General Election - 4th July 2024

[bluenova]

Where would you draw the line then on the level of wealth or income that dictates people are out of touch, unsuitable for high office and indeed worthy of criticism?

It’s presumably a level far below Sunak’s actual level of wealth. Any millionaire is no doubt a fair target, although you could argue that anyone earning north of say 200k hasn’t really faced a proper squeeze over the past couple of years, so they’re out of touch too.

So anyone with a successful business or professional career should presumably be precluded from running for PM?

It's possible to be in touch no matter how much money you have.

I had a fairly easy childhood, and have never really struggled financially. But I also worked for years with charities, directly with the public in some of the poorest parts of the country. I've volunteered with organisations that worked with homeless people, refugees, kids at risk of being taken into care, and more.

I haven't walked in their shoes for a day, but I've sat in tiny, damp flats and asked the tenants about their lives, I interviewed a kid who had come to the UK from a country he didn't even know the name of, but who'd had close encounters with more machine guns than most soldiers. I've applied for benefits for people with disabilities, where they've literally had to sit and explain step by step how they use the toilet. I've spoken to hundreds of homeless people about their lives, joking with them about day to day nonsense, but knowing that if they don't get off the streets soon, they'll be dead within a few years.

I can't fully appreciate their lives, but I have some understanding, and can empathise.

The best of Starmer last night was when he was talking about women's rights, and how closely he'd worked with people who'd been domestically abused, or when he was talking about compromise with the communities in Northern Ireland.

If you want to be PM, then empathy should be one of the first things that you display. It's not difficult to meet people from different walks of life, but it takes more than just showing up for the odd tour of an old people's home, or a twenty minute visit to the local hospital, to even start understanding who you're working for.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Not sure we can follow Ireland's methods. It's a country of 5m people, and has many of the features of a tax haven, and much of the overseas investment is simply money running through the country.

Overseas investment isn't in infinite supply. Low tax may allow you to compete, but I don't think any of the large economies want a race to the bottom.

They also have a massive housing crisis that has enabled the far right to whip up mobs to cause riots.

It wouldn't solve any of our problems and would create new ones. The EU would start a trade war with us if Singapore on Thames ever came to fruition. They'd be forced to. They took Ireland to court over their tax positioning to attract Google etc.

 

[BrianW]

Just appointing incredibly well-paid people to the top jobs seems to work well in the USA. They've no social problems there whatever.

My question to a very high earner aspiring to be PM (Sunak is a good example) is 'What attracts you to having a big pay cut to do a more challenging job?'

The grifters we have in politics treat it as a game. It helps them generate income through corruption and nepotism. Mind you, according to some folk that's OK. Just as long as they're not an unmarried mother fiddling her benefits.

 

[Johnny Mars Bar]

I watched the last 15 minutes of last nights debate, the main takeaway I took was how fucking rude Sunak is, horrible little bloke.

It’s crazy isn’t it. Properly loses his rag with people.

Now to be fair to him I’m the same. I think the general public are mostly a load of scruffy thick morons too, but I’m not running to be prime minister haha

 

[bluethrunthru]

 

[west didsblue]

He isn’t good on his feet, mate, which is unusual for a criminal silk who have to be generally more adept than in other areas of legal practice where hearings are less fluid and there’s more predictability in proceedings. In crime it’s a huge advantage to have your wits about you.

I will say, however, that he must have compensated enormously to become DPP, presumably by way of diligence, hard work and being all over his brief, which is especially impressive as opponents would have realised (and word would have got around) that he wasn’t quick at thinking on his feet and exploited it, especially as he appears easy to rattle.

Maybe that explains why he chose a job in the civil service away from the coal face of advocacy.

It’s probably quite different forensically cross examining a liar on the witness stand to dealing with a blatant liar in a political debate who is allowed to speak over him and gets a level of protection from the moderator.

 

[metalblue]

It's possible to be in touch no matter how much money you have.

I had a fairly easy childhood, and have never really struggled financially. But I also worked for years with charities, directly with the public in some of the poorest parts of the country. I've volunteered with organisations that worked with homeless people, refugees, kids at risk of being taken into care, and more.

I haven't walked in their shoes for a day, but I've sat in tiny, damp flats and asked the tenants about their lives, I interviewed a kid who had come to the UK from a country he didn't even know the name of, but who'd had close encounters with more machine guns than most soldiers. I've applied for benefits for people with disabilities, where they've literally had to sit and explain step by step how they use the toilet. I've spoken to hundreds of homeless people about their lives, joking with them about day to day nonsense, but knowing that if they don't get off the streets soon, they'll be dead within a few years.

I can't fully appreciate their lives, but I have some understanding, and can empathise.

The best of Starmer last night was when he was talking about women's rights, and how closely he'd worked with people who'd been domestically abused, or when he was talking about compromise with the communities in Northern Ireland.

If you want to be PM, then empathy should be one of the first things that you display. It's not difficult to meet people from different walks of life, but it takes more than just showing up for the odd tour of an old people's home, or a twenty minute visit to the local hospital, to even start understanding who you're working for.

Empathy is not the most important thing in decision making - the first thing I want from a PM is an ability to make decisions.

It’s why it’s a shit job because no matter how compassionate you want those decisions to be you can’t be all things to all folk. This is where I see Starmer’s biggest weakness.

 

[west didsblue]

Empathy is not the most important thing in decision making - the first thing I want from a PM is an ability to make decisions.

It’s why it’s a shit job because no matter how compassionate you want those decisions to be you can’t be all things to all folk. This is where I see Starmer’s biggest weakness.

Starmer’s made loads of decisions and pissed off plenty of people in the process. He’s as ruthless as any politician I’ve seen in recent years, and I think we need to reserve judgment until he’s been in the job a while and handled some real issues that don’t involve just trying to get one over on a blatant liar.

 

[M18CTID]

Not really worthy of a response. Lower taxation can lead to huge overseas investment. Look at what is happening in Ireland. Taxing successful companies is not the way forward to prosperity. You completely ignore the cost and implications of covid which have impacted the whole western world.

No doubt there are mitigating circumstances for Covid but don't try and pretend that this country wasn't well on its way to getting fucked before Covid became a thing. And that's all down to the Tories and no fucker else.

Record taxes
Record net migration
Record illegal immigration
Highest inflation rates since the late 70s
Brexit and Johnson's shitty oven ready deal which isn't worth a fucking wank because he allowed himself to be rolled over by the EU
Liz Truss and Kamikaze Kwarteng's suicidal budget which cost the country tens of billions of pounds and saw mortgage rates rocket

They're just a few things and most of them are fuck-all to do with Covid. And that's before we get on to scandal after scandal after fucking scandal. Yet here you are still voting for the fuckers. You need to give your head a fucking wobble sunshine

 

[BrianW]

I agree but I still think a lot of our taxes are wasted, look at the state of HS2 etc, the PPE scandals, Liz Truss.

I think most of us would agree that some tax money is wasted.

The problem is that we would tend to disagree over what constitutes waste. Some are dead obvious. Others far less so. HS2 was a very good idea in principle. We need more rail capacity. But along other things that went wrong was the decision to allow NIMBYS to dictate that many miles in the 'home counties' should be in tunnel for political, not engineering reasons.

Some of the spending I regard as waste is deeply appreciated by some of the good folk on here!

One thing I learned in my working life is that you can never eliminate all waste. If I had that formula, I'd be a billionaire in weeks as every business on the planet would want it.