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OwlFancier posted:Have they got an actual bad ones or just a lack of offerings? 2 billion for potholes is about as spicy as it gets so far, i would say they're hoping "get brexit done" will carry them. they absolutely do not want to engage with anything more than that from what i've seen, aim seems to be to cancel politics entirely. they're banking on resentment and nihilism of the voters completely here. gh0stpinballa fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 04:39
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£0 social care. £0 education. £0 houses that don't go on fire. £2,000,000,000 potholes someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this my country is dying
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Nov 24, 2019 04:46
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OwlFancier posted:£0 social care. Nice
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Nov 24, 2019 04:50
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e: stupid double post ghost
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Nov 24, 2019 04:50
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Greatly appreciate all the serious responses to Tai, whether they were asking in good faith or not. Lot of good stuff in there. Regarding them not responding, though, you do realise it's the middle of the night, yeah? They might have posted that and then gone to bed with plans to read stuff in the morning. Maybe hold off on "OP running scared" until the afternoon at least.
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Nov 24, 2019 05:29
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Phone posting so I can't go into detail but I do have some asides to add to the ongoing discussion. The Tories since Cameron have a different definition of privatisation than Labour. Tories in their rhetoric hold that an industry isn't privatised if it is free at the point of delivery, where Labour sees having the state buy some of its services from third party private businesses, where they were originally provided directly by state owned organisations, as privatisation. This is how you end up with some of the bizarre exchanges that we've seen in the debates where Jeremy rails against Tory privatisation, and Boris then argues sincerely that the NHS won't be put up for sale. I just felt it's worth knowing that they speak different languages at times and it's important to know what they mean when they say "the NHS is not for sale". Jeremy means we're going to put the facilities back into public ownership. Boris means he wants the NHS to be free at the point of delivery but will be willing to pay private businesses to deliver that for profit on the government pound. Azza Bamboo fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 06:13
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Guavanaut posted:I'm voting Ms Adequate for sound methods for dealing with holes. 
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Nov 24, 2019 06:30
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Azza Bamboo posted:Phone posting so I can't go into detail but I do have some asides to add to the ongoing discussion. I think this is part of it, but I also think the tories are probably still looking to get rid of the free provision in the long term. But the UK has always favoured pouring government money to private businesses, so it's probably that in the short term.
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Nov 24, 2019 06:34
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Necrothatcher posted:I spent an hour tonight chatting to a guy in a pub who makes 100k+ from his own business who is extremely suspicious of Corbyn and Labour's economic policies. However, he's voting Labour because he knows that the Tories' hard Brexit would tank his business. Not sure that's a universal experience. Had a meeting a bit ago where all the leave voters (including the md) expressed genuine shock that we might have to pay to export to the EU post Brexit, even though, quote 'that's how much it costs us to send stuff to Turkey.'
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Nov 24, 2019 07:39
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Pilchenstein posted:I feel like I should point out that I don't think the correct response to "austerity was unfortunate but we have to live within our means" is to explain how national debt is unlike a household credit card - it makes it seem as though you're making excuses and ceding the point that there's not enough money to pay for social programs. The correct response (in my opinion) is "there's plenty of money, so gently caress off" I think that explaining how money actually works matters immensely, because money IS kinda important and most people don't have a clue where it actually comes from or why government debt is completely different to household debt. I honestly think that people's ignorance of the mechanics of money is at least partially wilful. To reflect on the fact that the thing we depend on to buy everything is an imaginary social construct, created out of thin air by banks and governments and that only continues to exist as long as we agree to collectively believe that it does can be uncomfortable. It's like when you're on a flight: that's not the best time to be deeply considering that below your seat is a thin shell of metal, then several miles of empty air. The Bank of England has a good primer on how money is created and regulated in the uk, here: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy quote:Commercial banks create money, in the form of bank deposits, by making new loans. When a bank makes a loan, for example to someone taking out a mortgage to buy a house, it does not typically do so by giving them thousands of pounds worth of banknotes. Instead, it credits their bank account with a bank deposit of the size of the mortgage. At that moment, new money is created. For this reason, some economists have referred to bank deposits as ‘fountain pen money’, created at the stroke of bankers’ pens when they approve loans.
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Nov 24, 2019 08:44
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Praseodymi posted:Not sure that's a universal experience. Had a meeting a bit ago where all the leave voters (including the md) expressed genuine shock that we might have to pay to export to the EU post Brexit, even though, quote 'that's how much it costs us to send stuff to Turkey.' Yeah my company seem to think they're Brexit proof despite one of our biggest clients making all their money from hauliers, and 2 other clients who are based on France.
