The Labour Government

Kush45 said:
Interesting that the enquiry Labour never wanted to have is collapsing before it's even begun.
Rape gangs getting swept under the carpet again. Victims being made to feel worthless all over again.
Shocking
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I honestly don’t think anything wrong has been done with the enquiry.

Think this is what happens when you get victims involved who don’t carnt be expect to understand procedure the law and may have there own pre conceived political opinions
 
Brewster's millions said:
Good to see this fabled £40bn figure getting an airing again.

An estimate based on someone drawing a straight line on a graph from 2016, and which ignores any impact from the greatest disruption to hit developed economies since WW2. And indeed the performance of comparable economies within the EU over the past decade.

The unfortunate truth is that meaningful revisions to the OBR’s productivity estimates are nothing new, and the downgrade set to be revealed next month will in fact be small relative to some of those seen in the OBR’s formative years.

This risk of changing potential GDP assumptions, of any actual Brexit drag and the threat of entrenched inflation / higher borrowing costs were all obvious a year ago. Startlingly obvious in fact. And yet Reeves still chose to push borrowing higher by hundreds of billions of pounds, and decided that a margin for error of under £10bn five years’ forward, in a highly uncertain environment, was appropriate.

Her own judgements, and the government’s shambolic attempts to curb the growth of welfare expenditure, are the reasons why Reeves will need to raise taxes again next month. An apparent one-off punishing tax grab last October, not to be repeated in this parliament, and yet here we are again 12 months down the line

It’s rank incompetence and Reeves can’t reasonably blame anyone other than herself for the mess she’s created.
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The welfare budget is completely the wrong target and it is being done purely to appease knuckle-druggers. The welfare budget is a pittance because people on welfare get very little and it's barely enough to live. The number of outright benefit cheats is also a completely irrelevant figure.

This is ideological and not logical because what would you do? The welfare budget is around £50bn so would you save at best £1-2bn within that or would you spend the £50bn+ needed to fix the NHS so that waiting lists can be reduced to get people off welfare entirely?

The latter is obviously the ideal choice but who is making that argument? This is where government constantly fails us. Government is not run for the better of people, it is run as an Excel spreadsheet. The simple fact is nothing will change because it is actually cheaper to keep people on welfare versus the great expense of fixing the NHS and getting people back to work.
 
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WRicko said:
I honestly don’t think anything wrong has been done with the enquiry.

Think this is what happens when you get victims involved who don’t carnt be expect to understand procedure the law and may have there own pre conceived political opinions
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Blame the victims...?? Really..
 
We've got Guardiola said:
The welfare budget is completely the wrong target and it is being done purely to appease knuckle-druggers. The welfare budget is a pittance because people on welfare get very little and it's barely enough to live. The number of outright benefit cheats is also a completely irrelevant figure.

This is ideological and not logical because what would you do? The welfare budget is around £50bn so would you save at best £1-2bn within that or would you spend the £50bn+ needed to fix the NHS so that waiting lists can be reduced to get people off welfare entirely?

The latter is obviously the ideal choice but who is making that argument? This is where government constantly fails us. Government is not run for the better of people, it is run as an Excel spreadsheet. The simple fact is nothing will change because it is actually cheaper to keep people on welfare versus the great expense of fixing the NHS and getting people back to work.
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Harsh calling the centrists on here knuckle draggers they couldn't wait to defend those welfare cuts.
 
Jess Phillips Birmingham constituency has a muslim population of around 45%. Her job depends on winning their vote. Clearly she is in a compromised position with regards this racially charged enquiry. It's understandable that some the rape victims do not have trust in her. The optics just do not look good, she needs to step aside on this issue (not sacked).
 
Palerider said:
Jess Phillips Birmingham constituency has a muslim population of around 45%. Her job depends on winning their vote. Clearly she is in a compromised position with regards this racially charged enquiry. It's understandable that some the rape victims do not have trust in her. The optics just do not look good, she needs to step aside on this issue (not sacked).
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If she does, I find that very sad. She is one of the few MPs who speaks with real conviction and belief and is not afraid to ruffle feathers of all political colours. I think her attitude the other day was more about her frustration than anything else. There is no doubt that if she goes the vicitms will never get anyone who is more on their side than Philips is.

The way she was treated by her political opponents in the general election was nothing short of a disgrace and was worthy of far greater coverage by the media.
 
WRicko said:
I honestly don’t think anything wrong has been done with the enquiry.

Think this is what happens when you get victims involved who don’t carnt be expect to understand procedure the law and may have there own pre conceived political opinions
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Not sure it’s even that. Why would anyone want to take such a poisoned chalice of a role?

The perma-enraged will criticise them whatever the outcome of the inquiry.

Nothing is good enough for them. Give them a life sentence and they’ll demand two life sentences.

They reap what they sow.
 
