I'm in Salisbury - Tory heartland but genuinely looked like a 3 horse race here.
**** me dead, can't believe I'm saying this but why can't Reform be more competent.
In the first hustings the Reform candidate not only concurred with Farage on Russia but admitted meeting Putin and declared him a decent bloke! Not the most popular message in the constituency where a chemical weapon attack was carried out by his government.
If you specifically want EU citizens rather than non-EU citizens…why?
Why - because in general they are young and enthusiastic and single and go home after a couple of years - wheras non EU migrants settle here and bring families. also non EU migrants are not going to come here for gap years which is what a ;lot of the hospitality industry relied on. Basically you get a much higher % of workers to dependents
gross generalisation of course
Binners – normally i appreciate your posts, but you are coming across as a **** tonight. Take a break please, go spend some time outside or something
Strangely....I think Binners is spot on
I did take some time outside, glorious evening in Sussex, thinking that I am feeling a bit hopeful for the first time in 8 years....and really really hoping we don't wake up on the 5th thinking if only....
In the first hustings the Reform candidate not only concurred with Farage on Russia but admitted meeting Putin and declared him a decent bloke!
I was reading about him only 30 odd minutes ago. What a piece if work, eh?
Farage has made a rod for his own back here. The slippery **** might not outrun this one.
Why – because in general they are young and enthusiastic and single and go home after a couple of years – wheras non EU migrants settle here and bring families.
I am not sure this stereotype actually matches with the reality of EU or non-EU immigration.
International students and their dependants accounted for a further 39% of the increase in non-EU immigration. The UK has an explicit strategy of increasing and diversifying foreign student recruitment, and it is also likely that the reintroduction of post-study work rights post-Brexit made the UK more attractive to international students.
Sunak really is an irksome little shit. I saw him on TV before the 2019 election and thought the exact same then.
Brexit and a set of unbelievable circumstances have delivered him to No.10
He has zero class, is not a statesman and will hopefully be under investigation soon for his negligent Chancellor stint during COVID.
My county council is conservative and most MPs in the county are Tories. The council is on the verge of bankruptcy- due to central funding cuts.
How many in the government are from a business background? As mentioned before in the thread, Sunak’s hedge fund was responsible for RBS paying over the odds for ABN AMRO and look what happened to RBS.
Poopscoop
Full Member
I had to chuckle when Sunak talked about his girls growing up in the UK…
"As a dad of two daughters..." 🤮 Didn't like how Starmer allowed himself to get caught up bickering with Sunak though.
Interesting bit of trivia about Starmer, though, don't know if anyone picked it up: apparently his dad was a toolmaker...?
This young question-asker on TV is just completely wrong. Grad unemployment isn't astronomical. It's total rubbish.
https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/latest/insights-and-analysis/what-did-graduates-do-after-higher
How many in the government are from a business background?
Who cares? Government and business are different.
colournoise
Full Member
Anyone bored of the new ‘no surrender’ slogan already?
Lol indeed but I've also learned, again, that Sunak is very, very angry about the betting, very very angry. Not angry enough to do anything for over a week mind you but still... Very, very angry.
After his performance tonight, I think he's angry in general and needs a valium up the pooper!
Binners – normally i appreciate your posts, but you are coming across as a **** tonight. Take a break please, go spend some time outside or something
Be careful what you say to binners. I got a mod warning for saying mean things about him earlier.
Be careful what you say to binners. I got a mod warning for saying mean things about him earlier.
Ah, that's because recycling memes about left of centre folk is a protected characteristic.
Poorer areas tend to elect Labour councils. People in poorer areas rely more heavily on local services, so these councils have more spending commitments. It's not rocket science to work out why so many Labour councils are on the edge of the cliff.
And that's before you examine the record of a PM who bragged about diverting funding from poor areas to wealthier ones.
The man is a worm, a lowlife.
He is in fact a Hi Risk Anus.
I look forward to Sunak’s comments on women, and being a father as his motivation for putting them first, coming back to haunt him when his two daughters finish their private American education.
no surrender
What? copied from the rev Ian Paisley?
It is being reported that Sir Philip Davies bet £8k he would lose his seat. His defenestration by his electorate is on my Portillo Moment wishlist.
