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In the next general election betting the Tories no longer odds-on to win a majority – politicalbetti

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited July 2021 in General
imageIn the next general election betting the Tories no longer odds-on to win a majority – politicalbetting.com

It is some time since we looked at the next general election betting based on Betfair and as can be seen BoJo’s team is no longer rated as a better than evens chance to win a majority.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited July 2021
    Tory poll numbers is still basically unchanged at ~42% (perhaps down 1%).

    The difference in poll lead is always based on labour figure....in one of todays polls they are as low as 30%. Another 33%.

    Given Hancock scandal and ongoing covid issues i am very surprised the tories don't appear to have taken any real hit.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084
    Second class, like Boris
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    edited July 2021
    Third. Tory majority seems a very good bet.
    Would expect it to be smaller, mind.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Tories are value then as the markets have over-reacted to by-elections? Is that what's being suggested? 🤔
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Definitely game over now in the cricket.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,019
    FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.

    The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.

    Most seem totally tone deaf to this.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.

    The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.

    Most seem totally tone deaf to this.

    Instead of bringing the culture war narrative to it, what do *you* think?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    This poll on foreign aid may surprise some politicians

    https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1401927434333835266?s=19

    No surprise.
    Britons are curtain-twitching, Mail-reading, spite-mongers. Who hate freedom (especially other people’s).
    Do you not concede that this poll supports the reduction in foreign aid across all political groups and ages
    I don’t believe in running the country according to whatever lowest-denominator impulses can be discerned from polling.

    Sad that this is another example of your piously refusing to part with a smidgeon of your triple-locked wealth.
    A bit ad hom. , but agreed.
    I am still awaiting an apology as I have always supported cancelling the triple lock, though both my wife and I are pensioners

    I have said so on here on many occasions

    In addition I support the following in case there is any doubt

    The £20 Universal credit uplift made permanent

    100% behind Marcus Rashford's campaign for free school meals

    And I am not alone with conservative mps also supporting these three issues
    I wasn't agreeing with the ad hominem, Big_G.
    But the cut it aid is simply wrong, IMO.
    I don't think there is anything magical about 0.5 vs 0.7, but I think it is a small amount in the big picture and the main professed reasoning behind cutting it doesn't stack up so it should be maintained given whilst things are not spent perfectly we can be pretty sure there will be some quite serious netagative effects..
    The fact that the Covid response has blown out budget wide open and left a massive deficit that needs closing back down doesn't stack up?
    There are many other ways they could close the deficit, ways which would close it much more significantly.

    The level of focus on international aid to help close the deficit as opposed to anything else is what does not stack up for me. That some people have wanted to reduce it for a long time adds to that suspicion.

    Yes, every little helps, but on so many other areas it's magically not an issue but it is for this one? I don't buy that

    That's why while I'm not opposed to the principle the way some others are, it seems like the wrong move for the wrong reasons when we can be sure of pretty immediate effect.
    Since 2010 every area of government expenditure bar two has been subject to rigorous spending reviews and austerity. The only exceptions are the Health and International Aid.

    Healthy for obvious reasons can't be cut. Everything else has already been subject to austerity. By series of elimination that leaves one issue alone where the fat has not been trimmed.

    So if you think there's another area whereby £4bn in expenditure cuts can be made almost overnight then I'd love to hear what it is as an alternative and why it's not been done yet.

    Specifically which anything else are you thinking of instead?
    Ah hem... pensions, health and international aid.

    The amount the UK Government spends on pensions and health is set by the triple lock and by an ageing population. This means that it's increased from the high 30s as a percent of spending in the 1980s, to over 50% now. Every year it increases, and that means that there will be continued (and permanent) pressure on other parts of the budget.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    Meanwhile that Labour majority at 12% is an obvious lay.
    Would take cataclysmic events for that to come to pass.
    Not sure your average punter is aware just how far away that is without Scotland.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    On topic, the Conservatives should be 60-65% probability to win an outright majority at the next General Election, so this is excellent value for those wishing to lock their money away for a few years.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004

    Tory poll numbers is still basically unchanged at ~42% (perhaps down 1%).

    The difference in poll lead is always based on labour figure....in one of todays polls they are as low as 30%. Another 33%.

    Given Hancock scandal and ongoing covid issues i am very surprised the tories don't appear to have taken any real hit.

    You gov today was 12% lead

    42/30/9
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.

    The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.

    Most seem totally tone deaf to this.

    I wonder if putting so much emphasis on "all living former Prime Ministers" being against this did more harm than good?

    Not only are the living former PMs quite frankly not that popular - but it left open the fairly obvious question as to why Blair found it appropriate to spend 0.36% of GNI when he was PM, but inappropriate for Boris to spend 0.50% of GNI today?

    There doesn't seem to be a single good answer to that from anybody at all other than crass appeals to emotion.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837
    Boris didn't get where he is today with crass appeals to emotion.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089
    rcs1000 said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    This poll on foreign aid may surprise some politicians

    https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1401927434333835266?s=19

    No surprise.
    Britons are curtain-twitching, Mail-reading, spite-mongers. Who hate freedom (especially other people’s).
    Do you not concede that this poll supports the reduction in foreign aid across all political groups and ages
    I don’t believe in running the country according to whatever lowest-denominator impulses can be discerned from polling.

    Sad that this is another example of your piously refusing to part with a smidgeon of your triple-locked wealth.
    A bit ad hom. , but agreed.
    I am still awaiting an apology as I have always supported cancelling the triple lock, though both my wife and I are pensioners

    I have said so on here on many occasions

    In addition I support the following in case there is any doubt

    The £20 Universal credit uplift made permanent

    100% behind Marcus Rashford's campaign for free school meals

    And I am not alone with conservative mps also supporting these three issues
    I wasn't agreeing with the ad hominem, Big_G.
    But the cut it aid is simply wrong, IMO.
    I don't think there is anything magical about 0.5 vs 0.7, but I think it is a small amount in the big picture and the main professed reasoning behind cutting it doesn't stack up so it should be maintained given whilst things are not spent perfectly we can be pretty sure there will be some quite serious netagative effects..
    The fact that the Covid response has blown out budget wide open and left a massive deficit that needs closing back down doesn't stack up?
    There are many other ways they could close the deficit, ways which would close it much more significantly.

    The level of focus on international aid to help close the deficit as opposed to anything else is what does not stack up for me. That some people have wanted to reduce it for a long time adds to that suspicion.

    Yes, every little helps, but on so many other areas it's magically not an issue but it is for this one? I don't buy that

    That's why while I'm not opposed to the principle the way some others are, it seems like the wrong move for the wrong reasons when we can be sure of pretty immediate effect.
    Since 2010 every area of government expenditure bar two has been subject to rigorous spending reviews and austerity. The only exceptions are the Health and International Aid.

    Healthy for obvious reasons can't be cut. Everything else has already been subject to austerity. By series of elimination that leaves one issue alone where the fat has not been trimmed.

    So if you think there's another area whereby £4bn in expenditure cuts can be made almost overnight then I'd love to hear what it is as an alternative and why it's not been done yet.

    Specifically which anything else are you thinking of instead?
    Ah hem... pensions, health and international aid.

    The amount the UK Government spends on pensions and health is set by the triple lock and by an ageing population. This means that it's increased from the high 30s as a percent of spending in the 1980s, to over 50% now. Every year it increases, and that means that there will be continued (and permanent) pressure on other parts of the budget.
    While you're there, am I right in attributing the "Dotage Democracies Descend into Doom" theory to you?

