fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
You do it
Do you want to discuss boring politics? (18 Viewers)
- Thread starter mrtrench
- Start date
You do it
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Reduce overseas aid
Reduce welfare benefits
Attack people hiding behind mental health issues to not work
Stop winter fuel allowances
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shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Im not the one making claims. Your avoidance tells me you get my point.
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
You do it. I have mapped them to the right of the coalition government. Where do you think they are?
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
Blaming civil servants for not polishing the steaming turd that is Wes Streeting.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
What makes them to the right of the government that privatised Royal Mail and the probation service? I can only guess you’re counting Brexit as a socialist win?
duffer
Well-Known Member
Come on mate, are you really pretending that this Labour party is somehow left leaning?
On what evidence?
This "Labour" party has adopted Tory fiscal policy and now their welfare policy too.
They are literally cutting benefits to the old, disabled, and unemployed. They are actively hobbling environmental, consumer, and financial regulators. They're delighting in publicly recreating that hostile environment for immigration.
Their solution to the NHS is, guess what, top-down reorganisation.
Kid yourself all you want mate, but a bit of tinkering around the edges on the railways, and some far off and almost certainly watered down legislation on 'workers rights', does not make this a government of the left.
Poor people will get poorer, and rich people will get richer is all that you're getting here, and there's nothing left wing about that.
We've seen elsewhere what happens to centrist governments that make noises about change, but change nothing, and it's not pretty. That's where we're heading too.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Same question to you.
By any rational metric they’re the most left wing govt in most people in this threads lifetime. Being left wing is more than just increasing all departmental budgets.
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
The Blair government was far more progressive than this one.
David O'Day
Well-Known Member
The welfare system should be about protecting the most vulnerable and helping those who want to work back into work.
For the usual suspects what is the answer? A wealth tax? Likely to force wealth out of the country.
What is your sensible solution to the ever increasing DWP bill?
For the usual suspects what is the answer? A wealth tax? Likely to force wealth out of the country.
What is your sensible solution to the ever increasing DWP bill?
Mucca Mad Boys
Well-Known Member
The public purse was also in a far better state…
I’m no mystic Meg, but before the election I did say that the reason Labour won’t be able spend lots on policy areas it traditionally likes is for the same reason the markets punished Liz Truss’ ill-fated government for unfunded tax cuts.
The government of the day is beholden to the debt markets.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
Blimey Norman Tebbit is back from the dead
Ccfcisparks
Well-Known Member
I'm a supporter for welfare, but it is ridiculously exploited by some.
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
Spending priorities are a political choice.
As just one gripe, VAT was jacked up to 20% for seemingly arbitrary reasons and cutting it back to the previous 17.5, never mind 15 it temporarily was under Gordon Brown, hasn't been entertained. It's a regressive sales tax that hits businesses and individuals and has a fair impact on the cost of living.
Would a 2.5% VAT cut spook the markets?
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Was it? Or was it just taking place during an economic boom? It spent most of its time privatising health and education.
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
It brought in the minimum wage and brought loads of schools out of disrepair after the Tories had allowed them to rot. Instead this government is so obsessed with penny pinching that it will walk into an electorate that has seen nothing substantively improve and look to the far right for an answer.
Mucca Mad Boys
Well-Known Member
Yes and those political choices have implications.
I’d love to see tax cuts and a government unfreezing tax brackets. It’s forced people into higher tax bands and disincentivises work for many people at the lower earning thresholds.
Markets are sensitive to ‘unfunded’ government expenditure and applies equally to spending commitments as well as tax cuts. The implication is that any reformist government, left or right is stuck in a quandary. Hence the Labour government taking a similar tack to the last Tory government.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
The most left wing government appears to be a controversial statement
www.theguardian.com
Liz Kendall unveils UK benefits cuts set to leave many sick and disabled worse off
Welfare secretary announces changes aimed at cutting bill by up to £5bn in face of opposition from Labour MPs
Captain Dart
Well-Known Member
Labour will eat itself.The most left wing government appears to be a controversial statement
Liz Kendall unveils UK benefits cuts set to leave many sick and disabled worse off
Welfare secretary announces changes aimed at cutting bill by up to £5bn in face of opposition from Labour MPs
Grendel
Well-Known Member
The reality is the government is proving to be a serious disaster.
