[Politics] Tory meltdown finally arrived [was: incoming]...

[beorhthelm]

the Conservative party political broadcast this evening avoids any involvement or mention of Johnson.

 

[beorhthelm]

I think you might inadvertently be having a pop at me.

no one in particular, many have made the arguments convincingly. we'd stil disagree detail on how, but the case for more taxes seems won. we have several taxes rising, why i wasnt specific. largest tax increase in decade, mostly on business and higher rate payers (after allowance increase). so having been won over, i get confused by the reaction.

 

[beorhthelm]

I can't help but wonder, the way this account misses the point consistently and completely so often getting discussions going off at tangents, drops so many 'I understand' and 'I believe' posts that never seems to quote a source but always disappears when asked for a source, has increased their post count enormously whilst other posters have disappeared and appears allergic to the use of capital letters, whether it could be a genuine, one person account.

But I'm sure it's just me being paranoid

paranoid and very tiresome making personal accusations, not playing the ball. run along and ask the mods if look like i have a second account. if they think it is, let the account be deleted.

 

[Chicken Run]

paranoid and very tiresome making personal accusations, not playing the ball. run along and ask the mods if look like i have a second account. if they think it is, let the account be deleted.

I can’t help but wonder how lonely a man in his sixties must be to spend so much of his retirement time on a football forum conjuring up in his head weird conspiracies like this about you [emoji2357]

"They Say the #1 Killer of Old People is Retirement"


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[usernamed]

sounds a lot like a recent tax rise. many convinced by argument that tax rises are necessary, when they came along many who'd advocated them decided they are the wrong policy.

Well, with tax rises, there’s progressive and regressive tax rises. If you have to raise tax, the rise should be progressive.

With the NI hike, only employers, employees and the self-employed pay the bill (the Conservatives were pressured into making some allowances for the very lowest earners - those allowances weren’t in their original plans)

If we want good public services, they do have to be paid for. I’m not against a tax rise if it’s done right, but the NI hike (especially in its original form) was the worst sort of regressive tax rise.

Many people with significant wealth won’t pay a penny toward the NI hike if they’re not registered as employing anyone in the U.K., they’re not an employee in the U.K., and they’re not registered as self-employed in the U.K.

What we need to be doing now is closing loopholes and looking at an effective mechanism for taxing wealth, rather than income. Not for those with a bit, but for those who have more than they or their children could ever dream of spending. We could fund gold standard public services, and nobody (not even those affected by the tax) would have to make a single change to their lifestyles.

If anyone has a genuine interest in this stuff, there’s an organisation called Tax Justice U.K. who do their best to campaign for meaningful reform. The problem politicians have, is that any party who put such reforms in their manifesto would immediately be enemy #1 for our delightful press, who are largely owned by people who don’t like giving up a brass farthing. It’s all part of the joy of being British.

 

[Stat Brother]

Every bloody day it's something new.
Today we have depfeffel bragging about introducing the pass which allows a pensioner to ride the bus all day...







...because she can't afford to heat her house.

[tweet]1521402532857274370[/tweet]


[tweet]1521450257162383361[/tweet]

 

[beorhthelm]

Well, with tax rises, there’s progressive and regressive tax rises. If you have to raise tax, the rise should be progressive. ...

thats all very well put but i just dont recall those objections the last two times NI was raised. was all about ring fencing the funding of healthcare services, a tax on jobs from the other side. get rid and have only income tax if keeping a progressive system is what matters.

 

[usernamed]

thats all very well put but i just dont recall those objections the last two times NI was raised. was all about ring fencing the funding of healthcare services, a tax on jobs from the other side. get rid and have only income tax if keeping a progressive system is what matters.

I think the difference with the most recent NI hike is the environment in which we’re living today.

Wages have not risen significantly for a long time, inflation is high, energy bill increases have been a massive shock to the system. We absolutely have a cost of living crisis here in the U.K.

Small things tell a big story. For example, look at Netflix subscribers falling for the first time. Netflix isn’t like Sky, it doesn’t suck £90 a month out of peoples budgets, it’s £10.99 a month.

Yet, a significant proportion of its user base have deemed it unaffordable at the same time. (Enough to outweigh new subscriber numbers anyway)

If people are at a point that this £10.99 outgoing has become unaffordable, they’re being squeezed too hard. That’s a small telltale sign that economists will, and politicians should, pay attention to. Netflix is forecasting losing another 2 million by year end.

Sunak and Johnson are both incredibly privileged, and in times like this it shows. They simply cannot understand hardship. In their minds, hardship only exists from fecklessness, whereas the people suffering now are people who often work very hard, but in low paid jobs, or where having children places an upper limit on their working hours.

They talk of it being silly to do more now, when actually now is exactly when they need to act before people run out of credit card to keep their (necessary to get to work) vehicles on the road, or food in their cupboards, or they fall into arrears with energy bills or rent.

If we get to autumn with no additional help, then my fear is that we will see a further significant increase in debt repayment plans, personal bankruptcies, a further increase in homelessness, and even more pressure on mental health services, because living in this type of anxiety destroys all peace of mind.

From an economic perspective, the rule is simply that skint people don’t buy stuff. Impoverishing huge swathes of your population means that any business that relies on people having money in their pockets to survive has its survival put in jeopardy.

From a mental health perspective, living with the anxiety of not being entirely sure how you’re going to reach the end of the month and meet your obligations is absolutely exhausting, and when repeated monthly can lead to outright despair.

 

[nicko31]

Johnson just getting his priorities right, self promotion via a half truth first, compassion second.