    And if so, how close is the UK to that descent and is there a way out?
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    rcs1000 said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    This poll on foreign aid may surprise some politicians

    https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1401927434333835266?s=19

    No surprise.
    Britons are curtain-twitching, Mail-reading, spite-mongers. Who hate freedom (especially other people’s).
    Do you not concede that this poll supports the reduction in foreign aid across all political groups and ages
    I don’t believe in running the country according to whatever lowest-denominator impulses can be discerned from polling.

    Sad that this is another example of your piously refusing to part with a smidgeon of your triple-locked wealth.
    A bit ad hom. , but agreed.
    I am still awaiting an apology as I have always supported cancelling the triple lock, though both my wife and I are pensioners

    I have said so on here on many occasions

    In addition I support the following in case there is any doubt

    The £20 Universal credit uplift made permanent

    100% behind Marcus Rashford's campaign for free school meals

    And I am not alone with conservative mps also supporting these three issues
    I wasn't agreeing with the ad hominem, Big_G.
    But the cut it aid is simply wrong, IMO.
    I don't think there is anything magical about 0.5 vs 0.7, but I think it is a small amount in the big picture and the main professed reasoning behind cutting it doesn't stack up so it should be maintained given whilst things are not spent perfectly we can be pretty sure there will be some quite serious netagative effects..
    The fact that the Covid response has blown out budget wide open and left a massive deficit that needs closing back down doesn't stack up?
    There are many other ways they could close the deficit, ways which would close it much more significantly.

    The level of focus on international aid to help close the deficit as opposed to anything else is what does not stack up for me. That some people have wanted to reduce it for a long time adds to that suspicion.

    Yes, every little helps, but on so many other areas it's magically not an issue but it is for this one? I don't buy that

    That's why while I'm not opposed to the principle the way some others are, it seems like the wrong move for the wrong reasons when we can be sure of pretty immediate effect.
    Since 2010 every area of government expenditure bar two has been subject to rigorous spending reviews and austerity. The only exceptions are the Health and International Aid.

    Healthy for obvious reasons can't be cut. Everything else has already been subject to austerity. By series of elimination that leaves one issue alone where the fat has not been trimmed.

    So if you think there's another area whereby £4bn in expenditure cuts can be made almost overnight then I'd love to hear what it is as an alternative and why it's not been done yet.

    Specifically which anything else are you thinking of instead?
    Ah hem... pensions, health and international aid.

    The amount the UK Government spends on pensions and health is set by the triple lock and by an ageing population. This means that it's increased from the high 30s as a percent of spending in the 1980s, to over 50% now. Every year it increases, and that means that there will be continued (and permanent) pressure on other parts of the budget.
    That's a fair point and I'm against the triple lock too so fairly consistent on that. Happy to see both issues address not either/or.

    Worth noting of course that cutting pensions would not just be unpopular but would have a multiplier effect as the money pensioners get and spent in the local economy wouldn't be multiplied and wouldn't be taxed etc - whereas overseas aid probably doesn't have that much of a local multiplier effect.
  • TresTres Posts: 2,163

    rcs1000 said:

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    This poll on foreign aid may surprise some politicians

    https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1401927434333835266?s=19

    No surprise.
    Britons are curtain-twitching, Mail-reading, spite-mongers. Who hate freedom (especially other people’s).
    Do you not concede that this poll supports the reduction in foreign aid across all political groups and ages
    I don’t believe in running the country according to whatever lowest-denominator impulses can be discerned from polling.

    Sad that this is another example of your piously refusing to part with a smidgeon of your triple-locked wealth.
    A bit ad hom. , but agreed.
    I am still awaiting an apology as I have always supported cancelling the triple lock, though both my wife and I are pensioners

    I have said so on here on many occasions

    In addition I support the following in case there is any doubt

    The £20 Universal credit uplift made permanent

    100% behind Marcus Rashford's campaign for free school meals

    And I am not alone with conservative mps also supporting these three issues
    I wasn't agreeing with the ad hominem, Big_G.
    But the cut it aid is simply wrong, IMO.
    I don't think there is anything magical about 0.5 vs 0.7, but I think it is a small amount in the big picture and the main professed reasoning behind cutting it doesn't stack up so it should be maintained given whilst things are not spent perfectly we can be pretty sure there will be some quite serious netagative effects..
    The fact that the Covid response has blown out budget wide open and left a massive deficit that needs closing back down doesn't stack up?
    There are many other ways they could close the deficit, ways which would close it much more significantly.

    The level of focus on international aid to help close the deficit as opposed to anything else is what does not stack up for me. That some people have wanted to reduce it for a long time adds to that suspicion.

    Yes, every little helps, but on so many other areas it's magically not an issue but it is for this one? I don't buy that

    That's why while I'm not opposed to the principle the way some others are, it seems like the wrong move for the wrong reasons when we can be sure of pretty immediate effect.
    Since 2010 every area of government expenditure bar two has been subject to rigorous spending reviews and austerity. The only exceptions are the Health and International Aid.

    Healthy for obvious reasons can't be cut. Everything else has already been subject to austerity. By series of elimination that leaves one issue alone where the fat has not been trimmed.

    So if you think there's another area whereby £4bn in expenditure cuts can be made almost overnight then I'd love to hear what it is as an alternative and why it's not been done yet.

    Specifically which anything else are you thinking of instead?
    Ah hem... pensions, health and international aid.

    The amount the UK Government spends on pensions and health is set by the triple lock and by an ageing population. This means that it's increased from the high 30s as a percent of spending in the 1980s, to over 50% now. Every year it increases, and that means that there will be continued (and permanent) pressure on other parts of the budget.
    While you're there, am I right in attributing the "Dotage Democracies Descend into Doom" theory to you?

    And if so, how close is the UK to that descent and is there a way out?
    Loads of immigration is the typical solution.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084

    FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.

    The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.

    Most seem totally tone deaf to this.

    I wonder if putting so much emphasis on "all living former Prime Ministers" being against this did more harm than good?

    Not only are the living former PMs quite frankly not that popular - but it left open the fairly obvious question as to why Blair found it appropriate to spend 0.36% of GNI when he was PM, but inappropriate for Boris to spend 0.50% of GNI today?

    There doesn't seem to be a single good answer to that from anybody at all other than crass appeals to emotion.
    Talking of former PMs, a statistic that some may find surprising is that the highest earning MP last year was….Theresa May.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004
    IanB2 said:

    FPT

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    This poll on foreign aid may surprise some politicians

    https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1401927434333835266?s=19

    No surprise.
    Britons are curtain-twitching, Mail-reading, spite-mongers. Who hate freedom (especially other people’s).
    Do you not concede that this poll supports the reduction in foreign aid across all political groups and ages
    I don’t believe in running the country according to whatever lowest-denominator impulses can be discerned from polling.

