrect. There was significant residual LD vote to squeeze between 2015 and 2017.
For example Gordon.
2015 LD vote 32.7% 2017 LD Vote 11.6%
This is repeated across the North and North East.
Nationally the LD vote went from 7.5% to 6.8% but that translated into drops of 20+ percentage points in various constituencies.
For comparison, on the worst day of the outbreak in the UK, we recorded 8,600 cases, and then it fell away quite steeply. Florida is still going up fast.
A disaster is potentially unfolding there
I wonder if it's too late for Trump to get behind masks. Perhaps if they were red masks, with Make America Great Again on them.
I'm really not clear on the right wing objection to masks. You protect yourself with a gun, why not protect yourself with a mask? It has the added benefit of stopping the deep state from applying facial recognition software on you successfully. Lockdown - I completely see the objection to. Masks, not so much.
Indeed: especially as masks dramatically reduce the risk of needing lockdown.
Having thought about this, I think there are two reasons Trump hates masks:
1. It reminds him there is a problem. He's a massive fan of the Power of Positive Thinking (the book), and it has over the years worked for him. Wearing a mask goes against this, because it is in effect negative speech.
2. He's a bit vain. He thinks he looks good, and he thinks he'd look less good (and more scared) in a mask. And if he's not going to wear a mask, other people shouldn't either.
But it's also dumb. Modest mask etiquette reduces R substantially.
Masks are hugely uncomfortable, and a very significant social barrier.
I only wear them in close proximity environments in public (like trains or the tube) and I possibly would in a busy office too.
Otherwise, it's a rather dystopian placebo.
Masks are not really to protect you (they’re pretty crap at that role, although there is weak evidence is they do have some effect). What masks are very effective at is protecting everybody else from you, should you happen to be infected & not realise it.
So masks are essentially communitarian. We wear them & accept a certain mild level of discomfort in order to protect those around us from the possibility of being infected by a horrible disease. The more pro-social a society is, the more likely it is that people will wear masks & the less affected by Covid-19 that society will be.
(An aside: I bet the anti-vaxx conspiracy groups are full of anti-mask types.)
Sweden is essentially communitarian and a pro-social society, but I can tell you that mask-wearing is extremely unusual here.
Admittedly I almost never use public transport so I’m missing that environment, but I do work in a busy office and visit libraries, shops, hospital, tourist attractions and other public spaces, and I see a mask-wearer maybe once a week. Still taken aback every time I see one.
Interesting to contrast differing approaches to masks, when the evidence is that they’re something that works if everyone does it, so long as there’s sufficient supply. Public attitudes seem to follow along the authoritarian/libertarian axis.
Here in the UAE, masks are compulsory to wear in public, even outside and in cars, with large fines (£600) for non-compliance. Supermarkets also make you wear gloves, shops and malls have temperature scanners at entrances.
As expected, and at the other extreme, it’s almost impossible to persuade Americans to do anything, with large groups arguing against them as a point of principle, but most other countries are somewhere in the middle.
The UAE is one country where a herd immunity strategy was probably the right approach, given its low over 65 population. Instead it will have constant outbreaks even if everyone is dressed like they are performing an alien autopsy.
Despite having one of the highest test rates in the world through out, the UAE has a case rate around that of the UK's.
Do the massive fines also apply to the low paid workers?
Not sure that herd immunity is the way to go, in a country where there’s lots of inter-generational living and a big obesity problem among the young locals, as well as a lot of transient movement of people and areas of high-density housing. It’s definitely going to be a problem for a long time though, especially as we now see an explosion of cases in India and Pakistan.
The testing here has been very intensive, and I think that shows up in the number of cases detected. The public health officials have given free tests to everyone in high-density areas. Roughly a third of the 10m population have been tested, and we have only 300 deaths. Yes the fines apply to everyone, in the case of low paid workers they will fall on their employer. Employers are responsible for providing masks to everyone at work, and shops give them out for free or for pennies to low paid workers.
If Labour look like they'll do well in England, Scottish Unionists will switch from Tory to Labour as their best hope of getting Scottish representation into the UK Government more in tune politically with most Scots and thus preserving the Union.
An independence vote won by 51/49? What could possibly go wrong?
No won indyref2 in Quebec 51/49 in 1995 and Canada has not had another Quebec referendum on independence since
Quebec got almost total control and full budget control to ensure there was no further referendum, that will never happen with the crooks and gangsters running England.
I wonder, is OGH's email a plant designed to getting us, and people like us, discussing that and not Johnson's, and his sidekick Williamson's, politicalisation of the post of National Security Adviser in the UK.
Williamson was dire on R4 just now. If Johnson appoints on merit, he should soon be gone.
Williamson had a reputation for being an effective whip, which might be where should have stayed.
He's a terrible front line politician, combining the stiffness of May with the creepiness of Mandleson, without having the ability of either.
Less ability than Theresa May? Now there’s a novel concept.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Scottish politics is dominated by the Independence debate. Its extremely unhealthy, leads to the neglect of various priorities and is deeply frustrating but it is what it is.
Nationalism is a poisonous disease that is based on prejudice and hatred, and it gradually infects the body politic of nations . The Scottish version is based on the poorly disguised hatred of English people, and the English version (Brexit) is based on the poorly disguised hatred of French and Germans.
It is a philosophy that feeds off lies, disinformation and faux grievance, and nearly always degenerates in time to violence. The only antidote to it is education. The poorer someone's education is, the more likely they are to be a nationalist. That is why nationalists and fascists seek to pervert education.
So another Johnson recovery announcement, £1 billion on schools over ten years (£100m/ year) not really a lot, any idea of the UK annual schools capital budget? and yet again who’s going to build the new schools.
