The Labour Government

BobKowalski said:
To recap. You literally live in a unitary political State of four countries with no internal borders. We, as a country, live next door to a free trade area of thirty countries with distinctive cultures and languages and no internal borders.

Again, I ask nicely, with sprinkles on top, what the fuck are you talking about?
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Why are you using the EU as the poster child of your pro-no borders though? The EU has external borders.

They are merely a land mass where people can (sort of) move freely. Same as UK. They control the number of people who can be added to that land mass through immigration, same as UK.

Surely you advocate having no borders anywhere? Thus I’m somewhat confused by them being your poster child on this topic.
 
Chippy_boy said:
And that it is important that our ethnicity is celebrated and protected. Thousands of years of culture, history and tradition is not something trivial to be tossed away and lost forever.

And yet if I were to fly a Union Jack outside my house, I'd likely be branded as a racist white supremacist.

Parts of the UK now more closely resemble Pakistan. I am not racist. I have nothing against Pakistani people. I like Pakistani people. But I do not want to live in Pakistan. I don't want our high streets to look like Pakistan.
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Ethnicity and culture are linked, but they are not the same thing.

Culture can be celebrated but ethnicity only noted, and certainly not State protected, that way lies blood and soil and racial purity laws.

The great conflicts and pogroms of the 20th Century, the Teuton against the Slav, the Teutons and the Slavs against the Jews, the Turks against the Armenians, the Balkan War and Rwanda in the 90s and many more going back millennia were all fuelled by ethnonationalism.....

A form of nationalism where a nation's identity is primarily defined by shared ethnicity, culture, and ancestry, rather than shared civic or political values.

Hence ethnonationalism is the great no-no in progressive liberal circles, that's why Starmer bangs on about shared values. It is so taboo that progressives, so fond of manipulating language for their own ends, have abandoned the lexicon of ethnicity completely and allowed the right to run freely with it.

Well the left's trick of not talking about it is now biting them in the arse all over Europe.
 
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Given the Labour Govt's remarkable ability to shoot itself in the foot how do they reconcile potential decisions to scrap the two child benefit cap yet at the same time fail to address the SEND budget issues that are crippling some Councils.
 
metalblue said:
Why are you using the EU as the poster child of your pro-no borders though? The EU has external borders.

They are merely a land mass where people can (sort of) move freely. Same as UK. They control the number of people who can be added to that land mass through immigration, same as UK.

Surely you advocate having no borders anywhere? Thus I’m somewhat confused by them being your poster child on this topic.
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Why? Because it exists. You can see it in action. It isn’t a theoretical argument. I can point to thirty countries on a map that brought no internal borders into reality. That’s thirty distinctive cultures and languages sharing a political construct that is a benefit to trade and to people.

I am not arguing for all borders to be eliminated. That isn’t going to happen. That’s a pipe dream. But then the removal of European internal borders was a pipe dream in the 1950’s.

I will argue, and continue to argue, that we too should have no internal borders between ourselves and our neighbours and be part of this shared political construct. We are next door to it. It makes sense. You’re a conservative and you are against free trade and free movement - literally freedom from Governments telling people where to live and work?

Arguing that a custom borders and trade barriers between the UK and Europe makes sense is like arguing a custom border and trade barrier between England and Scotland makes sense. Spoiler. It doesn’t.
 
Blackley_Blue said:
Bad day for the 'Labour stopped the NHS strikes' lads ...
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have the strikes happened ?

Will Labour totally ignore any talks and allow months and years of strikes (costing billions and billions to the economy) like the Tories did? let's see.
 
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Chippy_boy said:
And that it is important that our ethnicity is celebrated and protected. Thousands of years of culture, history and tradition is not something trivial to be tossed away and lost forever.

And yet if I were to fly a Union Jack outside my house, I'd likely be branded as a racist white supremacist.

Parts of the UK now more closely resemble Pakistan. I am not racist. I have nothing against Pakistani people. I like Pakistani people. But I do not want to live in Pakistan. I don't want our high streets to look like Pakistan.
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So, to be clear. I am talking about an actual political construct of thirty countries in a free trade area with no internal borders that we live next door and share a land border with, and which (ironically) has no border posts.

