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Sir! Keir! Starmer!
 

Sir! Keir! Starmer!

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Can someone who’s claiming “blue collar wages are going through the ceiling” please prove this?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-09/u-k-worker-shortage-sparks-rare-blue-collar-wage-boom

I am a blue collar worker that can’t afford to rent a 1 bed flat to live in

Get a loan and get an HGV license?


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:08 pm
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Who gives them the loan? How long ‘till training and accreditation is complete? What is going to happen to their rent, gas, electricity, council tax, national insurance, food bill, petrol costs in that time and in the near future? What hours will they be pushed into working once they are driving? What rights will they have in the first two years in the job? What will the working conditions be like?


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:17 pm
 dazh
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This is an incredibly patronising thing to say.

Boils my piss TBH. It's the young who understand what's going on. Not because Corbyn told them, but because they can see it with their own eyes. They're being shafted by student debt, rapacious boomer landlords, slave wages in shitty jobs, and the biggest of all, by climate change which is going to rob them of their future.

My 16 year old understands how the world works better than most of the cynical idiots on here, and she's rightly extremely pissed off - and not a little depressed - about it. And yet the supposed 'grown ups' see fit to lecture them about 'the working world' or 'that's just the way it is' or some other vapid patronising bollocks about what's 'acceptable' or 'credible'.

You want reality? Well here it is.. (not you grum, I know you get this stuff)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/28/blah-greta-thunberg-leaders-climate-crisis-co2-emissions


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:25 pm
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They’re being shafted by student debt, rapacious boomer landlords, slave wages in shitty jobs, and the biggest of all, by climate change which is going to rob them of their future

The quote about the young is wrong I agree.

I completely agree with your point above as do most others on this thread. Where we differ is on how to fix it. I suggest that we tried with a left wing labour government twice and failed twice, I suggest some compromise is required from the left to get a labour government in power to stat to fix these issues. If we can't get labour into power we can't fix these issues.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:35 pm
 ctk
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People talk like Corbyn lost 4 elections in a row.

If Keir loses this next election are we going to swing back left or have another go in the centre?


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:36 pm
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No leader should ever get the chance to lose more than once

Corbyn should have been long gone in 2017, instead of the ludicrous spectacle of it being celebrated as a victory

Everything that has gone on since should have happened two years earlier


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:42 pm
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FFS, I’m agreeing with Binners again.

Anyway…

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2021/09/labour-has-become-two-parties-can-anybody-make-it-one-again

Does this sound familiar…?

I was heckled for suggesting that, while Boris Johnson has personality, Starmer has character. About half the people in the tent were outraged at the suggestion that there is any moral difference between a man who spent his life upholding the rule of law and the charlatan in Downing Street. And it was not mock outrage. It is a genuinely held belief among a large cohort of political activists on the left that Starmer is a corrupt liar in the pockets of the Trilateral Commission.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:47 pm
 dazh
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I suggest that we tried with a left wing labour government twice and failed twice

I'll happily accept this when the people on the right acknowledge their role preventing it from happening.

I suggest some compromise is required from the left to get a labour government in power to stat to fix these issues.

See above, there is no compromise with these c*, there's only 'do what we say'. Labour in its current form won't fix these issues. They won't abolish university fees and loans, they won't provide affordable homes, they won't reduce rents, they won't increase the minimum wage for the young, and they'll continue to pay lip service to climate change whilst doing bugger all (and no, 28bn a year won't solve it, it's not even close).

If you're wondering why I get so angry about this then look at it this way, The labour right wing in it's failure to 'compromise' with Corbyn has cost both my kids something like £50k each in fees and loans which would have been cancelled under a Corbyn govt. My oldest is now seriously talking about not going to uni (even though she got straight As in her GCSEs) because she's terrified of the debt. And you want me to vote for them now? Well f that!


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:53 pm
 ctk
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Yeah it would have been a lot easier if the PLP got behind him, gave it their best shot and then dumped him if he lost.

Instead they tried everything to get rid of him and involuntarily strengthened his hand. Doh!


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:55 pm
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Have Labour dropped their policy on tuition fees? It may be too late for your kids and mine if a Labour government ever happens, but if that policy forms part of the next manifesto, and they win, because enough of us vote for them, then other kids will be weighing up different cost/benefit ratios when planning their futures.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:57 pm
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I suggest some compromise is required from the left to get a labour government in power to stat to fix these issues.

Oh not this bollocks again. The left voted for Starmer in huge numbers - swayed no doubt by promises of unity and a commitment to some left wing policies.