Fact check
760 million over the next academic year
You think a “schools building programme” can be put in place from scratch over that time period?
Fact check - govt do fund schools capital already.
Schools are being built (and knocked down) every year.
Increasing the budget by 13% *should* mean increasing the actual building by more than 13% - fixed costs *should* stay fixed.
Even if this is a 20% increase in actual building, that wouldn't stretch the construction industry very much. Schools are not exotic buildings.
Of itself it isn’t going to stretch the construction industry, alongside all the other ‘projects’ it is going to stretch the available resource.
As an aside who is going to decide which schools are renewed or renovated? With the demise of the LEA who gets to choose and will the decision making process be open and above board? The fact that it appears they are going to be in recently tory won constituencies stinks to high heaven, but then labour would do the same. Time to be shut of these two parties who’s only existence is to protect and feed their paymasters.
Actually the red wall seats are exactly where the investment is needed
Red wall seats won by conservatives or red wall seats still held by labour?
So another Johnson recovery announcement, £1 billion on schools over ten years (£100m/ year) not really a lot, any idea of the UK annual schools capital budget? and yet again who’s going to build the new schools.
Fact check
760 million over the next academic year
You think a “schools building programme” can be put in place from scratch over that time period?
Fact check - govt do fund schools capital already.
Schools are being built (and knocked down) every year.
Increasing the budget by 13% *should* mean increasing the actual building by more than 13% - fixed costs *should* stay fixed.
Even if this is a 20% increase in actual building, that wouldn't stretch the construction industry very much. Schools are not exotic buildings.
Of itself it isn’t going to stretch the construction industry, alongside all the other ‘projects’ it is going to stretch the available resource.
As an aside who is going to decide which schools are renewed or renovated? With the demise of the LEA who gets to choose and will the decision making process be open and above board? The fact that it appears they are going to be in recently tory won constituencies stinks to high heaven, but then labour would do the same. Time to be shut of these two parties who’s only existence is to protect and feed their paymasters.
Actually the red wall seats are exactly where the investment is needed
Red wall seats won by conservatives or red wall seats still held by labour?
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
The stupid assumption that all Tory and Labour voters are against independence is unbelievable. Last poll had 43% Labour supporters as YES and even a small % of Tories. Unionists imagine it is just like England when it absolutely is NOT.
Nationalism is a poisonous disease that is based on prejudice and hatred, and it gradually infects the body politic of nations . The Scottish version is based on the poorly disguised hatred of English people, and the English version (Brexit) is based on the poorly disguised hatred of French and Germans.
This is undeniably true, and both sets of petty nationalists get really upset when anyone points this out.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Scottish politics is dominated by the Independence debate. Its extremely unhealthy, leads to the neglect of various priorities and is deeply frustrating but it is what it is.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
Ok, of you can take that theory of decreasing spending at 5% unemployment and turn it into an election winning strategy I think both Labour and Tory strategists will give you a job.
Government spending is a ratchet, once it goes up it's basically impossible to bring it back down again.
And as for your rubbish in Osborne crippling the economy, yes he crippled it into the fastest growing major European economy from 2010-2016 and the IMF admitted they got their doom and gloom about UK austerity completely wrong.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Agreed.
Strong Unionism is quite rare in Scotland. An immovable core of 20-25% of the electorate. The 2014 vote was won by “soft” Unionist and floating voters, who, when it comes to normal elections, vote on other issues and basic competence/attitudes towards leaders.
I would put strong Unionism at 35% based on various "on a scale of 1 to 10" surveys.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Scottish politics is dominated by the Independence debate. Its extremely unhealthy, leads to the neglect of various priorities and is deeply frustrating but it is what it is.
It is the most important political event in Scotland David so hardly surprising. Neglect and obstruction by Westminster and removal of the few powers we had are our main problems. We will never prosper whilst our bullying large neighbour controls our money and our economy.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
If Osborne crippled the economy why did the UK grow faster than the Eurozone in the past decade?
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
The euro-zone was crippled by the Euro & the restrictions placed on governments by the Bundesbank, sorry, the ECB.
The UK labour market has been "full", but the majority of jobs added were minimum-wage & very low-productivity. To take one tiny example: you can employ people to wash cars, or you can invest in a mechanised car wash & employ the same people to do something more productive (like build schools say, if you need more school buildings, but whatever...) elsewhere. Which would be better for the economy? The latter obviously. Yet the UK is full of people washing cars & the mechanised car washes have gone out of business. Which tells you that wage pressure is completely absent.
In some ways the UK economy has gone backwards in the decade.
Right, right now we are getting somewhere.
So despite the UK growing faster than other developed nations for the past decade, despite the UK having full employment for most of the past decade you still want more spending as you think the government is better at getting growth than the free market. Is that it? So you just want spend, spend, spend in all circumstances.
I think that coming off a deflationary bust is a great time for a government to spend on infrastructure projects.
When the labour market is tight & wages are growing, well that’s a very different story.
The Labour market was tight in recent years. So where were the calls for reduced spending in recent years?
Don't hide being fake economics to justify extra spending when the reality was the opposite. The UK was at full employment, growing faster than our economic peers and still people like you claim spending was too low.
Thank goodness we had someone like Osborne in charge so the economy was fixed, the roof was fixed while the sun was shining so that now we have a real crisis (which there wasn't any at all for the past decade) the economy is in fighting shape with a deficit under control despite what was inherited. Now is the time to spend countercyclically, not in the past.
Actually in none of those polls is Yes over 50% and in 4 Yes is doing no better or even worse than the 45% it got in 2014
phew saved by our resident Scottish expert part time tank commander
HYUFD ready to power up the A68 at the first sign of referendal stirrings.
