Latest voting split GE2021 CON voters – politicalbetting.com
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Latest voting split GE2021 CON voters – politicalbetting.com
The chart is based on the latest poll from Opinium and shows the current voting intentions of GE2019 CON voters.
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Comments
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First - Labour not dealing the deal0
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Those don’t knows will fall into line at the election.
2 -
A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.2
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Chaos in Sweden:
Yesterday morning the Riksdag voted in the country’s first woman prime minister, Magdalena Andersson - Social Democrat - with the backing of coalition partner the Greens, plus the Centre and Left parties.
In the afternoon that very same Riksdag voted through the Opposition centre-right Budget.
So the Greens immediately resigned from the governing coalition.
If there is an extraordinary GE now then at least one parliamentary party - the Liberals - is going to fall below the 4% threshold. Perhaps up to 3 of the 8 parliamentary parties. The Greens are very wobbly now without Social Democrats tactical votes.1 -
FPT
Does anyone else find it somewhat ironic that Ed Miliband is attacking the government for not dealing with the chaos caused by an energy price cap that was his idea in the first place?DecrepiterJohnL said:Bulb is among 22 energy suppliers to have failed in just two months. Labour has called for an inquiry into a failure of market regulation. The government has bunged it £1.7 billion. LibDems have suggested a Northern Rock solution.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59409595
Admittedly the Tories should never have adopted it and it’s their own fault they did, but even so…4 -
It’s not a Swede situation, it’s gone sour.StuartDickson said:Chaos in Sweden:
Yesterday morning the Riksdag voted in the country’s first woman prime minister, Magdalena Andersson - Social Democrat - with the backing of coalition partner the Greens, plus the Centre and Left parties.
In the afternoon that very same Riksdag voted through the Opposition centre-right Budget.
So the Greens immediately resigned from the governing coalition.
If there is an extraordinary GE now then at least one parliamentary party - the Liberals - is going to fall below the 4% threshold. Perhaps up to 3 of the 8 parliamentary parties. The Greens are very wobbly now without Social Democrats tactical votes.2 -
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
0 -
Bad news for the Lib Dems if they don't even get a slice of the pie named after them.1
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That's partly because my chart making programme only gives me limited options when doing a pie chart and I didn't want to bundle the wont votes with the DKsChris said:Bad news for the Lib Dems if they don't even get a slice of the pie named after them.
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He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
0 -
It would be mildly interesting to know how many of the OTH were LD.MikeSmithson said:
That's partly because my chart making programme only gives me limited options when doing a pie chart and I didn't want to bundle the wont votes with the DKsChris said:Bad news for the Lib Dems if they don't even get a slice of the pie named after them.
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I suppose that's politics. Of course Ed M could easily (and probably rightly) say the Tories weren't doing exactly what he would have done.ydoethur said:FPT
Does anyone else find it somewhat ironic that Ed Miliband is attacking the government for not dealing with the chaos caused by an energy price cap that was his idea in the first place?DecrepiterJohnL said:Bulb is among 22 energy suppliers to have failed in just two months. Labour has called for an inquiry into a failure of market regulation. The government has bunged it £1.7 billion. LibDems have suggested a Northern Rock solution.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59409595
Admittedly the Tories should never have adopted it and it’s their own fault they did, but even so…
And Good Morning one and all. Non-political, social, day ahead for me!0 -
Good morning, everyone.
The energy cap was a stupid idea when Miliband proposed it (as I said at the time), and was stupid when it got introduced. As many people predicted.4 -
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.9 -
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah1 -
It reminds me of the Tories making hay of Labour's difficulties over the fuel strikes in 2000, somewhat ignoring the fact it was their bloody fool 'escalator' system of fuel taxes that caused the problem in the first place.OldKingCole said:
I suppose that's politics. Of course Ed M could easily (and probably rightly) say the Tories weren't doing exactly what he would have done.ydoethur said:FPT
Does anyone else find it somewhat ironic that Ed Miliband is attacking the government for not dealing with the chaos caused by an energy price cap that was his idea in the first place?DecrepiterJohnL said:Bulb is among 22 energy suppliers to have failed in just two months. Labour has called for an inquiry into a failure of market regulation. The government has bunged it £1.7 billion. LibDems have suggested a Northern Rock solution.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59409595
Admittedly the Tories should never have adopted it and it’s their own fault they did, but even so…
And Good Morning one and all. Non-political, social, day ahead for me!0 -
Yes. Although it occurs to me there seem to be more "restaurants" (in the broadest sense) opening, so there might be increased demand as well as reduced supply. Which brings us back to training.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.0 -
Corbyn isn't Jewish.bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah0 -
Yes, beginning to play to his strengths.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Also becoming clear that there is not going to be a replacement before a GE.
It's him or Johnson the buffoon at the next election, at least for those in marginal seats. Mine is a safe seat, so I am free to waste my vote as I see fit.
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The don't knows are a measure of Boris's blundering but also an indication of where the recent falls in the Tory share has come from. Basically, Labour is winning over very few direct swops but supporters patience is being stretched.
What the government needs is a bit of quiet where we see our relative performance on Covid once again rise back to the top of the class, where the good economic news continues to filter through and where there are fewer self inflicted wounds like Owen Paterson and Peppa Pig. The last of these is by far the hardest with a media that smells blood in the water.1 -
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah5 -
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judaean People's Front...Foxy said:
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah0 -
SKS will keep the Toriees in powerFoxy said:
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah
SKS thinks the real enemies are in Labour hence he is expelling them at record rates particularly if they are Jewish0 -
He hasn't been expelled do keep up.ydoethur said:
Corbyn isn't Jewish.bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah0 -
I think you'll find he's been expelled from the only body Starmer has direct personal power over.bigjohnowls said:
He hasn't been expelled do keep up.ydoethur said:
Corbyn isn't Jewish.bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah0 -
SKS has no power over expelling Jewish members?ydoethur said:
I think you'll find he's been expelled from the only body Starmer has direct personal power over.bigjohnowls said:
He hasn't been expelled do keep up.ydoethur said:
Corbyn isn't Jewish.bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah
Powerless really it's a view.