Is it dogma or pragmatism tho…
Why is it the blairites also announce their courting of the right as pragmatism rather than accepting they are dogmatic.
show me a government that has objectively made more difference for the underprivileged, for kids, for the NHS etc. Blair made a difference.
Well I would rate the ones after WWII and probably through to the 70s as being more effective. If we go back further then the education acts of the 1850s also rate highly.
An obvious difference with Blair is that new labour actually offered a bit to the left rather than just shouting about "WHO ELSE WILL YOU VOTE FOR" Not a lot and they let their dogma about markets wreck the NHS reforms and bedded in most of the hard right ideals but yes they did a bit. The problem is did you not notice how far the spectrum shifted to the right thanks to their continuing of tory policies and how easily the good stuff was rolled back?
Ultimately though labour carried on many of the policies which the thatcherites started which is why our country is in such a shit state now. They have all been pissing money up against the wall and destroying and giving away state assets in the name of dogma.
You can diss me for that if want, but show me a real alternative on July 4….
See the problem? You cant actually offer anything beyond a "who else will you vote for". Currently Starmer is offering lots to the centre right whilst nothing to anyone else. Hence all the spiel about having changed the party and how its nothing like that nasty one people voted for in 2019. Which is of course his choice but does raise the question why should people who voted labour then vote labour now.
My grandparents were miners in the valleys, and made a difference by clubbing together for libraries and healthcare. Aneurin Bevan built on that thinking.
Yes he did. Now the relevance of this to Starmer?
I bought my copy of Das Kapital from the party bookshop on Alexanderplatz in East Berlin in 1986. How did that work out for the Eastern Europeans? Fenced in cos the dogma was flawed.
I have no idea what you are trying to argue here. Aside from the obvious one if you ignore the majority of the population to satisfy a minority then its likely to end in tears? Or that when in doubt the "moderates" generally align with the hard right?
So dream on that you want a different way of doing things….none of us will get the perfect outcome on July 5, but I know which imperfect outcome I’d like when compared to the Tory alternative.
One that is pretty close to what you want anyway?
The main issue for me despite likelihood of voting labour to get a specific tory out is this will be taken as support for Starmer. We will then have likes of binner spewing out their hatred towards anyone vaguely left wing and we will get the doubling down on policies which only appeal to the right which, given the tories will have moved right, will shift the spectrum even further rightwards
I don't recall either said anything really of any substance about defence (I guess they weren't asked about it either though...).
Surely that would be a major vote winner given the global situation that's developing.
Diss, I guess what i was trying to say was that despite having a some experiences of socialism, some of it pragmatic, some dogmatic, looking at different perspectives of what that might look like, we still have to work within what is achievable. My sense is that pragmatism is a better way to do things than dogma....hence Blair doing some really positive things for disadvantaged communities.
But you haven't answered the question what is the alternative for me on July 4?
Ah, that’s because recycling memes about left of centre folk is a protected characteristic.
I think of him as this places reform candidate. Incapable of a sensible argument and just projecting all their own failings onto others.
Defence costs money - lots and lots of it. Many many many schools and hospitals worth. Its not a vote winner because like many things in life, inexplicably the actual people who make the difference in these situations (inhabitants of Clacton, i'm looking at you) are idiots and can't begin to understand the nuanced arguments behind complicated zero sum decisions.
Andy Verity - financial journalist at the BBC is really nailing it for me on x.
https://twitter.com/andyverity/status/1806065309989630135?t=KmJn8GWfdOQudZb67b_rew&s=19
"Oh dear. 'The money isn't there. The money's been spent. Your own chancellor said that' (Starmer). When you're referring to the public finances in fiat currency economy, 'the money isn't there' is as economically illiterate as it was when Liam Byrne left his jokey note in 2010."
https://twitter.com/andyverity/status/1806064698040730004?t=TISlrlj3goehiNnHw1ZAcw&s=19
We need to get beyond this terrible level of debate.
It's bloody awful and not a shred of truth is being told about public finances.
Both idiots going on about us being bankrupt back in in 2010...
I think of him as this places reform candidate. Incapable of a sensible argument and just projecting all their own failings onto others.
I expect, and hope, he doesn’t give a shit how you think of him. Why all this personal stuff?
Very little business acumen and most of the leadership team come from public sector careers so don’t understand how money, business and finance works
There was more widespread financial knowledge and understanding in the public sector organisations I worked in before the current private sector one I'm in. We were a lot better at procurement too. There's this fallacy that the pubic sector doesn't know how to manage money.