HY is prepared to send the gunships up the Forth at dawn to suppress the natives. He’d probably then want a big statue of the naval commander placed on Calton Hill. A thuggish culture breeds thugs.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Scottish politics is dominated by the Independence debate. Its extremely unhealthy, leads to the neglect of various priorities and is deeply frustrating but it is what it is.
Nationalism is a poisonous disease that is based on prejudice and hatred, and it gradually infects the body politic of nations . The Scottish version is based on the poorly disguised hatred of English people, and the English version (Brexit) is based on the poorly disguised hatred of French and Germans.
It is a philosophy that feeds off lies, disinformation and faux grievance, and nearly always degenerates in time to violence. The only antidote to it is education. The poorer someone's education is, the more likely they are to be a nationalist. That is why nationalists and fascists seek to pervert education.
Nationalism doesn't involve hatred in and of itself.
Nationalism can be either virtuous or hate filled depending upon the individual same as any other philosophy.
SKS probably doing his level best not to stick his hand into the meat grinder that is TERF / trans politics, but he’s probably going to have to work out a way to either thread that needle or pick a side (which will have to be the trans side, there’s no way the Labour party will wear anything else) without frightening the horses.
Societal change is not always easy & I understand the visceral response that some women have to the idea of trans-women, but TERF types are busy repeating the same tired old arguments that were used against gay people in the 70s: When you find yourself sharing political space with US Dominionist Christians it might be time to take a long hard look at yourself and ask "are we the baddies?".
If you’re using the actions of one or two sociopaths as a stick to beat an entire vulnerable community, just as the actions of paedophiles were used in the past as an excuse to repress gay people, then your arguments are deeply suspect. They ought to be able to stand up on their own, without needing the shock value of the actions of individuals that could have been prevented in far less interventionist ways.
Fundamentally it comes done to conflicting rights. Women’s refuges are about protecting people and making them *feel* safe. If they are accessible to trans people in the early stages of the process (not sure of the right terminology but no offence intended) and who still physically resemble men then that could undermine the process.
In many ways it’s a similar debate to abortion: do the rights of the woman to choose outweigh the right of the foetus to life.
Where you have conflicting rights there needs to be a dividing line. It is dispiriting that so many activists (on both sides) seem unable to recognise the perspectives of others and demand that they get 100% of what they want vs finding some acceptable middle ground.
Charles this is a very un-self aware post from you. You and your party has spent the last 4 years proclaiming that compromise is undemocratic and that only a 100% victory is good enough. You now try and take the moral high ground by saying that both sides of the trans debate wont find acceptable middle ground?
Come on...
Being a member of the EU is like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant. The future relationship, of course, is much more nuanced. Labour had their chance to vote for May's deal. They didn't and we are now where we are.
On the trans-right issue, I don't really care about whether someone can be considered a woman or not. I do, however, care about whether they have male capabilities - i.e. the ability to commit sexual crimes. As long as they do, then they should be treated as men.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
I saw the debate and I would say a (benign and totally asymptomatic) plague on both your houses. The 2014 result was an emphatic vote for the Union. It wasn't "No-but-Yes". However the trend to independence in the last year is real.
and gathering pace
Agreed.
Not remotely scientific, but I note a shift on my social media. I very rarely talk politics there these days, but I’ve noticed that some unexpected friends and associates have been starting to post political stuff when they haven’t previously. In particular I note that some Labour-supporting friends have now very decisively shifted to Yes, and aren’t shy on telling people about it. Very, very heartening!
There is nothing heartening about the politics of division that is typified by backward looking nationalism.
Pass the garlic Old bellend has arisen from his crypt, as inviting as listening to the great clunking fist wittering on about broad shoulders and better together as North Britishers.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
Ok, of you can take that theory of decreasing spending at 5% unemployment and turn it into an election winning strategy I think both Labour and Tory strategists will give you a job.
Government spending is a ratchet, once it goes up it's basically impossible to bring it back down again.
And as for your rubbish in Osborne crippling the economy, yes he crippled it into the fastest growing major European economy from 2010-2016 and the IMF admitted they got their doom and gloom about UK austerity completely wrong.
A telling mis-reading - I didn’t say Osborne crippled the economy - I said he crippled the recovery.
I agree that day-to-day government spending can be politically difficult to reduce. That’s why your counter-cyclical spending should be lovely, lovely infrastructure projects who’s spending goes away once they’re done. (Obviously they need to be projects where future income at least pays for their running costs + maintenance as otherwise you’re committing yourself to a never ending maintenance burden - something the US is suffering from at the moment.)
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
If Osborne crippled the economy why did the UK grow faster than the Eurozone in the past decade?
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
The euro-zone was crippled by the Euro & the restrictions placed on governments by the Bundesbank, sorry, the ECB.
The UK labour market has been "full", but the majority of jobs added were minimum-wage & very low-productivity. To take one tiny example: you can employ people to wash cars, or you can invest in a mechanised car wash & employ the same people to do something more productive (like build schools say, if you need more school buildings, but whatever...) elsewhere. Which would be better for the economy? The latter obviously. Yet the UK is full of people washing cars & the mechanised car washes have gone out of business. Which tells you that wage pressure is completely absent.
In some ways the UK economy has gone backwards in the decade.
Tories will not be happy till it is all cleaners, car washers and burger/pizza flippers all on zero hours contracts.
Actually in none of those polls is Yes over 50% and in 4 Yes is doing no better or even worse than the 45% it got in 2014
phew saved by our resident Scottish expert part time tank commander
HYUFD ready to power up the A68 at the first sign of referendal stirrings.