0 -
You refer to SKS and his ilk surely.ydoethur said:
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judaean People's Front...Foxy said:
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah
He is the one doing the expelling of jews0 -
The government doing less things to deliberately upset its own supporters like raising taxes on working people etc would be a good start too.DavidL said:The don't knows are a measure of Boris's blundering but also an indication of where the recent falls in the Tory share has come from. Basically, Labour is winning over very few direct swops but supporters patience is being stretched.
What the government needs is a bit of quiet where we see our relative performance on Covid once again rise back to the top of the class, where the good economic news continues to filter through and where there are fewer self inflicted wounds like Owen Paterson and Peppa Pig. The last of these is by far the hardest with a media that smells blood in the water.1 -
The JPF are collaborators. Support the Peoples Front for the Liberation of Judea.ydoethur said:
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judaean People's Front...Foxy said:
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah0 -
It's a bit early to be drunk, isn't it?bigjohnowls said:
You refer to SKS and his ilk surely.ydoethur said:
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judaean People's Front...Foxy said:
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah
He is the one doing the expelling of jews2 -
I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.1
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The article on the Guardian site about the £3 chicken is worth a read.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.0 -
In other words, a new leader.DavidL said:The don't knows are a measure of Boris's blundering but also an indication of where the recent falls in the Tory share has come from. Basically, Labour is winning over very few direct swops but supporters patience is being stretched.
What the government needs is a bit of quiet where we see our relative performance on Covid once again rise back to the top of the class, where the good economic news continues to filter through and where there are fewer self inflicted wounds like Owen Paterson and Peppa Pig. The last of these is by far the hardest with a media that smells blood in the water.0 -
Take a sober look at the facts.ydoethur said:
It's a bit early to be drunk, isn't it?bigjohnowls said:
You refer to SKS and his ilk surely.ydoethur said:
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judaean People's Front...Foxy said:
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah
He is the one doing the expelling of jews
5 times more likely to be expelled from Labour if you are Jewish.0 -
I am looking at the facts and I'm perfectly sober.bigjohnowls said:
Take a sober look at the facts.ydoethur said:
It's a bit early to be drunk, isn't it?bigjohnowls said:
You refer to SKS and his ilk surely.ydoethur said:
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judaean People's Front...Foxy said:
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah
He is the one doing the expelling of jews
5 times more likely to be expelled from Labour if you are Jewish.
That's why I'm wondering what you're on.0 -
Watch the car wash market!IanB2 said:
The article on the Guardian site about the £3 chicken is worth a read.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.2 -
It would be interesting to know, as an example, how many chefs working in London have bought somewhere to live by the age of 40. If, as I suspect, the number is tiny, then the reason for the shortage of chefs is that the restaurants are not paying them enough.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
That this was disguised for many years, by a high turnover of foreigners willing to sleep in bunk beds for a couple of years, doesn’t mean it’s not a huge problem. The only way it gets fixed is if wages rise to meet demand, and restaurants invest in training.
Here is one example of a fancy, high-profile restaurant offering £12 an hour for a trained and qualified chef.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10155957/Salt-Baes-London-restaurant-hiring-chefs-hourly-wage-price-mashed-potato-menu.html1 -
Found an article in Middle East Eye by Peter Oborne on the point. Does appear to somewhat 'fringe'.ydoethur said:
I am looking at the facts and I'm perfectly sober.bigjohnowls said:
Take a sober look at the facts.ydoethur said:
It's a bit early to be drunk, isn't it?bigjohnowls said:
You refer to SKS and his ilk surely.ydoethur said:
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judaean People's Front...Foxy said:
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah
He is the one doing the expelling of jews
5 times more likely to be expelled from Labour if you are Jewish.
That's why I'm wondering what you're on.0 -
It would be good for automated car washes to make a return. 👍OldKingCole said:
Watch the car wash market!IanB2 said:
The article on the Guardian site about the £3 chicken is worth a read.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.1 -
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.0 -
Some poor car wash owners spent six figures on a capital investment a decade ago, just before the industry decided to take a step backwards.Philip_Thompson said:
It would be good for automated car washes to make a return. 👍OldKingCole said:
Watch the car wash market!IanB2 said:
The article on the Guardian site about the £3 chicken is worth a read.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
If it takes one man hour to clean your car, and you’re paying a tenner to someone who has to rent space and employ staff, there is precisely zero chance they’re paying minimum wage to those staff.1 -
They absolutely fuck your clear coat. Never use them on any car you care about. A ragged Kurd with a bucket of gritty water is no better obviously.Philip_Thompson said:
It would be good for automated car washes to make a return. 👍0 -
I assume the vast majority (all) of those members joined after Corbyn became leader and so aren't any real lose to the party and were probably more trouble than help.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.0 -
They were always pisspoor at cleaning cars. That's why they are underused even when cheap.Philip_Thompson said:
It would be good for automated car washes to make a return. 👍OldKingCole said:
Watch the car wash market!IanB2 said:
The article on the Guardian site about the £3 chicken is worth a read.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.0 -
You want this guy: https://www.perfectiondetailing.co.uk/Dura_Ace said:
They absolutely fuck your clear coat. Never use them on any car you care about. A ragged Kurd with a bucket of gritty water is no better obviously.Philip_Thompson said:
It would be good for automated car washes to make a return. 👍
Takes him a day and a half to clean a car properly, and costs about a grand.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=CK_heJ7oKl80 -
Not sure about that but the piece by DannytheFink in the Times yesterday was quite compelling acknowledging both the good and the bad.IanB2 said:
In other words, a new leader.DavidL said:The don't knows are a measure of Boris's blundering but also an indication of where the recent falls in the Tory share has come from. Basically, Labour is winning over very few direct swops but supporters patience is being stretched.
