Corbyn and Labor closing on May and Tories

[inquiss]

SNIP


I see no issues. If you consider any of those nine points to be so, you're probably Tory. In which case, fuck off and stop trying to destroy the country.

Couldn't agree more with these points. Why is the nationalisation of those items so unusual, when they used to be that way?

The train system is such a mess, people don't know what goes on behind the scenes. I have worked with people that have worked on the bids and there are some very funky contracts going on. Take GTR that owns the Southern route.The government pays them to run the line, but fare fares go to the government and delay compensation is also paid for by the government so loss of revenue falls on the government (ultimately the tax payer). GTR had no incentive to work towards a fix during the recent strikes. They are completely insulated from a loss of profits by the tax payer. The taxpayer just pays for the private profits - completely bonkers.

This video is clearly very tongue in cheek but it does show the problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvagsSOlAy4

Concerning the money to fund any social improvements for people that need it... it's a bug bear of mine that young people are going to get continually shafted in this country because they (up until recently) have had little voting power. They are also unwitting victims of the demography in the country with it's aging populations. This aging population has the highest percentage of home ownership and thus their wealth has gone up considerably over the last 5 years. That income should be taxed - otherwise the young will end up paying for this ageing population and it stifles their ability to either get onto the property ladder or build in some other way for their futures.

There are some obvious places that need cash - the homeless, young people, students, the police force and hospitals and the people that gained the most in the last 5 years should be the ones that pay for it.

 

[mikeymikec]

1. The UK's rail system was nationalized to begin with, then it was privatized. Now, it's privatized but the taxpayer pays for a nation-wide corporate embezzlement scheme. Private owners, publicly funded, huge bonuses. Better that we have it back.

2. Nothing wrong with creating more houses for the poor and homeless. If you disagree with that, fuck right on off; poor people deserve a home as much as the next person, and if they are unable to get one normally, we as a society will make sure they don't have to sleep outside in the wet and cold.

3. See above, there's nothing wrong with giving homeless people shelter. And there's everything wrong with denying them such.

4. Good. Stops apartments from gouging students and the lower class.

5. The NHS has been strangled, and if there's one thing the British public want, it's the NHS. I'm going to go ahead and say that if you don't want everybody in society to be healthy and fixed up, because those that can't afford it should suffer, fuck off.

6. There are few things better than investing in the education of children.

7. It's about time we got fiber.

8. Please provide the calculations for these statistics, without referencing right-wing nutjob websites and psuedo-intellectual blogs.

9. Investing in the education of adults is great.


I see no issues. If you consider any of those nine points to be so, you're probably Tory. In which case, fuck off and stop trying to destroy the country.

+1

Furthermore, a number of factors are coming together that is going to make the UK a place where inherited wealth counts for everything. House prices are sky-high, university education is essential if you want a job that earns over £20k (the national average), when you leave uni you've got a large debt to pay off (though admittedly nowhere near as bad as in the US - yet), and not enough houses are being built so house prices are going to keep going up until that is corrected.

The youth of today are going to have far greater economic challenges than the elderly of today did when they were young, including the march of automation, which primarily affects the less educated and the less able to adapt to a changing job market. The pace of automation is only going to increase. Youth unemployment is already at something like 25% IIRC, and it's becoming much more common for young adults to live at home for somewhat longer than they used to, and how is this going to work for low income families? If those adults can't properly get on the career ladder, then they're less likely to be able to buy a house in the future, which feeds into a system of more landlords and less houses for people to buy for themselves, and then how will the young of today pay for their care when they become elderly. It only makes sense that we should be trying to equal the playing field for the youth to make the most of their potential and maximise their opportunities. That is how a tax-paying workforce is made. The situation we're enabling is that the rich get richer, they call the shots and complain about the welfare system, and the poor get poorer. Also, with Brexit and with our country's further reduced focus on learning foreign languages, we're enabling a situation of reducing the young's chances of going abroad to improve their lot.

We moved away from the feudal system. Let's not go back to it.

 

[WelshBloke]

Dude, Boris is like the total opposite of Trump, he has a giant brain and is quite cultured.

Boris is a political coward and he's no where near as clever as you think.
He's arrogant, opinionated, vulgar, opens his mouth before engaging his brain, crass, thinks insulting people is a substitute for political argument...
He's a lot more like Trump than you think.

