Off Topic Politics Thread
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That dreadful Millwall supporting right wing Tory Rod Liddle had this to say about our local Tory MP Caroline Nokes in the Sunday Times at the Weekend:
"Nonsensical Nokes, regulate thyself
The uniquely appalling Conservative MP Caroline Nokes has demanded GB News be shut down by the regulator because of Laurence Fox’s offensive comments about the journalist Ava Evans.
I wonder if Nokes believes all broadcasters should be shut down when they are responsible for something offensive? Should the BBC have been closed after Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s horrible banter about Andrew Sachs’s granddaughter? The truth is that the braying Nokes — who has appeared on GB News no fewer than nine times — doesn’t like the channel’s politics, and that’s it.
There are 67,696 independent regulators in the Romsey and Southampton North constituency. I hope they take the principled decision to shut down Nokes at the next election."
I am sure he will be pleased to know that as a lifelong socialist who has never ever voted Tory that I am seriously considering voting for Caroline so that after the General Election there will be at least one decent Tory working to return the Conservative Party back to the way it once was and to turf out all the right wing members sending them off to re-join UKIP or what ever it is known as now.
"Nonsensical Nokes, regulate thyself
The uniquely appalling Conservative MP Caroline Nokes has demanded GB News be shut down by the regulator because of Laurence Fox’s offensive comments about the journalist Ava Evans.
I wonder if Nokes believes all broadcasters should be shut down when they are responsible for something offensive? Should the BBC have been closed after Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s horrible banter about Andrew Sachs’s granddaughter? The truth is that the braying Nokes — who has appeared on GB News no fewer than nine times — doesn’t like the channel’s politics, and that’s it.
There are 67,696 independent regulators in the Romsey and Southampton North constituency. I hope they take the principled decision to shut down Nokes at the next election."
I am sure he will be pleased to know that as a lifelong socialist who has never ever voted Tory that I am seriously considering voting for Caroline so that after the General Election there will be at least one decent Tory working to return the Conservative Party back to the way it once was and to turf out all the right wing members sending them off to re-join UKIP or what ever it is known as now.
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Pants on fire.
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What. A. ****
Apologies to actual ****s out there, at least you have depth and warmth.
Where do they find this endless queue of nonentities who are all so willing to abandon any sense of decency just to land a job and keep sweet with the arch **** that employed them? The contempt they show the voters is breathtaking, and yet millions of people will still vote for them in the next election.
I may have mentioned this before, but we're doomed aren't we?
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No no no all politicians are the same. Labour do it too. I have no examples but they do. Might as well not vote. Or just vote for Tories as we know what they are like! Low taxes! It’s all just banter anyway.
No, don’t vote, then we’ll get the kind of strong leadership this country needs.
To expand on one small part of that post, General Electric is a famous example of this. GE was probably the preeminent maker-of-things and corporate technological innovator of the first 70 years of the 20th century. It's also a company that paid extremely well and had excellent job security, because when you are in the business of being at the forefront of technological innovation across a whole bunch of different industries, you need to attract and keep top talent, because that talent will generate patents that you control and which will support your business for decades.
But in the 1980s, Jack Welch came along. And his great revision to the model was to stop spending so much money on research and development, employees and manufacturing, and start spending it on mergers, acquisitions, stock buybacks, and accounting tricks to reassign debt. And it worked: GE became much more profitable as basically a giant venture capital firm with a manufacturing wing than it did as a manufacturing-driven company. Because making **** is really expensive. The margins aren't that great, you may have to spend years burning money before ever developing something that is even worth manufacturing, etc. And in many cases, when in mergers-and-acquisitions mode, it's far more profitable to strip all of those pesky employees away from a new acquisition, keep the property (intellectual or physical), and then spin that off in a future sale.
So over the course of thirty years, GE went from being a company that created hundreds of thousands of good-paying, stable jobs, to one that sought out companies to purchase specifically so they could fire all of their employees. Because it's far easier to turn capital into more capital when you don't have to pay so many people along the way, and removing the long research and development cycle means that you can prioritize shareholder gains today rather than spend 10-15 years trying to innovate.