What the government needs is a bit of quiet where we see our relative performance on Covid once again rise back to the top of the class, where the good economic news continues to filter through and where there are fewer self inflicted wounds like Owen Paterson and Peppa Pig. The last of these is by far the hardest with a media that smells blood in the water.1 -
More than half of the Leavers were members welk before Corbyn myself included. Nearly all we're enthused by Corbyn and have a visceral dislike of the current incumbent.eek said:
I assume the vast majority (all) of those members joined after Corbyn became leader and so aren't any real lose to the party and were probably more trouble than help.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Right wingers don't do hard work like canvassing in my experience.Not even at the 2021 LEs0 -
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.0 -
Its genuinely depressing reading some of BJO's posts because they are so disconnected from reality.
The idea that SKS is "expelling Jews" is weaponised levels of wrong. A small number of members expelled for their association with proscribed bodies happen to be Jewish. They're expelled for supporting things like Labour against the Witchhunt, not because they are Jewish. To purport that to be the case is pretty twisted.
Whereas in Corbyn's day the doors were opened wide to the cranks and hardcore anti-semites. Then Labour members who were Jewish left in their droves having been targeted by the party for being Jewish.
Anti-semitism seems to be the racism that doesn't get counted as racism. As David Baddiel's awful/brilliant book puts it, "Jews Don't Count". The quicker the anti-semites and their supporters are removed from Labour the better.1 -
They're probably not paying VAT, Employers National Insurance or anything else either with any clients paying cash at least.Sandpit said:
Some poor car wash owners spent six figures on a capital investment a decade ago, just before the industry decided to take a step backwards.Philip_Thompson said:
It would be good for automated car washes to make a return. 👍OldKingCole said:
Watch the car wash market!IanB2 said:
The article on the Guardian site about the £3 chicken is worth a read.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
If it takes one man hour to clean your car, and you’re paying a tenner to someone who has to rent space and employ staff, there is precisely zero chance they’re paying minimum wage to those staff.2 -
Yep, restaurants are all set to become the exclusive preserve of the very wealthy once more. But, even so, they are never going to pay their staff enough for them to afford to buy property in London.Sandpit said:
It would be interesting to know, as an example, how many chefs working in London have bought somewhere to live by the age of 40. If, as I suspect, the number is tiny, then the reason for the shortage of chefs is that the restaurants are not paying them enough.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
That this was disguised for many years, by a high turnover of foreigners willing to sleep in bunk beds for a couple of years, doesn’t mean it’s not a huge problem. The only way it gets fixed is if wages rise to meet demand, and restaurants invest in training.
Here is one example of a fancy, high-profile restaurant offering £12 an hour for a trained and qualified chef.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10155957/Salt-Baes-London-restaurant-hiring-chefs-hourly-wage-price-mashed-potato-menu.html
1 -
Are you going to the PB meet up in February? We can take if you like.Jonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I do talk to many people in the flesh most don't disagree with my views on Starmer. Perhaps they are being polite.1 -
That's a great piece. But it's also worth noting that the richest countries in the world all import lots of low skilled labour. In fact, if you look at a chart of GDP per capita, and annual immigration of the low skilled per 100,000 residents, there's a clear correlation.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
There's a reason for that: in high value add countries, the native population is well skilled. Singaporean kids are well educated - they don't want to work as cleaners, nannys or bottom wipers.
It's not that natives are priced out of the care home market, it's that natives have got better jobs than working in care homes.
It would be great if there were no low skill jobs in the future, and everything was automated away. But the reality is that there are lots of jobs where automation is tough. Old people who are losing their marbles don't want to be looked after by robots. People make better cappuccinos than machines. And yes, your car will look better (and have the inside vacuumed and the trash thrown away) if it is cleaned by people rather than a machine.
And that's why Switzerland and Singapore import lots of low skilled labour. It's because there's lots of demand for it, and the natives are off doing the well paid jobs.
It is curious that the UK has had such a very different experience to these other rich countries.
And I think the thing is that you need to look at ultimate causes, and not proximate ones. British wages of low skilled workers have been affected by immigrants, because the British workers were no better educated (or skilled) than the immigrants. That's a problem that hasn't affected most other very rich countries. It's a problem that hasn't affected - for example - Germany or Switzerland with their extremely strong vocational training programmes.
We also need to look at the British system of tax and benefits: because (as @Philip_Thompson has noted), the UK system seems designed to discourage people at the lower end of the scale from working. Marginal tax rates in the 60 to 70% range (when you include the removal of benefits) for those at the bottom of the pyramid are a massive disincentive to work.
To solve the issue of an economy addicted to immigration, you need to understand why it's addicted to immigration, not simply to assume that if you ban it, all will be well. And I find it profoundly depressing that the current government - or most of the ones in the recent past - has done nothing to really understand why so many young people leave school in the UK without the right skills. (Instead, we obsess over whether we should reintroduce grammar schools when the UK produces lots of talented people at the top end already.) And we need to overhaul the tax and benefits system to encourage people to work. Those on or around minimum wage should have marginal tax rates as close to zero as possible.
Anyway: this may be all too nuanced for PB at 7:51am in the morning. So I'm going to grab a quick shower and head out for the day.5 -
One way to ensure better working conditions and higher levels of pay is to make it easier for workers to organise collectively and to withdraw their labour. Are you up for that?pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
2 -
Talking about disconnected from reality, my lovely MP David Duguid has been engaging with me on Twitter. As you may or may not know, a much-delayed Carbon Capture and Storage scheme is getting under way.
In "Track 1" - schemes to progress this decade - the funding went to a pair of projects in England, with Banff and Buchan's St Fergus scheme relegated to potential future consideration for "Track 2" in the 2030s.
David Duguid - the only Scottish Tory to vote to scrap the same Standards Commissioner who had already censured him - not only thinks this is a Good Thing but even stood and praised Peppa at PMQs, thanking him for not awarding part of the £1bn government funding to the constituency.