Is that Johnson’s new ground transport to help project the UK global image and to match his plane?
It's the ARTEC Boxer and is just your bog standard story of British defence procurement. The Army decided the future of battlefield mobility was 30 ton 8x8s and joined the Boxer program with France, Germany and the Netherlands in 1998. The British bailed in 2003, pissed around with various other projects that came to nothing for 14 years then rejoined (no laughing at the back) in 2017. Some may actually be delivered in time for the program' silver jubilee in 2023.
When was the last time the UK had a competent defence minister? The 1950s?
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
Ok, of you can take that theory of decreasing spending at 5% unemployment and turn it into an election winning strategy I think both Labour and Tory strategists will give you a job.
Government spending is a ratchet, once it goes up it's basically impossible to bring it back down again.
And as for your rubbish in Osborne crippling the economy, yes he crippled it into the fastest growing major European economy from 2010-2016 and the IMF admitted they got their doom and gloom about UK austerity completely wrong.
A telling mis-reading - I didn’t say Osborne crippled the economy - I said he crippled the recovery.
I agree that day-to-day government spending can be politically difficult to reduce. That’s why your counter-cyclical spending should be lovely, lovely infrastructure projects who’s spending goes away once they’re done. (Obviously they need to be projects where future income at least pays for their running costs + maintenance as otherwise you’re committing yourself to a never ending maintenance burden - something the US is suffering from at the moment.)
But he didn't cripple the recovery, that was a statistical phantom and the IMF admitted they were wrong about austerity.
On spending, sure infrastructure is a great way to spend money but how do you do that with "why are we spending £32bn on xxxx when the NHS needs more money?".
Politically spending more money on the NHS and education is always going to be more popular than a new power station.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
Ok, of you can take that theory of decreasing spending at 5% unemployment and turn it into an election winning strategy I think both Labour and Tory strategists will give you a job.
Government spending is a ratchet, once it goes up it's basically impossible to bring it back down again.
And as for your rubbish in Osborne crippling the economy, yes he crippled it into the fastest growing major European economy from 2010-2016 and the IMF admitted they got their doom and gloom about UK austerity completely wrong.
A telling mis-reading - I didn’t say Osborne crippled the economy - I said he crippled the recovery.
I agree that day-to-day government spending can be politically difficult to reduce. That’s why your counter-cyclical spending should be lovely, lovely infrastructure projects who’s spending goes away once they’re done. (Obviously they need to be projects where future income at least pays for their running costs + maintenance as otherwise you’re committing yourself to a never ending maintenance burden - something the US is suffering from at the moment.)
But he didn't cripple the recovery. We grew faster than our economic peers and unemployment fell and we had full employment.
Can you give any macroeconomic metrics spanning the decade to show a crippled recovery?
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Scottish politics is dominated by the Independence debate. Its extremely unhealthy, leads to the neglect of various priorities and is deeply frustrating but it is what it is.
Nationalism is a poisonous disease that is based on prejudice and hatred, and it gradually infects the body politic of nations . The Scottish version is based on the poorly disguised hatred of English people, and the English version (Brexit) is based on the poorly disguised hatred of French and Germans.
It is a philosophy that feeds off lies, disinformation and faux grievance, and nearly always degenerates in time to violence. The only antidote to it is education. The poorer someone's education is, the more likely they are to be a nationalist. That is why nationalists and fascists seek to pervert education.
Change the record you moron, surely an odd thought must come into your pea brain.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Scottish politics is dominated by the Independence debate. Its extremely unhealthy, leads to the neglect of various priorities and is deeply frustrating but it is what it is.
Dundonian Tory is frustrated. I feel your pain.
Normal Scots frustrated = good.
Tories frustrated = bad.
Welcome to the Toryverse.
You appear to be saying only Independence supporters are "normal Scots"
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
Ok, of you can take that theory of decreasing spending at 5% unemployment and turn it into an election winning strategy I think both Labour and Tory strategists will give you a job.
Government spending is a ratchet, once it goes up it's basically impossible to bring it back down again.
And as for your rubbish in Osborne crippling the economy, yes he crippled it into the fastest growing major European economy from 2010-2016 and the IMF admitted they got their doom and gloom about UK austerity completely wrong.
Phil means to be negative but he's really very optimistic. Apparently there was Chinese level growth available and presumably a land of sunshine awaits, should his preferred candidate win
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
If Osborne crippled the economy why did the UK grow faster than the Eurozone in the past decade?
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
The euro-zone was crippled by the Euro & the restrictions placed on governments by the Bundesbank, sorry, the ECB.
The UK labour market has been "full", but the majority of jobs added were minimum-wage & very low-productivity. To take one tiny example: you can employ people to wash cars, or you can invest in a mechanised car wash & employ the same people to do something more productive (like build schools say, if you need more school buildings, but whatever...) elsewhere. Which would be better for the economy? The latter obviously. Yet the UK is full of people washing cars & the mechanised car washes have gone out of business. Which tells you that wage pressure is completely absent.
In some ways the UK economy has gone backwards in the decade.
Right, right now we are getting somewhere.
So despite the UK growing faster than other developed nations for the past decade, despite the UK having full employment for most of the past decade you still want more spending as you think the government is better at getting growth than the free market. Is that it? So you just want spend, spend, spend in all circumstances.
I think that coming off a deflationary bust is a great time for a government to spend on infrastructure projects.
When the labour market is tight & wages are growing, well that’s a very different story.
The Labour market was tight in recent years. So where were the calls for reduced spending in recent years?
Don't hide being fake economics to justify extra spending when the reality was the opposite. The UK was at full employment, growing faster than our economic peers and still people like you claim spending was too low.
