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  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:


    The serious point here is that many Tories, reliant as they are upon older voters and even older members, see politics through the prism of what is, to many younger people, ancient history.

    Yes and it is precisely because Old Labour governments and significantly higher taxes and nationalised industries and frequent strikes have never really been experienced by anyone over 50 so many voted for Corbyn.
    Most of the Labour vote now is voting on their lot now which is bad and getting worse. What happened decades ago is for some reason less important to them than what is happening now, nor do they accept that because something happened before it will do again.
    We may well need to experience an old Labour government again to get the message through to the under 50s sadly, though hopefully at least without a Corbyn majority.

    Remember no Labour government before Blair won a 3rd term.
    Before Blair, no Labour government had ever won two consecutive full terms, never mind three.
    To be fair though, you don't 'win' a full term, you just win and then 'events, dear boy...'
  • Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Alistair said:

    I respect that a lot more than the "For some reason I thought Trump was only doing an impression of an idiot throughout the campaign, now I wish I'd voted Clinton" crowd.
    He's going to pivot to the centre any moment now.
    Only if and probably when the Democrats win the House of Representatives next year
    I think you may have taken Alistair's post at face value when, if I read him correctly, he's spoofing the commentariat who've been wrongly predicting this for about 18 months.

    Trump will not - ever - pivot to the centre, not least because on some scores he already sits there. Trump isn't particularly ideologically right-wing. What he is is a populist rabble-rouser and he certainly isn't going to stop being that when it's the main reason he was elected in the first place and only thinks of success in terms of dollars and ratings.
    On some scores, maybe.
    But look at his appointments, with administrative and judicial, and he's nowhere even close to the centre. And it leaves him with little or no ability to pivot - not least because that would involve a hit to his vanity, which comes before all else.
    +1. Neil Gorsuch is about as far away from the centre as you can get.
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:


    The serious point here is that many Tories, reliant as they are upon older voters and even older members, see politics through the prism of what is, to many younger people, ancient history.

    Yes and it is precisely because Old Labour governments and significantly higher taxes and nationalised industries and frequent strikes have never really been experienced by anyone over 50 so many voted for Corbyn.
    Most of the Labour vote now is voting on their lot now which is bad and getting worse. What happened decades ago is for some reason less important to them than what is happening now, nor do they accept that because something happened before it will do again.
    We may well need to experience an old Labour government again to get the message through to the under 50s sadly, though hopefully at least without a Corbyn majority.

    ...
    It'd still all be Thatcher's fault.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:


    The serious point here is that many Tories, reliant as they are upon older voters and even older members, see politics through the prism of what is, to many younger people, ancient history.

    Yes and it is precisely because Old Labour governments and significantly higher taxes and nationalised industries and frequent strikes have never really been experienced by anyone over 50 so many voted for Corbyn.
    Most of the Labour vote now is voting on their lot now which is bad and getting worse. What happened decades ago is for some reason less important to them than what is happening now, nor do they accept that because something happened before it will do again.
    We may well need to experience an old Labour government again to get the message through to the under 50s sadly, though hopefully at least without a Corbyn majority.

    Remember no Labour government before Blair won a 3rd term.
    Before Blair, no Labour government had ever won two consecutive full terms, never mind three.
    To be fair though, you don't 'win' a full term, you just win and then 'events, dear boy...'
    "Events" being the unburied dead?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Sandpit said:

    TGOHF said:



    http://courtnewsuk.co.uk/protestors-abuse-left-tory-mp-fearing-safety/

    " A Tory MP told a court he was left fearing for his safety when a protestor sent him abusive emails soon after the murder of Jo Cox. Kingsley Ezeugo, 48, turned up outside Hendon Town Hall shouting that Hendon MP Matthew Offord, 47, was a child molester and a racist. He also unfurled banners branding Mr Offord a paedophile and a member of the Ku Klux Klan at the MP’s constituency office in Bunns Lane. "

    Seriously, what’s wrong with some people?

    And we wonder why the number of good people putting themselves forward to be MPs is diminishing. I’m close to being in favour of all MPs having a policeman with them all day.
    What, to look for porn on their computers?
    LOL, but it’s clear that MPs in general, and female MPs in particular, are receiving communications that they consider to be disturbing and often genuinely threatening.

