General Election June 8th

[Vic]

Mutual Assured Destruction.
S.A.L.T.
S.T.A.R.T
New S.T.A.R.T
UN IAEA which prohibits nations making nuclear weapons (hence all the anger at North Korea)

Every measure has been made to reduce the number of nuclear weapons from increasing and more importantly from nations from having them, but MAD ensures that nobody who does is foolish enough to use them against another. Russia annexed Crimea without using them, what stopped them? MAD.

I really don't understand the last bit, but the whole post is rendered redundant by May not fulfilling treaty obligations on talking about disarmament.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...s-mp-reckless-irresponsible-123-a7631546.html

 

[Chippy_boy]

People's defence of Corbyn on here is almost like he's a cult leader.

What's with the almost.

They're like the rabble following Brian, hanging on his every word. But he's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

More seriously, he's the biggest threat this country has faced in 50 years. If elected, he would very quickly ruin our economy, put literally millions of people out of work and make absolutely everyone poorer. Not just the rich, everyone. It's no good having a £10 minimum wage and no job. And it's no good being paid a bit more when everything costs a lot more

And to cap it all, he'd fail in the first duty of any PM, which is to keep this country safe.

But there's none so blind as those who cannot see. Or perhaps as those so desperate? Desperate for a leader on the far left, since thankfully and rightly, we haven't had perhaps since Harold Wilson.

The reason we haven't had one since Harold Wilson is because the country at large, does not agree with those sorts of policies anymore. They've seen too often the fancy promises of free money, not actually working. I just hope everyone remembers that on polling day.

 

[Vic]

...

As for rough sleepers in case you had forgotten housing is the responsibility of local councils and I have noticed a rise in recent years in the Labour run Manchester council. I've not noticed anything like the rough sleepers in my own Tory run council Labours politically motivated policies implemented at the expense of people's lives? No of course not...

Typical Tory. Cut the money to councils (except for backdoor deals with Tory councils to keep them quiet) then blame the councils for dirty streets (and a myriad of other cuts from bus services to libraries and homelessness services).

The problem for the socialists is they are totally reliant on that 45% or more, what happens if those people go elsewhere? Who funds the system then?

Socialism does not work unless everyone participates and it seems the plan is to get only the rich to participate. Ask the poorer to pay more and there would be uproar, socialism however dictates that everyone contributes and inversely therefore shares in the rewards.

My guess is many people are not prepared to contribute which is why they are now asking the rich to instead, imagine if Labour announced a VAT rise or a rise in taxes on the middle classes to fund all of these fantasy land things. There would be utter uproar and that is why a social democratic state simply will never work.

I can tell you now that if bringing in Labour ever meant higher council tax or higher taxes which it will, people will soon change their tune.

Because it is the rich we are happy to shift that burden to them because it won't affect us and we will reap the benefits without putting anything back in but unfortunately it just does not work like that. It is inevitable that Labour's plans will not work out, the rich are best placed to divert their taxes away from here and suddenly the only people left to fund the merry-go-round is you and me.

Why wasn't there uproar when the Tories upped VAT which affects everyone in order to give income tax cuts to the rich? Tory lickspittle press. Shifting the burden to the poor is not newsworthy.

The pitch is simple. We will improve your life. We'll make sure the NHS will keep you well. We'll keep public services running. What we ask is that if your income reaches £80k you pay more tax. And we'd prefer it that when you get to that point you don't suddenly drink the Tory Tizer and vote for not paying more tax.

Yet you still get the same 'Tories have increased the debt crap.' I sincerely think they're either wilfully ignoring
this reasoning, expediency and all that, or they're just thick. As one left leaning poster likes to put it, anything else
just doesn't cut it.

Haven't they increased the debt? Sorry, the crap debt.

Not really - why would you want to share a platform with someone stuck in the 1970's, sympathizes with groups such as the IRA, threatens the country's security etc and besides she rips him to shreds at every PMQT. She will gain nothing by being on with him

You never watch PMQT do you? Just the same haranguing clip on the news about being a leader while Corbyn asks civil questions (from ordinary people) about the impact of Tory policies.

 

[Vic]

What's with the almost.