Thank goodness we had someone like Osborne in charge so the economy was fixed, the roof was fixed while the sun was shining so that now we have a real crisis (which there wasn't any at all for the past decade) the economy is in fighting shape with a deficit under control despite what was inherited. Now is the time to spend countercyclically, not in the past.
Rubbish: Real average weekly earning growth was negative for /six/ years after 2008, briefly went positive for a couple of years after that, then slumped back to 0% in 2017. 2019 was OK & then the coronavirus hit.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
If Osborne crippled the economy why did the UK grow faster than the Eurozone in the past decade?
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
The euro-zone was crippled by the Euro & the restrictions placed on governments by the Bundesbank, sorry, the ECB.
The UK labour market has been "full", but the majority of jobs added were minimum-wage & very low-productivity. To take one tiny example: you can employ people to wash cars, or you can invest in a mechanised car wash & employ the same people to do something more productive (like build schools say, if you need more school buildings, but whatever...) elsewhere. Which would be better for the economy? The latter obviously. Yet the UK is full of people washing cars & the mechanised car washes have gone out of business. Which tells you that wage pressure is completely absent.
In some ways the UK economy has gone backwards in the decade.
Tories will not be happy till it is all cleaners, car washers and burger/pizza flippers all on zero hours contracts.
Of course - because those people will flock to vote tory.....
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
That's simplistic Stuart. In the north east, the borders and rural areas it makes sense to vote Tory. In Glasgow, where there is a whole crop of low hanging fruit just out of SLAB's grasp it doesn't. Voting Labour was deeply problematic with Corbyn in charge and beyond most Tory's comfort zone. They may not have the same problem with Sir Kneel.
Of course the 3 way split of the Unionist vote helps the SNP enormously. Unionists need to think about the efficiency of their votes.
Surely it depends how important unionism is as an issue.
Some people might be willing to vote No in a referendum but not care that much elsewhere in which case the notion of Tory or Lab being interchangeable is silly.
Scottish politics is dominated by the Independence debate. Its extremely unhealthy, leads to the neglect of various priorities and is deeply frustrating but it is what it is.
Nationalism is a poisonous disease that is based on prejudice and hatred, and it gradually infects the body politic of nations . The Scottish version is based on the poorly disguised hatred of English people, and the English version (Brexit) is based on the poorly disguised hatred of French and Germans.
And the British version of nationalism doesn't exist?
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
Ok, of you can take that theory of decreasing spending at 5% unemployment and turn it into an election winning strategy I think both Labour and Tory strategists will give you a job.
Government spending is a ratchet, once it goes up it's basically impossible to bring it back down again.
And as for your rubbish in Osborne crippling the economy, yes he crippled it into the fastest growing major European economy from 2010-2016 and the IMF admitted they got their doom and gloom about UK austerity completely wrong.
Phil means to be negative but he's really very optimistic. Apparently there was Chinese level growth available and presumably a land of sunshine awaits, should his preferred candidate win
At the time I thought Osborne was going to do the sensible thing & cut day-to-day expenditure back to something more sensible whilst spending on infrastructure to fill the demand gap.
Old King Cole mentions Magic Money Tree, and in the very next post HY gives us yet another daft suggestion for spaffing taxpayers’ money up the wall.
I am old enough to remember when the Conservative Party prided itself on fiscal responsibility. Now it’s all F*ck Business and Ra Ra Ra Range Rovers All Round.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
Paradoxically it's probably the correct strategy to get 20-25% of the list vote in a Holyrood election (even if one queries the hard unionist rhetoric of Baillie/Murray etc) but there aren't that many FPTP Westminster seats like East Lothian or Edinburgh North and Leith even as a much longer shot where such a strategy could potentially work.
There is probably about 10-15% of the independence vote that can be won over for Slab in 2024 in the right circumstances.
Paul Sweeney actually talks the most sense (at least in terms of Westminster elections) and he came pretty close to saving his seat.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
Ok, of you can take that theory of decreasing spending at 5% unemployment and turn it into an election winning strategy I think both Labour and Tory strategists will give you a job.
Government spending is a ratchet, once it goes up it's basically impossible to bring it back down again.
And as for your rubbish in Osborne crippling the economy, yes he crippled it into the fastest growing major European economy from 2010-2016 and the IMF admitted they got their doom and gloom about UK austerity completely wrong.
A telling mis-reading - I didn’t say Osborne crippled the economy - I said he crippled the recovery.
I agree that day-to-day government spending can be politically difficult to reduce. That’s why your counter-cyclical spending should be lovely, lovely infrastructure projects who’s spending goes away once they’re done. (Obviously they need to be projects where future income at least pays for their running costs + maintenance as otherwise you’re committing yourself to a never ending maintenance burden - something the US is suffering from at the moment.)
But he didn't cripple the recovery. We grew faster than our economic peers and unemployment fell and we had full employment.
Can you give any macroeconomic metrics spanning the decade to show a crippled recovery?
The fact that he never eliminated the deficit as intended, let alone by 2015 as originally planned, since the economy didn't grow as fast as forecast, would seem to make the conclusion obvious.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
If Osborne crippled the economy why did the UK grow faster than the Eurozone in the past decade?
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
The euro-zone was crippled by the Euro & the restrictions placed on governments by the Bundesbank, sorry, the ECB.
The UK labour market has been "full", but the majority of jobs added were minimum-wage & very low-productivity. To take one tiny example: you can employ people to wash cars, or you can invest in a mechanised car wash & employ the same people to do something more productive (like build schools say, if you need more school buildings, but whatever...) elsewhere. Which would be better for the economy? The latter obviously. Yet the UK is full of people washing cars & the mechanised car washes have gone out of business. Which tells you that wage pressure is completely absent.