    Sad that this is another example of your piously refusing to part with a smidgeon of your triple-locked wealth.
    A bit ad hom. , but agreed.
    I am still awaiting an apology as I have always supported cancelling the triple lock, though both my wife and I are pensioners

    I have said so on here on many occasions

    In addition I support the following in case there is any doubt

    The £20 Universal credit uplift made permanent

    100% behind Marcus Rashford's campaign for free school meals

    And I am not alone with conservative mps also supporting these three issues
    I wasn't agreeing with the ad hominem, Big_G.
    But the cut it aid is simply wrong, IMO.
    I don't think there is anything magical about 0.5 vs 0.7, but I think it is a small amount in the big picture and the main professed reasoning behind cutting it doesn't stack up so it should be maintained given whilst things are not spent perfectly we can be pretty sure there will be some quite serious netagative effects..
    The fact that the Covid response has blown out budget wide open and left a massive deficit that needs closing back down doesn't stack up?
    There are many other ways they could close the deficit, ways which would close it much more significantly.

    The level of focus on international aid to help close the deficit as opposed to anything else is what does not stack up for me. That some people have wanted to reduce it for a long time adds to that suspicion.

    Yes, every little helps, but on so many other areas it's magically not an issue but it is for this one? I don't buy that

    That's why while I'm not opposed to the principle the way some others are, it seems like the wrong move for the wrong reasons when we can be sure of pretty immediate effect.
    Since 2010 every area of government expenditure bar two has been subject to rigorous spending reviews and austerity. The only exceptions are the Health and International Aid.

    Healthy for obvious reasons can't be cut. Everything else has already been subject to austerity. By series of elimination that leaves one issue alone where the fat has not been trimmed.

    So if you think there's another area whereby £4bn in expenditure cuts can be made almost overnight then I'd love to hear what it is as an alternative and why it's not been done yet.

    Specifically which anything else are you thinking of instead?
    Big G’s triple lock and all those other pensioner goodies.

    Slash them to the bone; they’re sucking the country dry.
    Why do you hate pensioners

    What have they done to you
    It’s not about hating pensioners, but about having an awareness that older voters tend, in the round, to be less concerned about the state of the economy or the housing market, and that having a government obsessed by not upsetting people who are not economically active is potentially an unhealthy state of affairs.

    It is quite obvious that the dramatic anomalies in the average earnings data argue towards exceptionally reinterpreting the earnings part of the triple lock, such that pensions keep pace with earnings averaged over several years, rather than ignoring last year’s significant drop off and then increasing pensions by a massive 8% this year.

    That Rishi faces a fight to get this piece of common sense accepted as the right way to proceed (and that Labour is mostly interested merely in making what political capital it can from this tweak to the ‘promise’) is a sad comment on the state of our politics.
    Good post and I hope Rishi wins the argument
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    IanB2 said:

    FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.

    The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.

    Most seem totally tone deaf to this.

    I wonder if putting so much emphasis on "all living former Prime Ministers" being against this did more harm than good?

    Not only are the living former PMs quite frankly not that popular - but it left open the fairly obvious question as to why Blair found it appropriate to spend 0.36% of GNI when he was PM, but inappropriate for Boris to spend 0.50% of GNI today?

    There doesn't seem to be a single good answer to that from anybody at all other than crass appeals to emotion.
    Talking of former PMs, a statistic that some may find surprising is that the highest earning MP last year was….Theresa May.
    I'd happier see her give away her earnings to charities than our taxes.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    MaxPB said:

    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.

    Having the rule of law and economic trade works more than any amount of aid.

    Until places like Yemen have the rule of law, they're not going to "develop".
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    Channel 4 News giving the government a really well deserved kicking.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Roger said:

    Channel 4 News giving the government a really well deserved kicking.

    So 7 people in the country will watch it?
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745


    I wonder if putting so much emphasis on "all living former Prime Ministers" being against this did more harm than good?

    Not only are the living former PMs quite frankly not that popular - but it left open the fairly obvious question as to why Blair found it appropriate to spend 0.36% of GNI when he was PM, but inappropriate for Boris to spend 0.50% of GNI today?

    There doesn't seem to be a single good answer to that from anybody at all other than crass appeals to emotion.

    I have to say, even as someone not well disposed towards the current Conservative incarnation, I'm struggling to get very excited about this.

    0.5% of GDP is still a respectable figure in the western world and of course the Opposition arties can pledge to restore the 0.7% in their manifestos for the next GE (and indeed the Conservatives may well pledge to return foreign aid to 0.7% "as and when conditions permit").

    There are valid questions around where the foreign aid budget goes and on what it is being spent.

    I'm sure there are many wholly worthwhile projects out there and supporting those who need help to improve their own lot (and some of what can be done may seem trivial to us but for example the provision of fresh clean water is literally a lifesaver) and those of future generations seems a no-brainer.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,749
    She’ll be kicking the arses of her SCon colleagues who sat on them presumably.
    Or not.

    https://twitter.com/ruthdavidsonpc/status/1414972022577324036?s=21
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,284
    Roger said:

    Channel 4 News giving the government a really well deserved kicking.

    They do that every day, I thought.
  • FPT - there are good arguments for foreign aid that might command public support.

    The trouble is the wrong ones are being made by the wrong people.

    Most seem totally tone deaf to this.

    Oh tell us all knowing Casino, what should we be thinking?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084
    edited July 2021
    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
  • Why do I get the feeling that the way to plug the gap is going to be making young people somehow pay more
  • TresTres Posts: 2,163
    edited July 2021
    In the Italian press, the British reputation for 'fair play' is taking a bit of a battering.
    Sounds like they have taken umbrage from William and Kate not hanging around for the medal ceremony.
    Have to be careful that we do not develop a reputation as 'poor hosts'.
  • My question for those who are in favour of cutting foreign aid.

    It isn't going to plug the gap in the public finances, not even close. It isn't going to make a tangible difference to anything, so of all the things to cut, why cut this?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    edited July 2021
    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Not at all, homelessness is a sad consequence of our economic path in this country. Some people are unable and fall by the wayside. Having a safety net for them makes some amount of sense for those who want to help themselves.

    The issue with international aid is that it doesn't do that. It's just heroin for the addict pushed by charities who get rich from doing it.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    MaxPB said:

    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.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Indeed, I was sent this earlier on today about some of the things we've done with International Aid in recent years.

    Supported 14.3 million children to gain a decent education, between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 32.6 million people, including at least 10 million women and girls, with humanitarian assistance between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 50.6 million children under five, women of childbearing age, and adolescent girls through our nutrition relevant programmes from April 2015 to March 2019.

    Supported 23.5 million women and girls to use modern methods of family planning between April 2018 and March 2019.

    Supported 51.8 million people to access clean water and/or better sanitation between April 2015 and March 2019.


    But hey, we need to get a new national yacht and we've got to find the money from somewhere.

    Coupled with the looming disaster in Afghanistan, it's not been a great few days for British/Western Foreign Policy in recent days.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745


    I'd happier see her give away her earnings to charities than our taxes.

    Did you not like May as PM? Honestly? I'd never have guessed....

    It's curious we treat our former Prime Ministers much worse than America treats its former Presidents (or at least that used to be the case).

    Jimmy Carter may not have been the most successful POTUS but are we to denigrate the work he has done since leaving office (Habitats for Humanity seems entirely laudable)?

    Bill Clinton was involved with George HW Bush on hurricane relief and has done other philanthropic activities. George W Bush seems to be regarded with a fondness which he perhaps wasn't while in office (except by supporters of Trump but they loathe Obama almost as much).

    We should, I think, seek to utilise ex-Prime MInisters in some way but that seems not to be how we operate - rehabilitation for their time in office seems to take several decades.

  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Spain is reporting +43,960 cases of covid.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084
    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Not at all, homelessness is a sad consequence of our economic path in this country. Some people are unable and fall by the wayside. Having a safety net for them makes some amount of sense for those who want to help themselves.