They're like the rabble following Brian, hanging on his every word. But he's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

More seriously, he's the biggest threat this country has faced in 50 years. If elected, he would very quickly ruin our economy, put literally millions of people out of work and make absolutely everyone poorer. Not just the rich, everyone. It's no good having a £10 minimum wage and no job. And it's no good being paid a bit more when everything costs a lot more

And to cap it all, he'd fail in the first duty of any PM, which is to keep this country safe.

But there's none so blind as those who cannot see. Or perhaps as those so desperate? Desperate for a leader on the far left, since thankfully and rightly, we haven't had perhaps since Harold Wilson.

The reason we haven't had one since Harold Wilson is because the country at large, does not agree with those sorts of policies anymore. They've seen too often the fancy promises of free money, not actually working. I just hope everyone remembers that on polling day.

You were doing well till you pulled the rug from under your own thread if you think Harold Wilson was far left. That must make anything you say of little worth.

 

[Ancient Citizen]

Haven't they increased the debt? Sorry, the crap debt.

I guess you're one of those, who, shall we say, hasn't yet grasped exactly what's happened,
and indeed, still happening. The Deficit v Debt structure has been explained in extremely simple terms,
obviously not simple enough.

 

[Chippy_boy]

You were doing well till you pulled the rug from under your own thread if you think Harold Wilson was far left. That must make anything you say of little worth.

Well I hardly remember him to be honest, but I thought he was more left than Callaghan. So I guess you'd have to go back even further then? Who was the last far left PM please? I'll then edit my post for you.

 

[Damocles]

I also enjoy when posters say Corbyn is a cult leader then afterwards make hilariously stupid predictions such as he'll take over Bluemoon, bankrupt the UK or nobody will have a job.

I'm trying to figure out when rationality disappeared from the Tory party and it was somewhere between Cameron's resignation and Corbyn catching them in the polls.

They seem to think a good way to win an election is to make the most ridiculous claims possible and hope their supporters are too stupid to think about them. They don't seem to hold the intelligence of the average British voter in very high esteem.

 

[Damocles]

Why would the Russians or the Chinese want to nuke London? They own half of it.

The big nuclear question should be put to May. "Is it safe to let China build our nuclear power stations?"

They don't understand.

They think that the world is still in the 1980s. They don't understand the interconnectivity of global economic markets and how that has stopped war more than all the nukes put together.

 

[kevin horlocks wand]

What's with the almost.

They're like the rabble following Brian, hanging on his every word. But he's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

More seriously, he's the biggest threat this country has faced in 50 years. If elected, he would very quickly ruin our economy, put literally millions of people out of work and make absolutely everyone poorer. Not just the rich, everyone. It's no good having a £10 minimum wage and no job. And it's no good being paid a bit more when everything costs a lot more

And to cap it all, he'd fail in the first duty of any PM, which is to keep this country safe.

But there's none so blind as those who cannot see. Or perhaps as those so desperate? Desperate for a leader on the far left, since thankfully and rightly, we haven't had perhaps since Harold Wilson.

The reason we haven't had one since Harold Wilson is because the country at large, does not agree with those sorts of policies anymore. They've seen too often the fancy promises of free money, not actually working. I just hope everyone remembers that on polling day.

The other thing about corbyns "something different" which a member of the audience touched on, is future governments would take years and successive goats to untangle if it , eh, perhaps, it doesn't work. So in the course of the parliament let's say

He does privatise railways, water companies, energy companies, introduce this national bank for infrastructure projects, scrap grammar schools, possibly get rid of trident , scrap university tuition fees which means those lucky enough to get up at uni pay for it themselves, introduce more damaging union legislation. 10 quid minimum wage.

That's a lot of stuff to reverse...

 

[The perfect fumble]

Go get 'em Barry .....

 

[kevin horlocks wand]

They don't understand.

They think that the world is still in the 1980s. They don't understand the interconnectivity of global economic markets and how that has stopped war more than all the nukes put together.

True that, I am less bothered by the nuclear issue in the old Cold War way and actually more concerned by it now, as I think the real threat from nuclear weapons is a terrorist hacking a system of one of the nuclear powerhouses and we would not be so powerful anymore. I think Corbyn should have focussed on this risk.

 

[Damocles]

True that, I am less bothered by the nuclear issue and actually more concerned by it now, as I think the real threat from nuclear weapons is a terrorist hacking a system of one of the nuclear powerhouses and we would not be so powerful anymore. I think Corbyn should have focussed on this risk.

