General Election 2019

I find myself in the middle of the Scully and cologne points which probably will not be a surprise. I have touched upon it in previous posts, but I believe that after the WWII governments of whatever party worked very much along the lines of doing whatever was right for the country, not individual groups. The NHS was set up by a Labour government which has been good for the masses, the housing stock was replaced by the Tory government of SuperMac. I could go on through every PM what they did or didn't do. The first government that didn't operate along those lines was the one of Thatcher. She had an ideology of monetarism, letting the markets do what they will, and control it by money supply. It was a disaster to be fair, and if you read up on it you will see of the huge rows between her and Lawson at the Treasury. She had sold off the council houses, you can put forward a case that they were not hers to sell, but that is a whole different argument. Once that had happened she stopped the local councils from spending the money on replacing the stock. She had given people the chance to own their own homes, good, but as it was a vote winner started to play around with interest rates, something she should not have done if she had stuck to her monetary principles. Interest rates soared and many people lost their homes because the interest rates were so high they couldn't pay their mortgage.
John Major restored something nearer to normality, and actually won an election very much against the odds. He operated a very central form of one nation Toryism, and it was only when he had the problems with his right wing extremists that as a divided party things started to fall apart. Blair had a very modern version of one nation Toryism. No one on the left of the Labour party called him a socialist.
The current situation we are in over Brexit has come about purely by Cameron failing to take a similar route to Major and facing the extremists of the party down. Once again we are treading the route of an ideology, and once again can see the mess it is leading to.
That is all history, but it is worth looking back to see where we made the mistakes.
I stand very much in the centre ground of one nation Toryism, or new Labour which are more or less the same thing. I cannot go along with the views of some of the advisors to Corbyn, anymore than I can go along with the ERG.
There is a myth that the Tories are good for business. They may be good for the owners, but they are not good for supporting the services that we all need. There is also a myth that Labour leaves office with an economy in tatters. Figures just do not support it. Do we want to have a school to educate children that gives the teachers the chance to do a decent job with the resources they need? Do we want to have a health service that even the poorest can access? You can create your own lists. Do we believe that an CEO earning hundreds of thousands each year will be suddenly in dire straights if he is asked to pay an extra 1% in taxes to help fund these services?
So that is it. I am no fan of extreme left or right when it comes down to social policies, something which over the past 70 years has been the normal situation in the UK, and only during the Thatcher years and currently has that been challenged.

 

I am sceptical about the expression 'extreme left' Frenchie because I do not recognize this in the policies of Corbyn. Nationalization of key industries such as rail, energy etc. wealth tax, financial transactions tax, pilot scheme for an unconditional citizens income, decentralization doesn't appear to me as being radical - apart from the unconditional citizens income it all appears par for the course and would have been normal for Labour governments prior to Thatcher. It is only because the middle of politics has shifted so far to the right since Thatcher that it appears to be so far left - it is, in fact, normal mixed economy politics. The levels of nationalization contained there are no higher than what would be found in most Western European states, the same applies to most of the rest of it. Would you classify the systems of Scandinavia, or the Netherlands as being extreme left ?

 

Two council elections yesterday in Tunbridge Wells and Snap (Cumbria) - both Lib Dem gains from Tories, the Kent seat with a 26% swing !

 

According to Fartrage, Downing St have been trying to bribe his few remaining MP hopefuls into standing down, jobs and peerages on offer.

https://home.bt.com/news/uk-news/ni...s-and-peerages-to-brexit-party-11364410869374

This is making US politics seem fair and above-board...

 

From what I see cologne, Corbyn is struggling with infiltrators to the party from the left, while the hard right have taken over the Tory party. I see nothing wrong in some nationalized industries, especially where public services are concerned, but the selling off of those was more about attempts to balance the books than providing a better service for the public. Take railways which I know from first hand experience, while it was state owned it became a shambles, in part through trade union influence, but far greater was the lack of funding by both Labour and Tory governments. Instead of planning ahead to upgrade and provide a proper service, it was left in a siding to rot. The idea that privatizing it was good has been shown to not work with the government being forced through public pressure to take back control in some regions. A proper mixed economy is what I would be in favour of. My local county council took the let's privatise everything route, and when they had no more family silver to sell , went bust. The reason they took that route was because the Tory government underfunded them to such an extent they couldn't see any other way forward.
The broad brush slogans about which party is best just don't work for me. You have to look in detail at individual industries, and then say do you have full state ownership, partial ownership, or a proper system in place to make sure a privatized industry is doing the right things. Many of the countries problems exist because of bad central government financial distribution of a too small pot of money. So far no party in government has produced sufficient revenue by way of increased production, and the current government is being plainly dishonest by telling us that it is all the fault of the EU. Tax rates will have to go up in one form or another after the election just to stand still, but which taxes will show if it is fair on the richest or the poorest.