Apparently my consideration that he shouldn't praise the government for "binning off" the project is "SNP doom-mongering". The project apparently has a "great future". At some unspecified point in the next decade assuming it ever gets funded.
Is it a special kind of mindset where you bid for something, lose that bid, then seek to praise the person saying no for their brilliant decision-making whilst telling people that the bid is going brilliantly? Even better he will then get to ask us all for our vote to give thanks for the non-funding of this scheme he so successfully secured.0 -
My immediate thought was "how many of the newly lost members were active, how many that were active were actually constructive to the CLP, and what is the ratio of lost Trot ex-members to lost Labour ex-voters...eek said:
I assume the vast majority (all) of those members joined after Corbyn became leader and so aren't any real lose to the party and were probably more trouble than help.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.2 -
The problem is that a lot of those Trot ex-members are red versions of a certain type of person who wants to say to anyone not "pure" enough that they should go and vote for a different party.RochdalePioneers said:
My immediate thought was "how many of the newly lost members were active, how many that were active were actually constructive to the CLP, and what is the ratio of lost Trot ex-members to lost Labour ex-voters...eek said:
I assume the vast majority (all) of those members joined after Corbyn became leader and so aren't any real lose to the party and were probably more trouble than help.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
To which people duly do.1 -
Unless there's a fuller a reconciliation between the left and the centre, Starmer may still not be able to fully capitalise on the current situation. HIs achilles' heel is still the four to five per cent or so lost when Corbyn was suspended.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.0 -
I think the events of 2017 prove Socialism can be popular and without internal back stabbing we could have had a Labour GovernmentJonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I think the events of 2019 show a disastrous 2nd referendum policy and an unpopular leader will result in a Tory landslide.
I think the events of 2024 will show that being Tory lite and having a useless leader will result in 2019 rather than 2017 type result0 -
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.3 -
The Corbynites as a whole, rather than those expelled, are essentially a mixture - some of the old "hard left" as stereotyped, but probably a majority proportion of younger more idealistic people with actually no memory of the machine politics eras.Philip_Thompson said:
The problem is that a lot of those Trot ex-members are red versions of a certain type of person who wants to say to anyone not "pure" enough that they should go and vote for a different party.RochdalePioneers said:
My immediate thought was "how many of the newly lost members were active, how many that were active were actually constructive to the CLP, and what is the ratio of lost Trot ex-members to lost Labour ex-voters...eek said:
I assume the vast majority (all) of those members joined after Corbyn became leader and so aren't any real lose to the party and were probably more trouble than help.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
To which people duly do.0 -
Of course, BJO has absolutely no idea about how many people are being expelled from the Labour party because he does not have access to the data. Neither do any of the other loons on the far-left who make similar claims. What we do know is that those who are being expelled tend to have close associations with recently proscribed organisations that have long histories of churning out anti-Semitic, conspiracist filth and which should never have been anywhere near a party opposed to racism in the first place. It is true that these organisations were largely composed of small numbers of people who feel a close kinship to Jeremy Corbyn which, of course, tells you all you need to know about Jeremy Corbyn. Unfortunately, the man himself was smart enough never to join one of them formally. But his time is past. BJO and his mates are better off outside Labour. They will be happier. And so will those of us who remain members of the party.RochdalePioneers said:Its genuinely depressing reading some of BJO's posts because they are so disconnected from reality.
The idea that SKS is "expelling Jews" is weaponised levels of wrong. A small number of members expelled for their association with proscribed bodies happen to be Jewish. They're expelled for supporting things like Labour against the Witchhunt, not because they are Jewish. To purport that to be the case is pretty twisted.
Whereas in Corbyn's day the doors were opened wide to the cranks and hardcore anti-semites. Then Labour members who were Jewish left in their droves having been targeted by the party for being Jewish.
Anti-semitism seems to be the racism that doesn't get counted as racism. As David Baddiel's awful/brilliant book puts it, "Jews Don't Count". The quicker the anti-semites and their supporters are removed from Labour the better.
2 -
Sorry but I suspect the events of 2017 just shows you that a dementia tax destroys your chances - not because it's better than the current system but because an imaginary circumstance (no matter how bad the reality) is seen by most people to be better than an actual plan.bigjohnowls said:
I think the events of 2017 prove Socialism can be popular and without internal back stabbing we could have had a Labour GovernmentJonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I think the events of 2019 show a disastrous 2nd referendum policy and an unpopular leader will result in a Tory landslide.
I think the events of 2024 will show that being Tory lite and having a useless leader will result in 2019 rather than 2017 type result
See also Brexit where the imaginary (everyone's personal flavour) won over Remain.
And it's worth saying that in all 3 post 2015 votes, the optimistic / change vote won over more of the same.
2016 Leave was change, Remain more of the same
2017 May was more of the same (+ bad idea), Corbyn was change,
2019 Corbyn was more of the same, Boris was change.0 -
It will be good to see you in February. Whilst there definitely those on the left who distrust Starmer and are wistful for Corbyn. There are others engaged in Facebook groups and follow certain newsfeeds that take to another level.bigjohnowls said:
Are you going to the PB meet up in February? We can take if you like.Jonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I do talk to many people in the flesh most don't disagree with my views on Starmer. Perhaps they are being polite.
Leaving the rights or wrongs of Starmer aside those social media forums do seem to be pretty toxic and drive people to a pretty dark place. It feels pretty nasty and manipulative. I switched the whole lot off over the summer and feel a million times better, I recommend anyone to do the same.1 -
Yep the same one that elected a LD MP twice under Blair, that one.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.0 -
I don't disagree that socialism can be popular - after all the Tories have adopted half your policies...bigjohnowls said:
I think the events of 2017 prove Socialism can be popular and without internal back stabbing we could have had a Labour GovernmentJonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I think the events of 2019 show a disastrous 2nd referendum policy and an unpopular leader will result in a Tory landslide.
