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  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    edited July 2020

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,381

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    I don't dispute your point about Corbyn, however getting rid of the barsteward can only be a good thing.

    As to the banks. I believe Brown and Darling had seen what had happened with the run on Northern Rock in 2007 and didn't fancy the mega version of that a year later. One could argue it the Bush administration had intervened with Lehmann Brothers, and underwritten some of the sub prime mortgage debt the crisis would not have been quite so bad. I wouldn't argue if you said the bail out of ungrateful bankers allowed them back at the trough with immediacy and impunity without penalty, quite how that could have worked I couldn't say.

    What of the future? I am not sure how Starmer or his successors can beat Johnson by returning the blue collar classes to the Labour fold. I was confident up until last week that any economic crash would be to Labour's benefit, but it might work for Johnson instead if he can scapegoat groups that Labour are seen as soft on. Mainly "foreigners" of any creed, colour and religion.
    There was perhaps no good, certainly no perfect, option available for the government in 2008.

    But the imagery remains of Labour bailing out the 'London bankers' while letting the local factories and steelworks close.

    And the imagery passes into the common mindset until something replaces it.

    Ed Miliband couldn't replace that image - he was too obviously London establishment. Corbyn for a brief period came close though by representing 'old Labour'. Starmer we will have to see.
    I don't dispute the morality issue of bailing out the banks, but a run on the banks would have seen more businesses fail, so arguably the situation could have been much, much worse.

    I can't do much about the optics of bailing out the banks.Either way Corbyn wasn't the answer.

    Labour (and dare I say the equally do-gooding LDs) do have a massive problem against Johnson. The proles love him, and whatever Guardianista knob-heads like me think of the great man it changes nothing. He is electoral gold.
    Though I often agree with you, I think you're over-egging the pudding here with regard to the popularity of BJ with the "proles" - presumably the (white) working class. You're far too gloomy - these people can be won back by the left.

    Just because you see a load of patriotic flags in the north doesn't mean that people have been won over to the right-wing cause. The silent majority, who don't fly flags, of the white w/c are not racist, and won't respond to dog whistles - though some of course will, and others are concerned about immigration levels. But there's also a significant proportion of the white w/c that are decent, relaxed about social change, and recognise that immigration doesn't particularly affect their own communities. The Labour tradition hasn't died for many communities and parts of communities. And in particular, w/c women are much less enamoured by the charms of BJ than men. So, to repeat, don't be so gloomy. BJ's appeal could well be transitory.
    Up until last weekend I was convinced the economic train wreck heading down the tracks would do for Johnson. Last week I realised none of this will be the fault of Johnson or his government. Clearly he isn't responsible for C19, but he will dodge the bullet over the economy too. I was using the Brown/Darling model for the theory that Johnson will be blamed for the economic damage. It will be the fault of all the scapegoat groups we love to hate. Johnson has a dogwhistle and he can play it like a concerto.

    I have an office near the Sandfields Estate in Port Talbot. A similar demographic to the Northern blue/red wall. Labour are hated when once they were revered. Stephen Kinnock was the worst offender in breaking lockdown. I have been told in all seriousness, Kinnock drove from Aberavon to London for a birthday party, that is the story in Port Talbot anyway. Dom's childcare issues by contrast were accepted! The fury at Starmer kneeling for BLM shouldn't be underestimated either. I thought he looked foolish, but those who saw it and were of a particular mindset deemed it as far more sinister. Luckily for Starmer, most people still associate him with Nigel Starmer-Smith, the rugby union commentator/former player, he simply hasn't registered yet.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,620
    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    Eh? Your own email shows that, quite literally, both gentlemen were left with assets worth millions in the case of Mr Applegarth and presumably also Mr Goodwin.
    It really was the difference between 'us and them' with Goodwin's pension:

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    I wonder how many RBS workers received that list of extras Goodwin got.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 5,288
    On-topic and apologies if covered downthread. Infection rate alone should not determine colour code status of a country, but rather trajectory (infection rate 5, R consistently at 1.4 might be more risk than infection rate 7, R=0.9( plus degree of confidence in the figures, and we should be agile enough to impose bans at sub-national level where necessary and appropriate. This may not always apply: a flight from NY may carry somebody who has been to Florida, for example.

    There is a degree of complexity, but it should be easily within the ken of an expert group to set some guidelines on how it will be operated then keep a country list updated.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    That’s not necessarily true. Local government workers and police officers can forfeit pensions, or at least, a significant chunk of them:

    https://www.publiclawtoday.co.uk/employment/312-employment-features/35240-employee-misconduct-and-lgps-pension-forfeiture

    And there are other ways they can be forfeited too:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/512/regulation/181/made

    The snag really in this case was the failure of the bank to pursue him for misconduct, for which they may have had good reasons but didn’t look at all good from the outside.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,381
    edited July 2020

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    Eh? Your own email shows that, quite literally, both gentlemen were left with assets worth millions in the case of Mr Applegarth and presumably also Mr Goodwin.
    It really was the difference between 'us and them' with Goodwin's pension:

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    I wonder how many RBS workers received that list of extras Goodwin got.
    Your argument has me wavering! Don't start me on the Pheonix Four and how they (allegedly) played the Labour Government, the taxpayer and the good burghers of Longbridge, or I will go full on Boris Tory!
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    Although interestingly in some parts of the public sector loss of some pension rights on dismissal is still a possibility.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,381
    HYUFD said:

    Wall Street swings behind Biden

    “They’re saying, ‘We’d like to see Biden crush Trump,’” he continued, adding that he doesn’t want Democrats to take control of the Senate. In his world, legislative gridlock is a good thing and voting for Republicans to keep the Senate is basically “making sure nothing radical happens.”
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/wall-street-bankers-well-gladly-pay-higher-taxes-to-get-rid-of-the-existential-threat-that-is-trump/ar-BB16LoN6

    They don't mean it HYUFD.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,620
    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    Do you think this was the same for every RBS employee ?

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    One thing which amazes me is why some Conservatives are always so eager to defend vast payments to incompetent business fatcats.

    It really is a weird cultural cringe.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,620
    Pro_Rata said:

    On-topic and apologies if covered downthread. Infection rate alone should not determine colour code status of a country, but rather trajectory (infection rate 5, R consistently at 1.4 might be more risk than infection rate 7, R=0.9( plus degree of confidence in the figures, and we should be agile enough to impose bans at sub-national level where necessary and appropriate. This may not always apply: a flight from NY may carry somebody who has been to Florida, for example.

