Off Topic Politics Thread
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This was me in November 2019! Something I had been talking about for a few years prior. Remember in the past couple of months the beeb and channel 4 with their "exclusives" on Drax, carbon zero figures and wood pellets? Who knew eh? Maybe these "scoop hunters" should just come to me rather than proclaim 5 years on they have "breaking news" or "exclusives."
I could have pointed them in the direction of the "renewable woodlands" being wiped out and not replaced in North America! Took them some time to actually find this out "for themselves."
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I could have pointed them in the direction of the "renewable woodlands" being wiped out and not replaced in North America! Took them some time to actually find this out "for themselves."
Research away from the Guardian and go back further. IMF revised their assessment after austerity hurt the EU more than it benefitted. they kept flip flopping like the wind on their assessment on austerity but when the Greece "PIIGS" problems occurred and they demanded austerity be forced there they were critical of Osborne being not austere enough! Their "reassessment" was after their initial proclamations were proven wrong as the UK was doing OK at that point while the austerity in the EU was doing more harm than good.
It is hard to find that info now because they have flip flopped so often, indeed saying there should be more suterity again during the Covid period! but their original position was to criticise Osborne for not being auster like the EU.....until the UK growth outperformed the EU at which point they changed their opinion before then saying it was too auster as the EU started to catch up growth the UK had already gained.
The Guardian's position obviously was to call it austerity from the start and was of course happy 3 years after to take the IMF criticism that fit the narrative...and at that point the IMF may well have been correct in their assessment but that does not change that initially in 2010 they were the other way criticising Osborne for not being austere enough!
IMF timeline if I could actually find articles not behind paywalls for back then were:
2010 - criticised for not being austere enough
2011 - supported once we outperformed the EU growth figures
2013 - criticised for being too austere.
No real change in austerity in that period, just pointing out the IMF wanted more austerity not less and changed their tune later on!
Here's 2011 from your Guardian folks!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jun/07/imf-backs-george-osborne-cuts
Maybe it was the EU that were demanding more austerity in 2010. I can;t find any viewable articles. everyone ie behind paywalls these days and this is 14 years ago now. I had all these areticles to hand in bookmarks a decade ago but I am long past the days of keeping hold of all this political stuff now.
These days I prefer to find the cloudiest part of the sky to shout at instead
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So you are saying we didn’t cut and that the brutal impact felt by public service was purely ideological?
No we did cut but were criticised by either the IMF or the EU ( I have edited above post accordingly to admit it may have been the EU because 14 years is a long time ago and I don't have all that stuff bookmarked anymore) then by 2013 when things started slowing down the IMF changed to say it should be reduced when they had spent the past 2-3 years supporting the "austerity."
There is no doubt that there were cuts and no doubt people did feel the effects however it's not very austere if you are still borrowing through that period. I would suggest quite the opposite as borrowing is either the result of; larger gap between income and outgoings as a result of tax income? or you are in reality spending more on everything...still !!
The reality was that the taxpot was increasing or at worst in real terms staying the same with inflation factored in over those first few years so increasing borrowing while your income is going up is definitely not being austere. More money was being spent. In the right places? Do governments ever spend the money in the right places? This is the tax pot and % of GDP from 2010 to 2018!
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So while those increases in income year on year are small they remain a pretty much stable % of GDP while the GDP was growing albeit slowly
And the deficit? Over those years the deficit was only reduced from 7.3% to 0.6%
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If you summarise it from 2010 to 2018
Income +31%
Deficit -6.5%
GDP same period +16%
Remember it took 8 years to "eliminate" the deficit that was supposed to be a 5 year plan!
So borrowing was reduced by 6.5% over 7 years while significantly more that 6.5% more money came in.........so spending was still going up! That is not austerity. And yes it probably was not going where it should have been but thats what governments do! They take your money and since "the third way" of Clinton / Blair they don't even hide their practices of pushing it up the tree, they do it out in the open in this modern era. Spend more money "on you" by squirelling half of it off up the tree to their pals
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Thank you for the welcome but I have no wish to get back into so much arguing over my experience / worldview anecdotal or backed by "fact" angainst someone else's different experiences/worldview different facts, and I fell out of love with football again before Covid and Covid then finished me off entirely
TBH I think there are far too many (as the poster above) that are too willing to believe narratives because they want it to be true or back up their existing beliefs.
The reality is I am quite willing to accept that there is a substantial part of the party membership that is completely bonkers. there is an element of racism in there too just as there is in every other party despite the way things are portrayed.