Palerider said:
Jess Phillips Birmingham constituency has a muslim population of around 45%. Her job depends on winning their vote. Clearly she is in a compromised position with regards this racially charged enquiry. It's understandable that some the rape victims do not have trust in her. The optics just do not look good, she needs to step aside on this issue (not sacked).
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I think she has bean a beacon of light in fighting for women and abuse. She should stay in post
 
We've got Guardiola said:
The welfare budget is completely the wrong target and it is being done purely to appease knuckle-druggers. The welfare budget is a pittance because people on welfare get very little and it's barely enough to live. The number of outright benefit cheats is also a completely irrelevant figure.

This is ideological and not logical because what would you do? The welfare budget is around £50bn so would you save at best £1-2bn within that or would you spend the £50bn+ needed to fix the NHS so that waiting lists can be reduced to get people off welfare entirely?

The latter is obviously the ideal choice but who is making that argument? This is where government constantly fails us. Government is not run for the better of people, it is run as an Excel spreadsheet. The simple fact is nothing will change because it is actually cheaper to keep people on welfare versus the great expense of fixing the NHS and getting people back to work.
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I’ve had a quick look at my knuckle-dragger fact book, and it seems that your numbers might be a bit off.

The welfare budget is currently around £310bn, not £50bn, and if you’re referring to health and disability benefits, these actually total around £75bn in the current fiscal year.

Critically, health and disability benefits are projected to rise to over £100bn per annum by 2030, and this government has tried (but failed miserably) to put a relatively minor dent in this expected increase.

Unfortunately, in the real world, savings will be required in order to fund higher expenditure in the NHS, and benefit fraud is not as immaterial as you suggest, given that it currently costs around £8bn a year.

Personally I think there is also a case to reform the triple lock, and to potentially replace the wage growth element with an inflation rate correctly weighted for pensioner expenditure, rather than simply using the CPI.

If done correctly this would help ensure that pensioners would be better protected from inflation caused by rising food and energy costs, but would likely stop pension liabilities from pushing significantly higher during periods of strong wage growth. Pension costs are expected to rise by £30bn per annum by 2030, so the areas of focus appear fairly obvious.
 
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WRicko said:
I honestly don’t think anything wrong has been done with the enquiry.

Think this is what happens when you get victims involved who don’t carnt be expect to understand procedure the law and may have there own pre conceived political opinions
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This is another one of those stories where you see the headlines/watch the news and you think someone's reallyl fucked up and then after reading into it for a bit, the outrage is over seemingly nothing.

This is what's actually happened with the enquiry:

- Government gets 30 people to testify and give their feedback/opinions about the enquiry.​
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- A couple said the enquiry wasn't broad enough.​
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- Jess Phillips said she respectfully disagreed and thought the enquiry needed to be "laser focused" to get meaningful results rather than be broad and shallow and said that the rumours about the enquiry scope were not true.​
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- 4 of the people who were going to testify now want Phillips to resign for disagreeing with them, even though Phillips is the only one of the 5 who actually knows if the scope of the enquiry is changing or not.​
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I don't think Labour or Phillips have actually done anything wrong here. Inviting people to give their opinion isn't a commitment to following every piece of advice they give. Being a victim of a grooming gang doesn't make you an expert on parliamentary enquiries, so their opinions on how the enquiry should proceed are unqualified anyway.

And of course almost 90% of the people invited to testify still are.

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WRicko said:
I honestly don’t think anything wrong has been done with the enquiry.

Think this is what happens when you get victims involved who don’t carnt be expect to understand procedure the law and may have there own pre conceived political opinions
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With respect, they’ve been let down by social workers and the police so forgive them for thinking an enquiry led by social workers and the police may not bring about any sort of justice for them.
 
blueinsa said:
With respect, they’ve been let down by social workers and the police so forgive them for thinking an enquiry led by social workers and the police may not bring about any sort of justice for them.
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I can understand the sentiment, albeit not agreeing with it. In this particular instance, I’m not sure it should be applicable to the candidate that was from the police.
 
The grooming gang inquiry is such a sensitive issue.

If you've been abused by a group of people you are may think all people of that group are the same and there's a grand conspiracy to protect them over you and other victims. Some of the victims will be deeply traumatised and some could be neuro divergent who have a need for justice or revenge because of their brain wiring.

The algorithm they follow might even back up this confirmation bias. Hence their distrust of authorities and an MP.

Getting victims on board the enquiry is good to ensure the proceedings are as balanced as possible.

Sadly in this media age balance is slowly being replaced by individual perceptions and beliefs.

Meanwhile the Tories, Reform, and the usual Far right fuckwitts with big gobs aren't helping by amplifying hate and discord to score political points over the government in charge.
 
Nobody trusts 'the system' anymore.

The snag with that is that because no one trusts 'the system', 'the system' cannot achieve any reform, because no one thinks it is acting in good faith.

So what is the alternative? This is the trouble with nihilism: it just creates cynicism, but does not offer any way forward.

Are we all just waiting for Jesus Christ to return to sort it all out? It feels a bit like that.
 
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