Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
The best argument I've ever heard against international aid is that we've been doing it for 40 years and nothing has changed. The budgets got bigger, the charity fat cats got richer but the poor are still poor and East Asia managed to lift itself out of poverty without aid.
Re East Asia, I don't think that's strictly true. Back in the 1960s and 70s, to prevent the spread of Communism in the region, they were massive recipients of American foreign aid.
But how much has Europe shovelled into Africa? It's still, frankly, a shithole that Africans want to escape from. You can't just look at American aid to Korea and say aid is a success. The west has collectively pissed away hundreds of billions in Africa and the poor are still poor, the dictators have got bulging bank accounts and charities have paid their directors handsome fees and defined benefit pensions.
It has to be said that aid to South Korea, the Philippines and South Vietnam in the Cold War was a distinctly mixed blessing. The corruption of Syngman Rhee, the destruction of Filipino agriculture and the annihilation of the South Vietnamese economy all spring to mind as unintended consequences.
They’re not the example I would choose of successful aid programmes, put it that way.
Postwar S Korea was literally the poorest country in the world. I’d say the aid program was unusually successful; the later democratisation bit probably wouldn’t have happened without prosperity and the higher education that came with it. But you’re of course right that aid alone doesn’t determine outcomes - and it’s entirely possible that it can be spent in unproductive or counterproductive ways.
An even greater success story is Singapore. It was a mosquito ridden toilet at the back end of the Empire with some nice buildings, a colourful-ish history, and no future, when it decided to go indy from Malaysia
Now it is one of the richest and most successful cities on earth. Astonishing
How much aid was it given? None? Trillions? I dunno, genuinely, but I doubt it was much
Of course it was hugely assisted by a numerate, ambitious high IQ Chinese workforce. And some gifted leaders
Britain rebuilt things after a fashion, immediately after the war - and while Korea was being devastated by the US/China struggle, Singapore boomed on the demand for tin and rubber: http://countrystudies.us/singapore/9.htm
But yes, they too had their own economic miracle.
Indeed, in the fifties, while still colonies, a good number of British, French and even Belgian economies boomed due to strong commodity prices.
Mrs Foxy was brought up in the Zambian Copperbelt, and it had a thriving economy then. What squashed Zambia was the collapse of the copper price, the quadrupled cost of imported fuel, and the economic barrier of the Rhodesian war, its only outlet to the sea.
She went from an enjoyable middle class life, with her dad on a local salary, to being unable to buy bread in the shops in two years. I think most of us would struggle to cope with double the expenses on half the income.
In the Sixties and early Seventies African countries took out massive development loans on the basis of expected earnings, and often didn't spend them wisely. Kleptocrats like Mobutu were encouraged to do so as part of a proxy Cold War for influence, and Western banks were very happy for the stolen money to be stashed here.
Certainly many African counties have had very bad governments at times, and have been on steep learning curves. Overall though far more money has come out of Africa either in debt interest or in money stashed by Kleptocrats and their Western supporters than ever went there in aid.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
I thought it's just an updated term for "political correctness gawn mad!".
Yes, that's exactly right. And before "political correctness" there were "trendy lefties". Funny how the BBC, schoolteachers, and the more compassionate elements in the Church of England have taken the flak in all three periods. Some things don't change.
Possibly "woke" is the opposite of "g*mm*n", except that one isn't allowed to say "g*mm*n".
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
That doesn't sound like a bad approach.
As I understand it, over recent years the UK has concentrated mainly on concentrating on specific goals - girls education is one that I remember hearing about, but also some others. My impression is that we'd been reasonably successful in comparison with earlier decades.
My personal approach would be to concentrate on one single goal - ending hunger - and concentrating our resources on that. Maybe part of this would be motivated by guilt, over the many famines Britain played a role in, but I think we could do more good by concentrating on doing one thing than by dispersing our efforts, I'd just be concentrating thematically rather than geographically.
That's a negative motivation.
A better one would be to project British values and affection for Britain, and provide a choice for developing nations over and above China.
The problem is Tories try and ape the Left and end up echoing quasi-socialist arguments.
They need to root their arguments in safety and security for Britons at home. Starting with "the right thing to do" just sounds like pompous and windy rhetoric at the voter's expense.
We should be concentrating our foreign aid efforts on global vaccine rollouts.
We do. Massively. If you look at GAVI or Medicines for Malaria or COVAX or any number of other organisations it is always the UK at the heart of things
We punch massively above our weight, and it's something we should be very proud of.
Looking at international aid solely through its effect on British politics, it's definitely in keeping with the new voters that Johnson has won to make this move. What those voters also want is to see that money spent three times over on them, with no tax rises.
I reckon those posters arguing about closing the deficit will be lucky if Johnson only spends the money saved three times over and not five.
If the aim is deficit-closing, BoJo shouldn't be spending the money at all on anything. And whilst that may happen, I find it really hard to envision. Meanwhile, the easy spending cuts have basically run out of road now. From here onwards, making the books balance is going to inconvenience UK voters. I don't think the PM is going to like that at all.
Which is why they’re starting with things like Overseas Aid, which most of the government’s voters couldn’t give a sh!t about. Next up will be privatising Channel 4 and cuts in arts subsidies.
The Guardian will go bonkers, but the Red Wall will cheer.
Yet the Government is quite happy to give Oxfam etc gift aid diverted from IHT and income tax revenues.It will be interesting to see if they attack that, given the number of 'charities' and dodgy thinktanks which benefit from that.
Of course, the same tax advantage also pertains to political parties as far as IHT is concerned.
Gift Aid is agnostic, applying to all charities. Now, is there a case for tightening up charity law, absolutely, “big charity” is a big problem, with huge salaries and expenses being paid, they should be forced to spend a much higher percentage of their revenues directly on good causes to call themselves charities. Not to mention those “charities” which appear to exist purely to lobby government.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
Looking at international aid solely through its effect on British politics, it's definitely in keeping with the new voters that Johnson has won to make this move. What those voters also want is to see that money spent three times over on them, with no tax rises.
I reckon those posters arguing about closing the deficit will be lucky if Johnson only spends the money saved three times over and not five.
If the aim is deficit-closing, BoJo shouldn't be spending the money at all on anything. And whilst that may happen, I find it really hard to envision. Meanwhile, the easy spending cuts have basically run out of road now. From here onwards, making the books balance is going to inconvenience UK voters. I don't think the PM is going to like that at all.
Which is why they’re starting with things like Overseas Aid, which most of the government’s voters couldn’t give a sh!t about. Next up will be privatising Channel 4 and cuts in arts subsidies.
The Guardian will go bonkers, but the Red Wall will cheer.
Yet the Government is quite happy to give Oxfam etc gift aid diverted from IHT and income tax revenues.It will be interesting to see if they attack that, given the number of 'charities' and dodgy thinktanks which benefit from that.
Of course, the same tax advantage also pertains to political parties as far as IHT is concerned.
At least with Gift Aid the vast bulk of the money is coming from private source and the state isn't picking and choosing who to give it to.
'Vast bulk': the big sums from the big donors will be at an effective rate of 40% for IHT (and also for income tax when the upper band is refunded, ignoring the minor complications such as Scottish rates).
So if I leave £100 in my will to the Tories and I am above the IHT limit then the state loses £40 which my estate would otherwise have paid. And if I give £100 out of my income to dodgy thinktank X and am above the relevant limit then the state also loses £40 - £25 going to thinktank and £15 returning to my pocket.