But just looking at the membership (not MPs) panel's polling through that leadership election should be showing you clearly that firstly the membership polled all the women at the top! It then showed that far from not liking brown faces, they polled a brown face top from poll 2 onward until she was eliminated by the MPs and you only have to read through the comments on Conservative Home for a long time before that election to see that the bokers lot went from being 100% Priti Patel supporters to Liz Truss when Priti did not stand. Strange but true. Priti was and still is a favourite of the bonkers side of the membership"despite" her Indian heritage!
My main annoyance is the way politics is now where none of them that could get the job have a clue giving us the 2 charsimaless, non entity robots of Sunak and Starmer! 2 politicians who caould only ever stand a chance of winning an election if the other side was in collapse! and all the while we now have Farage chipping back in again when his issue should have been dead and buried.
Then sat behind these 2 are groups of people who do not do politics at all, not for the people at least. It is all about grandstanding, calling the other side out, whataboutery while in real terms their "changes" to policy make no difference and are not supposed to make a difference because it is not them that decide what will happen! They are merely allowed to present it as if they have changed something when they are told from up on high what they should do!
Yes I am still anti globalist, anti big corp and with the way things are I am most definitely a political anarchist.........in a period now where there is no-one to vote for for any semblence of veering of that chosen path. Its a pity Corbyn had not got in and potentially hit the big red reset button but I daresay the reaction would have been the same as Truss where if you don't bow down to the big boys then you are out!
Maybe the BoE and markets would have dumped a huge pile of debt to get rid of him too! There's nothing like utilising some market panic about some crazy policies and making sure you double it down to make sure you get your man (or woman.)
Nice to see you back.
There is a lot to digest in your posts.
What I was going to say is to try to see it from the perception of a person who has a brown face and has had to live with it for over 50 years. Then I realised that my views are probably shaped by those 54 years on this planet and are not always balanced. Every day I subconsciously think is a reaction because of race or is it because it is as it is.
Stepping back a bit, on the face of it I agree with bits of what you are saying, but I can’t help feeling that somewhere there was an underlying issue with Rishi and his heritage. The main demographic of the Tory members just wouldn’t vote for a British Indian man over a white British woman. However, these feelings may be my prejudices coming through - prejudices that I have got through living my life. It’s hard to shake those and you could be right.
No, that is what Tory governments do. The decision to punish the poorest 20% for the crimes of the richest 20% was a violent act against the people of this country. If you were poor, disabled, in comprehensive schooling, etc., then there was austerity. Severe austerity. Yet you say the economy grew and we spent more? This just makes me angry.No we did cut but were criticised by either the IMF or the EU ( I have edited above post accordingly to admit it may have been the EU because 14 years is a long time ago and I don't have all that stuff bookmarked anymore) then by 2013 when things started slowing down the IMF changed to say it should be reduced when they had spent the past 2-3 years supporting the "austerity."
There is no doubt that there were cuts and no doubt people did feel the effects however it's not very austere if you are still borrowing through that period. I would suggest quite the opposite as borrowing is either the result of; larger gap between income and outgoings as a result of tax income? or you are in reality spending more on everything...still !!
The reality was that the taxpot was increasing or at worst in real terms staying the same with inflation factored in over those first few years so increasing borrowing while your income is going up is definitely not being austere. More money was being spent. In the right places? Do governments ever spend the money in the right places? This is the tax pot and % of GDP from 2010 to 2018!
You must log in or register to see images
So while those increases in income year on year are small they remain a pretty much stable % of GDP while the GDP was growing albeit slowly
And the deficit? Over those years the deficit was only reduced from 7.3% to 0.6%
You must log in or register to see images
If you summarise it from 2010 to 2018
Income +31%
Deficit -6.5%
GDP same period +16%
Remember it took 8 years to "eliminate" the deficit that was supposed to be a 5 year plan!
So borrowing was reduced by 6.5% over 7 years while significantly more that 6.5% more money came in.........so spending was still going up! That is not austerity. And yes it probably was not going where it should have been but thats what governments do! They take your money and since "the third way" of Clinton / Blair they don't even hide their practices of pushing it up the tree, they do it out in the open in this modern era. Spend more money "on you" by squirelling half of it off up the tree to their pals
The problem with Rishi is that he's an administrator, and not a leader. At all. He's bright, and he works hard, but he's out of touch and completely uninspirational.
The problem here is the "main demographic of the Tory members" is quite probably what we are all led to believe by the media and by those that oppose Tories so it suits to paint them as such. There is no doubt that there are a lot of old / very old Tory members but then there is a false correlation that that makes them racists as well! With that being said some of Truss' support came from people who were voting Suella Fernandez in the first poll! so they went from brown to white there!