    There is a degree of complexity, but it should be easily within the ken of an expert group to set some guidelines on how it will be operated then keep a country list updated.

    The devil is in the 'should be'.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    Pro_Rata said:

    On-topic and apologies if covered downthread. Infection rate alone should not determine colour code status of a country, but rather trajectory (infection rate 5, R consistently at 1.4 might be more risk than infection rate 7, R=0.9( plus degree of confidence in the figures, and we should be agile enough to impose bans at sub-national level where necessary and appropriate. This may not always apply: a flight from NY may carry somebody who has been to Florida, for example.

    There is a degree of complexity, but it should be easily within the ken of an expert group to set some guidelines on how it will be operated then keep a country list updated.

    It does depend on the likelihood of bumping into someone with the virus, though.

    I spent this lunchtime in a picturesque Cotswold village at the centre of the tourist circuit, which was awash with people enjoying a warm summer’s day with next to no masks and little effort at keeping away from others. I made my own efforts to keep a distance from others and was only comfortable being there at all because the current UK stats suggest the chances of bumping into an infected person are pretty small, plus the reduced likelihood of transmission in the open air.

    The discongruity was emerging from shops equipped with Perspex screens,staff in masks, and replete with notices restricting access, onto streets thronging with people taking no precautions whatsoever.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    Do you think this was the same for every RBS employee ?

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    One thing which amazes me is why some Conservatives are always so eager to defend vast payments to incompetent business fatcats.

    It really is a weird cultural cringe.
    You find it weird that a bunch of incompetent fat cats with big pensions are eager to defend the payment of vast pensions to incompetent fat cats?
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    A pension fund worth £1m will generate an income of about £35k before tax. If Applegarth can generate “at least £200k” from a £2.5m put he’s a phenomenal investor.

    So the Mirror’s numbers are utter garbage. I assume that article is pre the Goodwin settlement that say him reduce his pension pot by 60%
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,620

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    Eh? Your own email shows that, quite literally, both gentlemen were left with assets worth millions in the case of Mr Applegarth and presumably also Mr Goodwin.
    It really was the difference between 'us and them' with Goodwin's pension:

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    I wonder how many RBS workers received that list of extras Goodwin got.
    Your argument has me wavering! Don't start me on the Pheonix Four and how they (allegedly) played the Labour Government, the taxpayer and the good burghers of Longbridge, or I will go full on Boris Tory!
    I really doubt things have improved much in the last decade.

    And its certainly 'one rule for them ... ' with Boris.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    Eh? Your own email shows that, quite literally, both gentlemen were left with assets worth millions in the case of Mr Applegarth and presumably also Mr Goodwin.
    Not exactly. Those were the total compensation from their careers. They lost everything they had in future promises. If I left my job tomorrow I wouldn’t say I “walked away” with my salary from 2017.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    Guardian: The pandemic sweeping through major US cities is now wreaking havoc on rural American communities, with some recording the nation’s most new confirmed cases per capita in the past two weeks.

    The virus is infecting thousands of often impoverished rural residents every day, swamping struggling health care systems and piling responsibility on government workers who often perform multiple jobs they never signed up for, the Associated Press reports.

    Officials attribute much of the spread in rural America to outbreaks in workplaces, living facilities and social gatherings.

    Food processing plants and farms, where people typically work in cramped quarters, have proven to be hotspots.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139

    HYUFD said:

    Wall Street swings behind Biden

    “They’re saying, ‘We’d like to see Biden crush Trump,’” he continued, adding that he doesn’t want Democrats to take control of the Senate. In his world, legislative gridlock is a good thing and voting for Republicans to keep the Senate is basically “making sure nothing radical happens.”
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/wall-street-bankers-well-gladly-pay-higher-taxes-to-get-rid-of-the-existential-threat-that-is-trump/ar-BB16LoN6

    They don't mean it HYUFD.
    As the artice suggests they will likely vote Biden for President, GOP for Congress.

    Wall Street has never really liked Trump anyway, he got less support from the financial services industry than Romney did in 2012 for instance
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    Eh? Your own email shows that, quite literally, both gentlemen were left with assets worth millions in the case of Mr Applegarth and presumably also Mr Goodwin.
    It really was the difference between 'us and them' with Goodwin's pension:

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    I wonder how many RBS workers received that list of extras Goodwin got.
    It was cut to £342k in the deal
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    ydoethur said:

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    That’s not necessarily true. Local government workers and police officers can forfeit pensions, or at least, a significant chunk of them:

    https://www.publiclawtoday.co.uk/employment/312-employment-features/35240-employee-misconduct-and-lgps-pension-forfeiture

    And there are other ways they can be forfeited too:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/512/regulation/181/made

    The snag really in this case was the failure of the bank to pursue him for misconduct, for which they may have had good reasons but didn’t look at all good from the outside.
    As the article suggests public sector workers only may forfeit pension rights in the case of exceptionally serious misconduct and even then likely not all of them
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    Do you think this was the same for every RBS employee ?

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    One thing which amazes me is why some Conservatives are always so eager to defend vast payments to incompetent business fatcats.

    It really is a weird cultural cringe.
    As Thatcher said Tories believe in the rule of law, not the rule of the mob
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    edited July 2020
    HYUFD said:

    ydoethur said:

    That’s not necessarily true. Local government workers and police officers can forfeit pensions, or at least, a significant chunk of them:

    https://www.publiclawtoday.co.uk/employment/312-employment-features/35240-employee-misconduct-and-lgps-pension-forfeiture

    And there are other ways they can be forfeited too:

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2014/512/regulation/181/made

    The snag really in this case was the failure of the bank to pursue him for misconduct, for which they may have had good reasons but didn’t look at all good from the outside.

    As the article suggests public sector workers only may forfeit pension rights in the case of exceptionally serious misconduct and even then likely not all of them
    One of the circumstances, however, is this:

    4) The offence is an offence—
    (a)committed in connection with service as a public servant; and
    (b)certified by the Secretary of State as—
    (i)gravely injurious to the interests of the State; or
    (ii)liable to lead to serious loss of confidence in the public service.


    I think that would (if applied to RBS) cover the actions of Fred the Shred...
  • ClippPClippP Posts: 1,905
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    Do you think this was the same for every RBS employee ?

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    One thing which amazes me is why some Conservatives are always so eager to defend vast payments to incompetent business fatcats.