    IMO two things are required.
    1. A toning down of language by activists and politicians when it comes to individual opponents. See John McDonnell and Esther McVey as examples that should be referred to Parliamentary authorities as unacceptable conduct.
    2. Serious enforcement of social media comments, cf the guy who was jailed for threatening airport security via Twitter, that sort of response should be extended to threats against elected politicians.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,959

    Sandpit said:

    ToryJim said:
    So the penalty shootout isn’t happening, and we move to the replay.
    Problem is that there's no guarantee the reply will be any more decisive. The recent polling (last 5 polls, all different companies) has, to the nearest half-point (changes on the GE):

    CDU 31 (-2)
    SPD 20.5 (n/c)
    AfD 12.5 (n/c)
    FDP 10.5 (n/c)
    Grune 10.5 (+1.5)
    Linke 9.5 (+0.5)

    Again, once AfD are excluded, then the CDU/CSU becomes an essential component, which in turn means Linke cannot join the government, and so either the SPD (possibly with another), or both the Greens and FPD must - if a government is to be formed.
    Perhaps time for a thread - Is Germany ungovernable?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited November 2017
    @Cyclefree snipped due to length

    First, since when do people have to vote in order to benefit someone in any other part of the country? I didn't vote Cons last time round because I was worried about how the good folk of Corby might feel about a Tory government. I doubt that anyone in Corby voted because they were worried about the burghers of the Cotswolds, either.

    Secondly, as for pay you say it is luck. I say you perhaps have forgotten how difficult it is to get a job in the City. I have a friend who interviewed for the veterans programmes (Barc's AFTER, JP's MVP, etc). There were hundreds of applicants for six places. And that's a supposedly benign, targeted program for ex-soldiers. You say luck, I say application and determination. It's tough to get into the City and not for everyone.

    As for the 2-a day investigations, from one institution. That pushes at the very limit of belief without at all denying that it could have been and, if you say it, must have been the case: not sure which institution it was, nor the type of investigation (insider dealing? market abuse? something else?) but it seems very high indeed. But perhaps we should balance that with the no doubt many thousands of people of the same firm who were not being investigated.

    If you had to conduct two investigations a day for misconduct from one City firm for five years then I can well understand your cynicism.
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    edited November 2017
    The slow takeover of the entire Labour Party continues:

    13:52 Labour members have got to [elect] three new people to serve as constituency party representatives on the national executive committee (NEC) following reforms agreed at the party conference in Brighton. Constituency Labour party (CLP) nominations closed yesterday and Momentum, the Labour group for Jeremy Corbyn supporters, has released figures showing that the three candidates on its slate, Yasmine Dar, Rachel Garnham and Jon Lansman have got far more nominations than the three candidates being backed by the centrist groups Labour First and Progress, Eddie Izzard, Johanna Baxter, and Gurinder Singh Josan.

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2017/nov/20/brexit-bill-voters-will-go-bananas-if-uk-offers-40bn-to-eu-former-tory-minister-warns-may-ahead-of-key-meeting-politics-live
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:


    The serious point here is that many Tories, reliant as they are upon older voters and even older members, see politics through the prism of what is, to many younger people, ancient history.

    Yes and it is precisely because Old Labour governments and significantly higher taxes and nationalised industries and frequent strikes have never really been experienced by anyone over 50 so many voted for Corbyn.
    Most of the Labour vote now is voting on their lot now which is bad and getting worse. What happened decades ago is for some reason less important to them than what is happening now, nor do they accept that because something happened before it will do again.
    We may well need to experience an old Labour government again to get the message through to the under 50s sadly, though hopefully at least without a Corbyn majority.

    Remember no Labour government before Blair won a 3rd term.
    Your fundamental misconception being that the now is better than the then. For whom sir? For you, perhaps. For them...?

    If the Tories weren't working so hard to brutalise people it would be less of a problem. Millions and millions of blue collar Tories under Thatcher. Most of them are long gone and their 2017 counterparts wouldn't vote Tory if you paid them
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:


    The serious point here is that many Tories, reliant as they are upon older voters and even older members, see politics through the prism of what is, to many younger people, ancient history.

    Yes and it is precisely because Old Labour governments and significantly higher taxes and nationalised industries and frequent strikes have never really been experienced by anyone over 50 so many voted for Corbyn.
    Most of the Labour vote now is voting on their lot now which is bad and getting worse. What happened decades ago is for some reason less important to them than what is happening now, nor do they accept that because something happened before it will do again.
    We may well need to experience an old Labour government again to get the message through to the under 50s sadly, though hopefully at least without a Corbyn majority.

