The Labour Government

Postman Pep said:
If they were views widely shared within the party then I'd say yes. An example would be Trident renewal. We all know his personal position yet it was in both manifestos on his watch. The reason being it was a position carried at conference. If Starmer took a similar approach electoral reform would have been on the agenda.

So no the accusation that they operated in the same manner doesn't stand up to scrutiny. A reminder of McDonnell's words.

It is the absolute hollowing out of democracy in the Labour party, which enables a centralisation of power under a self-serving bureaucracy that is effectively out of control, operating with impunity.

And even though he didn't win a GE, there were plenty of stories flying around about Momentum's dubious tactics while he was leader. Maybe you were living on a different planet at the time and weren't aware of it:

Lol. More like an avalanche of 'stories', day in day out. As for "Momentum's dubious tactics", the article you cite and your interpretation of it is quite telling. You take at face value the accusations made by the likes of Neil Coyle (check out his record) that whatever push back these MP's received, whether legitimate or not, was all centrally organised by their factional opponents.

Again the point was about dissenters being silenced when the reality was anything but ... they could makeup any old shit and get a hearing.

Sure but McDonnell was making a wider point, not exclusively, but largely about selection processes. Again the article you cite is quite informative. Contrast the horror of deselection under Corbyn, which didn't happen, with the total lack of curiosity shown to the numerous deselection processes under this regime. I mean there was a sitting metro mayor removed from a list of candidates for a newly created wider jurisdiction for the heinous crime of sharing a platform with Ken Loach. At least that was the official justification.



Again comparing MP's dissenting against throwing vulnerable people under the bus with MP's cry arsing about temporarily losing factional control is pretty disingenuous imo.
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Not sure why you're going off on one so much. I was only pointing out that the likes of McDonnell and Corbyn have no right to pontificate about the way Starmer deals with his MPs when it's clear that there was bullying and intimidation tactics being used against members of the Labour party when they were in charge. You can deny that it happened all you want but it was an open secret.

Your last point makes no sense whatsoever in respect of what I posted. I thought I made it clear that I have no issue with McDonnell's criticism of Starmer with regards to that particular bill and his handling of it. You sound like a bitter Corbyn fan who can't accept that he's no longer leader of the Labour party.
 
Chippy_boy said:
What percentage of these people do you think are just lazy and need nothing more than a kick up the arse?

This is a genuine question, btw. Maybe it's an insignificant <1%? Or maybe more than that. Related, we've seen a huge change lately from people saying they feel stressed, or a bit depressed, to "it's affecting my mental health". I don't want to trivialise clinical depression which is obviously a serious condition. But it's very different from just being pissed off, and it seems to me, many people who are just a bit stressed or pissed off are jumping on the "it's affecting my mental health" bandwagon.
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Honest answer is I don't know and I'm not sure anyone really does. If I had to guess using other data to base my estimate on I'd say anywhere between 5% to 15%. Bear in mind that that number will be much closer to zero for people actually claiming related benefits as even after appeals the success rate is around 60% (approx, don't quote me on that) so the vast majority of spurious claims will be filtered out and in that 40% who are turned down there will be a lot of people who probably need support.

As for what's driving it I think there's loads of studies showing the impact of poverty, housing etc but at lot of these were pre Covid and I think we still have lots of holes in our knowledge. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's a material link between social media, mental health illness and being on benefits for an emerging minority.

Personally what I think we're seeing is a kind of 'boiling frog' situation, these issues that have making life more stressful and mentally challenging for people have been bubbling for decades and we've largely ignored them. What's happened now is they've got to the point where they are more obviously breaking people and if you throw in a few additional accelerants you've got a crisis that appears to have come from nowhere but has been growing for a while. I think the reason it's manifesting more in young people is simply that they are somewhat more exposed to more of the drivers like economic and housing insecurity than the rest of the population and the other accelerants are focused on them. But the rest of the population aren't that far behind, the amount of productivity we've lost through stress and mental illness has gone up significantly.

As inequality rises more people lose hope and when you lose hope you give up trying and health issues spiral. The key thing that almost all of our current generation of politicians lack is a vision and plan to restore that hope. The one person who's actually not bad at it is Farage but that also makes him the most despicable because he's pedalling a type of false hope and he knows full well that's what he's doing.

Putting aside the questions of AI and automation for a moment, we're heading to a demographic situation where by the 2040s we could have one working age person for every retiree or something nightmarish like that. So guess what next gen of FOCs (inc me), if you're able to you're going to have to stay economically active longer because otherwise you'll put a crushing unsustainable burden on younger people; we'll try and do better at keeping you well enough to do this. Younger folks, we need you to stay in the game because without you it all goes to ratshit; we'll all try and do better to stop putting barriers in your way. Hey people who are less keen on immigrants, we need you to accept that, counterintuitive though it seems, we can't actually get to a better place without immigration.