    It really is a weird cultural cringe.
    As Thatcher said Tories believe in the rule of law, not the rule of the mob
    Nothing to do with principles or ethics, of course. Conservatives are rotten to the core.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,620
    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    A pension fund worth £1m will generate an income of about £35k before tax. If Applegarth can generate “at least £200k” from a £2.5m put he’s a phenomenal investor.

    So the Mirror’s numbers are utter garbage. I assume that article is pre the Goodwin settlement that say him reduce his pension pot by 60%
    Do you have any idea about how big the pension fund of say a Nuneaton factory worker is ?

    In 2009 such a person would have been paying in about £50 per month.

    Now consider their reaction when they read about Applegarth and his £2.5m pension fund.

    As to Goodwin was this the settlement ?

    On 18 June 2009, RBS stated that following negotiation an agreement was reached between RBS and Goodwin to reduce his pension to £342,500 a year from the £555,000 set in February after he took out an estimated £2.7 million tax-free lump sum.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 23,486
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Wall Street swings behind Biden

    “They’re saying, ‘We’d like to see Biden crush Trump,’” he continued, adding that he doesn’t want Democrats to take control of the Senate. In his world, legislative gridlock is a good thing and voting for Republicans to keep the Senate is basically “making sure nothing radical happens.”
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/wall-street-bankers-well-gladly-pay-higher-taxes-to-get-rid-of-the-existential-threat-that-is-trump/ar-BB16LoN6

    They don't mean it HYUFD.
    As the artice suggests they will likely vote Biden for President, GOP for Congress.

    Wall Street has never really liked Trump anyway, he got less support from the financial services industry than Romney did in 2012 for instance
    What’s your view, Biden win or Trump win?

    If you could vote, who would you vote for?
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,775
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    Do you think this was the same for every RBS employee ?

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    One thing which amazes me is why some Conservatives are always so eager to defend vast payments to incompetent business fatcats.

    It really is a weird cultural cringe.
    As Thatcher said Tories believe in the rule of law, not the rule of the mob
    Mrs T. seems sound to me.

    The ghastly fat-cattery that has those of great incompetence paid as if they were great gods is an abomination.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,421
    edited July 2020
    I think the clearest possible sign that Goodwin’s pension arrangements were inappropriate is that we are still arguing about them 12 years later.

    But that is of course at least partly a reflection on whoever negotiated his contract.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 26,620
    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    Eh? Your own email shows that, quite literally, both gentlemen were left with assets worth millions in the case of Mr Applegarth and presumably also Mr Goodwin.
    It really was the difference between 'us and them' with Goodwin's pension:

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    I wonder how many RBS workers received that list of extras Goodwin got.
    It was cut to £342k in the deal
    This deal ?

    On 18 June 2009, RBS stated that following negotiation an agreement was reached between RBS and Goodwin to reduce his pension to £342,500 a year from the £555,000 set in February after he took out an estimated £2.7 million tax-free lump sum.

    So 'only' £342k a year.

    Plus a £2.7m tax free lump sum.

    Now perhaps this is only a drop in the ocean of some family fortunes but for swing voters in marginal constituencies its different.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,487

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    Do you think this was the same for every RBS employee ?

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    One thing which amazes me is why some Conservatives are always so eager to defend vast payments to incompetent business fatcats.

    It really is a weird cultural cringe.
    Most of these obligations are in the employment contracts of those concerned, which are in turn subject to market forces.

    Best way of forcing paypackets down would be to simply broaden and deepen the search for talent.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,608
    IanB2 said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    On-topic and apologies if covered downthread. Infection rate alone should not determine colour code status of a country, but rather trajectory (infection rate 5, R consistently at 1.4 might be more risk than infection rate 7, R=0.9( plus degree of confidence in the figures, and we should be agile enough to impose bans at sub-national level where necessary and appropriate. This may not always apply: a flight from NY may carry somebody who has been to Florida, for example.

    There is a degree of complexity, but it should be easily within the ken of an expert group to set some guidelines on how it will be operated then keep a country list updated.

    It does depend on the likelihood of bumping into someone with the virus, though.

    I spent this lunchtime in a picturesque Cotswold village at the centre of the tourist circuit, which was awash with people enjoying a warm summer’s day with next to no masks and little effort at keeping away from others. I made my own efforts to keep a distance from others and was only comfortable being there at all because the current UK stats suggest the chances of bumping into an infected person are pretty small, plus the reduced likelihood of transmission in the open air.

    The discongruity was emerging from shops equipped with Perspex screens,staff in masks, and replete with notices restricting access, onto streets thronging with people taking no precautions whatsoever.
    I drove past a heaving car-boot sale in Paignton this mornng. First one for quite some while, I'd imagine.

    Not a mask in sight.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    edited July 2020
    ClippP said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    Do you think this was the same for every RBS employee ?

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    One thing which amazes me is why some Conservatives are always so eager to defend vast payments to incompetent business fatcats.

    It really is a weird cultural cringe.
    As Thatcher said Tories believe in the rule of law, not the rule of the mob
    Nothing to do with principles or ethics, of course. Conservatives are rotten to the core.
    As the various peerages rumoured soon to be announced will amply demonstrate.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    Hotels are pocketing Rishi’s VAT cut by increasing their room prices to compensate, rather than following through on the government’s announced intention to drop prices to encourage more people to spend.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,487

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Wall Street swings behind Biden

    “They’re saying, ‘We’d like to see Biden crush Trump,’” he continued, adding that he doesn’t want Democrats to take control of the Senate. In his world, legislative gridlock is a good thing and voting for Republicans to keep the Senate is basically “making sure nothing radical happens.”
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/wall-street-bankers-well-gladly-pay-higher-taxes-to-get-rid-of-the-existential-threat-that-is-trump/ar-BB16LoN6

    They don't mean it HYUFD.
    As the artice suggests they will likely vote Biden for President, GOP for Congress.

    Wall Street has never really liked Trump anyway, he got less support from the financial services industry than Romney did in 2012 for instance
    What’s your view, Biden win or Trump win?

    If you could vote, who would you vote for?
    Why do you keep trying to 'out' those who you suspect might be Trump voters?

    It's rather unbecoming of you. And everyone knows the answer you're looking for.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    TimT said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I would argue that the seeds of today's relative poverty of post-industrial regions were sown when those industries either exhausted their natural resources or ceased to be globally competitive - both of which pre-dated Thatcher. You can blame her for lack of appropriate policies to address that issue, but then you'd have to attach the same blame to every government ever since too, including Labour.
    Yes but finance & services in the favoured regions took off under Thatcher - leading to great inequality. It's more galling to be struggling when others are on easy street.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,837

    HYUFD said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    A quick look on google or wiki shows that I am right.