I think the events of 2024 will show that being Tory lite and having a useless leader will result in 2019 rather than 2017 type result
The problem with the 2017 arguments is that however much of an increase Labour secured, they lost. However much that increase was, the threat of Corbyn drove a 20% surge in the Tory vote. Wasn't very efficient in England hence the temporary loss of seats, but the maths is clear.
There is another basic reality here. Your fight for your version of socialism in the Labour Party is lost. There isn't going to be a "one more heave" type moment where you finally dispatch Keir and replace him and all those throughout the party like him with true socialists.
I know that in your case that has delivered you into a position of punishment voting, saying you will vote Tory - the very thing you despise - to somehow punish the Labour party for disagreeing with you. In reality the people who disagree are the voters.
Whats worse is that none of you in your part of the left spectrum can agree on what true socialism is, hence the myriad of splinter groups and parties. Would be best if you all coalesced into a single group with a single identity and went out there offering your version of socialism to the electorate.1 -
Not just a dementia tax, 2017 was an object lesson in how not to run a campaign.eek said:
Sorry but I suspect the events of 2017 just shows you that a dementia tax destroys your chances - not because it's better than the current system but because an imaginary circumstance (no matter how bad the reality) is seen by most people to be better than an actual plan.bigjohnowls said:
I think the events of 2017 prove Socialism can be popular and without internal back stabbing we could have had a Labour GovernmentJonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I think the events of 2019 show a disastrous 2nd referendum policy and an unpopular leader will result in a Tory landslide.
I think the events of 2024 will show that being Tory lite and having a useless leader will result in 2019 rather than 2017 type result
See also Brexit where the imaginary (everyone's personal flavour) won over Remain.
Like the leader of the Government calling a premature election but then not bothering to do the debates.0 -
Yes. They had a proper Blairite blue Tory lickspittle of a Labour MP didn't they. No wonder they voted him out in 2001.bigjohnowls said:
Yep the same one that elected a LD MP twice under Blair, that one.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.0 -
People's Front of Judea, surely?ydoethur said:
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the Judaean People's Front...Foxy said:
The classic problem of the hard left. The real enemies are in the Labour Party, so let's keep the Tory sleazebags in power...bigjohnowls said:
Doing well at expelling Jews and missing open goals presented by Boris.Jonathan said:
He’s been doing well. Good to see.bigjohnowls said:
A big ifRoger said:A good looking analysis for Labour. If SKS impresses over the next several months Johnson's Tories are there for the taking.
Otherwise nah1 -
That's the difference between us and Denmark, for example. In-work poverty levels are much lower.SouthamObserver said:
One way to ensure better working conditions and higher levels of pay is to make it easier for workers to organise collectively and to withdraw their labour. Are you up for that?pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.1 -
Yes, an LD with Labour as second-placed and the Tories nowhere.bigjohnowls said:
Yep the same one that elected a LD MP twice under Blair, that one.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
After 2019 it'd take a small swing for the seat to end up Tory.
Corbyn nearly lost Tony Benn's old constituency to the Tories.0 -
Reg Race, the candidate,was a right winger yes.RochdalePioneers said:
Yes. They had a proper Blairite blue Tory lickspittle of a Labour MP didn't they. No wonder they voted him out in 2001.bigjohnowls said:
Yep the same one that elected a LD MP twice under Blair, that one.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Correct
0 -
No.SouthamObserver said:
One way to ensure better working conditions and higher levels of pay is to make it easier for workers to organise collectively and to withdraw their labour. Are you up for that?pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
Let people do it individually. If employers are providing a bad wage then workers can withdraw their labour individually by going to a new employer.
The problem with striking etc is its trying to compel a better wage even from those who are paying good wages already and then putting picket lines up trying to stop others from taking the jobs.3 -
Got it. So in protest of the retirement of Tony Benn, they voted LibDem because...? Are you saying the LibDem vote was the left wing vote in Chesterfield in 2001? I thought we were all yellow Tories?bigjohnowls said:
Reg Race, the candidate,was a right winger yes.RochdalePioneers said:
Yes. They had a proper Blairite blue Tory lickspittle of a Labour MP didn't they. No wonder they voted him out in 2001.bigjohnowls said:
Yep the same one that elected a LD MP twice under Blair, that one.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Correct0 -
You can make better money than that shaking cocktails in a bar in London...Sandpit said:
It would be interesting to know, as an example, how many chefs working in London have bought somewhere to live by the age of 40. If, as I suspect, the number is tiny, then the reason for the shortage of chefs is that the restaurants are not paying them enough.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
That this was disguised for many years, by a high turnover of foreigners willing to sleep in bunk beds for a couple of years, doesn’t mean it’s not a huge problem. The only way it gets fixed is if wages rise to meet demand, and restaurants invest in training.
Here is one example of a fancy, high-profile restaurant offering £12 an hour for a trained and qualified chef.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10155957/Salt-Baes-London-restaurant-hiring-chefs-hourly-wage-price-mashed-potato-menu.html1 -
Immigration: The dependency ratio is going to escalate as an issue, especially if the proportion of people going to uni stays the same and the retirement age/social care stuff doesn't get resolved. Scotland will struggle with this is particular.
I think someone mentioned the French system of child-linked personal tax allowances, though I don't see any government being brave enough to try that out.1 -
Socialism - the abolition of private property and the ownership of the means of production - is never going to be popular in any democracy, which is why no democracy has ever tried it. Social democracy, on the other hand, is very popular and works. Labour's problem is that it has never quite worked this out.RochdalePioneers said:
I don't disagree that socialism can be popular - after all the Tories have adopted half your policies...bigjohnowls said:
I think the events of 2017 prove Socialism can be popular and without internal back stabbing we could have had a Labour GovernmentJonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I think the events of 2019 show a disastrous 2nd referendum policy and an unpopular leader will result in a Tory landslide.
