Off Topic The Politics Thread
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I think it makes a great headline but there's already a minimum wage in place. If politicians are that concerned about those on low wages then raise that rather than keeping it at whatever it is now (£7 or so?) and pontificating about a living wage and painting businesses out as evil who pay the legal minimum wage, which the people who work there have accepted.
I think he was talking about the 'real' living wage not the government renamed minimum wage. I think it would be interesting for companies with publically traded shares, perhaps not for small companies.
I suspect people accept earning the minimum wage because they have to, they would be amenable to getting more.
There are much more powerful arguments against this idea which are more to do with how the share market works, which would require global agreements to overcome, which ain't going to happen. The man made fiction of joint stock companies now of course has an unconscious life of its own, giving us things like global recessions which we can't control.
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You can't legally enforce a 'real' living wage, and you can't financially constrain any company that doesn't pay people as much as you'd like them to. Corbyn is showing he has zero competence or understanding about how the economy works.
Punish companies that don't pay the legal minimum wage - that's fine, and is already enshrined in law. But to spout that you want to 'invent' some arbitrary number and then punish companies that don't meet that number? The guys a fool.
As for his 'let's negotiate a settlement with Argentina over the Falklands' - yet another area where he's clearly bottom of the class. Watford was right - lefty-sounding soundbites, but not a clue...
Why not make the real Living Wage the legal minimum wage? Rather than just changing the name of the minimum wage. Problem solved.
That's not what he said, though, is it?
Had he said that, this conversation wouldn't be happening. What he said was that irrespective of what the legal minimum wage is, he would fiscally constrain any company who don't pay what he thinks the 'real' living wage is.
And you can't put a number on that because it changes over the nation. You can live on Teeside for far less than you need to have the same existence in London. So you end up with people flipping burgers in a London McDonalds pulling in £25k, because some lefty think-tank says that's what you need to live in the capital. And so it becomes non-viable to run a business from the South, so everyone moves their premises overseas or northwards. At great expense. And then in a few years, the reverse is true, so people move their business abroad or south again. Pretty soon, we HAVE no business in the UK, because companies cannot afford to pay their staff the wages that Corbyn thinks they need.
He's really, really not thought this through. But it sounds a little left-wing, so the people that can't see past the colour of his flag will lap it up as usual.
He also said previously that he believes we should talk to ISIS/Daesh, great idea, I suggest we send him to Raqqa with a one-way ticket, he won't need a return, they can just put his head in a box...
Jeremy Corbyn: "We can keep the submarines, just without their warheads"...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35337432
This could work. I mean, look at the LAbour Party. They are still going, even though they have taken all effective leadership out of the party. The only difference is, it's become a farcical excuse for a political opposition.
There's your blueprint for Britain's deterrent if Corbyn has his way...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35337432
This could work. I mean, look at the LAbour Party. They are still going, even though they have taken all effective leadership out of the party. The only difference is, it's become a farcical excuse for a political opposition.
There's your blueprint for Britain's deterrent if Corbyn has his way...
What would you say that Trident protects us from Chaz? Are Daesh going to think twice about sending people out to blow themselves up in our town centres because we have a nuclear 'deterrent'? Are we, a small nation off the coast of Europe, likely to be attacked by North Korea? Would we ever use Trident for a first strike? What is it for?
I'm not sure, but then I'm not trying to play at being an effective opposition. What I would say, though, is that the fact of no aggressive nuclear explosion in any conflict since 1945 demonstrates quite clearly that for 70 years, the nuclear deterrents have been effective.
I would have thought that you and your pals at Central Office would be delighted at Corbyn's ineffectual opposition. The fact is, he has changed the game. No longer will Labour be a slightly less right-wing version of the Tory party. Unelectable as a majority party, maybe, but the left will have a voice again. Only 24% voted for Cameron, remember.
As to the nuclear thing, would you not say that the world has changed since the Cold War? The threats are different now and our spending billions on a weapon that we would or could never use seems to me to be a terrible waste.
"Pals at central office"? I vote Tory, yes, but to suggest I only think this way because I have connections to the party is surely beneath you, Stroller.
