|
LemonDrizzle posted:Unfortunately, this is likely to be an ongoing feature of the brexit farce, with the EU perspective on the proceedings being primarily reported in non-English language sources and thus less visible to the UK public. Oh dear. I shall cling to the folorn hope that this is also a bit of psychological warfare ahead of the election given the Commission sources. But sadly, I think it all rings quite true. 
|
#
¿
May 1, 2017 00:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 04:25 |
|
|
Oberleutnant posted:I presume that noted war criminal Tony Blair will be "entering the debate" via the medium of a webcast from the criminal state of Israel where he resides in shamefaced exile from fear of potential prosecution for war crimes. I seem to remember a few articles some months ago saying he was moving his entire office (I presume there are many people employed there) back into London, so he had a base to campaign on Brexit from. He may actually here, in which case it's worth mentioning there is still £10k in the kitty if you manage a citizen's arrest. Taintrunner posted:American here, is there any reason I don't want Corbyn to win? If you care about NATO, it probably wouldn't be good news. Or if you needed a trusty sidekick for general military interventionism. More generally, I can't imagine Trump - Corbyn relations being anything other than catastrophic, so it would be bad news for our diplomatic relationship generally.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2017 09:24
|
|
|
What if I want the clown costume version?
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2017 11:24
|
|
|
jBrereton posted:Not really. Labour have not been in government, they have been in squeezed local government. People understand that. This is definitely not the case, at least in my neck of the woods. I'm often not able to get to the end of the sentence when I talk about the impact of cuts to central government funding, before their eyes glaze over and/or they just interrupt with "it's all excuses, isn't it?!" I don't think the man on the street even understands that councils are partly funded by central government or is able to link the closure of services in Labour councils with central government cuts by the Conservatives. Which I'm sure is exactly why the Tories are cutting left and right but protecting their own councils.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2017 14:06
|
|
|
Pissflaps posted:I'll be sure to use this great new 'alternate history' line whenever anybody suggests literally anything could or should be different. I'd like a pony please.
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2017 23:43
|
|
|
Paul Nuttall: "You can give me ten Jeremy Corbyn's over one Tony Blair anyday." Slightly unexpected.
|
|
#
¿
May 4, 2017 23:51
|
|
|
That Freedland article is confirmed as a piece of shite when you get close to the end:quote:Why are they so stubborn? It can’t be a tenacious commitment to socialism. Corbyn and McDonnell’s programme includes nothing remotely as leftwing as, say, the £5bn windfall tax on the utilities promised, and implemented, 20 years ago by the supposed “evil neoliberal” Tony Blair. Yeah, there's no policies that have been talked about that dwarf £5bn. None at all.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2017 21:54
|
|
|
Paxman posted:Well I"m not a Corbyn fan but I suspect his legacy might be that Labour politicians realise they can't just present themselves as nicer Tories any more. Sadly, I think they'll conclude the exact opposite from a Corbyn landslide defeat. There will be lots of talk about how they need to be a credible party of the center and it will be business as usual. On the plus side, I read an article on the Beeb today that said taking national projections from the local election results would give Theresa May an increased majority, but not a landslide victory.
|
|
#
¿
May 5, 2017 23:07
|
|
|
Did some campaigning this morning in a Labour leaning area. Quite a few I spoke to were already voting Labour and there were lots of cars honking at the banner, but there was a fair share of people who wouldn't talk, but it's hard to know whether that was because they were voting for someone else or they didn't care about politics. A fair number of people saying they weren't voting Labour because of Corbyn, but also several saying they were voting for the local candidate anyway. Quite a few voters generally for whom Brexit transcended usual party lines; they want a hard Brexit and are prepared to switch their voting to make sure they get it - 'standing up to Brussels' or 'fighting against Europe' came up a bit. One angry Brexiteer (stereotypical human thumb) had voted Labour all his life, but wasn't going to this time, because Corbyn "doesn't have the loving balls to stick two fingers up at Brussels" so I guess he was going UKIP or the Conservatives. There's a lot of people who have bought the 'us vs them' rhetoric on Europe sadly. Praseodymi posted:Have we talked about this loving disgusting piece from the Scum? https://twitter.com/therubykid/status/863331572010897408 gently caress me. That is such a bizarre article. Such a misleading piece also, in that Palestine, Malaya, Berlin and Yangtze all happened before he was born. The entire first column happened before he was 18. Biggus Dickus posted:They are stored encrypted rather than hashed because websites expect them in plain text. All browsers do this. Isn't the difference that Chrome doesn't offer encryption of its password database with a master password? Regarde Aduck posted:The few times i've been to hospital the medical staff were all lovely but the reception staff treated everyone like scum and were always in foul moods. This is some sort of universal law of medicine.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 15:18
|
|
|
Regarde Aduck posted:It's almost like all the olds that voted for the UK to leave are committed to voting Tories to make sure the job is done. While that does excuse the lead, it doesn't excuse Labour's failed attempt to court these lost causes. Trouble is, a strategy of "don't try and attract the votes from anyone over 35" (or even just over 65) just wouldn't be credible for a party that wishes to form a government.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 21:18