    The issue with international aid is that it doesn't do that. It's just heroin for the addict pushed by charities who get rich from doing it.
    I’m guessing you haven’t really been on the ground and seen the difference we can make nowadays.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,749
    Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?





  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    My question for those who are in favour of cutting foreign aid.

    It isn't going to plug the gap in the public finances, not even close. It isn't going to make a tangible difference to anything, so of all the things to cut, why cut this?

    £4bn per year over the next 5 years is a lot of money. Saving that from the budget and reducing the deficit and future indebtedness is extremely worthwhile. Then again, I'm fiscally conservative so probably not the right person to answer.
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Indeed, I was sent this earlier on today about some of the things we've done with International Aid in recent years.

    Supported 14.3 million children to gain a decent education, between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 32.6 million people, including at least 10 million women and girls, with humanitarian assistance between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 50.6 million children under five, women of childbearing age, and adolescent girls through our nutrition relevant programmes from April 2015 to March 2019.

    Supported 23.5 million women and girls to use modern methods of family planning between April 2018 and March 2019.

    Supported 51.8 million people to access clean water and/or better sanitation between April 2015 and March 2019.


    But hey, we need to get a new national yacht and we've got to find the money from somewhere.

    Coupled with the looming disaster in Afghanistan, it's not been a great few days for British/Western Foreign Policy in recent days.
    To be fair, the looming disaster in Afghanistan is down to Joe Biden, not the UK government. And it's one hell of a looming disaster. It's very hard to understand why Biden, who has been so sensible on everything else, has made this huge misstep.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,284
    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.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    stodge said:


    I'd happier see her give away her earnings to charities than our taxes.

    Did you not like May as PM? Honestly? I'd never have guessed....

    It's curious we treat our former Prime Ministers much worse than America treats its former Presidents (or at least that used to be the case).

    Jimmy Carter may not have been the most successful POTUS but are we to denigrate the work he has done since leaving office (Habitats for Humanity seems entirely laudable)?

    Bill Clinton was involved with George HW Bush on hurricane relief and has done other philanthropic activities. George W Bush seems to be regarded with a fondness which he perhaps wasn't while in office (except by supporters of Trump but they loathe Obama almost as much).

    We should, I think, seek to utilise ex-Prime MInisters in some way but that seems not to be how we operate - rehabilitation for their time in office seems to take several decades.

    One of the most left wing people I know is a huge fan of George W Bush.

    Said that as President (and since then) did so much for the treatment and to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa.

    Reckons his policies saved north of 10 million lives.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,089

    Why do I get the feeling that the way to plug the gap is going to be making young people somehow pay more

    Ultimately, it has to be, especially if you define young as in work- which is a bit of stretch, but not a massive one.

    There's nobody else actually creating value for the nation.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    IanB2 said:

    FPT

    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    This poll on foreign aid may surprise some politicians

    https://twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1401927434333835266?s=19

    No surprise.
    Britons are curtain-twitching, Mail-reading, spite-mongers. Who hate freedom (especially other people’s).
    Do you not concede that this poll supports the reduction in foreign aid across all political groups and ages
    I don’t believe in running the country according to whatever lowest-denominator impulses can be discerned from polling.

    Sad that this is another example of your piously refusing to part with a smidgeon of your triple-locked wealth.
    A bit ad hom. , but agreed.
    I am still awaiting an apology as I have always supported cancelling the triple lock, though both my wife and I are pensioners

    I have said so on here on many occasions

    In addition I support the following in case there is any doubt

    The £20 Universal credit uplift made permanent

    100% behind Marcus Rashford's campaign for free school meals

    And I am not alone with conservative mps also supporting these three issues
    I wasn't agreeing with the ad hominem, Big_G.
    But the cut it aid is simply wrong, IMO.
    I don't think there is anything magical about 0.5 vs 0.7, but I think it is a small amount in the big picture and the main professed reasoning behind cutting it doesn't stack up so it should be maintained given whilst things are not spent perfectly we can be pretty sure there will be some quite serious netagative effects..
    The fact that the Covid response has blown out budget wide open and left a massive deficit that needs closing back down doesn't stack up?
    There are many other ways they could close the deficit, ways which would close it much more significantly.

    The level of focus on international aid to help close the deficit as opposed to anything else is what does not stack up for me. That some people have wanted to reduce it for a long time adds to that suspicion.

    Yes, every little helps, but on so many other areas it's magically not an issue but it is for this one? I don't buy that

    That's why while I'm not opposed to the principle the way some others are, it seems like the wrong move for the wrong reasons when we can be sure of pretty immediate effect.
    Since 2010 every area of government expenditure bar two has been subject to rigorous spending reviews and austerity. The only exceptions are the Health and International Aid.

    Healthy for obvious reasons can't be cut. Everything else has already been subject to austerity. By series of elimination that leaves one issue alone where the fat has not been trimmed.

    So if you think there's another area whereby £4bn in expenditure cuts can be made almost overnight then I'd love to hear what it is as an alternative and why it's not been done yet.

    Specifically which anything else are you thinking of instead?
    Big G’s triple lock and all those other pensioner goodies.

    Slash them to the bone; they’re sucking the country dry.
    Why do you hate pensioners

    What have they done to you
    It’s not about hating pensioners, but about having an awareness that older voters tend, in the round, to be less concerned about the state of the economy or the housing market, and that having a government obsessed by not upsetting people who are not economically active is potentially an unhealthy state of affairs.

    It is quite obvious that the dramatic anomalies in the average earnings data argue towards exceptionally reinterpreting the earnings part of the triple lock, such that pensions keep pace with earnings averaged over several years, rather than ignoring last year’s significant drop off and then increasing pensions by a massive 8% this year.

    That Rishi faces a fight to get this piece of common sense accepted as the right way to proceed (and that Labour is mostly interested merely in making what political capital it can from this tweak to the ‘promise’) is a sad comment on the state of our politics.
    A losing fight I bet.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,343
    edited July 2021
    Those figures look about right to me except for one thing. Tories and NOM have, on the data available right now, nothing to choose between them and no factors which give one result a decisive edge over the other.

    Labour can only get a majority with a real black swan event between now and the GE. That is, something unforeseeable for there is no foreseeable way in which Labour can win. This is not impossible, but not more than a 5% chance. So I would put it at Con 47%, NOM 47% Lab 5% Some other result (LD or Green or Centre Left Rainbow Alliance Party majority, or invasion by Martian Party) less than 1%.

    On another issued discussed recently, the stickiness of the Tory numbers in polling; one factor in this (ignore southern byelections) is that with the impossibility of a Tory coalition there is only one party to vote for which gives you a chance of a non centre left government; so whereas in the previous era Tory and LD votes could churn around. If you are Tory there is literally nowhere else to go.
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    MaxPB said:

    My question for those who are in favour of cutting foreign aid.

    It isn't going to plug the gap in the public finances, not even close. It isn't going to make a tangible difference to anything, so of all the things to cut, why cut this?

    £4bn per year over the next 5 years is a lot of money. Saving that from the budget and reducing the deficit and future indebtedness is extremely worthwhile. Then again, I'm fiscally conservative so probably not the right person to answer.
    Given that £3bn of that could be financed by the entirely uncontroversial measure of suspending the triple lock this year, Rishi can't have been looking very hard for alternative things to cut.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084
    edited July 2021

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Indeed, I was sent this earlier on today about some of the things we've done with International Aid in recent years.