OK... Several reasons why Trident isn't just preferable, but essential:
Firstly, we have a commitment to NATO to maintain a nuclear deterrent - and one that is independent of the US. In order to remove it, we'd need to leave NATO, and the relationships run far deeper there than with Europe. Our NATO commitments predate the organisation itself, and run back through centuries of international treaties and agreements, including the commitment to act when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the commitment to act when Germany invaded Belgium in 1914, all the way back to when Belgium as a nation was set up after the Battle of Waterloo. Britain does not, and certainly should not, throw away those commitments lightly, because they are ingrained in our national identity.
Secondly, it's all part of the balance we have on 'our' side of the old Cold War fence. If the only countries in the world that had warheads were the US and Russia, it only takes one idiot to end the world. But because we have our own, completely separate force, there are protocols to go through that prevent any one rogue moron thinking that pressing the button is simple. And the fact that the retaliatory strikes could come from anywhere - with no means to prevent them - is part of what has prevented Russia from the same course of action.
Thirdly, consider this: Do I think the world has changed? Yes. Do I think that there are new enemies that need different tactics? Of course. Am I as naive as those who believe that all of the old enemies have gone away? No. Some of the actions of Putin over the past few years show he is certainly a dangerous ally to have, and one that could easily revert back to potentially hostile enemy.
Those are the reasons why having a fully independent nuclear deterrent that cannot be used or abused by any foreign power is essential. And that's exactly what Corbyn should understand. The problem is, he's been a shouty voice out on the edge for so long, he doesn't realise that now he's on the platform, he has to actually consider the whole picture. He's still acting like a peripheral activist, and that's completely unbecoming of an opposition leader and wannabe Prime Minister.
I have a brilliant compromise on the Trump thing. We allow Trump into England but ban him from Scotland, and we ban Alex the Salmon from England and return him to Scotland in the same condition he arrived
I'm genuinely ambivalent about the UK having nuclear weapons, but none of these arguments persuades me that it's a good idea, because they are all flawed. I'm more swung by the fact that the French have them. It's not a moral issue for me, and we can't disinvent them. But if you think it is a unilateral, independent threat you are sadly misguided. We would only ever use these weapons to complement US ones, or with their permission. But I can't imagine the circumstances where using our types of bombs - long range big ones - would happen.
I'm ****ing furious that our elected and paid for representatives have debated this twat for 3 hours without being able to make any kind of decision, because it's not their decision to make, it's the government's. And of course we should let him him, how do you debate an idea if you are not allowed to hear it?
And on a similar note, the most horrifying bit of news I read today was that 55% of University campuses have banned people from speaking in the last year. The bans have been driven by the student unions, not the university authorities. This isn't banning people who urge others to go and harm people - that's a crime - it's banning people who may have ideas and opinions that contradict various political, religious and issue led ideologies. We have a generation of students who, rather than expanding their horizons by hearing things which may challenge their worldview, want to crush any debate. Lord knows I hold plenty of ideas and opinions in total contempt, but I would never deny people the right to voice them (if only in the hope that the counter argument will humiliate them).
You have the right to take offence, you do NOT have the right never to be offended.
But on the upside, according to a poll in the Sunday Times, most people in the UK are of 'no religion' (sadly a fair proportion of these haven't ruled out a 'higher intelligence') with the majority of the young even more firmly in this camp.
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"Not being able to imagine any circumstances where using our bombs would happen" is a very good thing. But you're right - they cannot be uninvented, and therefore it's important to me that we have a stake in the game. It sends a far bigger message than the payload itself, it says "We're taking national security as seriously as is possible". Whereas scrapping it all sends an equally clear message out - whether or not someone is a threat that can be countered with a nuclear response.
100% agree. We seems to have imported a practice of intolerance to differing views, banning rather than relishing a well debated argument. I say imported, because many of the zealots who try to prevent free speech in universities are Islaamic who feel their faith is being disrespected merely by opposing views being aired. There are also, of course, the feminazis who, irony of ironies, proscribe speakers like the feminist Germain Greer. I'm pleased to see my alma mater, Southampton Uni, is one of the more enlightened and least fascist in this respect.
And as for the Cecil Rhodes statue, I shall be outraged if it is removed. Rhodes was of his time - his approach and those of his contemporaries at the height of the British Empire, are now seen as what they were - wrong. [though, with humour, I do quite like this quote from him - Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life It neatly sums up the hubris of his attitude, but I may quote it at the start of the Six Nations
] You cannot reinvent history. Rhodes was not a mass murderer - unlike say, Stalin or Hitler - so let his statue remain as evidence of Victorian times and misguided reasoning.