 

[mikeymikec]

Jonathan Pie strikes again:

 

[mikeymikec]

I was listening to the radio on the way home today when the news came on. My ears pricked up when I heard that "tories are calling for Theresa May's resignation", and I thought "oh really? That's good, taking issue with a DUP coalition at a time when the Stormont power-sharing agreement is in a very shaky state, as well as siding with religious fundamentalists who want to regress the abortion laws", then the announcement continued... "because they think their advisors should resign due to their poor management of the tory election campaign"... oh. Another day of the tories being so far from having their finger on the pulse of society that they'd need to remove their collective head from their arse before they could even begin that task.

 

[Commodus]

I was listening to the radio on the way home today when the news came on. My ears pricked up when I heard that "tories are calling for Theresa May's resignation", and I thought "oh really? That's good, taking issue with a DUP coalition at a time when the Stormont power-sharing agreement is in a very shaky state, as well as siding with religious fundamentalists who want to regress the abortion laws", then the announcement continued... "because they think their advisors should resign due to their poor management of the tory election campaign"... oh. Another day of the tories being so far from having their finger on the pulse of society that they'd need to remove their collective head from their arse before they could even begin that task.

That seems to be the running theme of conservative politics worldwide at the moment: it's not that our policies are disliked, it's that we just didn't sell them well enough.

To be fair, there was some definite mismanagement: refusing to appear at a major debate, for example. And as that Jonathan Pie video explains, one of the greatest mistakes politicians can make (especially recently) is to act as if they've already won. If people don't like your policies or attitude, they will turn on you in a heartbeat, whether you're liberal or conservative.

 

[pmv]

What's your reasoning?

Seems to me _if_ there's a hung parliament (and I don't know if there will be - who knows at this point?) she won't remain leader of the Tory party, yet alone PM.

Tories are as ruthless about failure as a Bond villain. It'll be the trapdoor and shark pool for her - metaphorically speaking.

Edit - Osborne's grinning like a shark already.

Seems I was wrong here. I guess the Tories are not what they used to be.

I suppose there's already evidence for that. I doubt Thatcher would have made a miscalculation like Cameron's offering a referendum with no thought at all as to what to do if it went the wrong way. And for May to follow that up with _immediately_ making the exact same mistake with the election (having apparently learned nothing from recent experience) suggests that this generation of Tories are made from different stuff to their predecessors.

I used to think that one big reservation I had about Corbyn was just that he was too old. But maybe that's not such a bad thing after all.

Anyway, I can't see this coalition lasting. Even with the DUP their majority is wafer thin, smaller than Major's when his government died its long-drawn-out death of a thousand rebellions. How on Earth can it manage something as fraught as negotiating Brexit, yet alone get anything else done?

I mean, really, May's decision to call this election now looks supremely irresponsible, given it was always possible it could end like this, with possibly serious consequences for the UK's post-EU future.

Between that, Cameron's unthinking referendum, Nick Clegg almost killing the Lib Dem Party stone dead in his pursuit of a ministerial expense-account and desire to feel like a big-shot, and the Labour Blairite kids hating Corbyn but having nothing to offer as an alternative, I'm wondering if maybe this whole generation of post-ideological politicians just haven't got the substance of the previous lot.

 

[mikeymikec]

Admittedly I don't understand what 10 MPs make to the government's position either. I'm getting the impression that May is the worst kind of leader: Someone who craves power; and this coalition is about making a similar statement for her pride rather than out of political strategy.

 

[Triloby]

Not that much has changed, but John Oliver did a segment about Brexit after the snap election.

I'm still not so sure how the U.K. is going to renegotiate every single treaty and trade deal that they have with their allies in just two years or less, before completely pulling out of the EU. That's just assuming they go for a hard Brexit. On the other hand, going for a soft Brexit could easily piss off a fair amount of people in terms of immigration laws still being mandated by the EU and not the U.K. itself.

I do find it hilarious, though. For all the pissing and moaning (from the Conservatives) about how much of a bureaucratic shithole the EU is, they have managed to prove in about two months time that they are even less organized and far more fractured than the EU is right now.

A guy with a bucket on his head is far more reasonable and logical than Theresa May. Doesn't scream much in the way of confidence when negotiation time comes.