What does any of what I am talking about have to do with Pakistan? Firstly, Pakistan is not in Europe. Secondly, our current and past levels of immigration and especially non-EU immigration were 100% in our control and are as much a legacy of Empire and the Commonwealth. I suppose in a way, the current UK is very much a melding of our past and present culture. If you import your culture and way of life, either by force or otherwise, into other cultures then inevitably over time it will become a two way street and ultimately a shared culture with elements from both.

Makes you proud to be British.
 
Resident Doctors about to go on strike it seems.

Which vulnerable group in society will have to suffer to finance that fix I wonder?
 
metalblue said:
The margin of error will be 14% on a sample size of 50 (14.14214% to be exact - 1/sqrt(sample size)), thus the conclusion is in the range 7727 to 10272 will leave, not that wild. The key metric to the research being pointless is the qualitative element rather than quantitive element.
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I agree on the qualitative side - they're not doing anything at all it seems to make their sample representative in any way, and in the interview he said it was hugely skewed.

I understand the calculation in your post too, but most pollsters wouldn't go near those kind of tiny percentages. Even if the sample was perfectly representative, they'd have been laughed out of town if they'd said 0.6% of our survey have left the country in the last five months. But, in reality, most people running surveys know there's a certain amount of noise in even pretty good data, and I wouldn't rely on the maths with those kind of sample sizes (and yes I do agree that it's qualitative, but it's something that's amplified in smaller sized samples, beyond the simple margin or error calculation).

Still, as you say it's pointless. It's nonsense multiplied by rubbish, and yet still generated 100s of articles, which is rather depressing.
 
BobKowalski said:
Why? Because it exists. You can see it in action. It isn’t a theoretical argument. I can point to thirty countries on a map that brought no internal borders into reality. That’s thirty distinctive cultures and languages sharing a political construct that is a benefit to trade and to people.

I am not arguing for all borders to be eliminated. That isn’t going to happen. That’s a pipe dream. But then the removal of European internal borders was a pipe dream in the 1950’s.

I will argue, and continue to argue, that we too should have no internal borders between ourselves and our neighbours and be part of this shared political construct. We are next door to it. It makes sense. You’re a conservative and you are against free trade and free movement - literally freedom from Governments telling people where to live and work?

Arguing that a custom borders and trade barriers between the UK and Europe makes sense is like arguing a custom border and trade barrier between England and Scotland makes sense. Spoiler. It doesn’t.
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It’s unclear what you are fundamentally arguing for here.

Are you saying the UK, and the UK alone, should have open borders with mainland Europe (reciprocated) but not with any other country? Or only open borders with the EU?

Or are you saying that all countries should have no borders with their neighbours?

There are other free movement blocs, such as the Russian Federation or the US.
 
BobKowalski said:
Why? Because it exists. You can see it in action. It isn’t a theoretical argument. I can point to thirty countries on a map that brought no internal borders into reality. That’s thirty distinctive cultures and languages sharing a political construct that is a benefit to trade and to people.

I am not arguing for all borders to be eliminated. That isn’t going to happen. That’s a pipe dream. But then the removal of European internal borders was a pipe dream in the 1950’s.

I will argue, and continue to argue, that we too should have no internal borders between ourselves and our neighbours and be part of this shared political construct. We are next door to it. It makes sense. You’re a conservative and you are against free trade and free movement - literally freedom from Governments telling people where to live and work?

Arguing that a custom borders and trade barriers between the UK and Europe makes sense is like arguing a custom border and trade barrier between England and Scotland makes sense. Spoiler. It doesn’t.
Click to expand...
The idea of removal of borders depends upon how you view the nation state and not just simple economics or similar. There is a good argument that nation states are a completely stupid idea, basically a human construct to enact protectionism, nationalism, tribalism and lot's more ism's.

We are however a protective species so a common border generally is not wired into our biology. That kind of thing is getting worse and not better. Most people worry about immigration for example and yet they don't even know their neighbours. The older generation will even vote to the detriment of the wellbeing of their own grandchildren.

It's unfortunately wired into us and regardless of whether it's beneficial or not quite clearly we'll fight over it if necessary. Brexit was a good example of it because in the end nobody cared whether it was a good idea or not.
 
bluenova said:
I agree on the qualitative side - they're not doing anything at all it seems to make their sample representative in any way, and in the interview he said it was hugely skewed.