But its the 'orrible ones that love Priti and Truss while most people increasingly veered towards Kemi Badenoch through those 4 weeks while no-one really warmed to Rishi who was consistently down the order behind the 3 women Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch.
I can't really say I understand where you are coming from because even though my wife is a black foreigner I can't as a whitey ever understand fully what it feels like or your or her experience and I guess there could also be an element of suspicion of innocent things that occur because of heightened alertness to extra dangers.
But I think the Tories do suffer from image, mostly because of the trash they have as politicians as well as the media and their opposition more than willing to continue a narrative and highlight the worst of a bad bunch in terms of their membership however the graphs from that leadership polling through the weeks does paint the picture as opposite to your belief. I was wrong it seems. Badenoch did not hit the front on the second poll. It was the 3rd, so people moved towards her as they warmed to her.
Truss was only ever ahead of Badenoch on week 1 and when they did a head to head Badenoch won against all the others........which is why the MPs ditched the new girl before she got the job ahead of their man/woman!
But yeah there are some crackpots about. I remember in the comments section one person who was critiquing Kemi Badenoch and came out with a statement something like "She comes across as OK but she can't be PM with a gangster's haircuit" in reference to her (at the time) blue and black thick braids!! You might be surprised to hear that got a very sharp response! and not just from me! You might also be pleased to hear that even on a nasty Tory members site racist remarks like the above, no matter how casual the above might be perceived by the poster get roundly criticised!
Sunak is not liked by the membership at all! Partly because of his hand in Boris going and mostly because he is a nothing man, more boring than John Major! Truss is not liked by most of the moderates. That resulted in 30,000+ members not bothering to vote in that 2 horse race! and that handed the job to Truss.
Probably best that Kemi didn't win because after ousting Johnson this election would have been lost anyway and that would have been her one chance at the job gone. She lives to fight a better day...........which might come in about 3 week's time!!
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Doesn't help that the constant turnover in leadership in the Conservative Party also led to similar rates of turnover in staff. You can get away to some extent with a wooden politician if they have very capable people dictating their agenda and talking points and...they just don't have that.
Makes me angry too but thats the truth!
Income went up by 30%
deficit went down by 6% (which is still borrowing more, just not as much more as before
GDP went up by 16%
So split the difference. We continued to spend more than we got in, even though we got more in, a little bit less more than we got in each year but still going upward. Still spending more money but not seeing the results at our end because of the continuation of the Blair trickle up system. The guys at the top were doing quite nicely out of it still. we weren't! all out in the open. Still paying Consort and Carillion to do government work at above market prices etc. jobs for the boys included.
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Well if you are talking about the 20% crimes being the bankers and their casino gambling..........you should read that article I linked to above about pension companies now gambling your money in LDI setups which they are not supposed to be doing.......including the BoEs own pension fund....nothing has changed they are just doing it somewhere else so prepare for another big crash at some point and this time they are gambling on much more risky stuff while at the same time risking a much heavier crash than last time!
Truss spooking the markets will be a drop in the ocean compared to something global and if her 'nomics were blamed for the LDI practices currently being engaged in with the money you invested for the future!! then you should all be lobbying your pension groups to alter their practices before it is too late! a global spook could send gilt markets and LDIs into a freefall that wipes out your pension entirely, not just reduce it as normal stocks go down in value. Wipe the pot out entirely as the GILTs are recalled as payment!
Can't argue with this. It's not just the people at the top either. I work for a company that currently provides services for... well I'd better just say an English County Council. I know someone who works on the contract quite well. She's effectively a council officer but gets paid at least £10k a year more than any of the people I know who are directly employed by a council in an equivalent role. And I know people doing the same thing in London who should (in theory) be paid more.
The most ridiculous thing is that our company has recently lost the contract. But it won't affect her. She'll transfer over to the new contractor on the same pay etc. So will most of the staff. Apparently one of the people in her team has done the same job for the same council for years while technically being employed by 3 or 4 different contractors. It's just bizarre.
But yes, the amount of money milked from the taxpayer is quite astonishing.
I still reckon we are going to end up with something closer to 1997 rather than something this exceptionally wild, but notable that this is around the point where the Lib Dems start being projected to overtake the Conservatives in terms of seats.
Of course its a democratic mess that the party with the 4th most votes could come 2nd in seats, but it would be hilarious to see the Conservatives beloved FPTP turn on them.