    Supported 14.3 million children to gain a decent education, between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 32.6 million people, including at least 10 million women and girls, with humanitarian assistance between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 50.6 million children under five, women of childbearing age, and adolescent girls through our nutrition relevant programmes from April 2015 to March 2019.

    Supported 23.5 million women and girls to use modern methods of family planning between April 2018 and March 2019.

    Supported 51.8 million people to access clean water and/or better sanitation between April 2015 and March 2019.


    But hey, we need to get a new national yacht and we've got to find the money from somewhere.

    Coupled with the looming disaster in Afghanistan, it's not been a great few days for British/Western Foreign Policy in recent days.
    To be fair, the looming disaster in Afghanistan is down to Joe Biden, not the UK government. And it's one hell of a looming disaster. It's very hard to understand why Biden, who has been so sensible on everything else, has made this huge misstep.
    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.
  • MaxPB said:

    My question for those who are in favour of cutting foreign aid.

    It isn't going to plug the gap in the public finances, not even close. It isn't going to make a tangible difference to anything, so of all the things to cut, why cut this?

    £4bn per year over the next 5 years is a lot of money. Saving that from the budget and reducing the deficit and future indebtedness is extremely worthwhile. Then again, I'm fiscally conservative so probably not the right person to answer.
    It's chicken feed compared to what we need to plug the gap, surely you can see that Max. What shall we cut next, a serious question?

    I can respect your POV because you at least have principles and you stick to them. Others here just do what BoJo tells them, one day supporting cutting and the next investing. They flip flop so much I am getting dizzy.

    I am sure it must have been painful watching me down the Corbyn rabbit hole, I hope they can get out of the Johnson one, one day!
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    edited July 2021

    Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?





    Aren't those figures like a week old, and Scotland trails once again?

    We need @Malmesbury for a ruling.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Not at all, homelessness is a sad consequence of our economic path in this country. Some people are unable and fall by the wayside. Having a safety net for them makes some amount of sense for those who want to help themselves.

    The issue with international aid is that it doesn't do that. It's just heroin for the addict pushed by charities who get rich from doing it.
    I’m guessing you haven’t really been on the ground and seen the difference we can make nowadays.
    If any difference was going to be made by our aid programme then Africa wouldn't still be the way it is. In fact things are worse in some parts than ever before and African countries are signing away 100 year land leases to China for (lots of) pennies with the kind of deals we could never compete with.

    You need to be far, far more realistic about the impact of our aid programme and western aid programmes in general not specific to our own. They aren't successful and the only people who benefit are charities and the fat cats that run them.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?





    Aren't those figures like a week old, and Scotland trails once again?

    We need @Malmesbury for a ruling.
    If they were ahead a week ago and now are not then things must be sufficiently close as to make national dick measuring pointless.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Indeed, I was sent this earlier on today about some of the things we've done with International Aid in recent years.

    Supported 14.3 million children to gain a decent education, between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 32.6 million people, including at least 10 million women and girls, with humanitarian assistance between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 50.6 million children under five, women of childbearing age, and adolescent girls through our nutrition relevant programmes from April 2015 to March 2019.

    Supported 23.5 million women and girls to use modern methods of family planning between April 2018 and March 2019.

    Supported 51.8 million people to access clean water and/or better sanitation between April 2015 and March 2019.


    But hey, we need to get a new national yacht and we've got to find the money from somewhere.

    Coupled with the looming disaster in Afghanistan, it's not been a great few days for British/Western Foreign Policy in recent days.
    To be fair, the looming disaster in Afghanistan is down to Joe Biden, not the UK government. And it's one hell of a looming disaster. It's very hard to understand why Biden, who has been so sensible on everything else, has made this huge misstep.
    I don't understand it, it isn't like we have some experience of pulling out Afghanistan and allowing The Taliban to flourish.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084
    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Not at all, homelessness is a sad consequence of our economic path in this country. Some people are unable and fall by the wayside. Having a safety net for them makes some amount of sense for those who want to help themselves.

    The issue with international aid is that it doesn't do that. It's just heroin for the addict pushed by charities who get rich from doing it.
    I’m guessing you haven’t really been on the ground and seen the difference we can make nowadays.
    If any difference was going to be made by our aid programme then Africa wouldn't still be the way it is. In fact things are worse in some parts than ever before and African countries are signing away 100 year land leases to China for (lots of) pennies with the kind of deals we could never compete with.

    You need to be far, far more realistic about the impact of our aid programme and western aid programmes in general not specific to our own. They aren't successful and the only people who benefit are charities and the fat cats that run them.
    Assertion without evidence doesn’t even get you to first base. Give PB’ers a little more credit.
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    IanB2 said:


    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.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    MaxPB said:

    My question for those who are in favour of cutting foreign aid.

    It isn't going to plug the gap in the public finances, not even close. It isn't going to make a tangible difference to anything, so of all the things to cut, why cut this?

    £4bn per year over the next 5 years is a lot of money. Saving that from the budget and reducing the deficit and future indebtedness is extremely worthwhile. Then again, I'm fiscally conservative so probably not the right person to answer.
    It's chicken feed compared to what we need to plug the gap, surely you can see that Max. What shall we cut next, a serious question?

    I can respect your POV because you at least have principles and you stick to them. Others here just do what BoJo tells them, one day supporting cutting and the next investing. They flip flop so much I am getting dizzy.

    I am sure it must have been painful watching me down the Corbyn rabbit hole, I hope they can get out of the Johnson one, one day!
    £20bn over 5 years isn't chicken feed. It's a serious amount of money and we're borrowing it. If we weren't borrowing it then I might be of a different opinion, probably not because I don't see international aid as a worthwhile area of spending, at least not the way we do it with the money ending up in the hands of dictators, local warlords and charity fatcat pensions.

    I'd also raise state pensions at 1% this year rather than the predicted 8% as well as a few other big cost saving and revenue raising measures.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    edited July 2021
    kle4 said:

    Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?





    Aren't those figures like a week old, and Scotland trails once again?

    We need @Malmesbury for a ruling.
    If they were ahead a week ago and now are not then things must be sufficiently close as to make national dick measuring pointless.
    What it does show is how awesome Mark Drakeford is, just look at the figures for double jabbed in Wales.

    He may soon get the honorific PBUH.

    Perhaps when Prince Charles becomes King the new King makes Mark Drakeford the new Prince of Wales, he deserves it.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084

    IanB2 said:


    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?
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Why do I get the feeling that the way to plug the gap is going to be making young people somehow pay more

    Well £4bn has been plugged today without making the young pay more and you objected to that.

    So would you rather make the young pay that £4bn too? Or was the right decision made?
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:


    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.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Not at all, homelessness is a sad consequence of our economic path in this country. Some people are unable and fall by the wayside. Having a safety net for them makes some amount of sense for those who want to help themselves.

    The issue with international aid is that it doesn't do that. It's just heroin for the addict pushed by charities who get rich from doing it.
    I’m guessing you haven’t really been on the ground and seen the difference we can make nowadays.
    If any difference was going to be made by our aid programme then Africa wouldn't still be the way it is. In fact things are worse in some parts than ever before and African countries are signing away 100 year land leases to China for (lots of) pennies with the kind of deals we could never compete with.

    You need to be far, far more realistic about the impact of our aid programme and western aid programmes in general not specific to our own. They aren't successful and the only people who benefit are charities and the fat cats that run them.
    There are some excellent books on aid and development, Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion is well worth a read, for example.

