[Politics] The General Election Thread

[Grombleton]

Why do old people think shitty memes are funny?

 

[The Clamp]

Why do old people think shitty memes are funny?

Memes, Soy Boy etc. The language of *****.

 

[BadFish]

I really feel for you having to suffer so much over the last decade. Just remind me what level interest rates have been at for this period. Ah yes, in 2016 they were cut to 0.25%. Borrowing has never been cheaper, mortgages very affordable and most people have disposable income. I see no decline in young people owning cars. I see no decline in people taking regular holidays, across the whole social divide. People are still eating out regularly, buying good quality clothes and managing to afford the latest techno innovations.There is satellite tv everywhere. People are out and about, spending their disposable income on eating, drinking, entertainment, gambling and lots more.
I understand you are trying to make a political point but life over the last 20 odd years has been pretty comfortable for a large swathe of the suburban middle-class. ( Does this apply to your parents or do you come from a deprived area, with depression, unemployment, high crime and desperation? )
Some of us can cast our minds back painfully to 15% interest rates, no electricity, three day weeks, endless strikes, rubbish 20 feet high in the streets with rats everywhere, bodies lying unburied for weeks, civil and social unrest everywhere, rampant inflation, rocketing house prices, nose-diving house prices, negative equity, the Cold War, bombs going off in our high streets and killing innocent men, women and children and a few other things as well. But...hey ho....compared to austerity, we had it good.
To boost any country, you need to wealth create and re-invest, which will help to employ more people You need to control the size of the state and encourage business start-up. This is called capitalism. It is the bedrock of the EU. If you vote Labour, you are voting for a party that wants to ' transform capitalism ' ( John McDonnell potential Chancellor of the Exchequer )They want to re-introduce nationalization on a large scale, borrow huge amounts of money and commit to over £1.2 trillion of extra spending over the next five years. Labour are anti businesses making big profits and individuals, however talented they are, earning big money. They aim to penalise every business in this country, large medium or small by increasing corporation tax ( a tax on profits that should be going towards employing more people )from 19% to 26%. This is fine if you want a country run more on communist dogma and attitude rather than on free spirit and private enterprise but if you want to vote Labour and Remain in the EU, then you have a problem. You cannot commit to a party that opposes capitalism and want to remain within an organisation that promotes and thrives on capitalism. That is your dilemma.

It's interesting when you start looking into different measures of wealth and poverty over time.



http://www.poverty.org.uk/numbers-in-low-income/

https://theconversation.com/poverty...march-of-history-much-remains-the-same-100620

While I would agree that capitalism has been of huge benefit to vast swathes of society, it is going to take a bit to convince me that there is not a better way to make sure that more of the population are succeeding. To me it is true that food banks should not be necessary in a modern civilisation Gandhi's idea of the measure of a society being how it treats its most vulnerable rungs true for me and from what I understand another term of Tory rule could be disastrous in this area.

I find it interesting that you have mentioned "communist dogma" in your post as the very mention of it could easily be seen as "Tory" or "right wing dogma". Said Dogma is looking like being successful once more, I just wish that it would extend itself a little and try mentioning some of the positives offered by the Conservatives rather than running down the scruffy, commie, anti semite opposition leader. It would make these threads so much more interesting, if nothing else. It might even offer a veneer of positivity to this election campaign.

You also describe Capitalism as if it is one distinct thing, a thing that cannot be changed, adapted or improved. What is interesting to me about the Labour manifesto is they seem to be suggesting trying something different. Something that appears to be working in other countries around the world (Scandinavia seem to be doing okay in terms of happiness?). This thread also mentions a number of economists who are supportive of the ideas. There is an interesting article here about how Capitalism can be adapted to be more successful. Interesting ideas.

I suppose this depends on how you look at the state of the nation overall? The Tories seem to be to really be offering more of the same so i guess that Thursday's election is going to show that people are either happy with the staus quo or they are not. The Conservatives are looking like winning which suggests to me that people are happy for more of the same.

The problem I have with trying to balance this is that the whole brexit debacle suggests otherwise. However I have never understood how the electorate could be so unhappy that they want to leave the EU but are perfectly prepared to continue to vote for right leaning governments. I guess that years of fear mongering about migrants and the loonies in Brussels finally worked its magic.