I also wouldn't begrudge the Lib Dems because they at least acknowledge FPTP is broken and want rid of it (for what its worth they would still be getting short of what they would in a proportional system).
Reform need to kill the Conservatives outright to start picking up a reasonable number of seats.
Or in Starmer's case you can get away with a wooden politician if the opposition are in collapse. Labour have the same problem of not having any real standout leadership candidate as well.
Beware the narrative the media is feeding you though!! That poll says Tories stay where they were. It is Labour and Lib Dems that went -1 there!! Reform will take votes of Labour not just the Tories. I would guess with Lib Dems down 1% there they went to Labour and thus Reform gained 2% from Labour although poll to poll in real terms it could just be a difference between the people they polled.
I think Labour will come down a little more in the run up and things will get tighter but it would be complacent to take the "reform will halve the Tory vote" narrative. they are equally likely to take Northern Labour votes. Maybe one day in a few year's time they might have a manifesto! People are voting blind on this purely based on being fed up with the Status Quo and the 2 main parties being 2 peas in the same pod.
and although it was the EU elections not national elecctions, results from the continent should be a warning for us. We have always, especially in recent times (despite what we are told by loud voices in the media) been less susceptible to the "populist" kind of parties mainly because of the FPTP that you all hate keeping them out!
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Not personally putting too much faith in the polling at the moment, usually at this point they have the direction of travel right but the extent isn't quite there.
I'm fairly confident of a Labour majority, Conservatives second and Lib Dem's possibly getting back into third but beyond that we will see.
Reform will do well, but I think there is a lot of hype and bluster about them online at the moment, it would take a lot to beat the % of UKIP in 2015 and they won 1 seat back then, their vote was too thinly spread geographically and I anticipate similar problems for Reform.
If the Lib Dems do knock the Tories into 3rd i'm not sure what condition I will be in for work on Friday 5th June........
One piece of advice; ignore absolutely everything the IMF say/do.
No we did cut but were criticised by either the IMF or the EU ( I have edited above post accordingly to admit it may have been the EU because 14 years is a long time ago and I don't have all that stuff bookmarked anymore) then by 2013 when things started slowing down the IMF changed to say it should be reduced when they had spent the past 2-3 years supporting the "austerity."
There is no doubt that there were cuts and no doubt people did feel the effects however it's not very austere if you are still borrowing through that period. I would suggest quite the opposite as borrowing is either the result of; larger gap between income and outgoings as a result of tax income? or you are in reality spending more on everything...still !!
The reality was that the taxpot was increasing or at worst in real terms staying the same with inflation factored in over those first few years so increasing borrowing while your income is going up is definitely not being austere. More money was being spent. In the right places? Do governments ever spend the money in the right places? This is the tax pot and % of GDP from 2010 to 2018!
You must log in or register to see images
So while those increases in income year on year are small they remain a pretty much stable % of GDP while the GDP was growing albeit slowly
And the deficit? Over those years the deficit was only reduced from 7.3% to 0.6%
You must log in or register to see images
If you summarise it from 2010 to 2018
Income +31%
Deficit -6.5%
GDP same period +16%
Remember it took 8 years to "eliminate" the deficit that was supposed to be a 5 year plan!
So borrowing was reduced by 6.5% over 7 years while significantly more that 6.5% more money came in.........so spending was still going up! That is not austerity. And yes it probably was not going where it should have been but thats what governments do! They take your money and since "the third way" of Clinton / Blair they don't even hide their practices of pushing it up the tree, they do it out in the open in this modern era. Spend more money "on you" by squirelling half of it off up the tree to their pals
I agree 100% with Imp. The country has a huge spending problem.
None of the political parties are even close to correcting the actual causes of societal decline. (Currency debasement)
It’s also important to remember that the IMF are yet another corrupt organisation run by faceless bureaucrats who know almost nothing about reality.
We should have joined the Euro to avoid the currency debasement. Blair's second biggest mistake!
I wouldn't be surprised if things tighten up but I think the Conservatives look to be in much bigger trouble than 1997. They're losing votes to the Lib Dems and Labour over competence and the economy but they're also losing votes to Reform (or to people not voting at all) over social and cultural issues, especially immigration. At the same time, while Labour may end up with more seats than 1997, there's no real enthusiasm for a Labour government. If there's a major crisis in the next few years, especially an economic crisis, then I don't know where we end up in 2028 or 2029.
Although Labour are likely to make constitutional changes that will make their life easier at the next election (votes for 16 year olds for example) and entrench their views so that may not be possible.