Do you support the RMT?

[Elbow beards]

Progressive. What it is now up to earnings of £50,000. Another 10p on the £ for 100k. Additional 5p in the £ above 150k and so on. No loopholes for tax evasion of the rich. Blistering fines if they try or seizure of assets. It is estimated over £200b is lost to evasion and avoidance. Set up a department with more people to hunt them vastly more people employed to hunt didn’t£4b benefit fraud than tax, which shows again where extremism lies. Supertax the millionaire and billionaires and ignore all the bullshit about they will all leave. They won’t and even if they do they can all fuck off.

This is what pisses me off, the super rich have more money than they can possibly ever spend, but still feel the need to squirrel money away to avoid paying tax. Pure greed.

 

[Oldham Exile]

That my friend is the real world that most of us have to live in.
Judging by the majority of comments on this thread one can only conclude that they live in an environment they are irreplaceable, are protected by a strong union, work in a monopoly company, ex nationalised industry or the Public Sector and hence not subject to the same realities.

Surely the 'elephant in the room' is the impact of the pandemic on passenger habits and shift to working from home and the consequential significant loss of revenues - which are not coming back.

This is a real focus in Scotland at the moment where the Scotrail franchise is being 'in-sourced' - with the original financial aspects of the business case being essentially made irrelevant due to the impact of the pandemic on rail industry finances.

There will have to be wholesale changes to business models - and a number of TOCs are going to be badly impacted and it is likely that there will be a need to bring further services under the control of the 'Operator of Last Resort' as occurred previously with the LNER and Northern franchises.

There cannot be a remotely sensible outcome to this dispute that does not include the capability for compulsory redundancy programmes to be implemented.

More widely than just this dispute - there are, for me, echoes of the 70s in the approach of the unions at the moment - both in this dispute and based on the wider noises being made - seeking to insulate their members from the realities of life that impact the majority of the population.

 

[halfmist]

There is no extreme left in it. And as for extreme? How is it extreme to want a fairer distribution of wealth? A properly funded NHS? An education system that meets the needs of the country both for social and economic reasons. To pay a pension to people who have worked their whole lives in jobs that pay is so bad they don’t have enough to live on. To ensure no old person needs to choose between heat and food? That no child lives in poverty? That no worker lives in poverty. That our transport system is up to the job and doesn’t require you to sell a kidney to take a train journey? That 1200 food banks are consigned to a shameful part of our history with those who wilfully caused them reviled for their greed and disdain. These things are not extreme. What is extreme are the forces that would rather we kept millions in poverty, old people scared to switch their heating on and workers getting paid wages that puts them in poverty.

That extreme left wing is a creation of extreme right wing drip fed propoganda used to put fear into people who then vote against their interests.
Nobody is talking about Factory Farns, Five Year Plans, worship of the Party. Project fear has worked and the only extreme thing going on is the absence of compassion by those who have all the wealth and want to keep it that way. I am not extreme, I am fucking angry our people have been turned into docile subservient serfs, tugging their forelock’s and they get bent over a bare table and shafted.

We’ll all the best with your campaign to get enough voters to see things how you see them.
Whenever I see someone getting angry or start cursing to force their opinions on others I always think hmm violence usually follows and at that stage the voters like me will switch off and think , better the Devil we know, it could be a lot worse.

 

[Summerbuzz]

More widely than just this dispute - there are, for me, echoes of the 70s in the approach of the unions at the moment - both in this dispute and based on the wider noises being made - seeking to insulate their members from the realities of life that impact the majority of the population.

Seventies, Britain couldn't export because working practices and productivity had grown uncompetitive over a couple of decades. This time, Britain can't export, because we dumped manufacturing for banking / services, and left the EU. Banking having being given access to masses of 0% central loans for over a decade which must now stop, has no more growth potential. The key for now may be to make the FAANGs business work for your economy. That was partially dealt with as a block by the EU. I have no idea how we are proceeding on our own. The truth is people like Dyson and Tim Weatherspoon and many others not in the public eye got upset at the strength of the EU in regard to exactly that sort of area, because it impacted on their money.

I don't really see the point of the strike. I think it's politically potentially disastrous for moving the country forward. And automation of tickets is going to have to be more of a thing.

But as for 2022, it's a group of bosses and govt and put us in a position created by squandering opportunity to move forward in order to secure their interests. The Unions at their worst are no better, they're just as wasteful and divisive. But they've not been making the laws that govern this worsening economic situation. It really is time to take control away from either group, and act in the interests of the country.

 

[halfmist]

That is exactly what is happening
Posters on here are trying to re live the 1970’s, making out this Mick as some sort of Revolutionary who is defeating everything put in his way.
Some would even like to see him as PM, that’s how far we have got from reality.
Union membership has declined from around 14 million in the 1970’s down to about 4 million, with further declines to come
Over 1/2 of the Public Sector deals are now done without Union involvement so they declining in power and importance.
So it’s a bit like Clusters last stand by one of the few industries that can still hold the Country to ransom.