That's a 40% rate of loss of the donation in question, as far as the satate is concerned. Not trivial. The vast majority of the dination does not, therefore, come from the donor (okay, it does in the sense that the tax did - but that is depriving the state of revenue in an austerity period).
And it could be argued that the state shouldn't be forced to subsidise people's donations to people's choices. Still thinking about that myself, I'm not convinced, but there does exist a case.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
That doesn't sound like a bad approach.
As I understand it, over recent years the UK has concentrated mainly on concentrating on specific goals - girls education is one that I remember hearing about, but also some others. My impression is that we'd been reasonably successful in comparison with earlier decades.
My personal approach would be to concentrate on one single goal - ending hunger - and concentrating our resources on that. Maybe part of this would be motivated by guilt, over the many famines Britain played a role in, but I think we could do more good by concentrating on doing one thing than by dispersing our efforts, I'd just be concentrating thematically rather than geographically.
That's a negative motivation.
A better one would be to project British values and affection for Britain, and provide a choice for developing nations over and above China.
The problem is Tories try and ape the Left and end up echoing quasi-socialist arguments.
They need to root their arguments in safety and security for Britons at home. Starting with "the right thing to do" just sounds like pompous and windy rhetoric at the voter's expense.
Well, then you can go with the French approach: which is all about developing export industries. Pretty much every Euro they spend on foreign aid ends up back in France.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Today's vote on "restoring" aid was another slippery move from the Prime Minister. If he thinks it's acceptable to cut international aid, undermine the fight against COVID-19 and trash our global reputation, he should have the courage to come to Parliament and win the argument https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1415054208248733703/video/1
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
I thought it's just an updated term for "political correctness gawn mad!".
Yes, that's exactly right. And before "political correctness" there were "trendy lefties". Funny how the BBC, schoolteachers, and the more compassionate elements in the Church of England have taken the flak in all three periods. Some things don't change.
Possibly "woke" is the opposite of "g*mm*n", except that one isn't allowed to say "g*mm*n".
Oh? What am I supposed to call the pink joint of meat we boiled at the weekend and ate with potatoes and cabbage?
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
I'm a bit too knackered to put together a short and well crafted attempt. What I will say is that your definition would mean that the vast majority of the UK population would be described as woke to some extent. That doesn't seem right in terms of current usage of the word!
Well, yes, I agree. When put to them in words rather than slogans, the majority of Britons are woke.
Which is why we should concentrate on straightforward explanations rather than 3 word slogans and abstruse jargon.
FFS yet another PB discussion about ‘culture wars’ and wokeism.
Most people aren’t interested, and have no desire for a nation built on division and hating your fellow man or woman for their perceived views on social issues.
Sadly there are lots of sad agitators on both sides who can go and luxuriate in their pathetic tribal battles on some prison island somewhere, while the rest of us get on with our lives.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
I assume tongue in cheek, but anyway:
1) Presumably all other rich countries would just withdraw aid to the target, so the net effect would be minimal.
2) "Basic principles" might need to include women's and minority rights, which most (all?) of the potential targets would struggle to meet properly in the short to medium term.
3) It all sounds a bit... colonial.
(1) simply isn't true.
Put this in context for a second: Liberia's GDP is $3bn. The UK's GDP is $2.8 trillion. 0.5% of UK GDP is $14bn. If Liberia won our contest, it'd recieve $14bn/year for five years against a GDO of $3bn.
Obviously, if Nigeria (GDP $448bn) won, it would be rather different. But somehow I don't think that's likely.
(2) The money would be so extreme, you might find that governments were suddenly willing to make changes.
(3) So what? And we're not planning on leaving people in country after five years. Also, countries would be competing the be the recipient, which isn't really how colonialism happened (as far as I understand it).
If Liberia got enough money to more than quadraple its GDP overnight then I doubt it would do much good.
It wouldn't have the resources or capacity to meaningfully spend it, nor wean itself off at the end, so - outside huge temporary immigration and a quasi-imperalist expansion of their government to cope, with British help - the most likely outcome would be very high local inflation, supply shortages and mass embezzlement.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
Of how it is used, yes. Understood? Well, it isn't understood. Because the anti-woke steadfastly refuse to define it.
My favourite battle of the Culture War has been today's abject change by the self proclaimed "anti-Woke" GB News, in having the first television presenter "to take the knee" on camera in support of black British footballers.
Some lush comments underneath. Most declaring they'll switch off for good. One lone voice saying "actually isn't this what freedom of speech is all about?"
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer tv channel. Is Andrew Neil back from his extended holidays yet?
He’s busy slaying pretend Nats on Twitter. He’ll be moving on to windmills shortly.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
I assume tongue in cheek, but anyway:
1) Presumably all other rich countries would just withdraw aid to the target, so the net effect would be minimal.
2) "Basic principles" might need to include women's and minority rights, which most (all?) of the potential targets would struggle to meet properly in the short to medium term.
3) It all sounds a bit... colonial.
(1) simply isn't true.
Put this in context for a second: Liberia's GDP is $3bn. The UK's GDP is $2.8 trillion. 0.5% of UK GDP is $14bn. If Liberia won our contest, it'd recieve $14bn/year for five years against a GDO of $3bn.
Obviously, if Nigeria (GDP $448bn) won, it would be rather different. But somehow I don't think that's likely.
(2) The money would be so extreme, you might find that governments were suddenly willing to make changes.
(3) So what? And we're not planning on leaving people in country after five years. Also, countries would be competing the be the recipient, which isn't really how colonialism happened (as far as I understand it).
1) Agreed. Turns out that "GDP of a small African country" really is a useful reference point.
2) It isn't governments who have the final say on these things - it's wider society. I think that "change your attitudes towards a whole range of things that have worked* for you for generations, so a foreign power can come in and tell us what to do about even more issues" might be a tough sell.
3) Well... yes, but Twitter would be very angry anyway. That aside, the issue is more about perceptions than the reality - which effectively reduces this argument to a subset of 2).
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Today's vote on "restoring" aid was another slippery move from the Prime Minister. If he thinks it's acceptable to cut international aid, undermine the fight against COVID-19 and trash our global reputation, he should have the courage to come to Parliament and win the argument https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1415054208248733703/video/1
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
That's ridiculous. From the moment it was given it was never going to be taken away.
I confess I was surprised when it was announced. I still don't understand the government logic for giving it when they did. Welcome though it was, it was certainly not given in response to 'campaigning'.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
I thought it's just an updated term for "political correctness gawn mad!".
Yes, that's exactly right. And before "political correctness" there were "trendy lefties". Funny how the BBC, schoolteachers, and the more compassionate elements in the Church of England have taken the flak in all three periods. Some things don't change.
Possibly "woke" is the opposite of "g*mm*n", except that one isn't allowed to say "g*mm*n".
Gammon and Boomer are acceptable prejudices of our times.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
I thought it's just an updated term for "political correctness gawn mad!".
Yes, that's exactly right. And before "political correctness" there were "trendy lefties". Funny how the BBC, schoolteachers, and the more compassionate elements in the Church of England have taken the flak in all three periods. Some things don't change.
Possibly "woke" is the opposite of "g*mm*n", except that one isn't allowed to say "g*mm*n".
Gammon and Boomer are acceptable prejudices of our times.
I am at the tail end of the Baby Boom generation. I have never found any offence in being called a Boomer, and really cannot understand how anyone else does. As far as generations exist as opposed to being artificial constructs, it seems a perfectly reasonable usage.
FFS yet another PB discussion about ‘culture wars’ and wokeism.
Most people aren’t interested, and have no desire for a nation built on division and hating your fellow man or woman for their perceived views on social issues.