This is pretty much how wars of the future will be fought outside of small skirmishes.

Cyber attacks on infrastructure, economic attacks, and by gaining influence in their elections.

Nukes are pointless in the modern world as anybody who has them is so reliant on other world economies that it's an act of suicide

 

[Blue Mooner]

Here is a short article from Ha-Joon Chang weighing in all all the economic/tax matters being discussed here, expert economist who teaches at Cambridge and has been consultant to the World Back and U.N. amongst others.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...tish-voters-economy-britain-welfare?CMP=fb_gu

If a Labour supporter made these points on here they'd get the Tory voters reading from their bullshit hymn sheet written by con artists in response. Well to those Tory supporters and others with concerns about Labour's manifesto, listen to the expert quash your worries.

There are still scientists that don't believe climate change is man made.

The fact this is written by an academic writing for the Guardian hardly makes him the bastian of independence. The fact as an academic he has never put his theories into practice is a further source of doubt on this chaps credibility.

Nevertheless, I did read the article and the one part where his arguments seemed to fall apart was on this sentence....

'But would you call the money that you pay for your takeaway curry or Netflix subscription a burden? You wouldn’t, because you recognise that you are getting your curry and TV shows in return'

No I wouldn't call them a burden if I can afford them but if I can't then of course they are!!! I myself have only recently looked at my own finances that are currently stretched. As a result I have switched from BT to Plusnet to save £20 a month, am cancelling sky sports because going to matches, and only being interested in City, it's no longer value for money to me. I realised that if i carry on with my current level of spending, I will find myself in mild financial difficulty which I want to avoid so nipping it in the bud now. That's how a responsible government should operate not keep spending until the money runs out.....

No one here, well me at least, doubts that an investment of government money into transport or to provide a temporary stimulus is not an option that governments should ever use. The Tories are doing this with HS2 but as with anything it has to be a balance of measures. The same goes the other way with cutting tax too far.

You can try desperately to justify tax and spend until the cows come home but it's been done by Labour governments several times and initially it feels great but it always ends in disaster as it did under the last Labour government and it did the time Labour were in before that and were then kept out of power for 17 years.

The scary thing about Corbyn and McDonough is that they plan to take this socialist dogma to levels never seen before and at a time when we are still running a deficit of 40billion. To say it's a frightening thought is an understatement.

 

[Chippy_boy]

The pitch is simple. We will improve your life. We'll make sure the NHS will keep you well. We'll keep public services running. What we ask is that if your income reaches £80k you pay more tax. And we'd prefer it that when you get to that point you don't suddenly drink the Tory Tizer and vote for not paying more tax.

Haven't they increased the debt? Sorry, the crap debt.

Oh dear oh dear. The "pitch" is simple, because that's just what it is, a pitch. Have you ever heard of being over-sold and under-delivered?

And the crap debt has gone up, because of Labour's deficit. The one Labour presided over, and which they created BEFORE the crash of 2007. The crash made it worse, but they had already managed to turn a surplus into a deficit and rising debt, BEFORE the crash. They had already increased taxes on everyone and it still didn't raise enough money to stop us going into deficit.

Now, if you want to engage your mind for a moment, you might want to stop and ponder why that was?

Why is it that despite raising taxes right across the board, Labour managed to turn a budget surplus into a significant deficit? If Jeremy's plans are to be believed, this should not happen. So why did it happen under Blair and Brown? Puzzling eh?

The answer is so obvious and yet very very very unfortunate for anyone who likes the idea of a Labour government: Raising taxes depresses the economy. Raising tax rates, generates less tax revenue. Corbyn's money-tree is a big fat lie.

I know that's painful, and nearly half the electorate cannot bring themselves to face the truth, because that would mean accepting that they cannot vote Labour. So they ignore it and pretend it will be OK this time, when it's NEVER been OK before.

• Taxing the rich more, just causes them to move. It doesn't generate anything like the predicted additional tax revenues.
• Big corporations pay corporation taxes almost voluntarily. They employ fancy lawyers and complex financial affairs to obfuscate and confuse their tax affairs. Put corporation taxes up and they just move profits elsewhere so they can pay less. Or they leave the country altogether, and jobs with it. Smaller businesses have to pay it, so it's like penalising small businesses and not the larger ones. Very unfair.
• Putting up the minimum wage will put people out of work. Every Labour government ends up putting people out of work. Check the historical stats. Labour put people out of work. That's what they do. Tories get people back to work. That's why we have record employment levels now.