I think the events of 2024 will show that being Tory lite and having a useless leader will result in 2019 rather than 2017 type result
The problem with the 2017 arguments is that however much of an increase Labour secured, they lost. However much that increase was, the threat of Corbyn drove a 20% surge in the Tory vote. Wasn't very efficient in England hence the temporary loss of seats, but the maths is clear.
There is another basic reality here. Your fight for your version of socialism in the Labour Party is lost. There isn't going to be a "one more heave" type moment where you finally dispatch Keir and replace him and all those throughout the party like him with true socialists.
I know that in your case that has delivered you into a position of punishment voting, saying you will vote Tory - the very thing you despise - to somehow punish the Labour party for disagreeing with you. In reality the people who disagree are the voters.
Whats worse is that none of you in your part of the left spectrum can agree on what true socialism is, hence the myriad of splinter groups and parties. Would be best if you all coalesced into a single group with a single identity and went out there offering your version of socialism to the electorate.2 -
Target seat, as the 2024 Conservatives will call it.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.1 -
The largest proportion of those 2019 Conservative voters going to 'Other' parties of course will be the RefUK.
More 2019 Labour voters have also gone Green than Conservative.
There is still little movement between Conservative and Labour, even if slightly more 2019 Conservative voters have gone Labour than the reverse0 -
No Paul Holmes was more left wing than Reg Race and there were 2 other more left wing candidates than either of them. I voted Labour but LD in 2005RochdalePioneers said:
Got it. So in protest of the retirement of Tony Benn, they voted LibDem because...? Are you saying the LibDem vote was the left wing vote in Chesterfield in 2001? I thought we were all yellow Tories?bigjohnowls said:
Reg Race, the candidate,was a right winger yes.RochdalePioneers said:
Yes. They had a proper Blairite blue Tory lickspittle of a Labour MP didn't they. No wonder they voted him out in 2001.bigjohnowls said:
Yep the same one that elected a LD MP twice under Blair, that one.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Correct
As you know most people vote on National politics Blair was so unpopular in Chesterfield Labour lost in 2001 and 2005.
You should stick to Constituencies you know about mate..0 -
The biggest movement from 2017 to 2019 was Labour to LD, more so than Labour to Tory.bigjohnowls said:
I think the events of 2017 prove Socialism can be popular and without internal back stabbing we could have had a Labour GovernmentJonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I think the events of 2019 show a disastrous 2nd referendum policy and an unpopular leader will result in a Tory landslide.
I think the events of 2024 will show that being Tory lite and having a useless leader will result in 2019 rather than 2017 type result
Those voters were not socialist, they lent their votes to Corbyn in 2017 to try and stop a hard Brexit, he failed to do so, so they went LD in 2019. Most of them are now back voting Labour under Starmer even if those 2017 Labour voters who voted for Boris or Farage in 2019 to get Brexit done are still not voting Labour1 -
An article containing a subtext with the Guardian/Co-Op/Hampstead/Champagne Socialist/Green version of socialism: nice things ought to be a little bit too expensive for the poorest of the toiling masses and disadvantaged to afford.IanB2 said:
The article on the Guardian site about the £3 chicken is worth a read.pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
0 -
355: Fewest number of MPs won by Tony Blair at a general electionbigjohnowls said:
No Paul Holmes was more left wing than Reg Race and there were 2 other more left wing candidates than either of them. I voted Labour but LD in 2005RochdalePioneers said:
Got it. So in protest of the retirement of Tony Benn, they voted LibDem because...? Are you saying the LibDem vote was the left wing vote in Chesterfield in 2001? I thought we were all yellow Tories?bigjohnowls said:
Reg Race, the candidate,was a right winger yes.RochdalePioneers said:
Yes. They had a proper Blairite blue Tory lickspittle of a Labour MP didn't they. No wonder they voted him out in 2001.bigjohnowls said:
Yep the same one that elected a LD MP twice under Blair, that one.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Correct
As you know most people vote on National politics Blair was so unpopular in Chesterfield Labour lost in 2001 and 2005.
You should stick to Constituencies you know about mate..
262: Most number of MPs won by Jeremy Corbyn at a general election
Your vote is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.5 -
Most people have never heard of RefUKHYUFD said:The largest proportion of those 2019 Conservative voters going to 'Other' parties of course will be the RefUK.
More 2019 Labour voters have also gone Green than Conservative.
There is still little movement between Conservative and Labour, even if slightly more 2019 Conservative voters have gone Labour than the reverse0 -
May I ask a question BJO? I used to know the area a little back in the mid-90s: how has the social make-up of the Chesterfield/Brimington/Staveley area changed in the last couple of decades? Do you see it as becoming more middle class, less working class? Or has it not really changed?bigjohnowls said:
No Paul Holmes was more left wing than Reg Race and there were 2 other more left wing candidates than either of them. I voted Labour but LD in 2005RochdalePioneers said:
Got it. So in protest of the retirement of Tony Benn, they voted LibDem because...? Are you saying the LibDem vote was the left wing vote in Chesterfield in 2001? I thought we were all yellow Tories?bigjohnowls said:
Reg Race, the candidate,was a right winger yes.RochdalePioneers said:
Yes. They had a proper Blairite blue Tory lickspittle of a Labour MP didn't they. No wonder they voted him out in 2001.bigjohnowls said:
Yep the same one that elected a LD MP twice under Blair, that one.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Correct
As you know most people vote on National politics Blair was so unpopular in Chesterfield Labour lost in 2001 and 2005.
You should stick to Constituencies you know about mate..1 -
Mike, you're focussing on the wrong splits, this is the split you should be focussing on.
Rishi Sunak losing patience with ‘maelstrom of chaos’ at No 10
Rishi Sunak is increasingly frustrated with Boris Johnson’s “chaotic” No 10 operation, his allies said last night.
The chancellor believes that there needs to be greater professionalism after a succession of damaging Tory rebellions and government reversals.