    For example:

    The executives at HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley amassed huge nest eggs despite catastrophic performances. Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: “These are mind-boggling rewards for failure. They are all greed and no shame.

    “Britain’s bank bosses with their mink-lined pension pots will never have to work again. But millions of their customers fear they will never work again.

    “Bank lending has dried up and thousands of sound businesses are going down.”

    Former Northern Rock boss Adam Applegarth will retire on at least £200,000 a year thanks to his pension fund of £2.5million.

    The chief executive blamed for the demise of Bradford & Bingley after 157 years, Steven Crawshaw, is only 46 but has come away with a £1.8million pension fund.

    The man behind the multi-billion pound losses at Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin, has £8.4million for his retirement – nearly £800,000 a year.

    Others to hit the pension jackpot include the bosses of Halifax Royal Bank of Scotland, now owned by Lloyds, which had to be bailed out in October.

    Former chief executive of HBOS Sir James Crosby walked away with a pension fund worth £10.4million.

    His right-hand man Peter Cummings, 52, who oversaw £109billion of loans, can retire with a £5.2million pot.

    Crosby, 52, now sits on the Financial Services Authority, the body responsible for policing the City. His successor at the bank Andy Hornby, 41, left with a pension fund of £2million.


    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bank-greed-30million-pensions-scandal-789269

    Now you can babble on as much as you like about pension rights but to the average person it gets translated as "there's one law for them and another law for you".
    No there isn't, if you get sacked as a cleaner or secretary or nurse or teacher or welder you don't lose all your pension rights too.

    The law is the law, the same for everyone
    Do you think this was the same for every RBS employee ?

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    One thing which amazes me is why some Conservatives are always so eager to defend vast payments to incompetent business fatcats.

    It really is a weird cultural cringe.
    Most of these obligations are in the employment contracts of those concerned, which are in turn subject to market forces.

    Best way of forcing paypackets down would be to simply broaden and deepen the search for talent.
    Far from convinced market forces apply to top level corporate pay. It seems to be more pay as much as you can for prestige levels.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree with 3.

    The decline of heavy industry was inevitable due to comparative advantage. Thatcher just realised that you couldn’t stave it off permanently through subsidy. So she recognised the decline rather than “sowed the seeds”
    It was the rip roaring inequality she created and presided over that was the problem.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    edited July 2020

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Wall Street swings behind Biden

    “They’re saying, ‘We’d like to see Biden crush Trump,’” he continued, adding that he doesn’t want Democrats to take control of the Senate. In his world, legislative gridlock is a good thing and voting for Republicans to keep the Senate is basically “making sure nothing radical happens.”
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/wall-street-bankers-well-gladly-pay-higher-taxes-to-get-rid-of-the-existential-threat-that-is-trump/ar-BB16LoN6

    They don't mean it HYUFD.
    As the artice suggests they will likely vote Biden for President, GOP for Congress.

    Wall Street has never really liked Trump anyway, he got less support from the financial services industry than Romney did in 2012 for instance
    What’s your view, Biden win or Trump win?

    If you could vote, who would you vote for?
    I believe it will be very close, as I said before I would probably vote for Biden while voting Republican for Congress but I would have voted for Trump had Sanders been the Democratic nominee but I am not American so who I would vote for is irrelevant
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    George W Bush let Lehmans go bankrupt
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    kinabalu said:

    TimT said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I would argue that the seeds of today's relative poverty of post-industrial regions were sown when those industries either exhausted their natural resources or ceased to be globally competitive - both of which pre-dated Thatcher. You can blame her for lack of appropriate policies to address that issue, but then you'd have to attach the same blame to every government ever since too, including Labour.
    Yes but finance & services in the favoured regions took off under Thatcher - leading to great inequality. It's more galling to be struggling when others are on easy street.
    Thatcher can hardly be blamed for turning Docklands into a thriving financial sector
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862
    IanB2 said:

    Hotels are pocketing Rishi’s VAT cut by increasing their room prices to compensate, rather than following through on the government’s announced intention to drop prices to encourage more people to spend.

    May well make the difference between survival and not for some of the hotels. The sector has taken a hell of a hit. Those at the upper end with pools etc are still struggling.

  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,929
    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    George W Bush let Lehmans go bankrupt
    It was arguably Bush letting Lehmans go bust that tipped Wall Street over the edge into the GFC.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862
    kinabalu said:

    TimT said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment

    had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I would argue that the seeds of today's relative poverty of post-industrial regions were sown when those industries either exhausted their natural resources or ceased to be globally competitive - both of which pre-dated Thatcher. You can blame her for lack of appropriate policies to address that issue, but then you'd have to attach the same blame to every
    government ever since too, including Labour.

    Yes but finance & services in the favoured regions took off under Thatcher - leading to great inequality. It's more galling to be struggling when others are on easy street.
    How were the unemployment benefits to be paid for if no one was making money?
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,775
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    I think it's far from clear that "Well the Tories would have done the same obviously." is true.

    I suspect that a Tory government at the time wouldn't have foisted the crap on Lloyds for example. They'd have let some banks go under.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    DavidL said:

    kinabalu said:

    TimT said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment

    had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I would argue that the seeds of today's relative poverty of post-industrial regions were sown when those industries either exhausted their natural resources or ceased to be globally competitive - both of which pre-dated Thatcher. You can blame her for lack of appropriate policies to address that issue, but then you'd have to attach the same blame to every
    government ever since too, including Labour.

    Yes but finance & services in the favoured regions took off under Thatcher - leading to great inequality. It's more galling to be struggling when others are on easy street.
    How were the unemployment benefits to be paid for if no one was making money?
    lol - that was the business model.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,604
    kinabalu said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree with 3.

    The decline of heavy industry was inevitable due to comparative advantage. Thatcher just realised that you couldn’t stave it off permanently through subsidy. So she recognised the decline rather than “sowed the seeds”
    It was the rip roaring inequality she created and presided over that was the problem.
    It was the me,me,me individual selfishness that she encouraged. The loss of community and fairness. She once admitted she had a roomful of bogrolls in an earlier bogroll panic. She said it was the sensible thing to do. it was her selfish attitude that spawned Goodwin.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,381
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Wall Street swings behind Biden

    “They’re saying, ‘We’d like to see Biden crush Trump,’” he continued, adding that he doesn’t want Democrats to take control of the Senate. In his world, legislative gridlock is a good thing and voting for Republicans to keep the Senate is basically “making sure nothing radical happens.”
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/wall-street-bankers-well-gladly-pay-higher-taxes-to-get-rid-of-the-existential-threat-that-is-trump/ar-BB16LoN6

    They don't mean it HYUFD.
    As the artice suggests they will likely vote Biden for President, GOP for Congress.