|
|
|
Pissflaps posted:Labour's strategy is to shore up its vote in safe seats at the expense of marginals precisely to give the leadership - and people like you - something to point to as some sort of 'success' in the form of national vote share. Welcome back. This is complete horseshit, as you would realise if you were receiving the campaigning emails specifically directing everyone to assist in key marginals. vv Agreed, that's pretty funny.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 23:19
|
|
|
Pissflaps posted:Which marginals have you been directed to assist in and how has your assistance manifested itself? Generally, Momentum have produced a tool called 'Find My Nearest Marginal', to direct you to the closest ones. Their emails contain phrases like "[in the last three weeks] we've knocked on thousands of doors in marginal constituencies". The call to action in the emails is "Help us flood marginals with activists." As I'm sure you won't count Momentum as valid evidence, I'm on the mailing lists for the Labour party in two different parts of the country. One is sending emails (I've got 5from them) containing "There are 6 key marginal seats we are working extremely hard and putting all our resources into to defend and win, so please join us for a few hours in your nearest key marginal seat." The other is a slightly more local mailing list and refers to nothing other than campaigning in the marginal constituency I happen to inhabit. My assistance has manifested itself in turning up to local party meetings, manning a stall, delivering leaflets and doorknocking. It's simply incorrect to claim that the party's money and resources isn't going into fighting marginal seats.
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 23:44
|
|
|
Pissflaps posted:I've just tired the tool and it's told me to go and be an activist 50 miles away in York Central (Labour majority 6,716) rather than where I live (Labour majority 2,268). I'm sure this is a Momentum plot to cunningly name their app 'Find My Nearest Marginal' while directing activists to less marginal seats in an effort to sabotage the election result (it works for me). Edit: Thanks for the explanation Jabby 
|
|
#
¿
May 13, 2017 23:52
|
|
|
Pissflaps posted:I think it's the prioritising of vote share over number of parliamentary seats. Or given you've now seen evidence that the party is pouring all of its resources into marginals, perhaps you're just wrong? Unless you have evidence to the contrary?
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2017 00:00
|
|
|
Pissflaps posted:Well, I've seen your words in bold - something I'm a big fan of for added emphasis - but it hardly counts as 'evidence'. If emails from the party to its activists don't count as evidence of what the party is telling its activists to do, what does?
|
|
#
¿
May 14, 2017 00:14
|
|
|
Trickjaw posted:I think we may have found Pissflaps day job. This is amazing. "Evelyn burst into tears and I yelled [at 13 year-old Corbyn] 'Ho! You've killed my sister's rabbit, you wretched Commie!" Bonus points for "Pam gets confused. She spends a bit too much time reading the Daily Mail, I'm afraid."
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2017 00:25
|
|
|
Evil_Urna posted:Except for you know, 2010. Does not matter really anyway. The Tories are going to take the vast majority of seats come June and Labour is going to have to tow the line. Just on the offchance your comment was genuine, in 2010 the Conservatives went into coalition with the Liberal Democrats, not Labour. Also please change your highly disturbing avatar, tia.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2017 00:38
|
|
|
Party Boat posted:The most favorable way I can read that is that if >20% of your decisions are overturned at reconsideration then you go into the low performing group i.e. it's a measure for the original assessor, not the person doing the reconsideration. This is potentially the case, judging by a random comment on the Freedom of Information request: quote:"I was part of a review team and this is slightly misleading. It's not siding with DWP, tge target is 80% of original decisions should be...upheld. If the KPI isn't met, it's not the review team under scrutiny, it's the original decision makers"
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2017 22:58
|
|
|
I've been moderately interested to see Theresa May proposing a raft of worker's rights, new types of leave etc. and other policies supposedly appealing to the working class. I wonder what the calculation was at Conservative HQ and whether they would have felt the need to do this if Labour had presented a more centrist manifesto under Cooper or whoever. Alternatively, of course, it could be a consequence of feeling bold enough to target areas they wouldn't otherwise be targeting if Labour were polling better.Firos posted:I'm shocked no one is talking about BoJo ramming his foot into his mouth repeatedly over that Sikh temple gaffe. That was pretty painful to watch. He seemed completely unaware of the Sikh position on alcohol, then kept digging each time he didn't give a proper apology and completely missed the fact that she was making a wider point about religious offence: "I understand your family circumstances" and "I understand your point of view". Party Boat posted:For those who are interested, the Secret Barrister has done an informative post on the Oxford medical student and similarities with the Bashir assault case earlier this year: https://thesecretbarrister.com/2017...oing-to-prison/ Thanks for posting this Party Boat, mega interesting. Also good to follow the link on to the Bashir case sentencing remarks as well.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2017 23:10
|
|
|
jabby posted:I've never felt that argument makes much sense. Labour are doing badly, so the Tories feel like they can make a pitch to tempt away Labour voters? What would they be doing if Labour were doing well, not trying to go after their voters? Going after swing voters, aka the middle class, which is traditionally more in line with Conservative policies anyway.