Labour. A nice idea. Doesn't work.

 

[Damocles]

No I wouldn't call them a burden if I can afford them but if I can't then of course they are!!! I myself have only recently looked at my own finances that are currently stretched, have switched from BT to Plusnet to save £20 a month, am cancelling sky sports because going to matches and only being interested in City it's no longer value for money to me and if I have realised that if i carry on with my current level of spending I will find myself in mild financial difficulty which I want to avoid so nipping it in the bud now. That's how a responsible government should operate not keep spending until the money runs out.....

This is the biggest misconception in right aligned politics in the world. Government's budgets don't work like your household budget and they're not comparable at all.

Money doesn't run out. Every piece of spending is an INVESTMENT in the country.

We put money into the NHS for example because healthy citizens can work and spend money.

We put money into the Police because safe communities with low crime means less people in jail, more people willing to spend and more money in the economy.

We put money into elderly care because it incentives people to continue working knowing that they'll be taken care of.

This isn't a shopping bill.

 

[Damocles]

Taxing the rich more, just causes them to move.

This has never been proven by any wide ranging study done on it. For the record.

 

[Chippy_boy]

The other thing about corbyns "something different" which a member of the audience touched on, is future governments would take years and successive goats to untangle if it , eh, perhaps, it doesn't work. So in the course of the parliament let's say

He does privatise railways, water companies, energy companies, introduce this national bank for infrastructure projects, scrap grammar schools, possibly get rid of trident , scrap university tuition fees which means those lucky enough to get up at uni pay for it themselves, introduce more damaging union legislation. 10 quid minimum wage.

That's a lot of stuff to reverse...

Frightening for sure.

Of course he can't deliver on all of it because the money will run out faster than Usain Bolt with a poker up his arse. Which means incidentally, the levels of borrowing would go absolutely through the roof. I think it would be inevitable that we'd have our credit rating downgraded significantly and we'd see a sharp rise in inflation. Not only because of this, but as I've mentioned, you if you quickly shove a load of money into the supply side of the equation (£10 minimum wage, public sector pay rises, £350bn spending program), the economy doesn't have the capacity to increase supply quickly enough, so you just push up prices. And increase imports.

In a bizarre sort of way, I kind of wish I lived abroad and that he got in, so we could watch this all spectacularly fall to pieces and then we could say, "told you so". But of course the pain it would cause millions of people means that's not a sensible or realistic wish.

 

[Chippy_boy]

This has never been proven by any wide ranging study done on it. For the record.

I'm not going to spend hours trawling the internet to see if I can find one, so I have no way of knowing whether that's true or not, for the record.

But empirical evidence supports it. When the top rate was cut from 50p to 45p, tax receipts from that sector went up by £8bn. Those not wanting to accept this unfortunate truth thought how they might explain it. Rather ironically, the only explanation they could come up with is that people the previous year, knowing the 45p rate was coming, manipulated their incomes so as to pay artificially less at 50p, and then pay more at the 45p rate.

That's really quite funny, because the explanation actually helps prove the point. Tax rich people too much (people rich enough to not be on PAYE and to have flexibility in their affairs) and they simply don't pay it. It doesn't generate the extra income predicted, and the change above show.

I might also add, you say it's not proven by any wide ranging study. Would you say that therefore it's OK to "give it a go" and to base important budgetary plans on the amount of money a rate rise would generate?

You see this is the problem. When you are in opposition, you can say and claim what the hell you like because it's not getting tested. It's just words. Once you're actually running the country, actually making it work is a whole lot harder. The Tories are encumbered by reality. The Labour manifesto is fantasy.

 

[Ancient Citizen]

Of course it matters.

If Gibraltar were the disputed territory after Brexit, would U.K. threaten Spain with nukes ?

No need. Just invade about 3 o clock when they're all akip.

 

[kevin horlocks wand]

No need. Just invade about 3 o clock when they're all akip.

Having visited the place a few months ago, it's really not worth it. I would not bother.

Imagine going to Moston lane in the 1970s , that's it.