    Remember no Labour government before Blair won a 3rd term.
    Before Blair, no Labour government had ever won two consecutive full terms, never mind three.
    To be fair though, you don't 'win' a full term, you just win and then 'events, dear boy...'
    Yes, although the size of the majority is (or was) a hugely significant factor in how long a government would last, pre-FTPA - not something that Blair ever needed to worry about.
  • kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,911
    TOPPING said:

    Sandpit said:


    Agree completely. The next GE will have a huge turnout, there’s no way the lapsed Tories will abstain if they think there’s a serious chance of the ‘70s repeated - complete with general strikes, power cuts, the dead unburied and the union barons holding the country to hostage as they’ve done on Southern rail for the last year.

    This is of course the complacent thinking that handed Jezza an unexpected result last GE. It is lazy and doesn't account for the no doubt far more nuanced and well thought out campaign that Lab will run next time round. It is a static view and close to the one, no doubt, held by TMay when she was on the highways and byways with Philip, and yet one that didn't change as it became obvious events were changing around her.
    The Tories made absolutely no attempt to show people just how much Labour's manifesto would cost. They went hard on Corbyn / IRA and so on, and they had those ridiculously old-school "Labour's tax bombshell" posters that might have worked in the 80s but are a totally ineffective way to campaign in 2017.

    At the next GE, they need to get across, in no uncertain terms, the true economic cost to the country of a hard left manifesto.

    Pinning McDonnell down on exactly what he means by a "contigency plan" for a run on the pound would be a good start. Actually forcing Labour to explain in their own words the logical consequences of their manifesto and then using that against them would see people flocking to the Conservatives.
  • NEW THREAD

  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,093
    Just been checking some of the numbers around EU salaries etc. The benefits package would make a banker blush.

    If I have it right a move from the UK to Barcelona involves a 40% cut just based on the fiddle-factors aka "Correction Coefficients" used to allow for the calculated differing cost of living.

    Fiddle-factors for several places on the list (multiple applied to basic salary and - interestingly - it seems also to pensions):

    UK (London) 141.8
    Spain 88.1
    Denmark 133.1
    Austria 104.7
    Amsterdam 108.0

    https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2016/EN/COM-2016-717-F1-EN-ANNEX-1-PART-1.PDF








  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:


    The serious point here is that many Tories, reliant as they are upon older voters and even older members, see politics through the prism of what is, to many younger people, ancient history.

    Yes and it is precisely because Old Labour governments and significantly higher taxes and nationalised industries and frequent strikes have never really been experienced by anyone over 50 so many voted for Corbyn.
    Most of the Labour vote now is voting on their lot now which is bad and getting worse. What happened decades ago is for some reason less important to them than what is happening now, nor do they accept that because something happened before it will do again.
    We may well need to experience an old Labour government again to get the message through to the under 50s sadly, though hopefully at least without a Corbyn majority.

    Remember no Labour government before Blair won a 3rd term.


    If the Tories weren't working so hard to brutalise people it would be less of a problem. Millions and millions of blue collar Tories under Thatcher. Most of them are long gone and their 2017 counterparts wouldn't vote Tory if you paid them
    Rubbish, I'm afraid. There were millions of blue collar Tories in 2017, too. Tories won the support of 41% of the C1s, 47% of the C2s (more than Labour did) and 41% of the DEs, according to this YouGov.

    https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/06/13/how-britain-voted-2017-general-election/

  • AnorakAnorak Posts: 6,621
    I'm coming to the conclusion that Brexit is part of a Grand Master Plan.

    The Establishment (or Lizard Overlords, take your pick) wish for us to join a federal Europe, including full freedom of movement and membership of Schengen. Obviously the Great British Public would stand for no such thing, because Johnny Foreigner. Thus, the only solution to was to make Britain:
    (a) utterly unappealing as a migrant destination, and
    (b) so damaged that the EU would look like the Promised Land

    Hence Brexit.
  • ToryJimToryJim Posts: 3,363

    Sandpit said:

    ToryJim said:
    So the penalty shootout isn’t happening, and we move to the replay.
    Problem is that there's no guarantee the reply will be any more decisive. The recent polling (last 5 polls, all different companies) has, to the nearest half-point (changes on the GE):

    CDU 31 (-2)
    SPD 20.5 (n/c)
    AfD 12.5 (n/c)
    FDP 10.5 (n/c)
    Grune 10.5 (+1.5)
    Linke 9.5 (+0.5)

    Again, once AfD are excluded, then the CDU/CSU becomes an essential component, which in turn means Linke cannot join the government, and so either the SPD (possibly with another), or both the Greens and FPD must - if a government is to be formed.
    Perhaps time for a thread - Is Germany ungovernable?
    Far too soon to say that. It may well that Merkel cannot sit at the apex of political power in Germany any longer.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited November 2017
    HYUFD said:

    If there are new elections I'd bet on CDU/CSU-Green governing with a majority. The FDP will suffer and the SPD are not well positioned to make gains.