    Wall Street has never really liked Trump anyway, he got less support from the financial services industry than Romney did in 2012 for instance
    What’s your view, Biden win or Trump win?

    If you could vote, who would you vote for?
    I believe it will be very close, as I said before I would probably vote for Biden while voting Republican for Congress but I would have voted for Trump had Sanders been the Democratic nominee but I am not American so who I would vote for is irrelevant
    HYUFD. You are never irrelevant!
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    TimT said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I would argue that the seeds of today's relative poverty of post-industrial regions were sown when those industries either exhausted their natural resources or ceased to be globally competitive - both of which pre-dated Thatcher. You can blame her for lack of appropriate policies to address that issue, but then you'd have to attach the same blame to every government ever since too, including Labour.
    Yes but finance & services in the favoured regions took off under Thatcher - leading to great inequality. It's more galling to be struggling when others are on easy street.
    Thatcher can hardly be blamed for turning Docklands into a thriving financial sector
    No. But it compounded the misery of her victims. It made the impoverishment harder to bear.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.



    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    George W Bush let Lehmans go bankrupt
    It was arguably Bush letting Lehmans go bust that tipped Wall Street over the edge into the GFC.
    That’s no different from blaming the deck chair assistant on the Titanic. Lehman’s wasn’t a cause, it was a symptom.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    George W Bush let Lehmans go bankrupt
    But the big one was AIG. They bailed that. Saved the system.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 53,862
    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    George W Bush let Lehmans go bankrupt
    But the big one was AIG. They bailed that. Saved the system.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,604
    Reported cases plateaued in England and London with R around 1.


  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    edited July 2020
    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    TimT said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I would argue that the seeds of today's relative poverty of post-industrial regions were sown when those industries either exhausted their natural resources or ceased to be globally competitive - both of which pre-dated Thatcher. You can blame her for lack of appropriate policies to address that issue, but then you'd have to attach the same blame to every government ever since too, including Labour.
    Yes but finance & services in the favoured regions took off under Thatcher - leading to great inequality. It's more galling to be struggling when others are on easy street.
    Thatcher can hardly be blamed for turning Docklands into a thriving financial sector
    No. But it compounded the misery of her victims. It made the impoverishment harder to bear.
    Rubbish, it generated thousands of new jobs and billions in new revenue for public services
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 42,226
    Omnium said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    I think it's far from clear that "Well the Tories would have done the same obviously." is true.

    I suspect that a Tory government at the time wouldn't have foisted the crap on Lloyds for example. They'd have let some banks go under.
    Brown and Darling handled the crisis extremely well on the whole. This is undeniable. So don't go denying it.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,381

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    Eh? Your own email shows that, quite literally, both gentlemen were left with assets worth millions in the case of Mr Applegarth and presumably also Mr Goodwin.
    It really was the difference between 'us and them' with Goodwin's pension:

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    I wonder how many RBS workers received that list of extras Goodwin got.
    Your argument has me wavering! Don't start me on the Pheonix Four and how they (allegedly) played the Labour Government, the taxpayer and the good burghers of Longbridge, or I will go full on Boris Tory!
    I really doubt things have improved much in the last decade.

    And its certainly 'one rule for them ... ' with Boris.
    I used allegedly by the way because the biggest allegation that stuck was that their behaviour was "inappropriate"!

    So nothing to see really.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 10,775
    kinabalu said:

    Omnium said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    I think it's far from clear that "Well the Tories would have done the same obviously." is true.

    I suspect that a Tory government at the time wouldn't have foisted the crap on Lloyds for example. They'd have let some banks go under.
    Brown and Darling handled the crisis extremely well on the whole. This is undeniable. So don't go denying it.
    You don't have a clue about financial affairs do you?

  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,381

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Wall Street swings behind Biden

    “They’re saying, ‘We’d like to see Biden crush Trump,’” he continued, adding that he doesn’t want Democrats to take control of the Senate. In his world, legislative gridlock is a good thing and voting for Republicans to keep the Senate is basically “making sure nothing radical happens.”
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/wall-street-bankers-well-gladly-pay-higher-taxes-to-get-rid-of-the-existential-threat-that-is-trump/ar-BB16LoN6

    They don't mean it HYUFD.
    As the artice suggests they will likely vote Biden for President, GOP for Congress.

    Wall Street has never really liked Trump anyway, he got less support from the financial services industry than Romney did in 2012 for instance
    What’s your view, Biden win or Trump win?

    If you could vote, who would you vote for?
    I believe it will be very close, as I said before I would probably vote for Biden while voting Republican for Congress but I would have voted for Trump had Sanders been the Democratic nominee but I am not American so who I would vote for is irrelevant
    HYUFD. You are never irrelevant!
    Well,well,well. I've been off-topiced for complimenting HYUFD. Time to go!
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,766
    Biden 5.5 ahead in top battlegrounds: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/trump-vs-biden-top-battleground-states/
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,600
    "Leicester's city-wide lockdown should be lifted and replaced with intense public health messaging aimed at suppressing coronavirus in the 10 per cent of the city where there are excessive cases of infections, the city council has said."

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8536025/One-size-fits-lockdown-approach-effective-BAME-communities.html
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    ydoethur said:

    I think the clearest possible sign that Goodwin’s pension arrangements were inappropriate is that we are still arguing about them 12 years later.

    But that is of course at least partly a reflection on whoever negotiated his contract.

    They were completely disgraceful. There is a systemic problem with executive pay.

    But it doesn’t alter the fact that they were lawfully earned and, at the time, there were no clawback provisions.

    @another_richard likes to fulminate about how banks were bailed out but they weren’t. The government protected the system while punishing individuals. Goodwin is a recluse who everyone despised. That hurts him more than anything else.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,766
    Maybe Trump has what political ad makers call the "Dog Food Problem."

    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/16/opinions/brad-parscale-trump-dog-food-problem-begala/index.html
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,482

    Alistair said:

    The failure to close our air borders will go down as a huge negative against both the scientific advice and the politicians who credulously accepted it.

