kingturnip posted:

Don't bother responding to Exioce, they are either trolling or completely unwilling to actually engage with discussion.

Beefeater1980 posted:

The big question about housing is, if nobody gets to be a landlord and make money off renting privately (which would probably be a good thing), who gets to live in a smart detached house and who gets to live in Apt. 42 Suicide Towers? Do you have the government/ council become the monopoly landlord?

Secondary questions are things like who pays for maintenance, who takes care of it if a neighbour lets rats in or doesn’t maintain a party wall, who can decide they don’t like the layout of the front room or they want to drill holes into a wall to put a picture up, etc. The current system makes it clear where responsibility lies for each item, some by statue and some based on conventions that are then written into tenancy agreements.

Tertiary questions are things like does the government compensate construction workers whose employers go out of business because the private demand has gone down and/or government contracts have been awarded to another company?

None of these are reasons not to change the system, but I think that taken together, they make a pretty compelling case for changing it relatively slowly by progressively making it less and less attractive to own a rental property, eg by very heavy taxation that looks through to who derived the ultimate economic benefit.
A side benefit is that it would eat away at the rental income of the major landowners, probably limiting their political power too.

duckmaster posted:

Reverse-pedantry: this is in Scotland

Guavanaut posted:

With the Common Ground Trust idea, you'd own the home that you buy, and you'd pay ground rent to the CGT, who would own the land.

It's reformist rather than revolutionary, but it's a good starter for getting our Commons back. You'd still have all the rights and responsibilities that fall under the ancient Common Law principle of noli esse mentula, even if I owned my terraced house outright through some kind of allodial title, I'd still have some responsibilities not to knock a hole through next door, or remove supporting structures to cause damage to other people. A CGT could even help with this, because it provides some kind of non-court forum for discussion.

The ideal end state is that the occupancy of dwellings is based on need, but this is one of many steps to get even close to there.

Exioce posted:

Are you forgetting to consider our planning laws, by any chance? The one criticism you can't throw at neoliberalism economics is that it doesn't produce stuff. If there are profits to be had it will gently caress like bunnies, and there's a whole lot of money to be made from building houses.

Beefeater1980 posted:

The big question about housing is, if nobody gets to be a landlord and make money off renting privately (which would probably be a good thing), who gets to live in a smart detached house and who gets to live in Apt. 42 Suicide Towers? Do you have the government/ council become the monopoly landlord?

GreyjoyBastard posted:

I'm gonna have to look into this CGT thing, it sounds interesting.

even if i suspect you're just making up latin words

Exioce posted:

Well, I'd like to see ol Jezza Corbs wriggle his way out of THIS housing crisis!

*UKMT explain how this can be done easily*

Ah! Well. Nevertheless,

Exioce posted:

Are you forgetting to consider our planning laws, by any chance? The one criticism you can't throw at neoliberalism economics is that it doesn't produce stuff. If there are profits to be had it will gently caress like bunnies, and there's a whole lot of money to be made from building houses.

xtothez posted:

John Oliver made a bigger deal of Johnson breaking his 'dead in a ditch' promise than the BBC did today, and managed to throw in a line about him showing that 'big ditch energy' to boot.

Guavanaut posted:

jabby posted:

https://twitter.com/PolhomeEditor/status/1188946168358883328
gently caress's sake.

Beefeater1980 posted:

None of these are reasons not to change the system, but I think that taken together, they make a pretty compelling case for changing it relatively slowly by progressively making it less and less attractive to own a rental property, eg by very heavy taxation that looks through to who derived the ultimate economic benefit.
A side benefit is that it would eat away at the rental income of the major landowners, probably limiting their political power too.

jabby posted:

https://twitter.com/PolhomeEditor/status/1188946168358883328
gently caress's sake.

Pesmerga posted:

It’s funny how anything said in this thread that goes against the consensus is suddenly FBPE, when this is about Labour getting dragged into an election it claimed it wanted and has been ready for since 2017 in a way that every other party can start all campaigning with ‘and Labour didn’t even want this election anyway’.

jabby posted:

End of the day democratising the party doesn't mean all the votes will go your way.

According to this Guardian article Momentum-backed candidates are still winning the majority of contested selections, and the so-called 'hard Left' could end up with 45-55 seats in the next Parliament. Maybe not a drastic reshaping of the party, but having enough Corbyn supporters to guarantee a left-wing candidate on the ballot in the next leadership election is a fairly big victory.

thespaceinvader posted:

There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

We were never at war with Oceania.


They should be put into circulation, then all the people who want Brexit for stupid reasons can have one, we'll make the passports blue, and quietly sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Sanitary Naptime posted:

loving how???

Red Oktober posted:

I’ve always felt this is a way to deal with it. Passports blue, number plates without an EU Flag and have to queue in the different lanes at the airport and got different duty free. I think 90% of people would struggle to name any other differences from membership. Your average vote absolutely does not know how EU laws are formed and moved into British law.

Sanitary Naptime posted:

loving how???

Exioce posted:

Are you forgetting to consider our planning laws, by any chance? The one criticism you can't throw at neoliberalism economics is that it doesn't produce stuff. If there are profits to be had it will gently caress like bunnies, and there's a whole lot of money to be made from building houses.