 

[sully]

I really feel for you having to suffer so much over the last decade. Just remind me what level interest rates have been at for this period. Ah yes, in 2016 they were cut to 0.25%. Borrowing has never been cheaper, mortgages very affordable and most people have disposable income. I see no decline in young people owning cars. I see no decline in people taking regular holidays, across the whole social divide. People are still eating out regularly, buying good quality clothes and managing to afford the latest techno innovations.There is satellite tv everywhere. People are out and about, spending their disposable income on eating, drinking, entertainment, gambling and lots more.
I understand you are trying to make a political point but life over the last 20 odd years has been pretty comfortable for a large swathe of the suburban middle-class. ( Does this apply to your parents or do you come from a deprived area, with depression, unemployment, high crime and desperation? )
Some of us can cast our minds back painfully to 15% interest rates, no electricity, three day weeks, endless strikes, rubbish 20 feet high in the streets with rats everywhere, bodies lying unburied for weeks, civil and social unrest everywhere, rampant inflation, rocketing house prices, nose-diving house prices, negative equity, the Cold War, bombs going off in our high streets and killing innocent men, women and children and a few other things as well. But...hey ho....compared to austerity, we had it good.
To boost any country, you need to wealth create and re-invest, which will help to employ more people You need to control the size of the state and encourage business start-up. This is called capitalism. It is the bedrock of the EU. If you vote Labour, you are voting for a party that wants to ' transform capitalism ' ( John McDonnell potential Chancellor of the Exchequer )They want to re-introduce nationalization on a large scale, borrow huge amounts of money and commit to over £1.2 trillion of extra spending over the next five years. Labour are anti businesses making big profits and individuals, however talented they are, earning big money. They aim to penalise every business in this country, large medium or small by increasing corporation tax ( a tax on profits that should be going towards employing more people )from 19% to 26%. This is fine if you want a country run more on communist dogma and attitude rather than on free spirit and private enterprise but if you want to vote Labour and Remain in the EU, then you have a problem. You cannot commit to a party that opposes capitalism and want to remain within an organisation that promotes and thrives on capitalism. That is your dilemma.

You seem totally ignorant of the fact that there’s millions who can’t even get to your basic level of “mortgages very affordable” and they are certainly not out eating, drinking and gambling their lives away. It seems to make you oblivious of the real hardships in society that have been increased dramatically over the last 10 years of Tory government.

You have swallowed the rhetoric about corporation tax from the media. Labour plan to normalise it with the rest of the developed world not destroy businesses and investment. Do you think every other country with the level of corporation tax (and higher) they have proposed are anti-business? Of course they’re not. They just understand the importance of not syphoning off all the money generated to a few already wealthy individuals.

Just because those of us who can remember having a mortgage when interest rates were 15% are now at the latter end of our careers and have maxed our salaries and paid off our mortgages doesn’t mean that everyone is in the same boat. Try looking outside your little comfort zone of middle class baby boomer prosperity and you will find real hardship right across the country.

The number of homeless individuals nowadays is a national disgrace. The number requiring food banks equally embarrassing. It seems that many who have never seen such poverty simply don’t believe it or don’t care and / or think it’s the fault of those caught in poverty. I’d hate to not know whether to buy food or put a few quid on the electric, but that’s reality for far too many people in our communities.

We need to stop being selfish and think of how to make society more even. There will always be haves and have nots, but the gap between them doesn’t need to be so vast. It certainly shouldn’t be growing.

I could no more vote for that clown Johnson or his side-kick-in-hiding Rees-Mogg and all the rest of that nasty bunch than support Palace!

 

[MattBackHome]

Your whole argument is hugely flawed, Labour doesn’t oppose capitalism. They just want to fix the parts of it that don’t work.

Yeah it's a weird argument. It's largely a 'you don't know you're born' schtick, which appears to dismiss the issues that millions of people are facing today based on the fact that borrowing is cheap.