Sadly there are lots of sad agitators on both sides who can go and luxuriate in their pathetic tribal battles on some prison island somewhere, while the rest of us get on with our lives.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
That doesn't sound like a bad approach.
As I understand it, over recent years the UK has concentrated mainly on concentrating on specific goals - girls education is one that I remember hearing about, but also some others. My impression is that we'd been reasonably successful in comparison with earlier decades.
My personal approach would be to concentrate on one single goal - ending hunger - and concentrating our resources on that. Maybe part of this would be motivated by guilt, over the many famines Britain played a role in, but I think we could do more good by concentrating on doing one thing than by dispersing our efforts, I'd just be concentrating thematically rather than geographically.
That's a negative motivation.
A better one would be to project British values and affection for Britain, and provide a choice for developing nations over and above China.
The problem is Tories try and ape the Left and end up echoing quasi-socialist arguments.
They need to root their arguments in safety and security for Britons at home. Starting with "the right thing to do" just sounds like pompous and windy rhetoric at the voter's expense.
Well, then you can go with the French approach: which is all about developing export industries. Pretty much every Euro they spend on foreign aid ends up back in France.
That would be more popular.
Personally? I'm happy with a strategy that actively and unashamedly promotes British values and interests and the building of robust and resilient democratic institutions and justice systems, in partnership with those Governments, as well as - hopefully - driving popular affection and goodwill for our nation at the same time.
I think it's massively in our interests. But, I suspect it feels quasi-imperalist to many here so, despite being right IMHO, it isn't made.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
That's ridiculous. From the moment it was given it was never going to be taken away.
I confess I was surprised when it was announced. I still don't understand the government logic for giving it when they did. Welcome though it was, it was certainly not given in response to 'campaigning'.
I agree its not going to be taken away, but all the debate right now is on "you should keep this" "ooh I'm not sure" kind of level.
The second you confirm that this is being kept officially, then the debate moves on to something else.
Better to keep people campaigning on keeping something you're willing to keep anyway, than get them campaigning demanding something you don't want to give.
Having very effectively squeezed all but minions and tawdry lickspittles out of the party, how can post-Johnson Conservatives regenerate?
By renouncing BoZo and all his works.
The Conservative and Unionist Party of the future will pledge to restore Foreign Aid.
And rejoin the EU single market...
Tricky.
In the past, party leaders have been big enough to have substantial figures around them who don't always agree with the leader but are clearly still in the tent. Think of Thatcher and Heseltine, Major and the bastards, Blair and Cook or Prescott. May and Johnson.
One of the benefits of doing this is that, if the party does need to adjust course when it gets a new leader, it can. There's a choice of big beasts.
I'm not sure when it really changed. Maybe when most of Labour's big beasts gave up on Corbyn and he didn't take the hint. Maybe when Johnson decided to surround himself by small beasts for ego reasons. But it caused huge problems for Labour in 2020-1; Starmer was the nearest they had to a substantial figure and he also suffers from the low wattageness of those around him.
And in the event that Johnsonism goes pearshaped, what the hell do the Conservatives do? The rest of the party will be either too past it (today's rebels), too kicked out (Stewart etc) or too tainted by BoJo (the current cabinet) to present themselves as a fresh start.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Today's vote on "restoring" aid was another slippery move from the Prime Minister. If he thinks it's acceptable to cut international aid, undermine the fight against COVID-19 and trash our global reputation, he should have the courage to come to Parliament and win the argument https://twitter.com/lisanandy/status/1415054208248733703/video/1
That's literally what happened today. 🙄
Yes, I'm not really sure that's the line of criticism to take. I'm sure parliamentary defeat is not taken to mean the argument is lost, but it's a bit odd to accuse him of cowardice around coming to parliament when it did go to parliament and parliament backed him, as you'd expect with the numbers.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Eh? 5.32 million in England at last count.
My number was 10m households, for 26m people. At a grand a year, that’s £10bn. Plus pensioners on Pension Benefit.
On your number, it’s still over £5bn a year, 25% more than the aid cut.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
I assume tongue in cheek, but anyway:
1) Presumably all other rich countries would just withdraw aid to the target, so the net effect would be minimal.
2) "Basic principles" might need to include women's and minority rights, which most (all?) of the potential targets would struggle to meet properly in the short to medium term.
3) It all sounds a bit... colonial.
(1) simply isn't true.
Put this in context for a second: Liberia's GDP is $3bn. The UK's GDP is $2.8 trillion. 0.5% of UK GDP is $14bn. If Liberia won our contest, it'd recieve $14bn/year for five years against a GDO of $3bn.
Obviously, if Nigeria (GDP $448bn) won, it would be rather different. But somehow I don't think that's likely.
(2) The money would be so extreme, you might find that governments were suddenly willing to make changes.
(3) So what? And we're not planning on leaving people in country after five years. Also, countries would be competing the be the recipient, which isn't really how colonialism happened (as far as I understand it).
If Liberia got enough money to more than quadraple its GDP overnight then I doubt it would do much good.
It wouldn't have the resources or capacity to meaningfully spend it, nor wean itself off at the end, so - outside huge temporary immigration and a quasi-imperalist expansion of their government to cope, with British help - the most likely outcome would be very high local inflation, supply shortages and mass embezzlement.
I grant you, you wouldn't want to do it all at once! My point is that, when a country is individually targeted and given very large amounts of aid and help, it makes a much bigger difference than a few charities doing projects.
Let me give a few examples: Germany or Japan after World War 2 - lots of money, lots of help, and very prosperous countries on the far side; Korea or ROC in the 1950s and 60s, vast dollops of money and American engineers all over the place setting up electrical grids and water sanitation plants.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
I thought it's just an updated term for "political correctness gawn mad!".
Yes, that's exactly right. And before "political correctness" there were "trendy lefties". Funny how the BBC, schoolteachers, and the more compassionate elements in the Church of England have taken the flak in all three periods. Some things don't change.
Possibly "woke" is the opposite of "g*mm*n", except that one isn't allowed to say "g*mm*n".
Gammon and Boomer are acceptable prejudices of our times.
Boomer just means Baby Boomer, it’s a generational term like Xer or Millennial.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
I thought it's just an updated term for "political correctness gawn mad!".
Yes, that's exactly right. And before "political correctness" there were "trendy lefties". Funny how the BBC, schoolteachers, and the more compassionate elements in the Church of England have taken the flak in all three periods. Some things don't change.
Possibly "woke" is the opposite of "g*mm*n", except that one isn't allowed to say "g*mm*n".
Gammon and Boomer are acceptable prejudices of our times.
I am at the tail end of the Baby Boom generation. I have never found any offence in being called a Boomer, and really cannot understand how anyone else does. As far as generations exist as opposed to being artificial constructs, it seems a perfectly reasonable usage.
I've heard similar arguments advanced in the past for other epithets, like the shortened version of Pakistani.
Boomer - as opposed to the purely demographic Baby Boomer - is a derogatory term that's developed in recent years to apply to those over 60 years old, it's just the prejudice is based on age rather than race.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
That's ridiculous. From the moment it was given it was never going to be taken away.
I confess I was surprised when it was announced. I still don't understand the government logic for giving it when they did. Welcome though it was, it was certainly not given in response to 'campaigning'.
I agree its not going to be taken away, but all the debate right now is on "you should keep this" "ooh I'm not sure" kind of level.
The second you confirm that this is being kept officially, then the debate moves on to something else.
Better to keep people campaigning on keeping something you're willing to keep anyway, than get them campaigning demanding something you don't want to give.