    Not with the AfD still there.
    Yes, the massive danger of a second election is that the people give a big middle finger to the politicians and more votes to the AfD. German politics has been reasonably staid before, but it’s still a big risk to take.
  • david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 17,401
    edited November 2017
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    Alistair said:

    I respect that a lot more than the "For some reason I thought Trump was only doing an impression of an idiot throughout the campaign, now I wish I'd voted Clinton" crowd.
    He's going to pivot to the centre any moment now.
    Only if and probably when the Democrats win the House of Representatives next year
    I think you may have taken Alistair's post at face value when, if I read him correctly, he's spoofing the commentariat who've been wrongly predicting this for about 18 months.

    Trump will not - ever - pivot to the centre, not least because on some scores he already sits there. Trump isn't particularly ideologically right-wing. What he is is a populist rabble-rouser and he certainly isn't going to stop being that when it's the main reason he was elected in the first place and only thinks of success in terms of dollars and ratings.
    On some scores, maybe.
    But look at his appointments, with administrative and judicial, and he's nowhere even close to the centre. And it leaves him with little or no ability to pivot - not least because that would involve a hit to his vanity, which comes before all else.
    His judicial appointments will be his most lasting legacy, though I do wonder how interested he really is in them - to what extent is he making the appointments and on what basis? However, he'll just ride roughshod over his administrative appointments if he feels like it, as he already has over Pence and Tillerson at times - and if he'll do it to them, he'll do it to anyone.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,772

    A member of India's Hindu nationalist ruling party has offered a £1million reward to anyone who beheads the lead actress and the director of the yet-to-be released Bollywood film.

    The film Padmavati has sparked controversy over its alleged handling of the relationship between a Hindu queen and a Muslim ruler.

    Suraj Pal Amu, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader from the northern state of Haryana, offered the bounty against actress Deepika Padukone and filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali on Sunday.


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5099415/Bollywood-film-faces-attacks-Hindu-groups.html#ixzz4yyZwqs6B

    Puts the squealing about your picture being on the front of the Telegraph into some perspective doesn't it?
  • MortimerMortimer Posts: 13,921

    AndyJS said:

    AndyJS said:

    The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.

    There's no point whatsover to HS2. But if you think the main point was to allow someone else to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris, £120,000,000,000+ would be quite a lot to pay to deliver that.
    It's about connecting European cities by high speed train.
    You can connect them all you like, but you can't force people to go all the way by high speed train when it's still cheaper, faster and more convenient to go the way they do now.

    Once HS2 reaches Birmingham I'll certainly go to Paris by train using the Gare du Nord. However, that's no different to now, using Virgin Trains from Wolverhampton to Birmingham International and the short integrated cable powered link to Birmingham Airport, then CDG to Gard du Nord. It will still be faster, cheaper and more convenient.
    There are large numbers of people who don't actually like air travel for short haul, especially from large hubs.

    I avoid flying from anywhere other than City and Southampton, where possible.

    StP to Avignon or Bruges is an absolute dream.
  • philiphphiliph Posts: 4,704

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:


    The serious point here is that many Tories, reliant as they are upon older voters and even older members, see politics through the prism of what is, to many younger people, ancient history.

    Yes and it is precisely because Old Labour governments and significantly higher taxes and nationalised industries and frequent strikes have never really been experienced by anyone over 50 so many voted for Corbyn.
    Most of the Labour vote now is voting on their lot now which is bad and getting worse. What happened decades ago is for some reason less important to them than what is happening now, nor do they accept that because something happened before it will do again.
    We may well need to experience an old Labour government again to get the message through to the under 50s sadly, though hopefully at least without a Corbyn majority.

    Remember no Labour government before Blair won a 3rd term.
    Your fundamental misconception being that the now is better than the then. For whom sir? For you, perhaps. For them...?

    If the Tories weren't working so hard to brutalise people it would be less of a problem. Millions and millions of blue collar Tories under Thatcher. Most of them are long gone and their 2017 counterparts wouldn't vote Tory if you paid them
    Oddly enough the reality is the converse of your assertion.

    Most votes are given to a party on the perceived economic effect of the party in government on the voter.

    The more the party offers to a voter, the more likely it is to get the vote.