 

[Oldham Exile]

...............I don't really see the point of the strike. I think it's politically potentially disastrous for moving the country forward. And automation of tickets is going to have to be more of a thing.

But as for 2022, it's a group of bosses and govt and put us in a position created by squandering opportunity to move forward in order to secure their interests. The Unions at their worst are no better, they're just as wasteful and divisive. But they've not been making the laws that govern this worsening economic situation. It really is time to take control away from either group, and act in the interests of the country.

Agree with most/all that

You will not find me promoting this government of utter incompetence

But being negative towards the government should not mean that people (not meant towards you) should just blindly follow - in this case - the unions who will, IMO, just drag the country backwards

I think that they (the wider/collective union movement) are looking to be opportunistic

 

[bluejon]

That is exactly what is happening
Posters on here are trying to re live the 1970’s, making out this Mick as some sort of Revolutionary who is defeating everything put in his way.
Some would even like to see him as PM, that’s how far we have got from reality.
Union membership has declined from around 14 million in the 1970’s down to about 4 million, with further declines to come
Over 1/2 of the Public Sector deals are now done without Union involvement so they declining in power and importance.
So it’s a bit like Clusters last stand by one of the few industries that can still hold the Country to ransom.

It's not what's happening at all halfmist. I think a lot of people are just really enjoying watching a man who clearly knows the business he works in taking government ministers chatting bollocks apart in a way that we haven't seen for a while. Watching him destroy Robert Jenrick's arguments yesterday, a man who has stolen millions of pounds of public money, was a thing of beauty.

 

[Summerbuzz]

That is exactly what is happening
Posters on here are trying to re live the 1970’s, making out this Mick as some sort of Revolutionary who is defeating everything put in his way.
Some would even like to see him as PM, that’s how far we have got from reality.
Union membership has declined from around 14 million in the 1970’s down to about 4 million, with further declines to come
Over 1/2 of the Public Sector deals are now done without Union involvement so they declining in power and importance.
So it’s a bit like Clusters last stand by one of the few industries that can still hold the Country to ransom.

Thing is, you can't have life without workers, you can't have life without bosses. Bosses been in charge forever. Country is coming to a halt anyway because of the mismanagement, and we've already been underfunding as long as anyone can remember. It's a general malaise. And it's not the workers fault, it's not the teachers or doctors either So it's hard to be angry at the unions, or their members who strike, in this instance.

 

[metalblue]

Progressive. What it is now up to earnings of £50,000. Another 10p on the £ for 100k. Additional 5p in the £ above 150k and so on. No loopholes for tax evasion of the rich. Blistering fines if they try or seizure of assets. It is estimated over £200b is lost to evasion and avoidance. Set up a department with more people to hunt them vastly more people employed to hunt didn’t£4b benefit fraud than tax, which shows again where extremism lies. Supertax the millionaire and billionaires and ignore all the bullshit about they will all leave. They won’t and even if they do they can all fuck off.

Your numbers are way off. Tax avoidance is about £4bn a year and legal, tax evasion is about £2bn a year and not usually done by the rich but by your mate the builder or others in the cash economy. To allow tax avoidance is a conscious decision of government and I’m sure there are sound reasons for it but it’s easy to close if we choose to. So that leaves us with tax evasion which is nigh on impossible to deal with in the same way benefit fraud is impossible to deal with - but look if governments try and sound tough on both groups they hope it deters enough.

Progressive tax. Anyone earning over £100k starts to lose their tax free allowance so between 100k and 120k pay a nominal 60%. Billionaires don’t earn a billion a year so once you’ve hit them with a super tax once where do you go for your revenue the following year? That’s not progressive it’s bonkers.

 

[Kippaxpete]

There is no extreme left in it. And as for extreme? How is it extreme to want a fairer distribution of wealth? A properly funded NHS? An education system that meets the needs of the country both for social and economic reasons. To pay a pension to people who have worked their whole lives in jobs that pay is so bad they don’t have enough to live on. To ensure no old person needs to choose between heat and food? That no child lives in poverty? That no worker lives in poverty. That our transport system is up to the job and doesn’t require you to sell a kidney to take a train journey? That 1200 food banks are consigned to a shameful part of our history with those who wilfully caused them reviled for their greed and disdain. These things are not extreme. What is extreme are the forces that would rather we kept millions in poverty, old people scared to switch their heating on and workers getting paid wages that puts them in poverty.

That extreme left wing is a creation of extreme right wing drip fed propoganda used to put fear into people who then vote against their interests.
Nobody is talking about Factory Farns, Five Year Plans, worship of the Party. Project fear has worked and the only extreme thing going on is the absence of compassion by those who have all the wealth and want to keep it that way. I am not extreme, I am fucking angry our people have been turned into docile subservient serfs, tugging their forelock’s and they get bent over a bare table and shafted.

No caption required.