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Nov 24, 2019 08:54
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OwlFancier posted:I think the bigger worry might be that boris has gills in his ears. I'm pretty sure my ears don't have that bit. It probably does. There's a wierd little upward facing ridge there.
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Nov 24, 2019 08:54
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RockyB posted:This is a fair point. However the context the general public sees these polls in is having them signal boosted by the big media companies as the sole source of truth on how the campaign is going. I was always leery about the poll of polls concept, even back when I was working on stringer/election tracking software for <X> around the time of the Scottish Independence referendum. The reliance on it has gotten much worse over the last five years.  Excellent post, and I hope you do write that effortpost at some point 
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Nov 24, 2019 08:59
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Angepain posted:pot holes will no longer be a problem once jeremy corbyn replaces all the roads with trains Jeremy also has an extremely in-depth knowledge of manhole covers, cultivated for just such an occasion
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Nov 24, 2019 09:09
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What's the betting that "free hospital parking" involves just ordering the NHS Trusts to pay the private parking charges and not providing any increase in funding to cover it. Though I'm not a huge fan of the pensions intervention Labour are promising either tbh. With all the things that desperately need investment in this country, using £58bn as just a direct cash bribe to boomers doesn't seem like the most inspiring use of money.
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Nov 24, 2019 09:12
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I mean they're also refusing to increase pension age past 65, which is good, because you shouldn't have to work until you die. And poor people die earlier than rich people. Striclty speaking NHS investment is also mostly gonna go to boomers because old people use it a lot more than anyone else. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 09:14
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peanut- posted:What's the betting that "free hospital parking" involves just ordering the NHS Trusts to pay the private parking charges and not providing any increase in funding to cover it. The WASPI women I feel are a special case. I'm not quite old enough to be so badly caught up in it. When I was 40, my state retirement age was 60. By the time I hit 45 it was suddenly 67. And now it is 66 and a bit. For those women just say 5 years older than me, this change would have hit when they were 50. Many of these women grew up into adulthood at a time when a woman was expected to quit work when she got married (say in her early 20s) - this was still a thing which women would be under some pressure to do when I entered the workforce and it was still legal for employers to discriminate against women on the grounds that they might get married and have babies - and stay out of the workforce until their kids had left home, thereupon taking on some 'pin money' part time work never accruing any national insurance contributions. There was also a thing called 'married woman's stamp'. My mother (well over WASPI age) elected to pay 'full stamp' and so has always had a pension earned in her own right whereas many women didn't. (Mother was the first woman in her family to get educated so she had a professional job. My great grandma was widowed at 25 and worked at numerous back-breaking jobs to make ends meet, and my grandma too. Great-grandma left money in her will specifically for mother's education. She still had a tussle with her father who wanted her to leave school at 15). Getting employers to take on anyone over 50 let alone women who have spent their lives raising kids is tough. And do you recall that tory MP who said women over 60 should do apprenticeships (on £3.45 per hour or whatever it is now)? How many employers are going to take on 60+ year old apprentices? Suddenly women who expected to retire at 60 are told they have to find another 6 years work at the same time as older people are being told to get out of the workplace to make room for younger people who need jobs, when the prospect of a job, let alone one paying anything approaching a living wage is slight, and for more than a few of these women they will be caring for aged parents, ill spouses, doing 'baby-sitting' of grand children - providing a huge unpaid service to the economy. I'm a nerd and I read financial pages. I was aware of the upcoming changes for some years. Very many people aren't - especially slightly older women. The government propaganda on the subject was pathetic. This advert was supposed to alert women to changes, can you honestly say you would have realized that's what it was for?  Ed: this is also a time-limited thing - it's a specific group of women and will phase out over 5-6 years as they pass age 66. Ed2: also, the equal pay act didn't get passed until 1975 so women were routinely paid less than men for the same work (I have some idea it was around 2/3rd the male wages) and even later before 'equivalent work' became a thing'. Jaeluni Asjil fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 09:27
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Yeah, calling pensions a bribe to boomers is kind of... harsh? I mean, it is money that will largely GO to boomers, but given that it's money they paid in over the course of their life that they will be unable to live without... I struggle to see it as a problem.
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Nov 24, 2019 09:29
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It's also a good rhetorical tactic because it forces the tories to tell the olds "gently caress you you're not getting any money".
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Nov 24, 2019 09:35
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It's also a good counterpoint to the extremely dumb "you're just bribing young people to vote for you" argument
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Nov 24, 2019 09:39
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thespaceinvader posted:Yeah, calling pensions a bribe to boomers is kind of... harsh? They didn't pay it over the course of their life though. Not aiming that specifically at WASPI women who didn't work, boomers in general didn't pay anything like enough tax to cover the various pension entitlements they granted themselves. The younger generations are paying for it, in the same way that they will spend literally their entire lives paying for everything that has been done over the last 10 years to shield boomers from suffering any financial consequences of the 2008 crash. Making posts like this makes me feel Tory and I hate it, but there is a lack of appreciation of the staggering extent of the wealth transfer that has happened from the young to the old over the last decade.