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2017 23:20
|
|
|
MrL_JaKiri posted:Even if it had absolutely no effect it would still cost a lot of money to eliminate a non-existent problem If memory serves, I think the Electoral Commission literally said as much in their report on the topic, before saying they recognised it was important to provide the public with reassurance on electoral fraud. :facepalm: dispatch_async posted:Guess what just happened? This is an interesting one that we were discussing in the office the other day. One of our local MPs had taken the full maternity leave and there was basically zero support available for constituents in need when a colleague tried to get a meeting. I think it's a valid concern, albeit one that should be addressed by providing actual maternity cover, rather than blocking pregnant women from standing as an MP. The responsibilities are much higher than with a normal employee which makes it all a bit more emotive - it's one thing to inconvenience an employer by leaving for 9 months, but quite another to remove parliamentary representation from thousands of voters. Prince John fucked around with this message at 18:47 on May 18, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 18, 2017 18:44
|
|
|
Pistol_Pete posted:Well, exactly. People have been moaning and pissing in these threads about how inheritance divides the country into haves and have-nots and entrenches privilege in certain families for as long as I can remember. And now, when a Tory (!) finally proposes to DO something about it, it's suddenly a disgrace. I have a few objections: (i)It arbitrarily penalises people with long-term conditions that remain in their houses by extending the scope to cover care in the community, which will cause a lot of misery at the margins. (ii) It further entrenches the notion that care must be paid for using private funds (iii) It would cause much less human suffering (and probably admin costs too!) to simply recoup the money for social care from an actual wealth tax and/or changes to the inheritance tax threshholds that would avoid making the elderly worry about whether they'll have a home to live in while they're in their final years. I totally agree with your comments about the mountain of wealth, but that mountain doesn't start with an old biddy having to worry about selling her house and finding somewhere to live because she needs help at home.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2017 18:58
|
|
|
Marmaduke! posted:The Greens party political broadcast I just saw was a real work of art. It must be fun maoimg these when you know you won't win. Wow. This one? It's awesome. I'll link the 2016 one too, since that was also epic. Labour need to poach their media team.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2017 19:02
|
|
|
jabby posted:https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/865320130460479490 gently caress. Just gently caress.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2017 01:59
|
|
|
LemonDrizzle posted:That is more or less what we have today. It doesn't raise very much money at all. That's hardly a great mystery though, or some fundamental flaw with IHT. It doesn't raise much money because the system is set up to ensure that the asset rich can avoid it. The widespread use of trusts, gifting to relatives before the 7 year death curtain and the 100% exemption for trading business assets (aka unlisted shares), all leap to mind as things that the rich can afford specialist advice to take full advantage of. It would be very easy to massively increase the tax take of IHT without making GBS threads on the asset poor who own just a house. Prince John fucked around with this message at 15:02 on May 19, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 19, 2017 14:56
|
|
|
pointsofdata posted:Also I think a lot of people are wildly overestimating how common trust structures are. They're like a top fraction of a percent thing. I think it's more instructive to consider what value of inherited assets might be passed into trust, as a percentage of total inherited wealth, rather than the number of trust structures themselves.
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2017 21:43
|
|
|
jabby posted:Yeah they urgently need a bit of clarity on this. Either Griffiths is going beyond what had been agreed or Thornberry is unaware of what's been agreed. My gut feeling is that there is still genuine disagreement on Trident and they're both speaking truthfully. All sides have agreed that it's necessary to keep Trident renewal as Labour policy at the moment, and to keep it in the manifesto, for the sake of a united front. All the CND lot genuinely see the defence review as a chance to change that stance in the future (which is probably why they agreed to temporarily support it now).