Every bloody day it's something new.
Today we have depfeffel bragging about introducing the pass which allows a pensioner to ride the bus all day...


...because she can't afford to heat her house.

[tweet]1521402532857274370[/tweet]


[tweet]1521450257162383361[/tweet]

 

[A1X]

[tweet]1521745381788467200[/tweet]

 

[The Clamp]

[tweet]1521745381788467200[/tweet]

What level of crisis do we need to get to before people realise the Tory’s don’t give a **** and will never do anything meaningful to help the poor?

 

[hans kraay fan club]

[tweet]1521745381788467200[/tweet]

Surely the (supermarket) ‘own brand’ products ARE the ‘value brands’. Looks like yet another Tory helmet with no clue about real life.

 

[nicko31]

What level of crisis do we need to get to before people realise the Tory’s don’t give a **** and will never do anything meaningful to help the poor?

Could be last chance for many of the poor to vote, photo voter ID coming. The Tory calculation is it will be become too hard in future...

 

[The Clamp]

Could be last chance for many of the poor to vote, photo voter ID coming. The Tory calculation is it will be become too hard in future...

Indeed. They know a huge chunk of the electorate will be unable or not be bothered to vote once the punitive ID regime is rolled out.

 

[Papa Lazarou]

Indeed. They know a huge chunk of the electorate will be unable or not be bothered to vote once the punitive ID regime is rolled out.

And oddly those same people who will be disenfranchised are mainly non Tory voters, poor, ethnic minorities. The drip drip of Fascism.

 

[nicko31]

And oddly those same people who will be disenfranchised are mainly non Tory voters, poor, ethnic minorities. The drip drip of Fascism.

Feels like it. In the end they will be able to win without cheating. Just look at what is happening across the pond...

 

[A1X]

Surely the (supermarket) ‘own brand’ products ARE the ‘value brands’. Looks like yet another Tory helmet with no clue about real life.

Waitrose have both an own brand and a value brand. Now far be it from me to suggest this Tory Minister is a Waitrose shopper as opposed to a typical, salt-of-the-earth, down with the plebs Aldi man, but that's what they do in there.

 

[BBassic]

Waitrose have both an own brand and a value brand. Now far be it from me to suggest this Tory Minister is a Waitrose shopper as opposed to a typical, salt-of-the-earth, down with the plebs Aldi man, but that's what they do in there.

Of course he isn't a Waitrose shopper.

It'll be his staff that do his Waitrose shopping for him.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

In honesty? My suspicion is never. As others have pointed out, a lot of people have picked a tribe.

Democracy only works well when the electorate bother to read manifestos, and (to an extent) take looking back at past iterations of a party, and its current personalities out of the equation.

It’s not X-Factor, it’s the policies you’re really voting for. Some seemingly unlikable people are actually quite good at their jobs, although the current crop seem to combine charmlessness with incompetence, in a “worst of both worlds” manner.

You will have seen on this very thread a number of comments along the lines of “I’ll never vote x” which is a ludicrous position to take.

Politics shouldn’t be treated like football, it isn’t pick a side and support your team whatever happens. America is broken precisely because both sides have managed to weaponise their support in exactly this manner, and terrifyingly it works.

https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/party_over_policy_0.pdf

The research linked to above is wordy and not going to be for everyone, but (paraphrasing) what it showed was:

Students at Yale (who earlier in the term had self-identified as partisan and claimed welfare was something they felt strongly about) were all given (fake) newspaper details of a welfare bill, where the details had been changed in the following ways:

1. Some copies of the article detailed an extremely harsh welfare regime, while others detailed an extremely generous welfare regime.

2. Some copies of each of the above types of article had quotes from prominent Republicans supporting the deal, while other copies (of both types) had quotes from prominent Democrats supporting the deal.

3. Participants were then asked to rate their favourability toward the proposed scheme, and the results showed that it didn’t matter whether the scheme was harsh or generous, all that mattered was whether the scheme was endorsed by their tribe or the “other” tribe. The students paid no attention to the scheme itself, only who endorsed it.

These test subjects were students at one of America’s top universities, who had stated that they had a strong interest in the subject, and yet neither side picked out the scheme which technically fitted their politics.

There can be no improvement in our public life until we find a way to shake off the idea that our politics is integral to our identity, and instead treat our politics as something we select at each election. Sorry for the length of the post.

Brilliant post, and so true.

It has often been said that elections (in the UK) are won and lost by the floating voter, with two lumps of population lard (and a few smaller chunks) always voting the same way. The spanner in the works is when core voters form sects and the main parties waste time trying to shore up their core vote by pandering to it.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

Tribal politics in the USA and UK - both of which have 2 dominant parties. Who'd have thought it?

As I have said on many occasion, FPTP and the Westminster Houses of Parliament locks in confrontational, tribal politics. The Tories and Labour have put self-interest above the health of our democracy by refusing to support Proportional Representation or Single Transferable Vote.

If the electorate thought this is an important issue they would vote for a party that supports it, surely?

It is hard for me to get past the fact that the loudest voices in favour of a change to the electoral system are acolytes of the parties who do not have enough support to win many seats under the present system.

Meanwhile, when given a choice in an election the majority of voters opt for parties that do not plan to change the electoral system.

It is seductive to blame a failure to get what one wants on the unfairness of the system. I have yet to hear a single voice in favour of a change to the electoral system that is not a voice in favour of the replacement of the present party of government with something else (usually a 'coalition'). There is a tremendous amount of cloaking personal desires in the guise of the 'greater good' here, I would suggest.