    That is, in effect, getting paid for a vote.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited November 2017

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:


    The serious point here is that many Tories, reliant as they are upon older voters and even older members, see politics through the prism of what is, to many younger people, ancient history.

    Yes and it is precisely because Old Labour governments and significantly higher taxes and nationalised industries and frequent strikes have never really been experienced by anyone over 50 so many voted for Corbyn.
    Most of the Labour vote now is voting on their lot now which is bad and getting worse. What happened decades ago is for some reason less important to them than what is happening now, nor do they accept that because something happened before it will do again.
    We may well need to experience an old Labour government again to get the message through to the under 50s sadly, though hopefully at least without a Corbyn majority.

    ...
    It'd still all be Thatcher's fault.
    Not when she is dead and they cannot catch a train on time, get their bins collected and see their take home pay slashed after tax.
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    edited November 2017
    TOPPING said:

    @Cyclefree snipped due to length



    Secondly, as for pay you say it is luck. I say you perhaps have forgotten how difficult it is to get a job in the City. I have a friend who interviewed for the veterans programmes. There were hundreds of applicants for six places. And that's a supposedly benign, targeted program for ex-soldiers. You say luck, I say application and determination. It's tough to get into the City and not for everyone.

    As for the 2-a day investigations, from one institution. That pushes at the very limit of belief without at all denying that it could have been and, if you say it, must have been the case: not sure which institution it was, nor the type of investigation (insider dealing? market abuse? something else?) but it seems very high indeed.

    If you had to conduct two investigations a day for misconduct from one City firm for five years then I can well understand your cynicism.

    I have not forgotten how difficult it is to get a job in the City. But how much you get paid thereafter is not solely determined by how hard you work. If you think that you are in for a surprise. And not a good one. I would impress that point very forcibly on anyone who gets a job in the City.

    It was 13 years. At one institution. Not all the matters related to that institution. And not all of them were criminal. (Thank God!). And it was not 5000 people. All too often the same people came up. I am well aware of all the people who are not themselves under investigation. I have spent time doing advisory work, precisely because after a period as a litigator (earlier in my career) I wanted to spend time with employees who were trying to get thing right rather than when it all went wrong. It was a very valuable experience. And it is one reason why I got into training as well as investigation, precisely in order to show the people who do the right thing that they are not mugs for doing the right thing.

    But the cultural/conduct problems in the City don't primarily relate to the wrongdoers but to too many of those around them who often failed to enforce the right or any standards, who helped create - almost without realising, possibly, because these things were not talked about or thought important - an environment in which good people became ethically blind.

    That is a problem in a lot of sectors not just the City.

    I am cynical. But cynics are often people who have high expectations about how things ought to be and are disappointed that they aren't. It's a form of self-protection, as much as anything. I think the financial services sector - a trusted, efficient one - matters and I would like to play my part, however small, in helping it and the people in it to live up to the best of themselves.

    But I refuse to buy the bullshit which all too often emanates from those who are - and have been for far too long - too unwilling to confront the realities of their industry.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Cyclefree said:

    TOPPING said:

    @Cyr cynicism.

    I have not forgotten how difficult it is to get a job in the City. But how much you get paid thereafter is not solely determined by how hard you work. If you think that you are in for a surprise. And not a good one. I would impress that point very forcibly on anyone who gets a job in the City.

    It was 13 years. At one institution. Not all the matters related to that institution. And not all of them were criminal. (Thank God!). And it was not 5000 people. All too often the same people came up. I am well aware of all the people who are not themselves under investigation. I have spent time doing advisory work, precisely because after a period as a litigator (earlier in my career) I wanted to spend time with employees who were trying to get thing right rather than when it all went wrong. It was a very valuable experience. And it is one reason why I got into training as well as investigation, precisely in order to show the people who do the right thing that they are not mugs for doing the right thing.

    But the cultural/conduct problems in the City don't primarily relate to the wrongdoers but to too many of those around them who often failed to enforce the right or any standards, who helped create - almost without realising, possibly, because these things were not talked about or thought important - an environment in which good people became ethically blind.

    That is a problem in a lot of sectors not just the City.

    I am cynical. But cynics are often people who have high expectations about how things ought to be and are disappointed that they aren't. It's a form of self-protection, as much as anything. I think the financial services sector - a trusted, efficient one - matters and I would like to play my part, however small, in helping it and the people in it to live up to the best of themselves.

    But I refuse to buy the bullshit which all too often emanates from those who are - and have been for far too long - too unwilling to confront the realities of their industry.
    switching to new thread!
This discussion has been closed.