In some ways the UK economy has gone backwards in the decade.
Right, right now we are getting somewhere.
So despite the UK growing faster than other developed nations for the past decade, despite the UK having full employment for most of the past decade you still want more spending as you think the government is better at getting growth than the free market. Is that it? So you just want spend, spend, spend in all circumstances.
I think that coming off a deflationary bust is a great time for a government to spend on infrastructure projects.
When the labour market is tight & wages are growing, well that’s a very different story.
The Labour market was tight in recent years. So where were the calls for reduced spending in recent years?
Don't hide being fake economics to justify extra spending when the reality was the opposite. The UK was at full employment, growing faster than our economic peers and still people like you claim spending was too low.
Thank goodness we had someone like Osborne in charge so the economy was fixed, the roof was fixed while the sun was shining so that now we have a real crisis (which there wasn't any at all for the past decade) the economy is in fighting shape with a deficit under control despite what was inherited. Now is the time to spend countercyclically, not in the past.
Rubbish: Real average weekly earning growth was negative for /six/ years after 2008, briefly went positive for a couple of years after that, then slumped back to 0% in 2017. 2019 was OK & then the coronavirus hit.
There was plenty of room for counter-cyclical expenditure in the years after 2008.
Rubbish. 2007/08 is a false floor because it was the peak of an economic boom just before the crash and after half a decade of governmental overspending. If - as you claim - you believe that governmental spending increases real wages, then surely you must also accept that governmental overspending before the correction in the period of 2002-2007/8 had inflated wages beyond where they should have been and which could not be afforded.
Is it your intention that we never have a correction, we just keep inflating wages forever?
The government serves the people. The CS serves the government.
No
Government is the 'what'
CS is the 'how', which must, at times, include "can't be done"
The problem is when the "can't" turns into "shouldn't". I appreciate it's a delicate balance. But the CS made its bed during the referendum. They can now lie in it.
Elections have purdah rules which effectively impose neutrality instead of impartiality.
The EU Ref was a bit of a one off, and came with some difficult questions. It is, as I say, the CS' role to support the government, and the government's position was, er, probably remain? Or was that not a government position? Depends who you ask.
I told you a few months ago, they are going to do some creative re-branding.
Interestingly, that article (mainly) doesn't argue that balancing the books isn't important: it just says it should be done with tax rises rather than spending cuts.
Which is hardly unsurprising in the New Statesman.
The point is that all spending has to be paid for, eventually.
Government spending is always paid for. It’d paid for at the time it’s spent! Either the government uses taxes, or it prints money (OK, actually they borrow it from the BoE who magic it out of thin air in exchange for a debt they hold on their books, but the effect is the same.)
The real question is the state of the labour market & inflationary environment. If the labour market is slack & the money markets are deflationary then the government should spend, spend, spend!
Keynes was right, as always.
(It’s handy to keep the "debt" around as an excuse to raise taxes in the future in order to suck money out of an inflationary economy, but all these things are convenient fictions: the BoE can just hold on to the debt indefinitely if necessary.)
That's a remarkably relaxed attitude to public financing.
There's a certain level of debt (as a % of the economy) that can be sustained indefinitely, but it's not unlimited: that's why Osborne tried so hard to eliminate the deficit from 2010-2016. So our debt as % GDP didn't constantly grow. So it would peak, and then decline. And, we still have to pay interest on that debt - it won't have escaped your attention that we spend £40bn+ a year on interest - almost as much as Defence - and it requires regular re-financing through new bonds.
In other words, it needs to be both under control and sustainable within the medium-long-term capability of the economy.
Keynes would have understood this.
Yes, I agree that Osborne completely misunderstood how the economy actually functions and crippled the UK’s recovery as a result.
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
Ok, of you can take that theory of decreasing spending at 5% unemployment and turn it into an election winning strategy I think both Labour and Tory strategists will give you a job.
Government spending is a ratchet, once it goes up it's basically impossible to bring it back down again.
And as for your rubbish in Osborne crippling the economy, yes he crippled it into the fastest growing major European economy from 2010-2016 and the IMF admitted they got their doom and gloom about UK austerity completely wrong.
A telling mis-reading - I didn’t say Osborne crippled the economy - I said he crippled the recovery.
I agree that day-to-day government spending can be politically difficult to reduce. That’s why your counter-cyclical spending should be lovely, lovely infrastructure projects who’s spending goes away once they’re done. (Obviously they need to be projects where future income at least pays for their running costs + maintenance as otherwise you’re committing yourself to a never ending maintenance burden - something the US is suffering from at the moment.)
But he didn't cripple the recovery. We grew faster than our economic peers and unemployment fell and we had full employment.
Can you give any macroeconomic metrics spanning the decade to show a crippled recovery?
The fact that he never eliminated the deficit as intended, let alone by 2015 as originally planned, since the economy didn't grow as fast as forecast, would seem to make the conclusion obvious.
No because he kept increasing spending on the pet projects of the day (especially the NHS) and kept reversing proposed taxes where it proved unpopular.
The reality is we never had any austerity. We had a slight reduction of the deficit while spending continued to rise every single year. "Sharing the proceeds of growth" in other words.
Elections have purdah rules which effectively impose neutrality instead of impartiality.
The EU Ref was a bit of a one off, and came with some difficult questions. It is, as I say, the CS' role to support the government, and the government's position was, er, probably remain? Or was that not a government position? Depends who you ask.
That £4,300 claim was a pack of lies. Treasury civil servants should have refused to have anything to do with it.