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Nov 24, 2019 09:43
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I mean that's the nature of a pension... you stop working and are sustained by the labour of those younger than you.
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Nov 24, 2019 09:45
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OwlFancier posted:I mean that's the nature of a pension... you stop working and are sustained by the labour of those younger than you. It's a deferred wage.
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Nov 24, 2019 09:48
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You can call it what you want but ultimately the alternative is everyone fends for themselves into old age, which seems poo poo? I mean I guess the other alternative is carousel but I'm not enormously keen on that either and I'm not sure it's a vote winner.
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Nov 24, 2019 09:52
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Another few years in power and the Tories will start floating plans to sell off the NHS Pension scheme (I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already written a plan for it).
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Nov 24, 2019 09:56
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Pilchenstein posted:Never forget that austerity was always about murdering the poor and disabled and had literally loving nothing to do with saving money. Be incredibly suspicious of any oval office that tries to tell you otherwise. Disabled here, who has lost friends. Yes, it loving was. 
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Nov 24, 2019 09:58
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peanut- posted:They didn't pay it over the course of their life though. Not aiming that specifically at WASPI women who didn't work, boomers in general didn't pay anything like enough tax to cover the various pension entitlements they granted themselves. Part of this though is that people are living longer thanks to better health care (ed: men typically lived just 2 years post retirement eg my grandad born 1910 or died before retirement eg my other grandad died aged 49 after years in a foundry), but counter to that people are also healthier longer. My mother now in her early 80s is far fitter and healthier than her mother when she was in her 60s. There does also seem to be an idea ITT that boomer pensioners are all rolling in wealth, many of them are poverty-stricken. I wish younger people had grants to go to Uni but back then the number of students going to uni was quite a small percentage. Opening up higher education to all and the introduction of student loans are inextricably linked in my mind. It had the benefit of reducing unemployment figures at lower cost to govt without necessarily improving work opportunities because jobs for which O and A levels had previously been sufficient qualification suddenly required degrees. I also think that whatever the plan was when you entered the workforce regarding NI and pensions, then that should be the bottom line throughout your working life (though improvements are allowed). (Ed: ok it would take 30-40 years for changes to work through but if we can waste £200bn on trident, we have the money). I mean look at the nonsense with National Insurance - for decades it was 48 years(for my parents born just before WW2). Then it changed to 30 years for a few years (which is what it was when I quit full time work because of stress) and then it went up to 35 years so suddenly I have to find an extra 5 years - woe is me etc.. That was all in the space of about 10 years. How can anyone plan on that basis? To cut a long story short - we need a total restructuring of society because the 'old ways' of "get born go to school work - one job/career for 30-40 years - get married have babies retire die a couple of years later" no longer works. Jaeluni Asjil fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 09:58
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Really appreciate the replies to Tai's questions, even if they weren't asked in good faith. It's definitely helped me clarify a few points here and there! I get the feeling it's easy to forget that there's not a huge amount of helpful info floating around out there for the average person. It exists, yeah, but the average person also hears the constant smears at Corbyn and the Labour party and it's not unreasonable to think some people might accept that at face value. It's really important to understand that so work can be done to undo the damage. So when someone goes "But antisemitism!" or "but where's the money going to come from?" or "Corbyn's a terrorist!" people like me, who want to help convince people of what's actually the truth here, can have a foundation to make these arguments and start help changing people's minds.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:00
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Was a few pages back but for all of those wedded to gas as the best form of cooking and heating you’re poo poo out of luck, it’s electric (and decentralised district heating where possible) all the way. Hot water taps + induction hobs + insulating more than a wet paper bag + behind the meter solar + smart meters = the removal of the ‘goes bang’ element from domestic supplies, allows for decarbonisation and use of renewables faster and has the added benefit of improving investment cases into decarbonisation of transport as well.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:06
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gh0stpinballa posted:2 billion for potholes is about as spicy as it gets so far, i would say they're hoping "get brexit done" will carry them. they absolutely do not want to engage with anything more than that from what i've seen, aim seems to be to cancel politics entirely. they're banking on resentment and nihilism of the voters completely here. The Tories want to get Brexit done? Let's get Boris done   Here you see Corbyn defeating Tony Bloris because I'm lazy and I like that emote 
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Nov 24, 2019 10:07