But Diss, what is the alternative for me on July 4?
As a Blairite Labour seem relatively well suited to you. I say relatively since as the compass think tank/pressure group have found Starmers labour isnt exactly welcoming to any form of dissent.
Now care to put the argument for voting labour for anyone left of centre without using "otherwise its the tories".
Point of order dissonance - working in the NHS during the blair years it got a LOT better in terms of what happened on the ground
Was that the NHS in Scotland or the one in England, TJ? I thought that all of your experience was in the former.
I expect, and hope, he doesn’t give a shit how you think of him. Why all this personal stuff?
Have you read the shit he spewed on the last page? He is someone who hurls childish abuse and memes left, right and ****ing centre.
Have a read of this shite
What you have to do is shout IRAQ!!! then soil your petticoats in righteous outrage
… and apparently that immediately cancels out all of that progress, then you go misty-eyed about Jeremy Corbyn and enter the insane tinfoil-helmeted hinterland where 2 electoral defeats are miles better than 3 electoral victories because…. erm… I don’t know… idealogical purity or some other bollocks that trumps everything if you live in Islington
Welcome to their petition-signing, placard-waving, cloud-cuckoo-land of ‘The Left’
Of course you might agree with it but then you would be a bit hypocritical talking about "this personal stuff".
Whoever suggested earlier that Labours shadow front bench don't have business experience should listen to the podcast 'Leading' where Rachel Reeves (shadow chancellor) was interviewed.
She came across as very much on top of her potential brief, a centre left socialist and more than a match for Rory Stewart!
There’s this fallacy that the pubic sector doesn’t know how to manage money.
I do wonder how often its to do with people working in small private sector companies and then seeing the inevitable inefficiencies in a large public sector organisation and confusing that with "public sector" bad whilst missing that large private sector companies can be equally incompetent and at risk of empire building.
Another example is how the public sector are crap at IT projects. Leaving aside the obvious point they are generally contracted out to the private sector it misses the other detail that we hear about the public sector failures because there is generally some reporting responsibility. Whereas most of the private sector ones are brushed under the carpet unless they are spectacularly bad and/or obviously client facing (aka some of the bank failures). The sad fact is we are still pretty shit at large IT projects regardless of which sector its in.
Using the private sector to deliver something that ought to be done by the state (water as a good pragmatic example) - and adding layer of needed profit, is by definition an inefficiency.
People like Starmer can't get this stuff in their heads. Centrists have based economic policy on failed Conservative policy without scrutiny.
Hence Labour's fiscal rules being similar to the Tories.
Frankly, I'm embarrassed at the level of understanding that Labour have taken over many issues. I mean you can't spend all your Centrist time attacking the Tories and then slavishly copying their policy.
But we will see soon enough. We can at least stop talking about the Tories for a bit.
Leaving aside the obvious point they are generally contracted out to the private sector
I mean..... that's a hell of an omission when comparing the private and public sectors 😳
"Using the private sector to deliver something that ought to be done by the state (water as a good pragmatic example) – and adding layer of needed profit, is by definition an inefficiency."
It does depend on what the thing you're delivering is, trains and water for example I would agree.
But if there are services the public sector only needs from time to time, why create a workforce skilled and experienced enough to do that and have to pay them all the time when they are only needed some of the time?
But if there are services the public sector only needs from time to time, why create a workforce skilled and experienced enough to do that and have to pay them all the time when they are only needed some of the time?
Well that's why a job guarantee programme would work in this case. Helping people into work and transition to the private sector. It becomes the backstop to inflation too.
Paying them is not an issue providing they don't crowd things out.
(I'm really talking about the big stuff.)
Ha ha to the Scrooge meme.
I'm only pushing back at what is being put out there in debate! If it wasn't being repeated there would be no need for my existence.
(And I definitely don't have binners raging post count for angry Sunak/Tories recycling.)
Too tip for forumites - you can scroll past anything you don't want to read.
I expect, and hope, he doesn’t give a shit how you think of him. Why all this personal stuff?
Probably because he likes to dish it out but is very thin skinned as soon as someone gives him a wee love tap back. It's a quality that's irritating so people get irritated.
You don't notice so much cause he's on your side.