I understand the calculation in your post too, but most pollsters wouldn't go near those kind of tiny percentages. Even if the sample was perfectly representative, they'd have been laughed out of town if they'd said 0.6% of our survey have left the country in the last five months. But, in reality, most people running surveys know there's a certain amount of noise in even pretty good data, and I wouldn't rely on the maths with those kind of sample sizes (and yes I do agree that it's qualitative, but it's something that's amplified in smaller sized samples, beyond the simple margin or error calculation).

Still, as you say it's pointless. It's nonsense multiplied by rubbish, and yet still generated 100s of articles, which is rather depressing.
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I don’t disagree that the quality is the main concern - I’ve not seen who they asked but it will be hard to assess with enough confidence to extrapolate out.

It’s more complicated than just being taxed (and seen to be poorer as a result). If the government mishandles the economy the value of GBP drops making you less wealthy relatively. I’m sure there is a sweet spot of what they could tax to shore up the public finances however it’s always a challenging topic to say I’m going to tax you on something you’ve purchased with money I’ve already taxed you on.

It would be far better to stick 1% on everyone’s tax, perhaps 2% at the higher end. They’ll be fucked as it’ll break their election pledge and be seen to be making up economic policy in a knee jerk way so they won’t but it’s by far the fairest way to deal with state of the public finances.
 
metalblue said:
I don’t disagree that the quality is the main concern - I’ve not seen who they asked but it will be hard to assess with enough confidence to extrapolate out.

It’s more complicated than just being taxed (and seen to be poorer as a result). If the government mishandles the economy the value of GBP drops making you less wealthy relatively. I’m sure there is a sweet spot of what they could tax to shore up the public finances however it’s always a challenging topic to say I’m going to tax you on something you’ve purchased with money I’ve already taxed you on.

It would be far better to stick 1% on everyone’s tax, perhaps 2% at the higher end. They’ll be fucked as it’ll break their election pledge and be seen to be making up economic policy in a knee jerk way so they won’t but it’s by far the fairest way to deal with state of the public finances.
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They didn't appear to ask anything. Apparently they "track" people's location from various sources, with the first mention being LinkedIn.

The fairest way would probably be to reset the whole World economy, so the richest weren't taking up a bigger and bigger share (and with AI that's likely to get worse). Clearly that's not going to happen, but then, as you say income tax is unlikely to increase either. They may well go down the Wealth Tax or Bust route, and see what happens - although if I had to guess, I'd expect the wealth tax element to be more performative than anything, and that we'd see something else, more behind the scenes, take the burden.
 
metalblue said:
It’s unclear what you are fundamentally arguing for here.

Are you saying the UK, and the UK alone, should have open borders with mainland Europe (reciprocated) but not with any other country? Or only open borders with the EU?

Or are you saying that all countries should have no borders with their neighbours?

There are other free movement blocs, such as the Russian Federation or the US.
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In what way is it unclear? The UK is in Europe. Our neighbours are European. The Europeans have a free trade area including free movement involving thirty countries including non-EU countries. It makes sense for us to be part of that.

I mean, we did push for the creation of, and are largely responsible for, the Single Market because we figured it would be a good thing - and it was. But then we went insane, and judging by some of the posts in this thread we still are :)

Anyway, this is all a bit off topic for this thread and I doubt if I can make it any bleeding clearer. The fact people seem to be unaware that the United Kingdom is a unitary political construct is a bit bizarre. ‘We must have borders otherwise there will be chaos and it will never work!’. I mean, we fucking live in a ‘no internal border political construct’ for fuck’s sake.
 
inbetween said:
The idea of removal of borders depends upon how you view the nation state and not just simple economics or similar. There is a good argument that nation states are a completely stupid idea, basically a human construct to enact protectionism, nationalism, tribalism and lot's more ism's.

We are however a protective species so a common border generally is not wired into our biology. That kind of thing is getting worse and not better. Most people worry about immigration for example and yet they don't even know their neighbours. The older generation will even vote to the detriment of the wellbeing of their own grandchildren.