This is the problem with modern capital: the smart play is to make as few products as possible, employ as few people as possible (and make those you do employ as disposable as possible to keep costs down) and simply operate as a combination casino/real estate flipper. And GE is hardly alone: Welch is probably the most influential corporate manager of the past half-century, and his grubby fingerprints are all over the actions of his acolytes, who implemented his aggressive form of capitalism at some of the largest firms around the world.
When people talk about 'making capitalism work for those who work', this is what we're talking about. The incentives are incredibly ****ed up if there is more money to be made by not making things -- and focusing instead on vampire capitalism -- than one could make in 70 years of being the world's leader in making things. Capitalism is never going to be eliminated (nor should it be) but government's job is to lay out the guardrails which guide capitalism toward socially-acceptable ends. It's not just taxing more/less, it's what you tax; the rise of vampire capitalism, not coincidentally, accompanies a period of low capital gains taxes and enormous corporate tax loopholes that make it far more profitable to turn money into more money without the annoying middle step of paying people to do things.
And no: removing even more guardrails will not suddenly make capital more responsive to the needs of the polity, nor will it magically lift all boats...there is zero reason to assume so other than pure dogmatic belief, because history demonstrates the opposite. Capital is like water flowing downhill: left to its own devices, it's going to take the shortest route to get where it wants to go, and if that involves sweeping your village away, well...so it goes. But like water flowing downhill, it can be channeled: the profit motive is powerful, and when focused toward beneficial things within strict parameters, it can be immensely beneficial in driving innovation. But it must be focused, and right now it isn't, and the fact that it isn't is the primary driver of forty years of backsliding living conditions for the working and middle classes at a time of incredible wealth concentration at the top.
Loving the metaphor of the last para
Seems more like a red meat move as it is all “may” and implementing will be “very challenging”. Rather than a solid and confirmed change
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I don't disagree, also only a "consultation" but at least an acknowledgment of the current absurdity where men are sharing women's wards. If a woman patient were to complain about a man in her ward, the guidelines are that she (the woman, not the man) should be moved. As you say, nothing solid but when a culture such as this is so entrenched, progress is quite often at snail pace. But momentum does build and there's a feeling change is happening. At least the discussion is going in the right direction, not so long ago politicians were too timid to even mention it.
The world has gone ****ing mad.
Over the last few days I have realised that Oswald Mosley is back and is disguised as Cruella Braverman.
What breaks my heart is that several members of my family died fighting this kind of obscene fascism.
Even more disturbing is that large numbers of our fellow citizens actually believe her poison.
Ye Gods I never thought I would say it but I am ashamed to be English.
Over the last few days I have realised that Oswald Mosley is back and is disguised as Cruella Braverman.
What breaks my heart is that several members of my family died fighting this kind of obscene fascism.
Even more disturbing is that large numbers of our fellow citizens actually believe her poison.
Ye Gods I never thought I would say it but I am ashamed to be English.
(If the rumours are true)
I am in awe of the political skill required to not only cancel half of the countries flagship infrastructure project, but to announce it at the intended destination and to make it the cornerstone of your pre election Conference speech held in said destination.
It really is big brain from Rishi.
A masterpiece.
I am in awe of the political skill required to not only cancel half of the countries flagship infrastructure project, but to announce it at the intended destination and to make it the cornerstone of your pre election Conference speech held in said destination.
It really is big brain from Rishi.
A masterpiece.
The amount of mixed sex incidents his is far more disturbing than the trans issue.
"The number of NHS patients being forced to endure the indignity of banned mixed-sex wards has reached a record high.
Almost 5,000 people were placed on wards with the opposite sex in January, the worst recorded figure since the Government first cracked down on the practice."
"The Government promised to end mixed-sex wards across the NHS 13 years ago and the introduction of £250 fines for hospitals for every mixed-sex ‘breach’ initially saw the figures fall. While the incidents initially remained in the hundreds for the few first years they have been steadily climbing since 2017 and have remained above 2,000 a month since the start of the pandemic."
I said exactly the same thing to my friends last night when this story popped up. It is truly staggering
And it was true.
Not only is it true but they are reallocating the budget to about 9 Gorillion undefined local infrastructure projects that will somehow not encounter planning and logistical challenges and come in perfectly in budget.
Sounds like very expensive and chaotic bullshit to me.