I would just ask you for a moment to put yourself in the place of some poor sod on £95 per week who doesn't know for how long he or she can budget on that basis and how soon before that income gets cut by 21%.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
I thought it's just an updated term for "political correctness gawn mad!".
Yes, that's exactly right. And before "political correctness" there were "trendy lefties". Funny how the BBC, schoolteachers, and the more compassionate elements in the Church of England have taken the flak in all three periods. Some things don't change.
Possibly "woke" is the opposite of "g*mm*n", except that one isn't allowed to say "g*mm*n".
Gammon and Boomer are acceptable prejudices of our times.
I am at the tail end of the Baby Boom generation. I have never found any offence in being called a Boomer, and really cannot understand how anyone else does. As far as generations exist as opposed to being artificial constructs, it seems a perfectly reasonable usage.
Some terms are usually fine but context matters. Boomer is pretty neutral, but in the last few years at least it has definitely been used as an occasional insult in political contexts, and when someone intends to be perjorative it seems silly to not take it as such, even if the term in question was, and may still usually, be neutrally employed.
Final bit on aid from me because my wife and I are heading out for dinner and a drink in a bit - aid spending and aid programmes in the UK (and the wider west) are driven by liberal white colonial guilt. We give money to Africa because we think it helps atone for our sins in Africa. Maybe it does, I don't know. It doesn't, however, help actual people living there. That's not what our aid programmes are designed to do, they exist to advertise that signal that the UK is "doing it's bit" to help the world's poor regardless of the actual results.
We dole out money to charities and aid agencies who in turn put out press releases telling the world how wonderful the British or Danes or Americans are for giving money to Africa for some new widgets they're definitely going to buy.
I don't have any answers on how we should run aid programmes, all I know is what we're doing isn't working. We're just giving the heroin addict their next hit or booze to an alcoholic. It might make them feel good for a few minutes, or a day but the underlying issue remains unresolved and soon enough they'll be back begging for more so they can get their next fix.
You know, maybe we're doing it completely wrong. Maybe we run a competition for one country to be our sole recipient of foreign aid for the next five years. That country gets the equivalent of 0.5% of UK GDP for five successive years, and also gets a free trade agreement, and as much support as we can give. This wouldn't be charity led - it would be direct government support, with the goal of using five years to dramatically improve infrastructure at all levels - human, health, water, ports/airports, legal structures, education. etc.
In return, they have to adhere to basic principles such as the rule of law.
We'd be giving such large sums of money to a very poor country that it would be genuinely life changing.
Done right - we could do what was done to Germany post WW2, or Korea in the 1950s and 60s.
And countries would compete to prove that they could spend the money right, and that they could put the structures in place that would make us want to spend the money there.
I assume tongue in cheek, but anyway:
1) Presumably all other rich countries would just withdraw aid to the target, so the net effect would be minimal.
2) "Basic principles" might need to include women's and minority rights, which most (all?) of the potential targets would struggle to meet properly in the short to medium term.
3) It all sounds a bit... colonial.
(1) simply isn't true.
Put this in context for a second: Liberia's GDP is $3bn. The UK's GDP is $2.8 trillion. 0.5% of UK GDP is $14bn. If Liberia won our contest, it'd recieve $14bn/year for five years against a GDO of $3bn.
Obviously, if Nigeria (GDP $448bn) won, it would be rather different. But somehow I don't think that's likely.
(2) The money would be so extreme, you might find that governments were suddenly willing to make changes.
(3) So what? And we're not planning on leaving people in country after five years. Also, countries would be competing the be the recipient, which isn't really how colonialism happened (as far as I understand it).
If Liberia got enough money to more than quadraple its GDP overnight then I doubt it would do much good.
It wouldn't have the resources or capacity to meaningfully spend it, nor wean itself off at the end, so - outside huge temporary immigration and a quasi-imperalist expansion of their government to cope, with British help - the most likely outcome would be very high local inflation, supply shortages and mass embezzlement.
I grant you, you wouldn't want to do it all at once! My point is that, when a country is individually targeted and given very large amounts of aid and help, it makes a much bigger difference than a few charities doing projects.
Let me give a few examples: Germany or Japan after World War 2 - lots of money, lots of help, and very prosperous countries on the far side; Korea or ROC in the 1950s and 60s, vast dollops of money and American engineers all over the place setting up electrical grids and water sanitation plants.
Yes, I think there's a better argument for a "China containment" Marshall Plan.
The trouble is America has become really shit at engineering these days, outside the space programme and military, and doesn't really bother with spending on infrastructure anymore - even domestically.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Do you have a source on that?
And of course the EU membership and Overseas Aid cuts was money going overseas which really is dead money. Money in the UK has a multiplier effect so its much harder to measure.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
"cultural appropriation" is a much more bollocks concept than "woke" could ever dream of being, given that it is pretty much the defining human activity. It's especially lol when universities go on about it because what subject ever taught in any university outside ancient Athens (where there weren't any) is not 99% appropriated from elsewhere?
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
And the white lefties reserve their foulest language and criticism for the ethnic minorities who aren’t of the left and challenge their principles - the Priti Patels, Sajid Javids, Rishi Sunaks and Kemi Badenochs.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Eh? 5.32 million in England at last count.
My number was 10m households, for 26m people. At a grand a year, that’s £10bn. Plus pensioners on Pension Benefit.
On your number, it’s still over £5bn a year, 25% more than the aid cut.
That being said... I would expect that the number of people on UC would be in decline now, as the economy is presumably starting to boom as Covid recedes.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
That's ridiculous. From the moment it was given it was never going to be taken away.
I confess I was surprised when it was announced. I still don't understand the government logic for giving it when they did. Welcome though it was, it was certainly not given in response to 'campaigning'.
I agree its not going to be taken away, but all the debate right now is on "you should keep this" "ooh I'm not sure" kind of level.
The second you confirm that this is being kept officially, then the debate moves on to something else.
Better to keep people campaigning on keeping something you're willing to keep anyway, than get them campaigning demanding something you don't want to give.
I would just ask you for a moment to put yourself in the place of some poor sod on £95 per week who doesn't know for how long he or she can budget on that basis and how soon before that income gets cut by 21%.
That poor sod should be looking to get a job and get more than £95 per week. That's less than you can get from a single 12h shift at minimum wage.
As I've long said, the taper on earnings is a much bigger issue for those on UC keeping them poor by discouraging work rather than the actual level of UC itself.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Eh? 5.32 million in England at last count.
My number was 10m households, for 26m people. At a grand a year, that’s £10bn.
On your number, it’s still over £5bn a year, 25% more than the aid cut.
From where did you get that number? My 5.32 comes from local government
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
I thought it's just an updated term for "political correctness gawn mad!".
Yes, that's exactly right. And before "political correctness" there were "trendy lefties". Funny how the BBC, schoolteachers, and the more compassionate elements in the Church of England have taken the flak in all three periods. Some things don't change.
Possibly "woke" is the opposite of "g*mm*n", except that one isn't allowed to say "g*mm*n".
Gammon and Boomer are acceptable prejudices of our times.
I am at the tail end of the Baby Boom generation. I have never found any offence in being called a Boomer, and really cannot understand how anyone else does. As far as generations exist as opposed to being artificial constructs, it seems a perfectly reasonable usage.
Some terms are usually fine but context matters. Boomer is pretty neutral, but in the last few years at least it has definitely been used as an occasional insult in political contexts, and when someone intends to be perjorative it seems silly to not take it as such, even if the term in question was, and may still usually, be neutrally employed.
eg
I am a Boomer
Godsdamned Boomers
I've been shocked by the level of bile directed at "Boomers" in several of my WhatsApp groups, which has been borderline vitriolic.