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2017 10:06
|
|
|
winegums posted:I wish they'd give over on the whole scrapping trident thing. It's not a vote winner in the slightest. Get people happy, well paid, economically safe and generally content and they won't care if you scrap the floating nukes. I think they have given over on it, the trouble is that interviewers continually bring it up because "Labour rift over Trident" is considered a newsworthy story.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2017 11:52
|
|
|
Skinty McEdger posted:It turns out the Ruth Davidson strategy doesn't work unless you have someone who is likeable like Ruth Davidson. What exactly is the Ruth Davidson strategy? Are people voting for her because they assume she's not a typical nasty Tory because of her sex, or sexuality, or the fact she talks like a normal person? Or is there something more to it?
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2017 22:53
|
|
|
Just posting a link to the Guardian's The Secret Life columns as they're quite an interesting snapshot into various careers.
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2017 17:35
|
|
|
I'm glad he doesn't lie about his beliefs. I think it's better for everyone that way (for the voting public, and the integrity of politics (lol)). As long as he recognises that his personal beliefs are out of step with public opinion at large, and doesn't make them the basis of party policy, then I am relatively relaxed. Lots of politicians agree to follow a party line at the expense of their personally held belief; I'm not sure it's the hot potato people are making it, although it is funny because it's Tim Farron of course.
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2017 20:36
|
|
|
spectralent posted:This is why I don't understand the "we need muslims to take the lead in policing people!" thing. It's easy. The government doesn't want you to think they're indirectly to blame, and as a side effect they benefit from increased social division and votes from people trying to stop the Muslamic threat.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2017 23:20
|
|
|
TheRat posted:School spending to fall by 7 per cent if Conservatives win election, Institute for Fiscal Studies says I'm a bit confused about the maths on this one. quote:The Conservative manifesto said: “We will increase the overall schools budget by £4 billion by 2022, representing more than a real terms increase for every year of the parliament.” quote:In a new paper examining each of the main political parties proposals for education spending, the IFS calculated school budgets in England could face a real-terms cut of almost 3 per cent by 2021/22 if the Tories win the election. How can their manifesto claim a real terms increase, if its a real terms cut of 3% according to the IFS, or is this just an easily falsifiable claim in their manifesto?
|
|
#
¿
May 26, 2017 00:34
|
|
|
Former home secretary and Labour MP reveals he has a bizarre historical worldview. Referring to Corbyn linking Western foreign policy with terrorism, he says:quote:Asked whether Mr Corbyn was right about the war on terror, the Labour's former home secretary Charles Clarke told BBC Newsnight: "He's simply wrong. Yes, that's right, I'm sure Al-Qaeda was formed spontaneously to stop young people going to events like Manchester, and has nothing whatsoever to do with Western foreign policy or the financial and military support that was provided to them. Prince John fucked around with this message at 01:29 on May 26, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 26, 2017 01:27
|
|
|
jabby posted:Of course it won't, but presuming it's at least truthful about the information being leaked it means someone from Labour is leaking specifically to the Telegraph. Wasn't the Ruth Smeeth "floods of tears" incident at Labour's anti-semitism enquiry launch due to someone commenting on the fact a Telegraph journalist was handing her a press release? Sadly I think it's not that uncommon, although it seems really short sighted to me, it's not like you'll ever get a fair hearing in that paper as a Labour MP, no matter how far on the right of the party you are.
|
|
#
¿
May 30, 2017 22:48
|
|
|
Regarde Aduck posted:What is wrong with an united Ireland? Nothing theoretically, but I can see how it could be a problem for someone looking to lead the UK. There's no public support in the UK for chopping off one of the four countries in the UK. Keeping your countries' territorial integrity is one of the most fundamental duties of a leader. Edit: Oops, sorry, pages late. Prince John fucked around with this message at 21:26 on May 31, 2017 |
|
#
¿
May 31, 2017 21:20
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 04:25 |
|
|
Lord_Adonis posted:Does anyone here think that, should Labour win, they will be able to quietly put the Brexit process to bed by some political sleight of hand? I for one certainly hope that this talk of ''respecting the referendum result'' is simply an electoral tactic, and that with regards to the EU, sanity will be resumed with a Corbyn victory- after all, a sufficiently bad Brexit is likely to sink Labour's manifesto spending pledges when the pound tanks, trade deficit widens, inflation rises and tax receipts plummet. It's going to be quite a poisoned chalice if, by some miracle, Corbyn does win. It'll tarnish the legacy of the left just as badly as if he had lost, when people blame the left for all the inevitable Brexit woes to follow.
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2017 23:55
|
|