 

[theonlymikey]

I really feel for you having to suffer so much over the last decade. Just remind me what level interest rates have been at for this period. Ah yes, in 2016 they were cut to 0.25%. Borrowing has never been cheaper, mortgages very affordable and most people have disposable income. I see no decline in young people owning cars. I see no decline in people taking regular holidays, across the whole social divide. People are still eating out regularly, buying good quality clothes and managing to afford the latest techno innovations.There is satellite tv everywhere. People are out and about, spending their disposable income on eating, drinking, entertainment, gambling and lots more.
I understand you are trying to make a political point but life over the last 20 odd years has been pretty comfortable for a large swathe of the suburban middle-class. ( Does this apply to your parents or do you come from a deprived area, with depression, unemployment, high crime and desperation? )
Some of us can cast our minds back painfully to 15% interest rates, no electricity, three day weeks, endless strikes, rubbish 20 feet high in the streets with rats everywhere, bodies lying unburied for weeks, civil and social unrest everywhere, rampant inflation, rocketing house prices, nose-diving house prices, negative equity, the Cold War, bombs going off in our high streets and killing innocent men, women and children and a few other things as well. But...hey ho....compared to austerity, we had it good.
To boost any country, you need to wealth create and re-invest, which will help to employ more people You need to control the size of the state and encourage business start-up. This is called capitalism. It is the bedrock of the EU. If you vote Labour, you are voting for a party that wants to ' transform capitalism ' ( John McDonnell potential Chancellor of the Exchequer )They want to re-introduce nationalization on a large scale, borrow huge amounts of money and commit to over £1.2 trillion of extra spending over the next five years. Labour are anti businesses making big profits and individuals, however talented they are, earning big money. They aim to penalise every business in this country, large medium or small by increasing corporation tax ( a tax on profits that should be going towards employing more people )from 19% to 26%. This is fine if you want a country run more on communist dogma and attitude rather than on free spirit and private enterprise but if you want to vote Labour and Remain in the EU, then you have a problem. You cannot commit to a party that opposes capitalism and want to remain within an organisation that promotes and thrives on capitalism. That is your dilemma.

I came from a relatively deprived area Stockton on Tees, Teesside. It is home to the largest housing estate in Europe, but has many deprived smaller council areas. Stockton has the worst health inequality in the country. The better off here, live on average 18 years longer than the poor.

Forgive me if I wasn’t clear, but when is said “I have to believe it can get better than this” it wasn’t in reference to holidays, perks and fancy meals out.

What I meant was, there must be a world we can live in where there are not 4 million children living in poverty, where there is readily available rehabilitation for drug addicts and other addictions. Where there aren’t huge NHS waiting lists or insufficient beds. Where our elderly are looked after with dignity, without having to sell their homes. A world where homelessness is abolished and the homeless are no longer dying on our streets. A world where wages aren’t so low that even police officers are having to rely on food banks to feed their children, a world where food banks shouldn’t have to exist full stop.

Your post makes no mention of any of these human issues. Instead you cast your mind back to a failed experiment about three day weeks, which funnily enough, where not even implemented by Labour. You’ve harped on about interest rates without acknowledging it has never been harder to save a deposit for a home.

You have talked about capitalism reform. Surely you do not take issue with this? Reform does not equal abolishment. In any case capitalism in it’s *current form* has no place in the modern world. At least not until we have avoided our doom by fixing the climate crisis.

 

[Grombleton]

Memes, Soy Boy etc. The language of *****.

I mean, I guess we should be giving them some credit for actually trying to engage with younger people, instead of just ****ing their future up for them. It just makes them look like the creepy relatives you only see at family events though, not sure if that's what they were aiming for.

 

[BadFish]

I came from a relatively deprived area Stockton on Tees, Teesside. It is home to the largest housing estate in Europe, but has many deprived smaller council areas. Stockton has the worst health inequality in the country. The better off here, live on average 18 years longer than the poor.

Forgive me if I wasn’t clear, but when is said “I have to believe it can get better than this” it wasn’t in reference to holidays, perks and fancy meals out.

What I meant was, there must be a world we can live in where there are not 4 million children living in poverty, where there is readily available rehabilitation for drug addicts and other addictions. Where there aren’t huge NHS waiting lists or insufficient beds. Where our elderly are looked after with dignity, without having to sell their homes. A world where homelessness is abolished and the homeless are no longer dying on our streets. A world where wages aren’t so low that even police officers are having to rely on food banks to feed their children, a world where food banks shouldn’t have to exist full stop.

Your post makes no mention of any of these human issues. Instead you cast your mind back to a failed experiment about three day weeks, which funnily enough, where not even implemented by Labour. You’ve harped on about interest rates without acknowledging it has never been harder to save a deposit for a home.

You have talked about capitalism reform. Surely you do not take issue with this? Reform does not equal abolishment. In any case capitalism in it’s *current form* has no place in the modern world. At least not until we have avoided our doom by fixing the climate crisis.