Why is this important? Because, like for any other prejudice, it's a gateway to treating random people you don't know differently just because they're of a certain age or visually look to be.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
And the white lefties reserve their foulest language and criticism for the ethnic minorities who aren’t of the left and challenge their principles - the Priti Patels, Sajid Javids, Rishi Sunaks and Kemi Badenochs.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
"cultural appropriation" is a much more bollocks concept than "woke" could ever dream of being, given that it is pretty much the defining human activity. It's especially lol when universities go on about it because what subject ever taught in any university outside ancient Athens (where there weren't any) is not 99% appropriated from elsewhere?
Cultural appropriation seems to me to be largely confected outrage.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Do you have a source on that?
And of course the EU membership and Overseas Aid cuts was money going overseas which really is dead money. Money in the UK has a multiplier effect so its much harder to measure.
6.0m is the correct number of households claiming UC, less than I had read elsewhere but more than most others had thought. I stand corrected!
Yes, you are correct that an amount of aid is spent with domestic companies. As Robert suggests, the French do this concept very well, with almost every Franc in ‘aid’ somehow ending up back in France.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
Except righties seem to reserve their strongest venom for Black people raising these issues, such as Rashford for example.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
That's ridiculous. From the moment it was given it was never going to be taken away.
I confess I was surprised when it was announced. I still don't understand the government logic for giving it when they did. Welcome though it was, it was certainly not given in response to 'campaigning'.
I agree its not going to be taken away, but all the debate right now is on "you should keep this" "ooh I'm not sure" kind of level.
The second you confirm that this is being kept officially, then the debate moves on to something else.
Better to keep people campaigning on keeping something you're willing to keep anyway, than get them campaigning demanding something you don't want to give.
I would just ask you for a moment to put yourself in the place of some poor sod on £95 per week who doesn't know for how long he or she can budget on that basis and how soon before that income gets cut by 21%.
That poor sod should be looking to get a job and get more than £95 per week. That's less than you can get from a single 12h shift at minimum wage.
As I've long said, the taper on earnings is a much bigger issue for those on UC keeping them poor by discouraging work rather than the actual level of UC itself.
Ok, I'll suggest that to the guy I am helping through Citizens Advice who has had to give up work to look after his disabled son because his wife is termainally ill in hospital with cancer shall I?
Most of the people I speak to who are on UC are struggling with health issues either themselves or in their family.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Do you have a source on that?
And of course the EU membership and Overseas Aid cuts was money going overseas which really is dead money. Money in the UK has a multiplier effect so its much harder to measure.
6.0m is the correct number of households claiming UC.
Yes, you are correct that an amount of aid is spend with domestic companies.
That's people not households. Or "benefit units". Also. Being on UC does not mean you necessarily receive a payment every fortnight. 84% of them do. The others will be those who have exceeded the income threshold, but have claim open.
Not closing claims automatically when you are temporarily ineligible being one of a number of massive steps forward that UC was.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Do you have a source on that?
And of course the EU membership and Overseas Aid cuts was money going overseas which really is dead money. Money in the UK has a multiplier effect so its much harder to measure.
6.0m is the correct number of households claiming UC.
Yes, you are correct that an amount of aid is spend with domestic companies.
According to your source it was only 3m people pre-pandemic, so if it returns to that level then it'd be ~£3bn per annum.
Interestingly in the chart "Average (mean) Universal Credit payment for in payment households, Great Britain, February 2017 to February 2021" there's little visible sign of the uplift. Actually average payments have risen by less in the past year than they have in prior years. That seems counter-intuitive.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
That's ridiculous. From the moment it was given it was never going to be taken away.
I confess I was surprised when it was announced. I still don't understand the government logic for giving it when they did. Welcome though it was, it was certainly not given in response to 'campaigning'.
I agree its not going to be taken away, but all the debate right now is on "you should keep this" "ooh I'm not sure" kind of level.
The second you confirm that this is being kept officially, then the debate moves on to something else.
Better to keep people campaigning on keeping something you're willing to keep anyway, than get them campaigning demanding something you don't want to give.
I would just ask you for a moment to put yourself in the place of some poor sod on £95 per week who doesn't know for how long he or she can budget on that basis and how soon before that income gets cut by 21%.
That poor sod should be looking to get a job and get more than £95 per week. That's less than you can get from a single 12h shift at minimum wage.
As I've long said, the taper on earnings is a much bigger issue for those on UC keeping them poor by discouraging work rather than the actual level of UC itself.
Ok, I'll suggest that to the guy I am helping through Citizens Advice who has had to give up work to look after his disabled son because his wife is termainally ill in hospital with cancer shall I?
Most of the people I speak to who are on UC are struggling with health issues either themselves or in their family.
Indeed. It is usually sickness, disability or caring responsibility. Or ZHC. Or seasonal workers. UC is being treated as if it is JSA. A small proportion are on it because they are unemployed.
From the Guardian story on the football, they make it sound like it wasn't just some random drunk fans trying their luck, it was pre-arranged on social media.
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
That's ridiculous. From the moment it was given it was never going to be taken away.
I confess I was surprised when it was announced. I still don't understand the government logic for giving it when they did. Welcome though it was, it was certainly not given in response to 'campaigning'.
I agree its not going to be taken away, but all the debate right now is on "you should keep this" "ooh I'm not sure" kind of level.
The second you confirm that this is being kept officially, then the debate moves on to something else.
Better to keep people campaigning on keeping something you're willing to keep anyway, than get them campaigning demanding something you don't want to give.
I would just ask you for a moment to put yourself in the place of some poor sod on £95 per week who doesn't know for how long he or she can budget on that basis and how soon before that income gets cut by 21%.
That poor sod should be looking to get a job and get more than £95 per week. That's less than you can get from a single 12h shift at minimum wage.
As I've long said, the taper on earnings is a much bigger issue for those on UC keeping them poor by discouraging work rather than the actual level of UC itself.
Ok, I'll suggest that to the guy I am helping through Citizens Advice who has had to give up work to look after his disabled son because his wife is termainally ill in hospital with cancer shall I?
Most of the people I speak to who are on UC are struggling with health issues either themselves or in their family.
If you are looking after someone disabled then you should get a carers supplement and not just the £95 should you not?
You quoted them as only getting £95, so that's surely someone who isn't caring for anybody.
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
Face coverings must be worn on London's transport network despite restrictions easing on Monday, London's mayor says.
England is to move to level zero of Covid restrictions on 19 July, but mandatory use of face coverings is to remain in place on Transport for London (TfL) services, unless exempt.
This includes the Tube, bus, tram, DLR, Overground and TfL Rail.
That's me not going to the office any time soon, then.
From the Guardian story on the football, they make it sound like it wasn't just some random drunk fans trying their luck, it was pre-arranged on social media.
Indeed. Appalling crowd management at Wembley is going to be a nail in the coffin of any bid for a World Cup.
We (i.e. the Americans) should never have gone in there in the first place, and pulling out was always going to reveal the tragic mistakenness of that original decision. Staying longer isn’t going to improve the eventual outcome, however, so credit to Biden for biting the bullet that both Obama and Trump promised, but ducked.
No, there was very good reason for going there in the first place, although they screwed up the follow-up (especially by losing focus and diverting attention and resource to Iraq).
Still, whatever the history, and irrespective of whether they are right to leave, leaving in such a tearing hurry is a huge mistake.
Hurry? How many years have we been wasting the lives and limbs of our soldiers out there already?