    The problems aren't all to do with aid: East Asia was (fortunately) lacking in oil and metals, while Africa had tonnes of the stuff. This meant that the best way to get rich in Africa was to become high up in government, and then live off a share of the mineral wealth. That's not a sustainable model for economic development.

    The mineral wealth also encouraged conflict: the old saying was that to start a civil war in Africa you just needed a satellite phone and to pre-sell the mining rights to BHP Billiton in return for some cash for AK47s now.

    There are undoubtedly ways that aid can help. But it seems that focusing on the headline percentage number is extremely unhelpful. Encouraging good governance is probably a better use of money, but the difficulty there is that you are up against China - who doesn't give a shit about anything other that the minerals and the oil.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,749
    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,969
    I hope they make a tv series or film about this story.

    A gang of alleged fraudsters who dressed as cardinals to trick victims out of millions of euros have been caught in an undercover sting operation by police officers disguised as priests.

    Italy’s Carabinieri police set their trap after receiving reports of the five fraudsters tricking at least €1.7 million out of victims in 20 different scams.

    Dressing as cardinals and priests, the men would offer business owners large loans on generous terms, all backed by the Vatican bank. All they requested upfront was a cash guarantee, only to vanish the moment it was paid.

    In one wiretapped conversation, the alleged leader of the group, Lucio Cesaroni, referred to the extraterritorial status of Vatican prelates in Italy, and joked: “How can the Carabinieri arrest me? I am extraterritorial.”


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/italian-police-disguised-as-priests-catch-fake-cardinals-gang-982k85lks
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745

    Why do I get the feeling that the way to plug the gap is going to be making young people somehow pay more

    Well £4bn has been plugged today without making the young pay more and you objected to that.

    So would you rather make the young pay that £4bn too? Or was the right decision made?
    You and I both know £4 billion is the proverbial drop in the figurative ocean.

    We've yet to hear from Sunak how he intends to reduce the deficit (a return to more normal economic activity will help) and the wider debt and how that will be serviced/managed on the assumption interest rates start to rise.

    I imagine he'll be hoping for a bit of inflation to help things along.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:


    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.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922
    Tories = Italy
    Labour = England
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    MaxPB said:

    My question for those who are in favour of cutting foreign aid.

    It isn't going to plug the gap in the public finances, not even close. It isn't going to make a tangible difference to anything, so of all the things to cut, why cut this?

    £4bn per year over the next 5 years is a lot of money. Saving that from the budget and reducing the deficit and future indebtedness is extremely worthwhile. Then again, I'm fiscally conservative so probably not the right person to answer.
    Given that £3bn of that could be financed by the entirely uncontroversial measure of suspending the triple lock this year, Rishi can't have been looking very hard for alternative things to cut.
    The sudden pearl clutching at the cost of aid seems strange from a government that spaffs money all over its mates.

    I will believe that Rishi is serious when he proposes a balanced budget.

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758
    edited July 2021

    Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?





    I don’t know what the true figures are, but I would point out you and Stuart Carroll have just quoted Indie Sage as a source.

    Whose figures have - so far - always proven to be false. Largely because they are bunch of third rate lying scum pushing a mad agenda who should be locked up.

    So I would say nobody has proved Jackie Baillie is lying.

    Can you find the accurate figures.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Not at all, homelessness is a sad consequence of our economic path in this country. Some people are unable and fall by the wayside. Having a safety net for them makes some amount of sense for those who want to help themselves.

    The issue with international aid is that it doesn't do that. It's just heroin for the addict pushed by charities who get rich from doing it.
    I’m guessing you haven’t really been on the ground and seen the difference we can make nowadays.
    If any difference was going to be made by our aid programme then Africa wouldn't still be the way it is. In fact things are worse in some parts than ever before and African countries are signing away 100 year land leases to China for (lots of) pennies with the kind of deals we could never compete with.

    You need to be far, far more realistic about the impact of our aid programme and western aid programmes in general not specific to our own. They aren't successful and the only people who benefit are charities and the fat cats that run them.
    There are some excellent books on aid and development, Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion is well worth a read, for example.

    The problems aren't all to do with aid: East Asia was (fortunately) lacking in oil and metals, while Africa had tonnes of the stuff. This meant that the best way to get rich in Africa was to become high up in government, and then live off a share of the mineral wealth. That's not a sustainable model for economic development.

    The mineral wealth also encouraged conflict: the old saying was that to start a civil war in Africa you just needed a satellite phone and to pre-sell the mining rights to BHP Billiton in return for some cash for AK47s now.

    There are undoubtedly ways that aid can help. But it seems that focusing on the headline percentage number is extremely unhelpful. Encouraging good governance is probably a better use of money, but the difficulty there is that you are up against China - who doesn't give a shit about anything other that the minerals and the oil.
    I'm not a huge fan of Collier as his book says for people to stop prescribing solutions for Africa and then he goes on to prescribe solutions for Africa.

    Easterly and Moyo for me. And Polman for on the ground stuff.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    stodge said:

    Why do I get the feeling that the way to plug the gap is going to be making young people somehow pay more

    Well £4bn has been plugged today without making the young pay more and you objected to that.

    So would you rather make the young pay that £4bn too? Or was the right decision made?
    You and I both know £4 billion is the proverbial drop in the figurative ocean.

    We've yet to hear from Sunak how he intends to reduce the deficit (a return to more normal economic activity will help) and the wider debt and how that will be serviced/managed on the assumption interest rates start to rise.

    I imagine he'll be hoping for a bit of inflation to help things along.
    £4bn is not a drop in the ocean, it is a massive chunk of the structural deficit.

    The debt will erode over years so long as the deficit is closed. That is what matters.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:


    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.
    It's going to be like the fall of Saigon.

    Prepare for a new wave of refugees. Any Aghan with the wherewithal will be getting out, and rightly so. They would be crazy to stay.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited July 2021
    There are no good answers to our current fiscal issue.

    But for what it’s worth, I’d be looking at the triple lock, NI for working pensioners, a temporary e-commerce tax, and I’d change inheritance tax so that the beneficiary pays income tax on it.

    I’d also change council tax for a property tax, although I’d aim for it to be fiscally neutral in the first instance.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,088
    On the general subject of the state pension: the triple lock is going to need to be reformed at some point, but the core problem is with the changing ratio of pensioners to the remaining working age population, and in the long run you only fix that by bringing the proportion of working age adults back up again.

    The cost of all those extra pensions can be borne for a while by cuts elsewhere, borrowing and hiking taxes, but eventually it'll become unbearable and then the electorate will be faced with two alternatives, both of which most voters will find unpalatable:

    1. Open door immigration for young families from low and middle income countries (the Ponzi scheme option)
    2. Rapid and substantial increases in the retirement age (the work until you drop dead option)

    Theoretically there's also 3. Mandatory euthanasia at age 80, but this might be considered a little too radical.

    Anyway, I wouldn't entirely rule out (1) but I'm expecting (2). I'm supposedly entitled to the state handout at 68, but if I actually get it this side of 70 I'll be surprised.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004

    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21

    Really lovely to see
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?

    I'm not saying anyone is lying, nor that any nation is doing badly because all are doing well, but the demographics of different nations will skew the vaccination stats. As we were doing the vaccinations by risk and primarily due to age, then a place with an older population should be further ahead than a place with a younger population. Scotland's population is a bit older than the UK average, as is Wales, England is pretty much the same as the UK as you'd expect, Northern Ireland is a bit younger.