    Patrick Vallance was on Civil Service Live this week. he reckoned, with the benefit of hindsight, that completely closing the borders would have been effective, if done in *early February*. In fact he sort of indicated that SAGE had given that advice. However he also asked if it would have been seen as being in any way reasonable at the time.
    That feels like a straw man argument. Of course nobody would have backed a travel ban back in Feb, but temperature checks, they would have.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    kinabalu said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree with 3.

    The decline of heavy industry was inevitable due to comparative advantage. Thatcher just realised that you couldn’t stave it off permanently through subsidy. So she recognised the decline rather than “sowed the seeds”
    It was the rip roaring inequality she created and presided over that was the problem.
    Given the failure was inevitable sounds like you would have preferred her successes not to happen so everyone could be miserable together
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    Barnesian said:

    Reported cases plateaued in England and London with R around 1.


    Based on what we know, I suspect that R=1 in London is indicative of cases continuing to appear but at extremely low levels. In England as a whole, of course, we have trace levels in most of the country but these big localized hotspots.

    What I'm hoping we'll get from yet more testing and the data being handed to local authorities is a greater readiness to reimpose restrictions, but on specific problem areas rather than applying them as a blunt instrument to whole districts or cities such as in Leicester. What I hope we don't get is too much soft pedalling from councils that are afraid of the economic consequences of shuttering schools and businesses for two or three weeks at a time, which will simply end up leading to more damage and more severe action later. In the near future, it will be instructive to see how effective Blackburn's measures turn out to be.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 62,766
    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    George W Bush let Lehmans go bankrupt
    But the big one was AIG. They bailed that. Saved the system.
    And it's Groundhog day again. They may need to be rescued again shortly.

    "The insurance giant AIG—which had massive investments in CDOs in 2008—is now exposed to more than $9 billion in CLOs. U.S. life-insurance companies as a group in 2018 had an estimated one-fifth of their capital tied up in these same instruments."

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-banks-collapse/612247/
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,929
    Omnium said:

    kinabalu said:

    Omnium said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    I think it's far from clear that "Well the Tories would have done the same obviously." is true.

    I suspect that a Tory government at the time wouldn't have foisted the crap on Lloyds for example. They'd have let some banks go under.
    Brown and Darling handled the crisis extremely well on the whole. This is undeniable. So don't go denying it.
    You don't have a clue about financial affairs do you?

    Gordon Brown saved the world after the global financial crisis. HTH.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 22,837
    Charles said:

    ydoethur said:

    I think the clearest possible sign that Goodwin’s pension arrangements were inappropriate is that we are still arguing about them 12 years later.

    But that is of course at least partly a reflection on whoever negotiated his contract.

    They were completely disgraceful. There is a systemic problem with executive pay.

    But it doesn’t alter the fact that they were lawfully earned and, at the time, there were no clawback provisions.

    @another_richard likes to fulminate about how banks were bailed out but they weren’t. The government protected the system while punishing individuals. Goodwin is a recluse who everyone despised. That hurts him more than anything else.
    Whilst what you say is true its not the whole picture. Bankers in general have done very well in the decade since the gfc, and that is very much related to government decisions on QE and maintaining seven figure salary packages in loss making majority publicly owned companies.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,868
    Just catching up with the virus news of the day, apparently uniquely in England no one can ever recover from the virus and getting hit by bus months after testing positive is dying of the virus.

    As I've been saying for months, the government is being far, far too "honest" with the statistics going unnecessarily further than every other country, including the other home nations, which is causing an unnecessary economic slowdown as people are still looking at higher numbers than are actually occurring. We're probably running at about 40 deaths per day in all settings, maybe lower than that now. Looking at the daily data dump no one would realise.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    DavidL said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.



    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Well the Tories would have done the same obviously. So perhaps you mean that better was expected of Labour. And I do think that is often the case.
    George W Bush let Lehmans go bankrupt
    It was arguably Bush letting Lehmans go bust that tipped Wall Street over the edge into the GFC.
    That’s no different from blaming the deck chair assistant on the Titanic. Lehman’s wasn’t a cause, it was a symptom.
    Both

    It was a classic example of a bank being overlevered - basically they had bought Arch Properties with massive amounts of debt on the assumption they could always fund it in the market. But they couldn’t.

    The cause was because it was the trigger that caused chaos in the market - it brought Mother Merrill to her knees - and the freeze in delicate settlements.
  • LadyGLadyG Posts: 2,221
    Just had a beautiful family picnic on Hampstead Heath, under the collonades of Kenwood, looking south across the sunlit city.

    The wine was a very fine viognier: Domaine de la Janasse, 2018

  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,600
    kinabalu said:

    HYUFD said:

    kinabalu said:

    TimT said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I would argue that the seeds of today's relative poverty of post-industrial regions were sown when those industries either exhausted their natural resources or ceased to be globally competitive - both of which pre-dated Thatcher. You can blame her for lack of appropriate policies to address that issue, but then you'd have to attach the same blame to every government ever since too, including Labour.
    Yes but finance & services in the favoured regions took off under Thatcher - leading to great inequality. It's more galling to be struggling when others are on easy street.
    Thatcher can hardly be blamed for turning Docklands into a thriving financial sector
    No. But it compounded the misery of her victims. It made the impoverishment harder to bear.
    It sounds like you'd prefer everyone to be equally poor.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    IanB2 said:

    Hotels are pocketing Rishi’s VAT cut by increasing their room prices to compensate, rather than following through on the government’s announced intention to drop prices to encourage more people to spend.

    Which suggests to me that the hotels suspect that most people aren't going to travel regardless (because they're too afraid, don't have the money because of unemployment or don't dare to splash out because of the fear of it) so they might as well strengthen their balance sheets by extracting more money from the minority of customers who have to travel, or are eager to travel regardless.

    The Chancellor's VAT cut was presumably intended to try to stop these businesses collapsing and laying off their workers, not to provide consumers with a supply of cheap domestic holidays. The businesses themselves will know best how to rescue themselves. If they think that they're going to have a better chance of survival by charging a smaller number of customers more and pocketing that cash, rather than trying to fill all their rooms up with bargain break customers that they suspect may not come in sufficient numbers to make that worthwhile, then that seems fair enough.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 13,898
    HYUFD said:


    I believe it will be very close, as I said before I would probably vote for Biden while voting Republican for Congress but I would have voted for Trump had Sanders been the Democratic nominee but I am not American so who I would vote for is irrelevant

    The French call it "co-habitation" but it's the same thing and many people quite like the idea of one Party controlling the Executive and another controlling the Legislature as it prevents radical policy changes.