Too many. But what they are doing now is literally abandoning bases overnight. It's completely irresponsible.
Would you keep British troops there after Biden pulled out?
I think Biden is being too rapid on this, but I can understand from a tactical PoV that dragging it out might not work either.
But once the Americans made the decision to pull out, being realistic the British had no choice but to do so too. This isn't a war we could after 20 years win unilaterally.
Oh, absolutely. This is Biden's cock-up, not ours (I believe we strongly argued against it). We have no choice but to abandon the Afghans to their miserable US-mandated fate.
This is the biggest victory ever for bots. The vast majority of the social media posts probably came from bots, and they've successfully generated a moral panic in the UK, which nows leads the political and news agenda. What an awful situation.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Do you have a source on that?
And of course the EU membership and Overseas Aid cuts was money going overseas which really is dead money. Money in the UK has a multiplier effect so its much harder to measure.
6.0m is the correct number of households claiming UC.
Yes, you are correct that an amount of aid is spend with domestic companies.
According to your source it was only 3m people pre-pandemic, so if it returns to that level then it'd be ~£3bn per annum.
Interestingly in the chart "Average (mean) Universal Credit payment for in payment households, Great Britain, February 2017 to February 2021" there's little visible sign of the uplift. Actually average payments have risen by less in the past year than they have in prior years. That seems counter-intuitive.
I suspect both the increase in claimants and the reduced average payment are caused by the £20 uplift allowing many more low paid workers to claim, since their pay now falls below the uplifted UC allowance.
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Why don't you watch the clip. The economist there said austerity was a disaster.
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
"cultural appropriation" is a much more bollocks concept than "woke" could ever dream of being, given that it is pretty much the defining human activity. It's especially lol when universities go on about it because what subject ever taught in any university outside ancient Athens (where there weren't any) is not 99% appropriated from elsewhere?
Yes, I completely agree. The fact that "woke" types tend to spout bollocks about it being something you can "appropriate" is a big part of why the right looks down on "woke".
From the Guardian story on the football, they make it sound like it wasn't just some random drunk fans trying their luck, it was pre-arranged on social media.
Indeed. Appalling crowd management at Wembley is going to be a nail in the coffin of any bid for a World Cup.
So it should be frankly. We don't deserve the WC if that's the best we can do on crowd control.
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Do you have a source on that?
And of course the EU membership and Overseas Aid cuts was money going overseas which really is dead money. Money in the UK has a multiplier effect so its much harder to measure.
6.0m is the correct number of households claiming UC.
Yes, you are correct that an amount of aid is spend with domestic companies.
According to your source it was only 3m people pre-pandemic, so if it returns to that level then it'd be ~£3bn per annum.
Interestingly in the chart "Average (mean) Universal Credit payment for in payment households, Great Britain, February 2017 to February 2021" there's little visible sign of the uplift. Actually average payments have risen by less in the past year than they have in prior years. That seems counter-intuitive.
I’ve just pulled this up now, and realised that my thinking was wrong. It’s past bedtime now, but I’ll do some more digging on UC stuff tomorrow.
It’s genuinely interesting, especially that it seems to be working an awful lot better than the old system of benefits would have done, in the face of pandemic levels of disruption to employment.
Face coverings must be worn on London's transport network despite restrictions easing on Monday, London's mayor says.
England is to move to level zero of Covid restrictions on 19 July, but mandatory use of face coverings is to remain in place on Transport for London (TfL) services, unless exempt.
This includes the Tube, bus, tram, DLR, Overground and TfL Rail.
That's me not going to the office any time soon, then.
Doesn’t affect trains I don’t think, unless Overground or TfL Rail under the mayor’s control.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
"cultural appropriation" is a much more bollocks concept than "woke" could ever dream of being, given that it is pretty much the defining human activity. It's especially lol when universities go on about it because what subject ever taught in any university outside ancient Athens (where there weren't any) is not 99% appropriated from elsewhere?
Yes, I completely agree. The fact that "woke" types tend to spout bollocks about it being something you can "appropriate" is a big part of why the right looks down on "woke".
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Why don't you watch the clip. The economist there said austerity was a disaster.
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
Economist? Are you talking about the clip of the Lord who setup Cobra beer? Because he isn't an economist.
Face coverings must be worn on London's transport network despite restrictions easing on Monday, London's mayor says.
England is to move to level zero of Covid restrictions on 19 July, but mandatory use of face coverings is to remain in place on Transport for London (TfL) services, unless exempt.
This includes the Tube, bus, tram, DLR, Overground and TfL Rail.
That's me not going to the office any time soon, then.
Doesn’t affect trains I don’t think, unless Overground or TfL Rail under the mayor’s control.
This is going to be a nightmare to enforce.
Get on SWR service, take mask off. Get off SWR service, put mask on.
The Government have made a complete mess of this, they should have just said masks continued to be compulsory on public transport.
The truth about GB News is that it's still considerably more Woke than the average British voter. It's less Woke than Sky News, BBC News and Channel 4 News.
Depends what you mean by "Woke" which is becoming increasingly meaningless..
Given that 59% don't have a clue what it means, and 30% haven't even heard the term, it isn't easy to work out how Woke the average Briton is.
I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
Woke means being awakened to persistent systemic economical disadvantage in general, and to racism in particular.
Which is why Tories are "anti-Woke".
A very inadequate and misleading definition of how the word is used and understood.
On the contrary, that is precisely what it means and how I use it.
By all means give us the benefit of your version.
18 months ago I had only come across one person in real life who used the term as a positive, so assumed it was a term that started out as a positive but had been subsumed by its negative counter reaction. It seems to have made a bit of a comeback.
Wiki:
"Amid its increasing adoption beyond its African American origins, the term "woke" gained broader connotations. Rather than being applied solely to racial issues, it was increasingly used as a catch-all term to describe those left-wing ideologies, often centred on the identity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted to "social justice". This included BLM but also related forms of anti-racism as well as campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. The terms "woke capitalism" and "woke washing" were coined to describe companies who signalled their support for such causes. By 2020, parts of the political right in several Western countries were using the term "woke", often in an ironic way, to describe various leftist movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used to denigrate those campaigning against discrimination."
In short, "woke" got culturally appropriated by white lefties, who then turned it into something completely different, with some assistance from the right.
"cultural appropriation" is a much more bollocks concept than "woke" could ever dream of being, given that it is pretty much the defining human activity. It's especially lol when universities go on about it because what subject ever taught in any university outside ancient Athens (where there weren't any) is not 99% appropriated from elsewhere?
Yes, I completely agree. The fact that "woke" types tend to spout bollocks about it being something you can "appropriate" is a big part of why the right looks down on "woke".
But what does "woke" mean?
Whatever you want, it is a term stolen and made totally meaningless.
It's the nut job way of shutting down opinions they don't like, in a sense it is cancel culture for the right
From the Guardian story on the football, they make it sound like it wasn't just some random drunk fans trying their luck, it was pre-arranged on social media.
Of course it was. It needed strength of numbers to succeed. They turned up mob handed and overwhelmed the security. Or stuffed cash in their pockets, it would seem.
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Why don't you watch the clip. The economist there said austerity was a disaster.
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
Economist? Are you talking about the clip of the Lord who setup Cobra beer? Because he isn't an economist.
Wasn't aware the BoE head didn't know what they were talking about, or the head of the IMF? But perhaps you know more
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Why don't you watch the clip. The economist there said austerity was a disaster.
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
Austerity was not a disaster and it did work.
It was necessary, we had no choice, its the necessary result of Brown pissing away so much money.