But but but yesterday ydoethur was after telling us that the shift to Yes was mythical and all MoE stuff and that Britannia would rule over Caledonia for a thousand years. Or something like that.
Now they imagine Scottish Tories will vote Labour , barking
Even if there is a significant SCon to SLab swing, it is actually a far less efficient use of the Unionist vote in Scotland.
If you simply switch the SLab and SCon percentage vote from last year (18.6% and 25.1% respectively) then these two parties actually end up with two fewer MPs (2 SLab + 3 SCon = 5; compared with current 1SLab + 6 SCon = 7).
There is of course the question of what happens to the 9.5% the SLDs got last year. I haven’t a scoobie, but I’m open to suggestions.
Strongly Unionist voters would probably be well-advised sticking with the SCons, but I’m sure SLab will do their utmost to muddy the waters and lure a significant chunk to waste their votes on them instead.
There is fluidity between SNP and Labour and also between SNP and Conservatives. The Tories had their relative success under Ruth Davidson in significant part because of switchers from SNP to Tory. These people had voted SNP after the 2014 referendum and presumably don't object to independence in principle. (I think we discussed this before and you disputed my claim).
Back to SNP/Labour supporters. A chunk of these previous SNP supporters may switch to Labour in a 2024 election if they prefer a Labour rather than a Conservative government at Westminster and if they are dissatisfied with the SNP at the time of the election.
“... and also between SNP and Conservatives. The Tories had their relative success under Ruth Davidson in significant part because of switchers from SNP to Tory“
Nope. Ruthie’s 2017 (ahem) “triumph” (ie. not losing quite as badly as usual) was down to SLD to SCon swings, not SNP to SCon. The SNP’s problem that year was abstentions.
We disagree about whether it's SNP abstentions or straight SNP to CON switchers in the constituencies that the Tories won in 2017. I don't have time to dig out the figures again. The LD and Labour votes had already collapsed in 2015 so there was little voteshare there to squeeze. These seats were SNP/Con fights.
Completely incorrect. There was significant residual LD vote to squeeze between 2015 and 2017.
For example Gordon.
2015 LD vote 32.7% 2017 LD Vote 11.6%
This is repeated across the North and North East.
Nationally the LD vote went from 7.5% to 6.8% but that translated into drops of 20+ percentage points in various constituencies.
They only see what they want to see. Let them believe that there is a vast pool of SNP-Con floaters. It wouldn’t be the first fantasy to cripple Scottish Tory electoral strategy.
Comments
& it’s not a relaxed attitude to government spending. When the labour market is tight, government spending should be the minimum necessary to provide the services the government wishes to provide.
He's a terrible front line politician, combining the stiffness of May with the creepiness of Mandleson, without having the ability of either.
In many ways it’s a similar debate to abortion: do the rights of the woman to choose outweigh the right of the foetus to life.
Where you have conflicting rights there needs to be a dividing line. It is dispiriting that so many activists (on both sides) seem unable to recognise the perspectives of others and demand that they get 100% of what they want vs finding some acceptable middle ground.
The Labour market has been at full employment for most of the past decade.
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Mind-the-values-gap.pdf
1. You are required to wear a mask in public spaces where you may come within two metres of another person, unless given specific exemption.
Reasons are given, expectations are set and the rest is detail.
Any women's shelter or rape crisis centre that accepts trans women has freely chosen to do so and has set their own limits on what they find acceptable.
There are anti-trans activists who repeat the claim that shelters will be forced to accept trans-women but this is not true. It is exactly the same tactic as used by anti-gay marriage proponents who kept claiming that churches would be forced to marry gay couples.
Its a prime example of Yes Minister's view on opinion polling. Ask leading questions, get leading answers.
If you'd asked five questions from a right wing perspective the response may have been different.
Not remotely scientific, but I note a shift on my social media. I very rarely talk politics there these days, but I’ve noticed that some unexpected friends and associates have been starting to post political stuff when they haven’t previously. In particular I note that some Labour-supporting friends have now very decisively shifted to Yes, and aren’t shy on telling people about it. Very, very heartening!
But here we are. Better late than never, eh?
And that applies to all governments.
Increasing the budget by 13% *should* mean increasing the actual building by more than 13% - fixed costs *should* stay fixed.
Even if this is a 20% increase in actual building, that wouldn't stretch the construction industry very much. Schools are not exotic buildings.
I wonder why that is? Is it just that they want more spending and will latch on any excuse to do it.
As an aside who is going to decide which schools are renewed or renovated? With the demise of the LEA who gets to choose and will the decision making process be open and above board? The fact that it appears they are going to be in recently tory won constituencies stinks to high heaven, but then labour would do the same. Time to be shut of these two parties who’s only existence is to protect and feed their paymasters.
The economy was growing faster than rivals and we had full employment for most of the last decade. What demand gap are you banging on about?
The UK labour market has been "full", but the majority of jobs added were minimum-wage & very low-productivity. To take one tiny example: you can employ people to wash cars, or you can invest in a mechanised car wash & employ the same people to do something more productive (like build schools say, if you need more school buildings, but whatever...) elsewhere. Which would be better for the economy? The latter obviously. Yet the UK is full of people washing cars & the mechanised car washes have gone out of business. Which tells you that wage pressure is completely absent.
In some ways the UK economy has gone backwards in the decade.
The Magic Money Tree is just starting to feature, too.
Nope. Ruthie’s 2017 (ahem) “triumph” (ie. not losing quite as badly as usual) was down to SLD to SCon swings, not SNP to SCon. The SNP’s problem that year was abstentions.