Okay, so you say this is not all handwavey and you've thought this through in a serious manner. Then tell me, what are the starting policies, what are their effects on the wider economy and society, how much they will cost, where the money is to come from, and the effect of getting funding from the source that you intend to? To have an answer to those things shows seriousness. Here, I'll start us off:

1. Jeremy Corbyn gets elected PM
2. He implements ________________
3. It has the effects of _______________ on Group A, ________________ on Group B, ________________ on Group C, ______________ on Group D, _______________ on Group E
4. It costs __________________
5. The money comes from __________________
6. The effect of sourcing funds from there is __________________

Exioce posted:

The one criticism you can't throw at neoliberalism economics is that it doesn't produce stuff.

Azza Bamboo posted:

It was never about the passports, it was never about the EU tag on the cars, and while I disagree with brexiters on brexit I will say they will be angry that they've been fobbed off.

dispatch_async posted:

https://twitter.com/tompeck/status/1188870324374441984
https://twitter.com/tompeck/status/1188874444204335104

really enjoying how mad Tom Peck is about Corbyn being funnier than him

Carborundum posted:

Guess that explains the massive growth in industrial production in the UK over the last 40 years. Oh, wait...

I'm sure you've met some annoying Marxists in your life but I don't really get what that has to do with anything. If you're at all serious, try to actually engage with some of the answers you've had.

bump_fn posted:

can someone itt with a financial times subscription post this article thanks

https://twitter.com/EuroBriefing/status/1188748402982567937

quote:

Europe needs to solve its collective action problem
Too often the interests of EU member states are not aligned

The news is less dramatic than Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria, or our daily fix of Brexit news. But it is hard to overestimate the importance of German chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow Huawei, the Chinese telecoms group, to bid for Germany’s 5G mobile network.

This is the quintessential instance of EU’s collective action problem: a large European country makes a unilateral decision to the detriment of other member states of the bloc.

Germany’s constitutional balanced budget rule is another example. I would classify it as the single most stupid economic policy decision taken by a G7 country in my lifetime. It artificially constrains the ability of fiscal policy to stabilise the economy at a time when monetary policy has hit the limits. The governance of the eurozone is the grandfather of the EU’s collective action problems. Huawei is the grandchild.

The issues with Huawei’s 5G bid will become clear much sooner: the company exposes the EU to security risks. Unless the German parliament manages to overturn Ms Merkel’s decision, other countries are bound to follow. This in turn will limit the EU’s ability to develop an industrial policy towards China. It would be a diplomatic own goal on a scale similar to US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull American troops out of Syria.

There are technical and commercial reasons for Germany to favour the Huawei bid. German telecom operators are already invested in Huawei’s technology. And the German economy would take a hit if China were to respond to a Huawei ban in kind. But these economic effects are small compared to the wider implications. Two of the world’s three 5G producers, Nokia and Ericsson, are European. Why not let European companies build the EU’s 5G network?

As a Chinese company, Huawei would struggle to dispel doubts about its ability to shield sensitive EU data from the Chinese security services.

The EU cannot base its industrial strategy on the illusory hope that a Chinese-owned company might stand up to Chinese politicians or defy Chinese law. 5G is not simply another telephone network. It will be a critical component of the telecommunications infrastructure on which much of our future commercial activity will be based.

By its nature, the EU is not well equipped to deal with this type of problem. It is good at triangulating between the divergent interests of its members, but not at developing a coherent geopolitical strategy. For example, the EU has failed to leverage the euro into a foreign policy tool. Foreign policy was not on member states’ minds when they created monetary union. And despite some minor reforms here and there, the eurozone’s governance framework is still similar to what it was 20 years ago.

A small-country mindset doesn’t simply disappear when states come together to form a union. And today’s policy debate in the eurozone is still full of single-country obsessions like competitiveness and fiscal rules. A similar mindset afflicts foreign policy. In contrast to the Americans, Chinese or Russians, Europeans are framing foreign policy in terms of relationships, not interests. Interest-based policies are discretionary by definition. But the EU is rules-based. As central bankers are only too well aware, rules and discretion do not happily coexist.

The EU has shown that it can act forcefully when there is near-unanimity, as was the case when national leaders responded to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. But that was an exception. More typical has been the failure to agree a joint immigration policy. Immigration is a classic collective action problem where interests are not aligned.

If there is a foreign policy strategy, it is to support exports. The business model of Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and other EU countries is to run trade surpluses against the rest of the world. Foreign policy is a byproduct of the resulting vulnerabilities.

My thinking about the EU’s future is close to that of French president Emmanuel Macron. He is right to keep reminding the EU that it needs a stronger centre. I also agree with his strategy of maximum disruption of the EU status quo. Nothing else works.

Mr Macron was right to veto EU accession to North Macedonia and Albania until after reforms are agreed and implemented. The biggest task facing the EU is to get better, not bigger. He is also right to question the purpose of yet another Brexit extension. The European Council’s indecision on Brexit distracts from the more important issue of reforming the EU and the eurozone.

Some of the needed reforms would require a change of the European treaties. But this should not stop the EU from addressing some of its collective action failures right now. A joint policy on 5G would be a good start.

Chuka Umana posted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/northernireland/comments/dm23ze/thats_not_a_balaclava_its_a_hat_to_keep_my_head/

Tell me again how the PSNI is any different from the RUC?