The left has compromised, and in return has been lied to, marginalised, ignored and expelled.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 3:58 pm
 ctk
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Yep same when Corbyn took over. It was the centrists who refused to compromise.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:01 pm
 ctk
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Have Labour dropped their policy on tuition fees? It may be too late for your kids and mine if a Labour government ever happens, but if that policy forms part of the next manifesto, and they win, because enough of us vote for them, then other kids will be weighing up different cost/benefit ratios when planning their futures.

Let's hope it's in there then. Fabulous policy from Labours left.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:03 pm
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Agreed.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:04 pm
 dazh
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Have Labour dropped their policy on tuition fees?

Do you even doubt it? Come on man open your eyes!


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:04 pm
 ctk
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What a **** Nick Clegg was for introducing tuition fees!

It was him wasn't it?


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:05 pm
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Boils my piss TBH. It’s the young who understand what’s going on.

How old are you? I'm ancient, obv, but have three kids in their 20s whose future looks not great, frankly. Are you saying you think I don't understand what's going on? Who's being patronising?


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:10 pm
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Tesco are notorious for taking on swathes of temporary staff, letting them go then recruiting loads more temporary staff, all on minimum wage or barely above. They don’t want to have to take people on permanent contracts as it costs them more long term and impacts shareholders bank balances.

Sorry but evidence/citation for this statement about one individual company required.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:14 pm
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Yep same when Corbyn took over. It was the centrists who refused to compromise

Ok lets just keep the infighting going and resign ourselves to Tory rule forever. Great!


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:17 pm
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Do you even doubt it? Come on man open your eyes!

Can you explain why you think it's going to be dropped?

You must think it would be difficult to deliver, to the point where it will (without doubt) be dropped, let's hear why.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:19 pm
 ctk
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difficult to deliver

Where there's a will, there's a way.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:19 pm
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Does this sound familiar…?

Well, your selective revisionism does, yes. Because you conveniently omitted this bit:

It is not confined to the left. As a despairing section of the left reacts to suspensions and expulsions with the kind of aimless, random and vindictive heckling Starmer faced during his speech, parts of the right – especially those schooled in Trot-baiting during the period of “high Blairism” – are responding in kind. “Crawl back to the undergrowth where you belong,” one Starmer staffer said of the left. A Labour councillor asked a senior politician to my face, as if I wasn’t actually there, “can we trust him?”

But it's actually a pretty good article; I don't agree with all of what Mason says there, but I like him generally as an analyst. (Hey Kimbers; here's an alternative to Marina Hyde for you!). But from his tone, it is clear Mason has spent a little too long enjoying a comfortable middle class affluent life in bohemia, and has become a little disconnected from his working class roots. It happens. Bottom line is that he's right though; Labour is split right down the middle, and is at war with itself. Which is precisely what Blair wanted.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:20 pm
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Which is precisely what Blair wanted.

Why?


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:27 pm
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But is it split down the middle? During his conference speech most of the party seemed to unite behind him. Thee was a small minority heckling but hardly anything like 50%?


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:27 pm
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Because you conveniently omitted this bit

I didn’t paste the whole article, that’s why I supplied a link. And I agree with the rest of the article as well, as it’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been posting here myself, and denigrated for… the endless battling is coming from both sides… so let’s all stop pretending it’s one sided, in either direction.

and has become a little disconnected from his working class roots

He’s impure… burn him!


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:28 pm
 dazh
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Can you explain why you think it’s going to be dropped?

Simple, because it doesn't fit with Rachel Reeves' pro-austerity economic policies. If free university tuition was difficult to deliver, then it would never have been the policy up to the point where Clegg agreed to abolish it.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:28 pm
 grum
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Ok lets just keep the infighting going and resign ourselves to Tory rule forever. Great!

Yes you're right it's the people who are repeatedly called racist naive morons and kicked out the party on spurious grounds who need to compromise more.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:28 pm
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it’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been posting here myself

No it's not. More deluded revisionism. You've been attacking the left constantly. So please; don't make shit up.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:29 pm
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Ok lets just keep the infighting going and resign ourselves to Tory rule forever. Great!

If you want my vote, how are you going to earn it then? Please tell me.

lost, lost, lost, lost, Blair, Blair, Blair, Lost, lost lost lost

Tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:30 pm
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lost, lost, lost, lost, Blair, Blair, Blair, Lost, lost lost lost

Tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory, tory.

If that's what you actually believe I don't think there's anything I or anyone else can say on this thread that's likely to change your mind. Hey ho.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:37 pm
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More deluded revisionism.

Well, this is a forum, so you can just page back and see where I said that the endless fighting comes from both sides. You might have taken it as an attack on “the left”, but then you see everything in that way.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:38 pm
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Simple, because it doesn’t fit with Rachel Reeves’ pro-austerity economic policies.

Ok, so why do you think Rachel Reeves is pro austerity? Because she thinks MMT is misrepresented as some kind of panacea rather than bog standard Keynesian stimulus?