In other words we're all going to have to compromise, stop fighting each other and rediscover the meaning of community. If that sounds a bit like being on a wartime footing to be blunt if we want to solve our problems both self inflicted and caused by global events that's where we are I think. We just appear to be lacking the wartime leaders ! That's before you demand they are tech policy savvy enough to wrangle out of control global technology firms!!!

You only asked a single question and got a rant, sorry!
 
hilts said:
It was just that Hampshire blokes inept attempt at deflection because he couldn't bring himself to answer a question on a football forum. People will pay extra if everyone is in it together. Fuck corporations and greedy fuckers getting a pass because politicians are scared of them.
Self employed too tbh.
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Which post are you referring to and what question was it in response to?
 
Chippy_boy said:
I think a lot of people (me included) have a problem with legal migration as well.

I am not opposed to it in principle. The issue I have is essentially pragmatic:

1. Irrespective of planning reforms, we do not have the bandwidth in terms of electricians, plumbers, plasters, roofers, bricklayers etc, to build the requisite numbers of houses. My brother-in-law is a builder and knows this all too well. Have you tried getting hold of a plumber lately? Anyone who is any good is booked up for weeks or months. We cannot continue bringing hundreds of thousands of additional people into the country every year as things stand. We can't house them, we don't have sufficient hospital or healthcare capacity or transport or anything else. The country is FULL.

2. Social integration. Surely we can all agree we want a well-integrated, socially harmonious society where sure, everyone has their own cultural heritage but we all rub along and respect what we have in common and also our differences. In far too many cases, we don't have that at the moment. We have right wing racist thugs hell bent on "taking our country back" and we have largely Muslim communities not integrating and declaring Islamic no-go areas for westerners. This cannot continue and with immigration running at current rates, it's only going to get worse until something terrible finally snaps. We could even end up in civil war unless we start to take this problem very seriously.
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Not to worry, all those millionaires you say are leaving in droves will leave a big hole the immigrants can fill..
 
Reeves looks well, speaking well and full of energy at NHS speech in London, Good on her. Big round of applause and cheers from the staff behind her.
Starmer speaking and praising the work reeves has done this year.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
Reeves looks well, speaking well and full of energy at NHS speech in London, Good on her. Big round of applause and cheers from the staff behind her.
Starmer speaking and praising the work reeves has done this year.
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I suppose it’s just a shame Starmer didn’t do the same yesterday when he was asked about it. Twice.
 
Brewster's millions said:
I suppose it’s just a shame Starmer didn’t do the same yesterday when he was asked about it. Twice.
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He did, he praised the work she done at the dispatch box yesterday - he was clearly unaware of her crying yesterday and was said to be puzzled when an aide raised her visible upset with him after the Commons session.
 
blue b4 the moon said:
She shouldn't have been there if she's got personal issues...bj was forever hiding and going missing when the going got tough.

The worrying thing for me is that neither her or anyone else could see she'd be a mess on the front bench.
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I expect it was considered, but then there would have been snark about her not being present, not just in the House but by the media too. Lose/lose.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
He did, he praised the work she done at the dispatch box yesterday - he was clearly unaware of her crying yesterday and was said to be puzzled when an aide raised her visible upset with him after the Commons session.
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He was asked a direct question on whether she’ll remain as Chancellor and refused to answer it.

He threw her under the bus and then frantically tried to change his tune yesterday afternoon. Another u-turn.
 
Brewster's millions said:
He was asked a direct question on whether she’ll remain as Chancellor and refused to answer it.

He threw her under the bus and then frantically tried to change his tune yesterday afternoon. Another u-turn.
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The one thing he couldn't do was say her position was unassailable (Thatcher re Lawson). That was worse than saying nothing.
 
Vic said:
The one thing he couldn't do was say her position was unassailable (Thatcher re Lawson). That was worse than saying nothing.
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He ‘s been asked the same question before (in January) and said that Reeves would be in charge during the full parliament.
Which is why the question was asked yesterday.

And yesterday he gave a different response, caused a fallout across markets and then had to change his tune in the afternoon.

He’s lurching from one balls up to another.
 
BlueHammer85 said:
Reeves looks well, speaking well and full of energy at NHS speech in London, Good on her. Big round of applause and cheers from the staff behind her.
Starmer speaking and praising the work reeves has done this year.
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Many a relationship looks normal and happy to the watching world.

Meanwhile and behind closed doors……
 
Brewster's millions said:
He ‘s been asked the same question before (in January) and said that Reeves would be in charge during the full parliament.
Which is why the question was asked yesterday.

And yesterday he gave a different response, caused a fallout across markets and then had to change his tune in the afternoon.

He’s lurching from one balls up to another.
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How are the markets doing now? Oh, that's right - they fully recovered in next to no time and are up again so far today. One thing's for sure - the markets aren't anywhere near as spooked by all this than people like you are, and they seem quite happy with Reeves being chancellor.
 
metalblue said:
Did you not find it strange he didn’t look at her during PMQ?
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Not really, he’s fully in the moment battling with the opposition and firing off answers and questions from all sides, I don’t believe he was even aware and after that wobble she had she’s next to him laughing and pointing at the Tories.
 
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