And its worth noting that from 2010-2019 pre-pandemic as well as the Tories closing away Brown's structural deficit they inherited, Britain actually grew faster not slower than our EU neighbours. Despite Tories "flatlining" growth according to spin from lefties, despite "Tory austerity", despite the 2016 Brexit vote, despite the uncertainty supposedly associated with Brexit suppressing growth.
Despite all that, actually Britain was faster growing over the entire Tory decade.
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Why don't you watch the clip. The economist there said austerity was a disaster.
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
Economist? Are you talking about the clip of the Lord who setup Cobra beer? Because he isn't an economist.
Wasn't aware the BoE head didn't know what they were talking about, or the head of the IMF? But perhaps you know more
No, I was asking a question if you were talking about Mr Cobra beer as the economist?
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Why don't you watch the clip. The economist there said austerity was a disaster.
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
Austerity was not a disaster and it did work.
It was necessary, we had no choice, its the necessary result of Brown pissing away so much money.
And its worth noting that from 2010-2019 pre-pandemic as well as the Tories closing away Brown's structural deficit they inherited, Britain actually grew faster not slower than our EU neighbours. Despite Tories "flatlining" growth according to spin from lefties, despite "Tory austerity", despite the 2016 Brexit vote, despite the uncertainty supposedly associated with Brexit suppressing growth.
Despite all that, actually Britain was faster growing over the entire Tory decade.
Okay just disagree with the IMF, CBI, BoE then. You know better.
It didn't work, it failed by its own measures. When did we achieve a surplus Philip?
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Why don't you watch the clip. The economist there said austerity was a disaster.
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
Economist? Are you talking about the clip of the Lord who setup Cobra beer? Because he isn't an economist.
Wasn't aware the BoE head didn't know what they were talking about, or the head of the IMF? But perhaps you know more
No, I was asking a question if you were talking about Mr Cobra beer?
Yes the head of the CBI, IMF referred to in the clip?
Helen Pidd @helenpidd · 4h Of all the heartfelt messages on the @MarcusRashford memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
Not a chance is the PM taking the £20 away. 😂
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
In which case, why doesn't he lead from the front for once and announce the change of policy now?
Overton Window.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Except that it’s costing almost an EU membership’s worth of cash, three times the Overseas Aid cut. It’s not just for the unemployed, more than half the country is on UC.
Do you have a source on that?
And of course the EU membership and Overseas Aid cuts was money going overseas which really is dead money. Money in the UK has a multiplier effect so its much harder to measure.
6.0m is the correct number of households claiming UC.
Yes, you are correct that an amount of aid is spend with domestic companies.
According to your source it was only 3m people pre-pandemic, so if it returns to that level then it'd be ~£3bn per annum.
Interestingly in the chart "Average (mean) Universal Credit payment for in payment households, Great Britain, February 2017 to February 2021" there's little visible sign of the uplift. Actually average payments have risen by less in the past year than they have in prior years. That seems counter-intuitive.
I’ve just pulled this up now, and realised that my thinking was wrong. It’s past bedtime now, but I’ll do some more digging on UC stuff tomorrow.
It’s genuinely interesting, especially that it seems to be working an awful lot better than the old system of benefits would have done, in the face of pandemic levels of disruption to employment.
Turn2us calculator is an invaluable resource when it comes to UC. I suspect Foxy is on to something. It is now pulling in more of the in work low paid. Particularly the part time workers with childcare responsibility who will have been badly hit by schools being shut. And you are spot on. The old system wouldn't have coped. Particularly the "signing on" with mandatory interview bit.
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Why don't you watch the clip. The economist there said austerity was a disaster.
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
Economist? Are you talking about the clip of the Lord who setup Cobra beer? Because he isn't an economist.
Wasn't aware the BoE head didn't know what they were talking about, or the head of the IMF? But perhaps you know more
The BoE head is right as quoted that the UK is like a 'coiled spring' ready to recover from this pandemic.
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
The difference is that austerity was necessary in 2010 because Gordon Brown had blown all the money and was running a structural deficit.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Why don't you watch the clip. The economist there said austerity was a disaster.
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
Economist? Are you talking about the clip of the Lord who setup Cobra beer? Because he isn't an economist.
Wasn't aware the BoE head didn't know what they were talking about, or the head of the IMF? But perhaps you know more
No, I was asking a question if you were talking about Mr Cobra beer?
Yes the head of the CBI, IMF referred to in the clip?
The head of the CBI isn't an economist. It might also help the public purse if he didn't stick his money in panamian banks.
Comments
@helenpidd
·
4h
Of all the heartfelt messages on the
@MarcusRashford
memorial today, this is the one which got me most. “Thank you for all our dinners”. From Reggie aged 6.
https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1414991009373687808
If Rashford decides to take Johnson on over the £20 for UC in the autumn then it is just a question of how the PM waffles his way around the u-turn.
https://xkcd.com/386/
Mrs Foxy was brought up in the Zambian Copperbelt, and it had a thriving economy then. What squashed Zambia was the collapse of the copper price, the quadrupled cost of imported fuel, and the economic barrier of the Rhodesian war, its only outlet to the sea.
She went from an enjoyable middle class life, with her dad on a local salary, to being unable to buy bread in the shops in two years. I think most of us would struggle to cope with double the expenses on half the income.
In the Sixties and early Seventies African countries took out massive development loans on the basis of expected earnings, and often didn't spend them wisely. Kleptocrats like Mobutu were encouraged to do so as part of a proxy Cold War for influence, and Western banks were very happy for the stolen money to be stashed here.
Certainly many African counties have had very bad governments at times, and have been on steep learning curves. Overall though far more money has come out of Africa either in debt interest or in money stashed by Kleptocrats and their Western supporters than ever went there in aid.
Funny how the BBC, schoolteachers, and the more compassionate elements in the Church of England have taken the flak in all three periods. Some things don't change.
Possibly "woke" is the opposite of "g*mm*n", except that one isn't allowed to say "g*mm*n".
Not a snowballs chance in hell.
A better one would be to project British values and affection for Britain, and provide a choice for developing nations over and above China.
The problem is Tories try and ape the Left and end up echoing quasi-socialist arguments.
They need to root their arguments in safety and security for Britons at home. Starting with "the right thing to do" just sounds like pompous and windy rhetoric at the voter's expense.
So if I leave £100 in my will to the Tories and I am above the IHT limit then the state loses £40 which my estate would otherwise have paid. And if I give £100 out of my income to dodgy thinktank X and am above the relevant limit then the state also loses £40 - £25 going to thinktank and £15 returning to my pocket.
That's a 40% rate of loss of the donation in question, as far as the satate is concerned. Not trivial. The vast majority of the dination does not, therefore, come from the donor (okay, it does in the sense that the tax did - but that is depriving the state of revenue in an austerity period).
And it could be argued that the state shouldn't be forced to subsidise people's donations to people's choices. Still thinking about that myself, I'm not convinced, but there does exist a case.
Keep the £20 as not officially given and you can "extend" or even confirm it in a few months time and people are happy.
Confirm the £20 as officially part of the UC baseline and that will be banked and people will start campaigning for another increase from there.
Who can forget the deeply woke sugar bowls of the period
https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/anti-slavery-sugar-bowl/
Which is why we should concentrate on straightforward explanations rather than 3 word slogans and abstruse jargon.
Most people aren’t interested, and have no desire for a nation built on division and hating your fellow man or woman for their perceived views on social issues.
Sadly there are lots of sad agitators on both sides who can go and luxuriate in their pathetic tribal battles on some prison island somewhere, while the rest of us get on with our lives.