Its actually cutting through the welfare system in a way the Tories would not have dared. The savings are miniscule and just exceed the additional funding strangely found to blow away on continuing to back Zelensky.
The zeal and pleasure they seem to be getting from it is pure Thatersism
The Economy meanwhile is shrinking fast and the government increase on employers bearing the cost is deluded.
In two months I have had two customers and three suppliers go bust. Others will be making redundancies in April to mitigate NI and minimum wage hikes. The growth strategy is non existent. I am likely to have to make job cuts in April as customer demand is declining alarmingly.
Reeves is clueless and is wrecking the economy.
Its not a left or right argument - its just facts
Ccfcisparks
Well-Known Member
Yep Starmer has snuck into government dressed as a left winger, but in reality he's horrendously right.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
It’s an odd mix of Tory desires to get benefits reduced and and yet tax businesses when there is zero strategy at growing the economy
Reeves couldn’t run a chip shop - she’s pitifully out of her depth
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
Well, it is if it refuses to argue that you can’t provide strong public services on the cheap. Scandinavians seem to have no issue with the concept.
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
She’s better at running the country than she was at playing chess I suppose
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
They've not renationalised it or anything else really as yet? They have ducked water renationalisation despite the chronic problems with the sector. Energy LOL, they've established Great British Energy to do something. I'm sure plans are afoot to renationalise Royal Mail and take telecoms back into public ownership where they should be? The probation service was renationalised by the Tories a few years ago.
The coalition introduced the structure of the welfare system we have today that the current government. The current government retains all of its main features, e.g. the two child benefit cap, the bedroom tax, the structure of Universal Credit. The current government is reducing the circumstances in which you can claim Universal Credit.
Brexit was the government after that.
You utter fucking clown.
Ian1779
Well-Known Member
Welfare exploitation will always be minuscule in comparison to tax avoidance and evasion.
To suggest otherwise is laughable.
Ian1779
Well-Known Member
Spoken like a true Tory.
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
Reeves somehow managing the perfect storm of reducing demand through consumers having fuck all to spend while increasing costs to businesses that employ them. Just a disaster. Absolutely no reasons for optimism for anybody but the BlackRocks of this world who their boy McSweeney represents.
rondog1973
Well-Known Member
Re: the second paragraph. Have you had tea at Tufton St?
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
O'Day showing his true colours alright, Madonna did a song about it
Ccfcisparks
Well-Known Member
Where have I suggested otherwise LOL.
Ian1779
Well-Known Member
I wasn’t suggesting you did to be fair. It was more the idea that people think welfare corruption is some kind of huge pot of money when it’s paltry comparatively.
Mucca Mad Boys
Well-Known Member
Two separate topics.
In a recent poll, 4 in 10 Gen Zers are considering quitting work to live on benefits, often citing mental health. That clearly risks benefit boom that isn’t fit for purpose.
That clearly isn’t what the vision that Nye Bevan would have for the welfare state - the old Labourites were very much in favour of ‘something for something’. Even Frank Field in the last Labour government looked sustainability of the welfare state and suggested something similar to an individual social security fund.
Grendel
Well-Known Member
This is a pretty good analysis tbf
www.theguardian.com
Many said the Starmer era would be just Tory-lite – now it’s worse than that. Time to stop the pretence
He’ll be radical, the PM’s allies claimed. Well, look now, as the poor are targeted and ministers boast of wearing Tory clothes better than the Tories, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
Brighton Sky Blue
Well-Known Member
The old Labourites were saying that in the era of jobs for life, strong union membership to protect pay and conditions, more secure employment and housing far closer to wages in cost than today.
Work does not pay if your employment is insecure, wages not keeping up with living costs and pension schemes a shadow of their former selves. I cannot speak much for Gen Z, but among my millennial friends now all in our 30s, 3 of us have/are having children, the rest aren't and it's for economic reasons. The consequences of this declining birth rate we are already seeing and it will either be that you need to be rich to have children or get the state to drastically increase the level of financial support for new parents.
People need to look beyond the up front cost of anything as a reason not to do it. 14 years of the Tories underfunding most things in the name of saving money has ultimately left us with a system in very bad shape needing even more money to fix it than if we'd made the commitments in the first place.