Stonewall is lobbying to change this though, see page 33 of https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/a_vision_for_change.pdf -
Stonewall will lobby Government for reform of the Equality Act, to include ‘gender identity’ as a protected characteristic and to remove the use of the terms ‘gender reassignment’ and ‘transsexual’ from the Act. Removing current ambiguities in the Act will ensure that all trans people, including those who identify as non-binary, are unequivocally protected and included. It will also signal to trans employees and service users, as well as public bodies and employers, that discrimination of trans people is not acceptable.
In addition, Stonewall will advocate for the removal of all instances of permitted discrimination of trans people from the Act, as well as for updates to the explanatory notes and statutory codes of practice accordingly. Stonewall will lobby political parties in England, Scotland and Wales to include full equality for trans people, and the reform of the Equality Act, as part of their political commitments.
Combine this change with it becoming much easier to legally change sex with self-ID, and you absolutely end up with a situation with women's shelters forced to accept trans women (i.e. men, including 'intact' ones).
Even short of legal change, trans activists have been shameless in trying to bully others into their way of thinking. Witness what happened to Vancouver Rape Relief.
So despite the UK growing faster than other developed nations for the past decade, despite the UK having full employment for most of the past decade you still want more spending as you think the government is better at getting growth than the free market. Is that it? So you just want spend, spend, spend in all circumstances.
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1277420353971724289?s=20
When the labour market is tight & wages are growing, well that’s a very different story.
Huh? Low hanging fruit in Glasgow?? A “whole crop”???
The location of this Unionist orchard escapes me.
The most “marginal” Glasgow seat is Glasgow North East. It requires an SNP to SLab swing of 3.75. After that, it gets increasingly difficult. Where exactly is this “whole crop” that is going to save the Union?
We need to stop giving out figurative medals, it is very early days.
Strong Unionism is quite rare in Scotland. An immovable core of 20-25% of the electorate. The 2014 vote was won by “soft” Unionist and floating voters, who, when it comes to normal elections, vote on other issues and basic competence/attitudes towards leaders.
Come on...
For example Gordon.
2015 LD vote 32.7%
2017 LD Vote 11.6%
This is repeated across the North and North East.
Nationally the LD vote went from 7.5% to 6.8% but that translated into drops of 20+ percentage points in various constituencies.
The testing here has been very intensive, and I think that shows up in the number of cases detected. The public health officials have given free tests to everyone in high-density areas. Roughly a third of the 10m population have been tested, and we have only 300 deaths. Yes the fines apply to everyone, in the case of low paid workers they will fall on their employer. Employers are responsible for providing masks to everyone at work, and shops give them out for free or for pennies to low paid workers.
It is a philosophy that feeds off lies, disinformation and faux grievance, and nearly always degenerates in time to violence. The only antidote to it is education. The poorer someone's education is, the more likely they are to be a nationalist. That is why nationalists and fascists seek to pervert education.
Normal Scots frustrated = good.
Tories frustrated = bad.
Welcome to the Toryverse.
Government spending is a ratchet, once it goes up it's basically impossible to bring it back down again.
And as for your rubbish in Osborne crippling the economy, yes he crippled it into the fastest growing major European economy from 2010-2016 and the IMF admitted they got their doom and gloom about UK austerity completely wrong.
Strong Independence is 25%
Don't hide being fake economics to justify extra spending when the reality was the opposite. The UK was at full employment, growing faster than our economic peers and still people like you claim spending was too low.
Thank goodness we had someone like Osborne in charge so the economy was fixed, the roof was fixed while the sun was shining so that now we have a real crisis (which there wasn't any at all for the past decade) the economy is in fighting shape with a deficit under control despite what was inherited. Now is the time to spend countercyclically, not in the past.
Nationalism can be either virtuous or hate filled depending upon the individual same as any other philosophy.
On the trans-right issue, I don't really care about whether someone can be considered a woman or not. I do, however, care about whether they have male capabilities - i.e. the ability to commit sexual crimes. As long as they do, then they should be treated as men.
I agree that day-to-day government spending can be politically difficult to reduce. That’s why your counter-cyclical spending should be lovely, lovely infrastructure projects who’s spending goes away once they’re done. (Obviously they need to be projects where future income at least pays for their running costs + maintenance as otherwise you’re committing yourself to a never ending maintenance burden - something the US is suffering from at the moment.)
On spending, sure infrastructure is a great way to spend money but how do you do that with "why are we spending £32bn on xxxx when the NHS needs more money?".
Politically spending more money on the NHS and education is always going to be more popular than a new power station.
Can you give any macroeconomic metrics spanning the decade to show a crippled recovery?
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1277444428777623553
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1276973967748800514
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/averageweeklyearningsingreatbritain/june2020
There was plenty of room for counter-cyclical expenditure in the years after 2008.
Oh wait...
I was sadly mistaken however!
I am old enough to remember when the Conservative Party prided itself on fiscal responsibility. Now it’s all F*ck Business and Ra Ra Ra Range Rovers All Round.
There is probably about 10-15% of the independence vote that can be won over for Slab in 2024 in the right circumstances.
Paul Sweeney actually talks the most sense (at least in terms of Westminster elections) and he came pretty close to saving his seat.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36073201
Government is the 'what'
CS is the 'how', which must, at times, include "can't be done"
Is it your intention that we never have a correction, we just keep inflating wages forever?
The EU Ref was a bit of a one off, and came with some difficult questions. It is, as I say, the CS' role to support the government, and the government's position was, er, probably remain? Or was that not a government position? Depends who you ask.
The reality is we never had any austerity. We had a slight reduction of the deficit while spending continued to rise every single year. "Sharing the proceeds of growth" in other words.
It's a really dull point. 'Political appointment' refers to the process used to appoint them, Not the content of their character.