    The question is what will the GOP do if Trump is defeated and yet they control the Senate? Will the legacy of Trump continue to dominate the GOP caucus or will there be a swing back to a more centrist traditional line whereby moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats can gather an effective majority?

    Time will tell, it always does.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    MaxPB said:

    Just catching up with the virus news of the day, apparently uniquely in England no one can ever recover from the virus and getting hit by bus months after testing positive is dying of the virus.

    As I've been saying for months, the government is being far, far too "honest" with the statistics going unnecessarily further than every other country, including the other home nations, which is causing an unnecessary economic slowdown as people are still looking at higher numbers than are actually occurring. We're probably running at about 40 deaths per day in all settings, maybe lower than that now. Looking at the daily data dump no one would realise.

    This has been a subject of much discussion for the last couple of days. I'd previously assumed that PHE's wonky stats were down to delayed reporting of many of the Covid deaths they were sticking up, but it now looks like a decent percentage of them were those infamous "people who caught Covid in February and got run over by a bus in July," i.e. completely fictitious. One would imagine that ministers are bloody furious about this, although one might also wonder why it is that such an elementary mistake wasn't uncovered sooner.

    I, too, would be entirely unsurprised if we were down to about 30-40 fatalities per day. The English hospital number reported today was 13, and the reporting weekend doesn't even start until tomorrow.
  • LadyGLadyG Posts: 2,221
    Meanwhile on Twitter there is quite the spectacle: the hard left is now trying to cancel..... The Guardian.

    Is this the revolution devouring its own, as expected?

    https://twitter.com/BenJolly9/status/1284423588313993216?s=20
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    LadyG said:

    Meanwhile on Twitter there is quite the spectacle: the hard left is now trying to cancel..... The Guardian.

    Is this the revolution devouring its own, as expected?

    https://twitter.com/BenJolly9/status/1284423588313993216?s=20

    If true then, as you should suggest, it ought to come as no surprise. Coming as it does hot on the heels of the Graun's own decision to cancel Steve Bell, it does look like the hydra's many heads are starting to bite one another.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,604
    I'm watching Mrs America on BBC iPlayer. 9 episodes.

    If you enjoy politics this is the show for you. It covers 1971-78 (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan). It is the early culture wars and is full of politicing at the highest level, as well as leafleting and town hall meetings at the lowest. Great characters, excellent production (by the Madmen team).

    I've just watched episode 8. Fantastic. Just one more episode to watch tonight as Reagan comes on the scene.
  • LadyGLadyG Posts: 2,221

    LadyG said:

    Meanwhile on Twitter there is quite the spectacle: the hard left is now trying to cancel..... The Guardian.

    Is this the revolution devouring its own, as expected?

    https://twitter.com/BenJolly9/status/1284423588313993216?s=20

    If true then, as you should suggest, it ought to come as no surprise. Coming as it does hot on the heels of the Graun's own decision to cancel Steve Bell, it does look like the hydra's many heads are starting to bite one another.
    Yes, I am this minute buying some organic, cruelty free, ethically harvested wholemeal popcorn
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    No significant change apparent there. Looks like the net outcome upon the opinion polls of all that has happened since the General Election is that the Tories have stayed precisely where they were, and Labour has stolen about half of the Lib Dems' remaining support since junking Corbyn.

    As ever, in the context of an election not due to take place until 2024, this essentially means nothing.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 8,604
    EMA gives Tory lead of 6.4%, overall majority of 28.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    Barnesian said:

    I'm watching Mrs America on BBC iPlayer. 9 episodes.

    If you enjoy politics this is the show for you. It covers 1971-78 (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan). It is the early culture wars and is full of politicing at the highest level, as well as leafleting and town hall meetings at the lowest. Great characters, excellent production (by the Madmen team).

    I've just watched episode 8. Fantastic. Just one more episode to watch tonight as Reagan comes on the scene.

    Yes, have been watching too, it is excellent though BBC2 only up to episode 4 so far
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    edited July 2020
    Looks like the only movement since the general election has been the LDs down 5% and Labour up 4% and the SNP up 1%.

    Tory voteshare unchanged.

    So Starmer winning over plenty of Remainers who could not stand Corbyn and went LD last time but not winning over any Tories at all
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139

    Biden 5.5 ahead in top battlegrounds: Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Arizona

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/trump-vs-biden-top-battleground-states/

    Biden's average voteshare in those swing states is 48% ie the same as Hillary's national voteshare in 2016, looks like there may still be a lot of 'silent' Trump voters
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 123,139
    stodge said:

    HYUFD said:


    I believe it will be very close, as I said before I would probably vote for Biden while voting Republican for Congress but I would have voted for Trump had Sanders been the Democratic nominee but I am not American so who I would vote for is irrelevant

    The French call it "co-habitation" but it's the same thing and many people quite like the idea of one Party controlling the Executive and another controlling the Legislature as it prevents radical policy changes.

    The question is what will the GOP do if Trump is defeated and yet they control the Senate? Will the legacy of Trump continue to dominate the GOP caucus or will there be a swing back to a more centrist traditional line whereby moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats can gather an effective majority?

    Time will tell, it always does.
    For 4 years if Trump loses the more moderate congressional GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy will effectively lead the Republican Party
  • justin124justin124 Posts: 11,527
    HYUFD said:

    Looks like the only movement since the general election has been the LDs down 5% and Labour up 4% and the SNP up 1%.

    Tory voteshare unchanged.

    So Starmer winning over plenty of Remainers who could not stand Corbyn and went LD last time but not winning over any Tories at all
    These are GB figures so Labour is up 3%.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,868
    I think people rather like having the pubs open again. Ever since then the Tory lead has become stronger and Labour whining about it has made them look out of touch.
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    FWIW, it might be more helpful if polling organisations stopped bothering to do GB surveys and treated Scotland exclusively as a separate polity like Northern Ireland. It would give us a more accurate idea (insofar as the polls can) of what's going on in England and Wales, and since that's most likely all that the British state will consist of in a few years' time anyway they might as well start getting used to it now.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 63,102
    MaxPB said:

    I think people rather like having the pubs open again. Ever since then the Tory lead has become stronger and Labour whining about it has made them look out of touch.
    Town was very busy today and a lot more general activity

  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 26,176
    NEW THREAD
  • Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    MaxPB said:

    I think people rather like having the pubs open again. Ever since then the Tory lead has become stronger and Labour whining about it has made them look out of touch.
    There's some sign of an uptick in virus cases, but so long as these are concentrated in a few localities and the public health authorities manage to keep a lid on them, then things should remain stable for the time being.