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OwlFancier posted:I mean that's the nature of a pension... you stop working and are sustained by the labour of those younger than you. But the economics of it right now are completely broken. As a younger person you are not paying now for a system that will in turn be there to support you. You're paying for a very specific group of people to receive a level of benefit that no-one following them will ever receive. If you normalise for housing costs, the income of the retired is now higher than those in work, this is not a sustainable model. I think if most people were offered the chance to turn the NHS into the most swish, luxurious and perfect healthcare system there ever was for it's current users, with the proviso that it will completely vanish in 30 years they'd think that was stupid and selfish. But that's more or less the trade-off we're currently making with shovelling ever more money into boomer pensions.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:11
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Some really good posting last night, both twisto with another fascinating effortpost and good faith replies to the right wing talking points. I also don't begrudge people who've had enough of that poo poo and told said poster to gently caress off, but it was genuinely heartening to see some really useful responses. Your efforts are appreciated
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Nov 24, 2019 10:11
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peanut- posted:But the economics of it right now are completely broken. As a younger person you are not paying now for a system that will in turn be there to support you. You're paying for a very specific group of people to receive a level of benefit that no-one following them will ever receive. If you normalise for housing costs, the income of the retired is now higher than those in work, this is not a sustainable model. So perhaps the solution is simply taxing the wealthy and transferring their wealth back to the young while ensuring a decent floor for the old? If you're wealthy at an old age that's not because of your state pension, it's because of a lot of other things. I've had plenty of family on a state pension and it isn't some absurd amount of money, for most of them it was barely enough to get by when factoring in social care costs. Dismantling the state pension system, to use your analogy, would be like dismantling the NHS on the basis that the old and rich should have to pay health insurance. Ultimately, unless you're going to advocate for mandatory culling, or some other form of reducing life expectancy, it is necessary to find a way to ensure a basic level of welfare for the elderly however long they live, and the state pension is currently about at that level. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 10:22 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 10:14
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OwlFancier posted:So perhaps the solution is simply taxing the wealthy and transferring their wealth back to the young while ensuring a decent floor for the old? If you're wealthy at an old age that's not because of your state pension, it's because of a lot of other things. I've had plenty of family on a state pension and it isn't some absurd amount of money, for most of them it was barely enough to get by when factoring in social care costs. Indeed. The state should help to support people, and there is no way the private sector will do so unless forced to by the state. Spinning things as the young in general versus the old in general is just another tactic by the wealthy to deflect public anger from themselves. Do not fall for the Right's attempts to incrementally destroy the welfare state. Instead, focus on incrementally expanding the welfare state, for example by paying WASPI women what they were promised. Non-incremental expansion of our efforts to care for each other is even better. Do both
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Nov 24, 2019 10:29
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I mean I am actually very much for the age war in general but state pensions are like... just not a very good way to go about it even in that instance, because they're really kind of an example of how it should work for everyone. Much like the NHS, or council housing.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:31
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:The WASPI women I feel are a special case. I'm not quite old enough to be so badly caught up in it. When I was 40, my state retirement age was 60. By the time I hit 45 it was suddenly 67. And now it is 66 and a bit. For those women just say 5 years older than me, this change would have hit when they were 50. Jaeluni is excellentposting on this subject and in my opinion should have it added to their current remit of buses. Olds love buses, and buses love olds, so this is a match made in heaven
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Nov 24, 2019 10:36
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Found out that a friend of mine is not even registered to vote, because “it’s not worth it” and “they’re all the same”, and I think that poo poo makes me even angrier that somebody who plans to vote Conservative. The sheer arrogant privilege of not being bothered enough about the huge numbers of homeless people you see every day or the enormous A&E wait times, to say nothing of even bigger (but not within direct experience) issues like hundreds of thousands of austerity deaths… gently caress, man, if that’s not even worth a ten minute walk to the polling place then your priorities are truly disgusting.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:36
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bessantj posted:Some people really are unhinged when it comes to Momentum. I've seen a few comments now that say they're a cult like Scientology. We, you mean. Like half the thread is in Momentum Slack. If we're antifa supersoldier thugs then I missed the memo somehow.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:39
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That was actually my reaction to the alan moore thing. Like great sure alan it's nice that the hermit has decided to wander down off the mountain and tell us all how they'll be deigning to join us this year in politely saying no to the slaughter but you might have tried that at some point previously in your life.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:39
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feedmegin posted:We, you mean. Like half the thread is in Momentum Slack. If we're antifa supersoldier thugs then I missed the memo somehow. Most of the momentum types round my way are in their 60s and 70s, go to church on sundays and knit their own yoghurt. There's probably 2 in the whole CLP who even begin to approach (in appearance anyway if not deed) the popular public impression of Momentum Thugs.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:43
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