The fallout landed on the Treasury this week as Liam Booth-Smith, Sunak’s chief of staff, was accused of briefing that there was “a lot of concern in the building about the PM”.
The claim has been denied by the Treasury but allies believe that Sunak will need to protect Booth-Smith because senior figures in Downing Street are “gunning for him”. They highlighted the fact that Sajid Javid quit as chancellor after No 10 attempted to remove his advisers.
One ally of Sunak said: “Rishi is not confrontational but he takes things seriously. He goes through them logically and thinks things through. He’s frustrated with the operation in No 10. Things are chaotic in No 10.”
Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, and Dan Rosenfield, the No 10 chief of staff, came in for criticism. “Case and Rosenfield act like starry-eyed junior researchers who are trying to make him [Johnson] feel good. But it’s very difficult to challenge him when someone’s political star is based on being bumbling and chaotic,” the ally said.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-losing-patience-with-maelstrom-of-chaos-at-no-10-qlwnschx9
Rishi Sunak is the new pound shop Gordon Brown.1 -
NearlyPhilip_Thompson said:
Yes, an LD with Labour as second-placed and the Tories nowhere.bigjohnowls said:
Yep the same one that elected a LD MP twice under Blair, that one.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
After 2019 it'd take a small swing for the seat to end up Tory.
Corbyn nearly lost Tony Benn's old constituency to the Tories.
Blair lost it twice out of 30 -
I am not particularly keen on Starmer, as I have posted that here on numerous occasions. I always found Corbyn a bit of a curates egg, and posted positively about him here, and indeed on a number of other hard Labour Left figures. My political likes and dislikes can be quite idiosyncratic.bigjohnowls said:
Are you going to the PB meet up in February? We can take if you like.Jonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I do talk to many people in the flesh most don't disagree with my views on Starmer. Perhaps they are being polite.
What I do recognise is that Starmer is the only real alternative to the current clowning sleazebags. He may not be the best, but he is the best that there is.
And I have to concede that he is getting better. As the election gets closer (probably just 2 years away) the differences will become more stark, and the policy differences more clear.
In order to get majority support in Parliament a leader needs to draw on wider support than a narrow faction. That was why Corbyn lost two elections.
4 -
Latest Swedish poll puts the Social Democrats down 3% on the last general election and the centre right Moderates up 2%.StuartDickson said:Chaos in Sweden:
Yesterday morning the Riksdag voted in the country’s first woman prime minister, Magdalena Andersson - Social Democrat - with the backing of coalition partner the Greens, plus the Centre and Left parties.
In the afternoon that very same Riksdag voted through the Opposition centre-right Budget.
So the Greens immediately resigned from the governing coalition.
If there is an extraordinary GE now then at least one parliamentary party - the Liberals - is going to fall below the 4% threshold. Perhaps up to 3 of the 8 parliamentary parties. The Greens are very wobbly now without Social Democrats tactical votes.
The poll also gives the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Swedish Democrats combined more than the Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party and Centre Party certainly if the Greens fall below the threshold like the Liberals however given as in Germany the centre right will not work with the populist right although the right combined will have more seats the centre left will likely stay in power but without the votes to get its budget through. Hence you had what occurred last night and a Social Democrat PM elected in office but not in power who swiftly has to resign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2022_Swedish_general_election0 -
SDP were amazingly popularSouthamObserver said:
Socialism - the abolition of private property and the ownership of the means of production - is never going to be popular in any democracy, which is why no democracy has ever tried it. Social democracy, on the other hand, is very popular and works. Labour's problem is that it has never quite worked this out.RochdalePioneers said:
I don't disagree that socialism can be popular - after all the Tories have adopted half your policies...bigjohnowls said:
I think the events of 2017 prove Socialism can be popular and without internal back stabbing we could have had a Labour GovernmentJonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I think the events of 2019 show a disastrous 2nd referendum policy and an unpopular leader will result in a Tory landslide.
I think the events of 2024 will show that being Tory lite and having a useless leader will result in 2019 rather than 2017 type result
The problem with the 2017 arguments is that however much of an increase Labour secured, they lost. However much that increase was, the threat of Corbyn drove a 20% surge in the Tory vote. Wasn't very efficient in England hence the temporary loss of seats, but the maths is clear.
There is another basic reality here. Your fight for your version of socialism in the Labour Party is lost. There isn't going to be a "one more heave" type moment where you finally dispatch Keir and replace him and all those throughout the party like him with true socialists.
I know that in your case that has delivered you into a position of punishment voting, saying you will vote Tory - the very thing you despise - to somehow punish the Labour party for disagreeing with you. In reality the people who disagree are the voters.
Whats worse is that none of you in your part of the left spectrum can agree on what true socialism is, hence the myriad of splinter groups and parties. Would be best if you all coalesced into a single group with a single identity and went out there offering your version of socialism to the electorate.0 -
What a fucking hypocrite Prince William is.
Benefit scrounger and father of three tells the Africans to stop having so many kids.
https://inews.co.uk/news/prince-william-human-population-growth-africa-harming-wildlife-13153781 -
It couldn't happen here, people say, as it happens here. This government has removed more freedoms and rights from UK citizens than any other in peacetime history. And more is on the way. No wonder it sees Orban's Hungary as its closest European ally.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/priti-patel-anti-protest-powers-stuffed-policing-bill-1316830?ito=twitter_share_article-top0 -
Genuine question, and I haven't read the book, why 'awful/brilliant'?RochdalePioneers said:Its genuinely depressing reading some of BJO's posts because they are so disconnected from reality.
The idea that SKS is "expelling Jews" is weaponised levels of wrong. A small number of members expelled for their association with proscribed bodies happen to be Jewish. They're expelled for supporting things like Labour against the Witchhunt, not because they are Jewish. To purport that to be the case is pretty twisted.
Whereas in Corbyn's day the doors were opened wide to the cranks and hardcore anti-semites. Then Labour members who were Jewish left in their droves having been targeted by the party for being Jewish.