Why do you think she would think that? Why do you think every other country in the world thinks that?

Is it because it's true?

Or is there some other reason RR would be pro-austerity in which case let's hear it.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:42 pm
 grum
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Well, this is a forum, so you can just page back and see where I said that the endless fighting comes from both sides.

Of course it comes from both sides, but to claim there is equivalence in terms of the scale and seriousness of it is utter nonsense.

Plus you are binners' no 1 fanboy and he spends most of his time crudely insulting the left.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:43 pm
 ctk
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Well, this is a forum, so you can just page back and see where I said that the endless fighting comes from both sides. You might have taken it as an attack on “the left”, but then you see everything in that way.

Kelvin it's mostly- by a large margin - from the centrists. Under Corbyn it was, now it is.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:45 pm
 dazh
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Because she thinks MMT is misrepresented as some kind of panacea rather than bog standard Keynesian stimulus?

WTF has free university got to do with MMT? I didn't even mention MMT, and we didn't have MMT when university tuition was free pre-2010.

Or is there some other reason RR would be pro-austerity in which case let’s hear it.

She's pro-austerity because she think it will win her votes. She doesn't really care if it shafts an entire generation. She's too scared of the tory mantra of 'national credit cards' etc to make the case for something that obviously the right thing to do.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:53 pm
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My oldest is now seriously talking about not going to uni (even though she got straight As in her GCSEs) because she’s terrified of the debt.

The boring answer is that she doesn't have to, degree apprenticeships aren't taxed the same way. Plus she earns money doing something whilst she studies.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:55 pm
 grum
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It's pretty sad that the only reason for going to uni for most people now involves a calculation of whether it will be worthwhile financially. Remember when a decent education was considered a good thing regardless of earning potential?


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:58 pm
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If you want my vote, how are you going to earn it then?

How do the party you vote for earn it?

Please tell me.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 4:58 pm
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Remember when a decent education was considered a good thing regardless of earning potential?

Remember substantially fewer people went to university.....


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 5:00 pm
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Ok, so why do you think Rachel Reeves is pro austerity?

https://twitter.com/RachelReevesMP/status/1442007958611652608?s=20

Plus you are binners’ no 1 fanboy and he spends most of his time crudely insulting the left.

Embarrassing for me. But hey, I can agree with whoever I like, on all sorts of issues, even if we’re in different places politically. To be fair to Binners, he was supporting Labour while I was self indulgently voting for other candidates in seats that only the Tories or Conservatives could win. And he kept supporting Labour when it moved to the left, and I started voting for them. Despite his jokes, he’s one of the few people here who has consistently supported getting Labour into, and the Tories out of, power, and has stated he’ll stick to that. So he isn’t really part of the problem… I have been, and others here now say they are going to be. I think a lot of where I agree with him comes down to one thing… with the electoral system we are in, Labour need to win seats. If there is a magic formula that introduces a more social democratic UK, and gets Labour into power, let’s look for it. If you’re a Socialist, that should also be your aim in the short term. Yes, I’d like privatised telecoms, UBI, PR etc long term, and we should be trying to encourage support for that (aren’t Welsh Labour doing a UBI trial?) but the focus should be on step one… GET THE TORIES OUT.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 5:01 pm
 grum
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Yup, another questionable thing Blair is responsible for! The idea sounds wonderful but it inevitably devalued the concept of a university degree.

Maybe it raised education levels over all I don't know. Seemed like lots of colleges got renamed universities though...


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 5:02 pm
 dazh
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degree apprenticeships aren’t taxed the same way. Plus she earns money doing something whilst she studies.

There aren't many/any degree apprenticeships in art which is what she wants to do and what she's good at. And as grum says, why should it be tied to employment? If you think discouraging kids from getting an education is a good thing then you know what you can do.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 5:04 pm
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If you think discouraging kids from getting an education is a good thing then you know what you can do.

Ah, good to be able to agree with Dazh 100% on something.

Seemed like lots of colleges got renamed universities though…

That was a long time ago. We can get over that snobbery now, leave it in the last century.


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 5:09 pm
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So those moaning about Univserity fee's, do you think a Starmer Labour Government would lower the threshold for repayment which hits lower earners hardest like the current Government are proposing?


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 5:16 pm
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Yup, another questionable thing Blair is responsible for! The idea sounds
wonderful but it inevitably devalued the concept of a university degree.

With the impact being that a lot of jobs now require a degree where it should not be necessary but because so many people have them then it has become a default requirement causing a vicious cycle.

I was 18 in 1986 and most people only tended to go to University because they had a real desire too. Now it seems that a lot of people go for something to do with no real goal at the end of it (my son, my nephew, my niece, my managers sons etc, etc,.)


 
Posted : 30/09/2021 5:16 pm
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