You are spot on here mikey. Well said

 

[Hugo Rune]

Your whole argument is hugely flawed, Labour doesn’t oppose capitalism. They just want to fix the parts of it that don’t work.

It’s almost like Labour want to introduce higher corporation tax than those communist countries, Canada, France & Germany (with their failed economies)! They don’t.

 

[The Clamp]

I came from a relatively deprived area Stockton on Tees, Teesside. It is home to the largest housing estate in Europe, but has many deprived smaller council areas. Stockton has the worst health inequality in the country. The better off here, live on average 18 years longer than the poor.

Forgive me if I wasn’t clear, but when is said “I have to believe it can get better than this” it wasn’t in reference to holidays, perks and fancy meals out.

What I meant was, there must be a world we can live in where there are not 4 million children living in poverty, where there is readily available rehabilitation for drug addicts and other addictions. Where there aren’t huge NHS waiting lists or insufficient beds. Where our elderly are looked after with dignity, without having to sell their homes. A world where homelessness is abolished and the homeless are no longer dying on our streets. A world where wages aren’t so low that even police officers are having to rely on food banks to feed their children, a world where food banks shouldn’t have to exist full stop.

Your post makes no mention of any of these human issues. Instead you cast your mind back to a failed experiment about three day weeks, which funnily enough, where not even implemented by Labour. You’ve harped on about interest rates without acknowledging it has never been harder to save a deposit for a home.

You have talked about capitalism reform. Surely you do not take issue with this? Reform does not equal abolishment. In any case capitalism in it’s *current form* has no place in the modern world. At least not until we have avoided our doom by fixing the climate crisis.

Superb post.

 

[BadFish]

It’s almost like Labour want to introduce higher corporation tax than those communist countries, Canada, France & Germany (with their failed economies)! They don’t.

Yeah but Jeremy Corbyn has got a beard.

 

[Bold Seagull]

It’s almost like Labour want to introduce higher corporation tax than those communist countries, Canada, France & Germany (with their failed economies)! They don’t.

Heaven forbid Britian should stand shoulder to shoulder with other nations and say capitalism is what we have, but as far as multinationals go, if we align common corporate taxation policies and levels, then investment will come through factors such as best supporting workforce, quality of living etc. rather than one country simply undercutting it's tax rates compared to the next. Money therefore goes back into the relevant exchequers rather than shareholders through profit gained from a tax undercutting regime.

Making Britain corporation tax cheap is not making Britain great. You are basically saying we are a bit shitter than everywhere else, but at least we're cheap on tax.

If you really do have faith and belief in Britain being strong after Brexit, then believe we can also charge a matching rate of tax of other similar countries and don't have to undercut to attract investment.

 

[schmunk]

Yeah but Jeremy Corbyn has got a beard.

Don't forget the wonky glasses - he's not to be trusted!

 

[BadFish]

Don't forget the wonky glasses - he's not to be trusted!

He's also a bit scruffy.

 

[Hugo Rune]

He's also a bit scruffy.

He hasn’t really got a sense of humour. Whilst Boris lies about pretty mix everything, at least he has a laugh- why is Corbyn so bloody serious? Christ, it’s only a job!

 

[Kinky Gerbil]

Have labour/lib dem voters realised they need to vote tactically yet?

Or are they still ignoring this and going to be shocked when the Tories win ?

 

[Bozza]

Have labour/lib dem voters realised they need to vote tactically yet?

Or are they still ignoring this and going to be shocked when the Tories win ?

Labour finally realised they needed a stance on Brexit, so miracles can and do happen.

 

[A1X]

[TWEET]1203986657298526208[/TWEET]

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Have labour/lib dem voters realised they need to vote tactically yet?

Or are they still ignoring this and going to be shocked when the Tories win ?

I think the voters definitely do, even of the leaders don't.

 

[The Clamp]

In the most recently discovered comments, written in the Spectator magazine in 1999, Johnson said: “Across the country, there are many Tories who wish their party leadership would speak up more strongly against, say, gays in the military, or the cowing of the police by the Macpherson report, or the arrest of General Pinochet, or the impending abolition of the oath and the cap badge of the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary], or the abolition of the hereditary peers and foxhunting. They are, of course, right.”

Nice guy.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ncovered-in-historical-boris-johnson-articles