Anti-semitism seems to be the racism that doesn't get counted as racism. As David Baddiel's awful/brilliant book puts it, "Jews Don't Count". The quicker the anti-semites and their supporters are removed from Labour the better.1 -
Tory Gain nailed on under SKSSandpit said:
Target seat, as the 2024 Conservatives will call it.Philip_Thompson said:
Would that be the same Chesterfield that had a Labour majority of 13,598 in 2015 . . . but a Labour majority of 1,451 in 2019? 🤔bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Chesterfield doesn't do Tory Lite but will go Tory IMO0 -
Took a while, but they got there eventually.
We need to invade France...
Minister Kevin Foster says Britain is “keen” to put boots on the ground in France to patrol the borders.
But he says the U.K. cannot “force” Macron to let us #today
https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/14637852877552189470 -
They can only go to a new employer paying better wages if one exists and they have the necessary qualifications. It's funny, isn't it, that the most unionised countries tend to be the ones that have the best pay and working conditions?Philip_Thompson said:
No.SouthamObserver said:
One way to ensure better working conditions and higher levels of pay is to make it easier for workers to organise collectively and to withdraw their labour. Are you up for that?pigeon said:
There's a lot of truth in this. People are used to obtaining cheap products and services that are often made cheap because businesses have access to a large pool of desperate staff willing to labour under crap conditions for bugger all money.Aslan said:
As countries become more advanced and more productive, lower productivity jobs get priced out of the market. That's a good thing.Anabobazina said:The idea that all skills shortages can be filled by increasing wages is bonkers. Some can be filled that way, sure. But borders get in the way. Otherwise the richest cities on Earth would never have any skills shortages. The truth is there are a finite amount of chefs who have permits to work in London and that cohort has been massively reduced by restrictions on immigration (eg Brexit). That’s a simple fact. We need people.
If the restaurant business in question brings a sufficiently high value to its customers, then it can put up prices and pay its chefs more. If it can't do that then it's because other businesses are producing more value. When it goes out of business then average productivity will be higher.
People have been bemoaning low productivity UK for decades. Now we are actually leaving the low productivity stuff behind, people want immigration policy to bail them out.
We have been here before in history. When the Black Death killed off half the peasantry, the other half suddenly found that they were in a workers' market. Lords who were willing to pay premium wages to get their land worked continued to get it worked. Those who weren't found all their peasants ran away to work for lords with a better grasp of the new economic realities, and their estates went fallow. The feudal system collapsed. Nobody apart from scalper lords thought the collapse of feudalism to be a bad thing.
What will now happen is that businesses that are desperate for staff will have to work out ways to manage with fewer staff; or they'll have to pay their staff more, and find efficiencies elsewhere so that the bill doesn't get passed on to the customer; or they'll need to pay their staff more, pass the cost onto the customer, and provide a good enough service that the customer is willing to pay a premium; or they'll have to close.
If you want people to be paid decent wages then a period of wage inflation can only be a good thing. The fact that there is a certain strand of supposedly left-leaning opinion (particularly amongst wealthy metropolitans) that is utterly desperate to reopen the borders to limitless migratory flows therefore exposes the hollowness of their ideological posturing. They don't care about low paid workers at all - they just want to indulge in internationalist virtue signalling, and to keep their cheap lattes, cheap cleaners, cheap nannies and cheap plumbers.
We all like cheap, but if it is to continue in future it must be achieved through lean working practices and automation, not through paying people naff all and flogging them to death. If that means that some concerns that previously relied on chefs working 12-hour shifts for the minimum wage find that said chefs are leaving, and nobody else is willing to labour under such rotten conditions, then hurrah.
Let people do it individually. If employers are providing a bad wage then workers can withdraw their labour individually by going to a new employer.
The problem with striking etc is its trying to compel a better wage even from those who are paying good wages already and then putting picket lines up trying to stop others from taking the jobs.
2 -
A lot of the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos were written by Boris and co in the past week.Foxy said:
I am not particularly keen on Starmer, as I have posted that here on numerous occasions. I always found Corbyn a bit of a curates egg, and posted positively about him here, and indeed on a number of other hard Labour Left figures. My political likes and dislikes can be quite idiosyncratic.bigjohnowls said:
Are you going to the PB meet up in February? We can take if you like.Jonathan said:
The events of 2019 proved that delighting a narrow group of members was an electoral dead end.bigjohnowls said:
It's your party now.Jonathan said:I fear BJO is lost to the hard left echo chamber. There is one of these in every CLP. Unremittingly hyperbolic and vitriolic. Whilst they’re vocal and, like cult members, impossible to argue with, they are few in number and completely unrepresentative.
Re there's "one in every CLP"
Membership in Chesterfield down from 832 to 671 since SKS came to power.
161 reduction in that CLP is a small number (19%) vast majority of those will not vote Labour under SKS though.
Anyway, more importantly I am worried about you. I advise getting off those fringe LP social forums and news feeds. It’s good for the soul. They’re pretty toxic and a complete waste of time. Let others do the outrage thing.
PB is far better and it’s worth talking more to real LP people in the flesh.
I do talk to many people in the flesh most don't disagree with my views on Starmer. Perhaps they are being polite.
What I do recognise is that Starmer is the only real alternative to the current clowning sleazebags. He may not be the best, but he is the best that there is.
And I have to concede that he is getting better. As the election gets closer (probably just 2 years away) the differences will become more stark, and the policy differences more clear.
In order to get majority support in Parliament a leader needs to draw on wider support than a narrow faction. That was why Corbyn lost two elections.
Labour invest in HS2E / NPR and other projects to ensure we hit carbon neutral (to hit that the Government needs to be investing £12bn a year in transport infrastructure projects). Also the dementia tax.
Lib Dems - target the seats where they are closer than Labour with Nimby policies as required (it's the south, that's what they want alongside no money being spent).0
This discussion has been closed.