    If the schools coming back in September cause all four wheels to fall off the clown car at once, then things may start to look somewhat different (and that goes double if mass unemployment has really taken off come October/November time.)
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 17,559

    Charles said:

    Carnyx said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    geoffw said:

    There is a slight problem in the logic of only allowing travellers (incl returnees) from countries with fewer cases per 100,000 than us. If all countries take that line we have an impasse.

    Would it not create a hierarchy whereby NZs can go anywhere and Brazilians nowhere with the likes of us somewhere in between?
    To resume the discussion of last night.

    Brexit was a reaction to the previous decade not the 1980s.

    It was the broken promises about immigration contrasted with the voices at the supermarket.

    It was the bailout of the London bankers contrasted with the factories and steel works closing.

    It was the throwing money at foreigners contrasted with the cuts in local areas.
    I think it was more about identity than economics. But you are more likely to fret about identity when you're poor. Can we attribute the relative poverty of these places to the 1980s and Thatcher? No, not entirely. Other and more recent issues - including some of those you mention - are relevant too. Seeds sown in the 80s though.
    Your 1980s comfort zone is still an addiction - it was all the fault of Fatcha :wink:

    Thatcher might not have been liked, might have been viewed as 'the enemy' even but she wasn't thought to have 'betrayed' such places.

    Whereas in 2016 the feeling was that the establishment had lied to, and in Labour's case betrayed, them. And that the establishment did not only not like them but viewed them as 'the enemy'.
    I'm not saying Thatcher caused Brexit. I'm opining 3 things -

    Brexit is about identity not economics.

    But identity concerns come to the fore when you are getting a raw deal.

    The seeds of today's relative poverty of post industrial regions were sewn under Thatcher.
    I disagree on the third.

    It was Labour bailing out the London bankers while letting factories and steelworks shut down where the mood changed.

    That was the great betrayal.

    Now that didn't bear full fruit until 2016 and 2019 but even in 2010 and 2015 it was working class votes which made Cameron PM.
    Working class voters have voted for Conservative Governments for I think 69 of the last 100 years. It is not a new phenomenon.

    However, I do think Johnson's Benny Hill tribute act captures the hearts of a great many people who see him as a national treasure rather than a Conservative Politician.
    Conservative governments have always been elected on working class votes but there are reasons why that vote switch happens.

    And what Labour supporters seem to be in denial about was how the working class were betrayed when the London bankers were bailed out by a Labour government.

    Instead we get 'it was all the fault of Corbyn' or convoluted and contradictory theories blaming Fatcha.
    You seem to have this obsession with “the bankers” being bailed out

    The owners of the banks were basically wiped out. There have been criminal prosecutions of a few and drumming out of others. The innocent have been forced to pay for the sins of the guilty through the bank levy.

    But if the actual institutions themselves had been shut down then the country would have fallen apart.
    The details aren't important to the general perception of what happened.

    By 'bankers' people don't think of shareholders but the 'red braces in front of computer screen' types.

    And in particular the Goodwins and Applegarths who walked off with fortunes while the local branches shut with the local workers losing their jobs.
    Goodwin has been drummed out. He’s a nonentity, PNG. Applegarth I haven’t tracked.

    And most of the traders you refer to have lost their jobs.
    Goodwin and Applegarth might be non-entities but they walked away with millions.

    Do you realise how offensive that looked to the many people ? Especially those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and received statutory redundancy only ?
    Godwin’s shares were wiped out, as we Applegarth. Their options and incentive plans were cancelled.

    There were some complaints about Goodwin’s pension but at the time there was no legal way to remove prior compensation and I’m not a fan of illegal expropriation
    Its all blah, blah, blah.

    People see that Goodwin and Applegarth walked away with millions and that's all there is to it.
    The point is they didn’t.

    Applegarth made about £5m after tax in his career at Northern Rock. A decent amount of money but no more than a partner in an accountancy or law firm would have made. Do you think that should have been taken away from him retrospectively?

    Goodwin struck a deal to give up half his pension. He had a good legal case to give up none of it but chose to in return for an end to the legal cases. Should RBS have rejected that settlement deal?

    Objectively speaking you are wrong.
    Eh? Your own email shows that, quite literally, both gentlemen were left with assets worth millions in the case of Mr Applegarth and presumably also Mr Goodwin.
    It really was the difference between 'us and them' with Goodwin's pension:

    Media and government criticism increased on disclosure in February 2009 of the size of Goodwin's pension. The treasury minister Lord Myners had indicated to RBS that there should be "no reward for failure", but Goodwin's pension entitlement, represented by a notional fund of £8 million, was doubled, to a notional fund of £16 million or more, because under the terms of the scheme he was entitled to receive, at age 50, benefits which would otherwise have been available to him only if he had worked until age 60.

    Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, stated that as a result Goodwin is drawing £693,000 a year (later revised to £703,000 due to Goodwin working an extra month in the new financial year), and disclosed that under the RBS pension scheme Goodwin is entitled to draw the pension already, at age 50, because he had been asked to leave employment early, rather than having been dismissed. A pensions expert suggested that this meant Goodwin had received a substantial payoff from his early retirement, as it would cost around £25 million to buy such a pension and his pension 'pot' amounted to £16 million. When the matter became public in late February 2009, Goodwin defended his decision to refuse to reduce his pension entitlement in a letter to Lord Myners on 26 February, pointing out that on leaving in October 2008 he had given up a contractual 12-month notice period worth around £1.29 million and share options worth around £300,000. In March 2009 Lord Myners revealed that part of the reason Goodwin's pension was so large was that RBS treated him as having joined the pension scheme from age 20 (instead of 40, when he actually joined) and ignored contributions to his pension from previous employment.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin#Size_of_pension

    I wonder how many RBS workers received that list of extras Goodwin got.
    It was cut to £342k in the deal
    This deal ?

    On 18 June 2009, RBS stated that following negotiation an agreement was reached between RBS and Goodwin to reduce his pension to £342,500 a year from the £555,000 set in February after he took out an estimated £2.7 million tax-free lump sum.

    So 'only' £342k a year.

    Plus a £2.7m tax free lump sum.

    Now perhaps this is only a drop in the ocean of some family fortunes but for swing voters in marginal constituencies its different.
    And also for marginal voters in swing constituencies.
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