    So all things being equal you'd expect Wales and Scotland to be ahead of England, and Northern Ireland to be in the rear. As is the case. To see if anyone is really lagging you'd need to look at vaccination rates for age bands.

    Just eyeballing it Northern Ireland might be going a bit slower than expected, and Scotland should be a bit closer to Wales, or Wales is doing better than expected.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,261

    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21

    Really lovely to see
    Bollocks
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    kle4 said:

    Perhaps some of the lads on here that like pushing the notion that Scotland’s vaccine effort lags behind the rest of the UK could explain why Big Jackie is lying?





    Aren't those figures like a week old, and Scotland trails once again?

    We need @Malmesbury for a ruling.
    If they were ahead a week ago and now are not then things must be sufficiently close as to make national dick measuring pointless.
    Yes, once you take the demographic diference into account I don't think there is a lot in it.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    pigeon said:

    On the general subject of the state pension: the triple lock is going to need to be reformed at some point, but the core problem is with the changing ratio of pensioners to the remaining working age population, and in the long run you only fix that by bringing the proportion of working age adults back up again.

    The cost of all those extra pensions can be borne for a while by cuts elsewhere, borrowing and hiking taxes, but eventually it'll become unbearable and then the electorate will be faced with two alternatives, both of which most voters will find unpalatable:

    1. Open door immigration for young families from low and middle income countries (the Ponzi scheme option)
    2. Rapid and substantial increases in the retirement age (the work until you drop dead option)

    Theoretically there's also 3. Mandatory euthanasia at age 80, but this might be considered a little too radical.

    Anyway, I wouldn't entirely rule out (1) but I'm expecting (2). I'm supposedly entitled to the state handout at 68, but if I actually get it this side of 70 I'll be surprised.

    Immigration isn’t a Ponzi scheme.
    EU migration has increased the overall level productivity and hence GDP *per capita*
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    rcs1000 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    It’s strictly not true.

    For example.
    https://developingeconomics.org/2018/11/12/historicising-the-aid-debate-south-korea-as-a-successful-aid-recipient/
    The Korean total of $6 billion in U.S. economic grants and loans, 1946-1978, compares to $6.89 billion for all of Africa, and $14.89 billion for all of Latin America’
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Foxy said:

    IanB2 said:

    IanB2 said:


    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.
    It's going to be like the fall of Saigon.

    Prepare for a new wave of refugees. Any Aghan with the wherewithal will be getting out, and rightly so. They would be crazy to stay.
    Same as South Africa. :(
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    MaxPB said:

    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.

    An argument that you could use against every charity and aid agency in the world. A totally specious argument.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    stodge said:


    I'd happier see her give away her earnings to charities than our taxes.

    Did you not like May as PM? Honestly? I'd never have guessed....

    It's curious we treat our former Prime Ministers much worse than America treats its former Presidents (or at least that used to be the case).

    Jimmy Carter may not have been the most successful POTUS but are we to denigrate the work he has done since leaving office (Habitats for Humanity seems entirely laudable)?

    Bill Clinton was involved with George HW Bush on hurricane relief and has done other philanthropic activities. George W Bush seems to be regarded with a fondness which he perhaps wasn't while in office (except by supporters of Trump but they loathe Obama almost as much).

    We should, I think, seek to utilise ex-Prime MInisters in some way but that seems not to be how we operate - rehabilitation for their time in office seems to take several decades.

    One of the most left wing people I know is a huge fan of George W Bush.

    Said that as President (and since then) did so much for the treatment and to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa.

    Reckons his policies saved north of 10 million lives.
    Only slightly under mined by the global gag rule. PEPFAR could have done so much more good if not needlessly encumbered with moralising garbage.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,004
    Leon said:

    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21

    Really lovely to see
    Bollocks
    Not at all

    Marcus Rashford is an intelligent and excellent role model and the whole country should support him, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka against this racist abuse
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    It is notable that the government has done nothing to prepare people for austerity, ie the general message is that money grows on trees.

    The overseas aid cut is presented more as an “own the libs” policy than a fiscal measure.

    The Sunak-Johnson tension is going to be wonderful to witness.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Indeed, I was sent this earlier on today about some of the things we've done with International Aid in recent years.

    Supported 14.3 million children to gain a decent education, between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 32.6 million people, including at least 10 million women and girls, with humanitarian assistance between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 50.6 million children under five, women of childbearing age, and adolescent girls through our nutrition relevant programmes from April 2015 to March 2019.

    Supported 23.5 million women and girls to use modern methods of family planning between April 2018 and March 2019.

    Supported 51.8 million people to access clean water and/or better sanitation between April 2015 and March 2019.


    But hey, we need to get a new national yacht and we've got to find the money from somewhere.

    Coupled with the looming disaster in Afghanistan, it's not been a great few days for British/Western Foreign Policy in recent days.
    To be fair, the looming disaster in Afghanistan is down to Joe Biden, not the UK government. And it's one hell of a looming disaster. It's very hard to understand why Biden, who has been so sensible on everything else, has made this huge misstep.
    Because after a literal multi generation occupation the country is no closer to stability?

    There are no good options for America in Afghanistan, they may as well do the one that doesn't involve bleeding itself dry of treasure and troops.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    I note that France is increasing its overseas aid budget to 0.7%

    It really is filling in the leadership gap Britain has progressively vacated since 2016.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,261

    Leon said:

    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21

    Really lovely to see
    Bollocks
    Not at all

    Marcus Rashford is an intelligent and excellent role model and the whole country should support him, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka against this racist abuse
    No, I meant the twats in the photo waving Black Lives Matter placards, promoting a vile Marxist group which wants to defund the police, destroy capitalism, and break down the family. They are stupid arseholes at best

    Rashford is an apparently pleasant chap, with a tough and interesting backstory, who has done really positive things, in his status as a multi-millionaire. He's not a saint, but he is a force for good, on the whole

    These pillocks in the photo saying Black Lives Matter can do one
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165

    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21

    The irony is that that lot are actually politicising this:

    https://www.standuptoracism.org.uk/about/
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,758
    Alistair said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Indeed, I was sent this earlier on today about some of the things we've done with International Aid in recent years.

    Supported 14.3 million children to gain a decent education, between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 32.6 million people, including at least 10 million women and girls, with humanitarian assistance between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 50.6 million children under five, women of childbearing age, and adolescent girls through our nutrition relevant programmes from April 2015 to March 2019.

    Supported 23.5 million women and girls to use modern methods of family planning between April 2018 and March 2019.

    Supported 51.8 million people to access clean water and/or better sanitation between April 2015 and March 2019.


    But hey, we need to get a new national yacht and we've got to find the money from somewhere.

    Coupled with the looming disaster in Afghanistan, it's not been a great few days for British/Western Foreign Policy in recent days.
    To be fair, the looming disaster in Afghanistan is down to Joe Biden, not the UK government. And it's one hell of a looming disaster. It's very hard to understand why Biden, who has been so sensible on everything else, has made this huge misstep.
    Because after a literal multi generation occupation the country is no closer to stability?

    There are no good options for America in Afghanistan, they may as well do the one that doesn't involve bleeding itself dry of treasure and troops.
    And there never were, and never have been, good options for foreign powers in Afghanistan. Not the Americans, the Soviets, the British, the Mughals, even Alexander the Great.