It wouldn't have the resources or capacity to meaningfully spend it, nor wean itself off at the end, so - outside huge temporary immigration and a quasi-imperalist expansion of their government to cope, with British help - the most likely outcome would be very high local inflation, supply shortages and mass embezzlement.
2) It isn't governments who have the final say on these things - it's wider society. I think that "change your attitudes towards a whole range of things that have worked* for you for generations, so a foreign power can come in and tell us what to do about even more issues" might be a tough sell.
3) Well... yes, but Twitter would be very angry anyway. That aside, the issue is more about perceptions than the reality - which effectively reduces this argument to a subset of 2).
*for some definition of "worked"
I confess I was surprised when it was announced. I still don't understand the government logic for giving it when they did. Welcome though it was, it was certainly not given in response to 'campaigning'.
I: Monkey emojis ok to send to black players, says @instagram #TomorrowsPapersToday https://t.co/rqyzGuM5Gc
5.32 million in England at last count.
Personally? I'm happy with a strategy that actively and unashamedly promotes British values and interests and the building of robust and resilient democratic institutions and justice systems, in partnership with those Governments, as well as - hopefully - driving popular affection and goodwill for our nation at the same time.
I think it's massively in our interests. But, I suspect it feels quasi-imperalist to many here so, despite being right IMHO, it isn't made.
The second you confirm that this is being kept officially, then the debate moves on to something else.
Better to keep people campaigning on keeping something you're willing to keep anyway, than get them campaigning demanding something you don't want to give.
In the past, party leaders have been big enough to have substantial figures around them who don't always agree with the leader but are clearly still in the tent. Think of Thatcher and Heseltine, Major and the bastards, Blair and Cook or Prescott. May and Johnson.
One of the benefits of doing this is that, if the party does need to adjust course when it gets a new leader, it can. There's a choice of big beasts.
I'm not sure when it really changed. Maybe when most of Labour's big beasts gave up on Corbyn and he didn't take the hint. Maybe when Johnson decided to surround himself by small beasts for ego reasons. But it caused huge problems for Labour in 2020-1; Starmer was the nearest they had to a substantial figure and he also suffers from the low wattageness of those around him.
And in the event that Johnsonism goes pearshaped, what the hell do the Conservatives do? The rest of the party will be either too past it (today's rebels), too kicked out (Stewart etc) or too tainted by BoJo (the current cabinet) to present themselves as a fresh start.
https://twitter.com/bamefor/status/1414928760634232847?s=21
On your number, it’s still over £5bn a year, 25% more than the aid cut.
Let me give a few examples: Germany or Japan after World War 2 - lots of money, lots of help, and very prosperous countries on the far side; Korea or ROC in the 1950s and 60s, vast dollops of money and American engineers all over the place setting up electrical grids and water sanitation plants.
Fair point about Gammon.
Boomer - as opposed to the purely demographic Baby Boomer - is a derogatory term that's developed in recent years to apply to those over 60 years old, it's just the prejudice is based on age rather than race.
eg
I am a Boomer
Godsdamned Boomers
The trouble is America has become really shit at engineering these days, outside the space programme and military, and doesn't really bother with spending on infrastructure anymore - even domestically.
And of course the EU membership and Overseas Aid cuts was money going overseas which really is dead money. Money in the UK has a multiplier effect so its much harder to measure.
That being said... I would expect that the number of people on UC would be in decline now, as the economy is presumably starting to boom as Covid recedes.
THE TIMES: Met chief in Wembley row seeks new term #TomorrowsPapersToday https://t.co/W7ICSBuwCP
As I've long said, the taper on earnings is a much bigger issue for those on UC keeping them poor by discouraging work rather than the actual level of UC itself.
My 5.32 comes from local government
https://lginform.local.gov.uk/reports/lgastandard?mod-metric=13379&mod-area=E92000001&mod-group=AllRegions_England&mod-type=namedComparisonGroup
Gov.uk suggests 4.9m households of whom only 85 % received a payment) but that is from earlier Nov 2020.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/universal-credit-statistics-29-april-2013-to-14-january-2021/universal-credit-statistics-29-april-2013-to-14-january-2021
Why is this important? Because, like for any other prejudice, it's a gateway to treating random people you don't know differently just because they're of a certain age or visually look to be.
I don't.
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/universal-credit-statistics-29-april-2013-to-8-april-2021/universal-credit-statistics-29-april-2013-to-8-april-2021
Yes, you are correct that an amount of aid is spent with domestic companies. As Robert suggests, the French do this concept very well, with almost every Franc in ‘aid’ somehow ending up back in France.
What could possibly be the reason?
Most of the people I speak to who are on UC are struggling with health issues either themselves or in their family.
Also. Being on UC does not mean you necessarily receive a payment every fortnight. 84% of them do. The others will be those who have exceeded the income threshold, but have claim open.
Not closing claims automatically when you are temporarily ineligible being one of a number of massive steps forward that UC was.
https://amp.theguardian.com/football/2021/jul/13/england-fan-who-stormed-euros-final-defends-his-actions
Interestingly in the chart "Average (mean) Universal Credit payment for in payment households, Great Britain, February 2017 to February 2021" there's little visible sign of the uplift. Actually average payments have risen by less in the past year than they have in prior years. That seems counter-intuitive.
Or ZHC. Or seasonal workers.
UC is being treated as if it is JSA.
A small proportion are on it because they are unemployed.
Seems worth a try.
It's great that after warning about this for years, the mainstream has finally conceded that the Tory economic programme was a complete and utter disaster.
You quoted them as only getting £95, so that's surely someone who isn't caring for anybody.
Prior to the pandemic the 2018/19 deficit was considerably lower than the 2007/08 deficit, so the structural deficit coming out now should be much lower too.
The Tories fixed the roof that Brown trashed.
Face coverings must be worn on London's transport network despite restrictions easing on Monday, London's mayor says.
England is to move to level zero of Covid restrictions on 19 July, but mandatory use of face coverings is to remain in place on Transport for London (TfL) services, unless exempt.
This includes the Tube, bus, tram, DLR, Overground and TfL Rail.
That's me not going to the office any time soon, then.
UC is effectively subsidising low pay employers.
Jesus what has happened, David Davis is talking a lot of sense!
It was not necessary. It was never necessary. It did not work.
It’s genuinely interesting, especially that it seems to be working an awful lot better than the old system of benefits would have done, in the face of pandemic levels of disruption to employment.
Get on SWR service, take mask off. Get off SWR service, put mask on.
The Government have made a complete mess of this, they should have just said masks continued to be compulsory on public transport.
It's the nut job way of shutting down opinions they don't like, in a sense it is cancel culture for the right
It was necessary, we had no choice, its the necessary result of Brown pissing away so much money.
And its worth noting that from 2010-2019 pre-pandemic as well as the Tories closing away Brown's structural deficit they inherited, Britain actually grew faster not slower than our EU neighbours. Despite Tories "flatlining" growth according to spin from lefties, despite "Tory austerity", despite the 2016 Brexit vote, despite the uncertainty supposedly associated with Brexit suppressing growth.
Despite all that, actually Britain was faster growing over the entire Tory decade.
You seem in a very excitable mood today.
It didn't work, it failed by its own measures. When did we achieve a surplus Philip?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/13/leading-tory-mp-says-party-must-change-attitude-on-taking-the-knee
Has there been a tear in the fabric of the universe?
And you are spot on. The old system wouldn't have coped.
Particularly the "signing on" with mandatory interview bit.
The IMF have called a lot wrong over decades.