 

I agree with a lot of the above Frenchie. I am not necessarily in favour of a one size fits all situation where nationalization is always the best solution, simply because it is nationalized. Nationalized industries do work well in other countries, but depend on investment, organization and the right recruitment. People in the west tend to associate socialism with only this ie. nationalization, but this is a dominant feature also of the Gulf States, and also of many so called Fascist led countries of the past. So nationalization, as an end in itself, is not peculiar only to socialism. Under the Marxist variant of socialism nationalization would only be justifiable if it were a prelude to direct worker ownership, or ownership directly by the local community - it is never an end in itself under this model. I have never seen anything in the Labour Party which deviates from the normal social democratic model for western Europe ie. mixed economy, the harnessing of capitalism for the public good, and a reliance on the Keynesian model of economics which relies on maintaining a high level of spending power at the base of the social pyramid. If there were people in the Labour Party calling for the complete collectivization of all the means of production, and the bloody overthrow of capitalism then you would be right about the infiltration - but I don't hear those calls from anyone in the party. The Labour Party has always been a broad church - I do think that many in the party should remember the Christian socialist origins of the party and remember why those people became socialists in the first place.

 

President Macron has been in China on a trade mission. Some of the agreements reached are here.
Deals were struck in the fields of aeronautics, energy and agriculture, including approval for 20 French companies to export poultry, beef and pork to China.
Energy deals included a memorandum of understanding between Beijing Gas Group and French utility Engie to collaborate on a liquefied natural gas terminal and storage in the northern city of Tianjin.
An executive with Beijing Gas Group told Reuters that the cooperation with Engie would include the French firm supplying membrane technology, used for gas leak prevention, in the massive gas storage projects that China is embarking on.
Among other deals, France’s Total will set up a joint venture with China’s Shenergy Group to distribute LNG by truck in the Yangtze River Delta.
The two countries also agreed to reach an agreement by the end of January on the cost and location of a nuclear fuel reprocessing facility to be built by Orano, formerly known as Areva.
Separately, Chinese state news agency Xinhua said China would support its firms’ purchases of Airbus aircraft.
Xinhua said the two countries agreed to work together to push forward the completion and delivery center program of the European plane maker’s A350 model, as well as step up investment by Airbus in China.
China and France hope to boost cooperation, particularly in the helicopter sector as well as on aircraft engines and pilot training, it said.

Seems as if it has been very worthwhile, but isn't the EU supposed to hold us back from such deals?

 

All sounds very depressing in environmental terms Frenchie !

 

We will reverse the Beeching cuts, and bring the rural railways back into use with a £500 million fund says Johnson. 1 km of railway costs on average £11 million to build over open ground. Many of the pieces of land are now privately owned and built on, so in addition there will be compensation to pay. Many of the bridges that used to carry the lines have been demolished to save on the cost of safety repairs. I reckon that his £500 might reinstate 25 kms. The policy is nonsense.

 

If Diane Abbott had come up with this type of costing the media would have had a field day ! It could cover the cost from Taunton to Yeovil

 

My thoughts entirely, a country making some beneficial arrangements with another but the EU says they can't.

 

Her abacus doesn't go anywhere near 500

 

Of course this is entirely outside anything that the EU has a say in. There is nothing to stop any country doing something along these lines with another country that does not have an effective trade deal with the EU. Any company can sell their goods or services to any other company that is outside the EU, it is only where there is an International treaty signed that tariffs and quotas start to have an impact. The nonsense about not being able to sell a pork pie to the USA is nothing whatsoever to do with the EU. It is down to there not being a market for them there, or the logistics of them arriving fresh enough to make them worthwhile as an export product.

 

The opening for this has already been covered by the EU Frenchie. The EU and China already have an investment agreement (2013), the EU is also committed to open trading relations with China as long as intellectual property rights are respected, and WTO conditions are met. You'll probably find that Macron's deals fall within what the EU has previously negotiated.

 

Agreed, but the deal struck between China and the EU is very loose compared to others that have been agreed.

 

China does not respect intellectual property.

 

Farage claimed that people "deep within No.10" offered eight peerages if his party would stand down to avoid splitting the leave vote. The law is very clear. Section 107 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 makes it illegal to bribe a candidate to withdraw from an election. It is known as 'corrupt withdrawal from candidature' and is a criminal offence.
Met Police respond to allegations that Johnson's allies offered BXP figures peerages to stand down, saying that they have received two allegations of electoral fraud and malpractice and that both allegations are currently being assessed.

Is this another new low after the missing five weeks that never happened?

 

The boss of Airbus has rubbished the scare story suggesting the UK would lose business once Brexit has happened. He added" We have a very strong base in the UK and we are very happy with this industrial base. We have no reason to move production out of the UK"

Another project fear fantasy bites the dust.

 

I know it is not very eye catching in an election campaign, but serious questions really should be asked about the inertia of this government. After the Grenfell Tower disaster it became clear that the building regulations that should have been updated were pushed to one side, and nothing was happening. After that dreadful night a promise was made that the update would be pushed through with haste. Nearly two and a half years later and they still haven't issued any update, and we are informed that it will be months before we see anything. Last year a building in Bolton was reclad with a different composite material to the grenfell one, but as we witnessed last night it went up in flames. Luckily everyone got out this time, but it was another disaster in the making. With new materials coming on to the market constantly a better system of checking their usage must be found. The government can pass the buck onto the testers of these materials as they have been privatised, but someone within government really needs to be on top of the standards that these companies are working to.

 

The attitude of building inspectors both for the local authority and the LABC warranty scheme has changed dramatically since the Grenfell Tower tragedy. My new house that was basically finished in March but is still waiting for the LABC sign off because of new regulations on fire stopping in warm roof spaces. We may need to rip out a couple of walls to add the latest protection. The authorities also double checked the sizes of 'fire escape' windows on the first floor, which duly complied.

Surely bodies like BSI are the best testers for materials such as these.?