    Unfortunately every such intervention only makes things worse.

    George W. Bush will forever be tainted by Iraq, but Afghanistan was a much worse mistake.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,261

    I note that France is increasing its overseas aid budget to 0.7%

    It really is filling in the leadership gap Britain has progressively vacated since 2016.

    Let them have it. Where did it get us?
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21

    Really lovely to see
    Bollocks
    Not at all

    Marcus Rashford is an intelligent and excellent role model and the whole country should support him, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka against this racist abuse
    No, I meant the twats in the photo waving Black Lives Matter placards, promoting a vile Marxist group which wants to defund the police, destroy capitalism, and break down the family. They are stupid arseholes at best

    Rashford is an apparently pleasant chap, with a tough and interesting backstory, who has done really positive things, in his status as a multi-millionaire. He's not a saint, but he is a force for good, on the whole

    These pillocks in the photo saying Black Lives Matter can do one
    Looks like you lost your culture war, and didnt even get to extra time, let alone penalties......
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,284

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21

    Really lovely to see
    Bollocks
    Not at all

    Marcus Rashford is an intelligent and excellent role model and the whole country should support him, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka against this racist abuse
    No, I meant the twats in the photo waving Black Lives Matter placards, promoting a vile Marxist group which wants to defund the police, destroy capitalism, and break down the family. They are stupid arseholes at best

    Rashford is an apparently pleasant chap, with a tough and interesting backstory, who has done really positive things, in his status as a multi-millionaire. He's not a saint, but he is a force for good, on the whole

    These pillocks in the photo saying Black Lives Matter can do one
    Looks like you lost your culture war, and didnt even get to extra time, let alone penalties......
    The culture war was started by the left, and it's a war they're going to lose.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21

    Really lovely to see
    Bollocks
    Not at all

    Marcus Rashford is an intelligent and excellent role model and the whole country should support him, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka against this racist abuse
    No, I meant the twats in the photo waving Black Lives Matter placards, promoting a vile Marxist group which wants to defund the police, destroy capitalism, and break down the family. They are stupid arseholes at best

    Rashford is an apparently pleasant chap, with a tough and interesting backstory, who has done really positive things, in his status as a multi-millionaire. He's not a saint, but he is a force for good, on the whole

    These pillocks in the photo saying Black Lives Matter can do one
    How the fuck does taking the knee make you a Marxist?

    I mean, did Marx himself take the knee? Did Lenin? Stalin?

    FFS!
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,837

    Andy_JS said:

    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.

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/05/18/what-does-woke-mean-britons

    I have difficulty myself as I haven't heard a convincing and coherent definition.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922
    ydoethur said:

    Alistair said:

    IanB2 said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.

    That’s like saying that we still have homeless people so all spending on helping the homeless should stop.

    Relatively small amounts of money deployed strategically by our outstanding NGOs like VSO can make a significant difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. As well as helping to promote the UK’s soft power and, in the longer term, reducing the appetite of (for example) Africans to try and relocate to the EU.

    The cut in aid is being done solely to humour the prejudices of Tory members with narrow horizons; the dribble of money saved will do nothing to transform our circumstances up here in the rain.
    Indeed, I was sent this earlier on today about some of the things we've done with International Aid in recent years.

    Supported 14.3 million children to gain a decent education, between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 32.6 million people, including at least 10 million women and girls, with humanitarian assistance between April 2015 and March 2019.

    Reached 50.6 million children under five, women of childbearing age, and adolescent girls through our nutrition relevant programmes from April 2015 to March 2019.

    Supported 23.5 million women and girls to use modern methods of family planning between April 2018 and March 2019.

    Supported 51.8 million people to access clean water and/or better sanitation between April 2015 and March 2019.


    But hey, we need to get a new national yacht and we've got to find the money from somewhere.

    Coupled with the looming disaster in Afghanistan, it's not been a great few days for British/Western Foreign Policy in recent days.
    To be fair, the looming disaster in Afghanistan is down to Joe Biden, not the UK government. And it's one hell of a looming disaster. It's very hard to understand why Biden, who has been so sensible on everything else, has made this huge misstep.
    Because after a literal multi generation occupation the country is no closer to stability?

    There are no good options for America in Afghanistan, they may as well do the one that doesn't involve bleeding itself dry of treasure and troops.
    And there never were, and never have been, good options for foreign powers in Afghanistan. Not the Americans, the Soviets, the British, the Mughals, even Alexander the Great.

    Unfortunately every such intervention only makes things worse.

    George W. Bush will forever be tainted by Iraq, but Afghanistan was a much worse mistake.
    There was a 40 year period when Afghanistan was officially a British Protectorate (1879 to 1919), but that's about it.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,454
    Andy_JS said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    You were only supposed to start a bloody culture war, not lose it.

    https://twitter.com/mdbuckley/status/1415011135737274368?s=21

    Really lovely to see
    Bollocks
    Not at all

    Marcus Rashford is an intelligent and excellent role model and the whole country should support him, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka against this racist abuse
    No, I meant the twats in the photo waving Black Lives Matter placards, promoting a vile Marxist group which wants to defund the police, destroy capitalism, and break down the family. They are stupid arseholes at best

    Rashford is an apparently pleasant chap, with a tough and interesting backstory, who has done really positive things, in his status as a multi-millionaire. He's not a saint, but he is a force for good, on the whole

    These pillocks in the photo saying Black Lives Matter can do one
    Looks like you lost your culture war, and didnt even get to extra time, let alone penalties......
    The culture war was started by the left, and it's a war they're going to lose.
    Depends what you mean. It was perhaps started in the periphery by the left but had little influence on anything. It was the right that made it mainstream and important.

    And the right will win the current electoral battles, but the left will win the hearts and minds of the younger generations, so are the long term winners.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922
    dixiedean said:

    Andy_JS said:

    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.

    https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/05/18/what-does-woke-mean-britons

    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!".
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745



    £4bn is not a drop in the ocean, it is a massive chunk of the structural deficit.

    The debt will erode over years so long as the deficit is closed. That is what matters.

    Nice try but you seem to have a different understanding of numbers to me.

    The current debt is £2,206 billion - the deficit in 2019-20 was £65 billion (in terms of what the Government had to borrow). I appreciate 2020-21 will look a lot healthier but are you suggesting we will have a surplus ?

    I'm not going to argue £4 billion won't help but it's not some game changer. It's one step out of many we will need to take if we are serious about reducing borrowing and eventually being able to reduce the debt.

    The attitude of some in the pro-Johnson camp last year was we can keep borrowing ad infinitum - perhaps but one day it will catch up with someone somewhere.

    It's already clear some of the exaggerated promises of the "levelling up" vanity projects are going to be revisited - that's unfortunate and Covid was unforeseeable - but there have been and will be fiscal consequences.

    If the pro-Johnson line is going to be to shrug and blame it on Covid between now and 2024, it may be honest for someone to come out and say so.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Leon said:

    I note that France is increasing its overseas aid budget to 0.7%

    It really is filling in the leadership gap Britain has progressively vacated since 2016.

    Let them have it. Where did it get us?
    Dunno where it got you.

    But according to Theresa May today, “Fewer girls will be educated, more girls and boys will become slaves, more children will go hungry, and more of poorest people in world will die” as a result of the cuts.

    It was a Tory manifesto promise, too.
This discussion has been closed.