It's unfortunately wired into us and regardless of whether it's beneficial or not quite clearly we'll fight over it if necessary. Brexit was a good example of it because in the end nobody cared whether it was a good idea or not.
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Ism’s are always bad news :)
 
metalblue said:
I don’t disagree that the quality is the main concern - I’ve not seen who they asked but it will be hard to assess with enough confidence to extrapolate out.

It’s more complicated than just being taxed (and seen to be poorer as a result). If the government mishandles the economy the value of GBP drops making you less wealthy relatively. I’m sure there is a sweet spot of what they could tax to shore up the public finances however it’s always a challenging topic to say I’m going to tax you on something you’ve purchased with money I’ve already taxed you on.

It would be far better to stick 1% on everyone’s tax, perhaps 2% at the higher end. They’ll be fucked as it’ll break their election pledge and be seen to be making up economic policy in a knee jerk way so they won’t but it’s by far the fairest way to deal with state of the public finances.
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I agree on the 1% tax increase. I think they could get round it politically by stating that it will go towards the "defence of the realm". There's no doubt since Trump got back in the requirement to spend more on defence has intensified and could just about be used as the reason for an increase.

Someone on median salary of £35k would pay an extra £225 per year, 50K would pay £375 extra and £100k would pay £875 extra.

Alternatively they could increase VAT by 2%. I would not want that on any purchases on say, under £100 to protect the very lowest paid- but it's only an extra £20 on a £1000 new TV. This strategy could also be used to get reduce or even get rid of VAT on gas/electricity bills, again to protect those on lowest income.

All of this could be "sold" as temporary changes till we are upto speed on defence spending.
 
Chippy_boy said:
And that it is important that our ethnicity is celebrated and protected. Thousands of years of culture, history and tradition is not something trivial to be tossed away and lost forever.

And yet if I were to fly a Union Jack outside my house, I'd likely be branded as a racist white supremacist.

Parts of the UK now more closely resemble Pakistan. I am not racist. I have nothing against Pakistani people. I like Pakistani people. But I do not want to live in Pakistan. I don't want our high streets to look like Pakistan.
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Good faith questions.

When you say I don't want our high streets to look like Pakistan what do you actually mean?
What is it you are specifically anxious about?

I lived for a while in Sparkhill in the late 80's around about when the white population had become a minority. The shops were reflective of the local community and the fact that more of the pakistani and indian community were more into running shops, food outlets and small businesses. The percentage of pakistani origin people has gone up quite a bit since then but the place looks broadly the same to me, maybe a higher density of shops, new swimming pool next to the old library which is still there and a fairly new Gurdwara on the other side of the library. Definitely more mosques than churches but hardly surprising given the local population and the fact hardly anyone goes to church these days.

It really didn't and doesn't look like a highstreet in Pakistan or India, which for a million reasons look really quite different to ours. It looks like what it is - a british highstreet, lots of redbrick victorian and edwardian buildings, it just so happens the shops in them are selling stuff that serves the predominantly ethnic community. It looks a bit run down in parts because the overall level of investment in the area hasn't been that high but not really any different from many other urban areas. So my point is the area has looked roughly like it does now for quite a long time and the world hasn't fallen apart. I do absolutely acknowledge there are parts of the country where there are very high concentrations of people of pakistani origin mostly in areas of the three big cities of England and then in maybe 5 - 10 towns around the country. They might change the flavour of a specific area in the way I've described but not of the country in any material way.

You talk about thousands of years of culture, history and tradition being tossed away but who's doing that? For example, Christian churches have disappeared because the indigenous population has decided it doesn't believe in God anymore, some of the older churches I know are only viable because of immigrants breathing new life into them. We have a poor record of preserving our heritage but that's got nothing to do with asian shopkeepers. We stuck our industry very close to or inside our cities (which for instance the italians typically didn't), that and a much less discriminating approach by the Luftwaffe did quite a good job of getting rid of chunks of our history in WWII and then we've just never prioritised it since, preferring to indulge in some pretty dubious postwar urban planning. We binned off our small retail culture in favour of huge supermarket chains and online shopping, ironically the only people keeping what was our traditional shop culture going are immigrants many of whom still understand the value of food that tastes of something.

So I'm struggling to understand what aspects of our culture being tossed away (which I have some sympathy with) has anything to do with the Pakistani community? Which brings me back to my second question which I would genuinely in good faith like to understand.
 
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