 

[mikeymikec]

I've heard a number of times that the EU and UK can agree to an extension to the trade talks, but I bet that largely rides on the UK not making a continual arse out of itself at the negotiating table.

In other news, the Scottish conservatives (who had no seats and won several in this election) and the DUP are interested in a softer brexit.

 

[pmv]

The whole thing is a ludicrous mess. I note Rich Hall on some panel show was thanking Britain for giving the world someone else to point and laugh at instead of the US.
This is not the Anglosphere's finest hour.

 

[WelshBloke]

The whole thing is a ludicrous mess. I note Rich Hall on some panel show was thanking Britain for giving the world someone else to point and laugh at instead of the US.
This is not the Anglosphere's finest hour.

The News Quiz on Radio 4. You can get it on the Friday night comedy podcast from radio 4.

 

[woolfe9998]

How is partisanship in the UK? Is it any better or worse than it is in the US right now?

 

[WelshBloke]

How is partisanship in the UK? Is it any better or worse than it is in the US right now?

Involves more drinking tea, subtle sarcasm and passive aggression.

 

[woolfe9998]

Involves more drinking tea, subtle sarcasm and passive aggression.

Well, that at least sounds like an improvement over what we have in the US. We moved past passive aggression a long time ago here.

 

[Blackjack200]

Involves more drinking tea, subtle sarcasm and passive aggression.

And way, way, way, less corporate influence.

Partisanship is not the issue in the U.S. The issue is pathological misanthropy and nihilism. A society that has so thoroughly destroyed people's social identity that they now tell children to get fucked with their healthcare, celebrate the abuse of prison inmates, and defend cops that shoot unarmed children.

 

[WelshBloke]

Epic speech btw.

https://youtu.be/-zncI9vcda0

 

[xthetenth]

The News Quiz on Radio 4. You can get it on the Friday night comedy podcast from radio 4.

I wish that'd still mean getting Frankie Boyle's take on things.

Well, that at least sounds like an improvement over what we have in the US. We moved past passive aggression a long time ago here.

At least we aren't at the canings phase again. Yet.

 

[MajinCry]

I wish that'd still mean getting Frankie Boyle's take on things.

At least he gets to deliver some solid material every once in a while.

 

[xthetenth]

True, that was his complaint, no? Nobody was delivering much of their material and he was but his wasn't making it to the audience?

 

[MajinCry]

True, that was his complaint, no? Nobody was delivering much of their material and he was but his wasn't making it to the audience?

Didn't he go through a media blackout of sorts, after being dropped from Mock The Week? He's now able to get his own show dedicated to political commentary. There's just too damn few episodes of it.

 

[norseamd]

Boris is a political coward and he's no where near as clever as you think.
He's arrogant, opinionated, vulgar, opens his mouth before engaging his brain, crass, thinks insulting people is a substitute for political argument...
He's a lot more like Trump than you think.

To be fair, Trump seems to have his own cleverness as well. Both of them are just moralless douchebags who dont seem to care about the problems they create, even those problems that hurt them as well.

 

[Blackjack200]

To be fair, Trump seems to have his own cleverness as well. Both of them are just moralless douchebags who dont seem to care about the problems they create, even those problems that hurt them as well.

Cleverness? Trump is an absolute bag of fucking rocks. He has undermined his own agenda numerous times out of sheer stupidity and the only reason he remains as popular as he is is because a certain portion of the country shares his sense of indignant rage.

 

[norseamd]

Cleverness? Trump is an absolute bag of fucking rocks. He has undermined his own agenda numerous times out of sheer stupidity and the only reason he remains as popular as he is is because a certain portion of the country shares his sense of indignant rage.

Yet he ran a campaign that seceded in winning himself the presidency. He knew that a crude "Murican" persona tapping into rageful racism and hate of "elites" and "liberals" could mobilize mass support among much of the white American populace. George W. Bush brought the irresponsible incompetent smartass joker act to the presidency earlier, but Trump makes him look like a choirboy. Just look at that smirk he always has on his face, he obviously thinks of himself as a clever funny player. I found all of these just in the first few results in the animated results just for the search word "trump" alone. Theres obviously hundreds more.

 

[WelshBloke]

Yeah. He's a smug, entitled, rich kid. He's still an idiot though.