The Post General Election Thread

[EalingBlue2]

This talk of savage public sector cuts is dramatic at best. Of the 12 billion - 40 percent will come from tax evasion, significant amounts from housing benefit reform. How many under 25s do you know are able to buy a house? And yet the single mum from Rochdale can have 3 kids by 23 and get a 3 bedroom council house. That option in life has to be eradicated. It is unfair on working people for that type of thing to be happening. Working people have to make choices like living with parents until mid twenties, renting, house sharing, delaying having children and paying there way. We have to still somehow provide the safety net for genuine cases but the safety net is too full. Even if you do not like it - a lot of this is due to uncontrolled immigration and millions of people especially in London getting a ridiculous amount of"free money" I will happily debate this with Damocles, ducado, pb or anyone in a civil manner. I maintain my stance in my post the other day (where ducado called me idiotic) that the Labour Party now largely represent public sector workers, those on benefits, immigrants and people like my dad who is a dinosaur Union man. The plasterer, bricklayer, white collar man is best off voting Tory. In work yesterday the vast majority of professionals had voted Tory and we're of exactly the same opinion. In fact someone said these people on the extreme left who want doctors to earn the same as shelf stackers should be shot! ( I am not going that far!!!) My mrs in the public sector said very much the opposite and that the mood was down. This supports my opinion. There were literally thousanfs of people in the public sector who contributed nothing for years and years. Quite rightly they have been streamlined. At the peak of the recession they had the audacity to talk about strikes when they got offered a one percent pay rise. Meanwhile the bricklayer has seen his pay halfed in that time and that is even if he was in work.

This utter nonsense about stripping the public sector a la thatcher and having to spend more to rebuild it is quite simply that.

Harsh decisions have to be made to make people realise if you want to get on in this country you have to work hard. Cameron says it repeatedly and it seems fair to me.

Ps my kids came home last night and the ten year old had been told by her teacher that it was a sad day as cameron had got in and was going to close down the nhs!!!!

Looking forward to parents evening.

I think the trouble is too many people don't respect the fact that the only reason they live in a civilised society is because of a backbone of public servants who do everything from looking after the sick, keeping the country healthy, saving us from fires or crime, fighting for our freedom, educating the kids etc. they are the backbone of society.

The Murdoch right has for 30 years tried to portray these people as slackers and blusters etc and created this sense of entitlement In elements of the population where they believe only work in pursuit of money is worthy and that they deserve more.

You always talk about hard work deserving reward yet constantly imply those working to teach our kids, protect our streets, working in casualty at night are less deserving and u assume less hard working.

I work as a CFO for a sub region in a multi national and I work hard but I don't work as hard as some nurses , doctors and police I know who do much more stressful and hard work for a lot less money!

I would also love to understand how you morally think punishing children is a good way to improve society as you constantly talk about taking benefits from people with kids. Many find the protection of vulnerable kids more important than punishing adults

i constantly talk about taking benefits from people with kids do ?I! Here's one huge saving idea - make final salary pensions in the public sector not include the calculation of overtime hours in the last two years of service. Would save billions and billions! Biggest fiddle of all time.

Anyway without wishing to sound like ducado - I am not debating with you as I will loose by death by waffle as per the ched evans thread and the kids have just told me I have to rescue a hedgehog stuck and drowningin our drain. May debate later when I have done my bit for the animal kingdom.

Good luck - hope you succeed!

You talk a lot about stopping benefits to the single mothers who have lots of kids, I assume that meant the kids too.

 

[worsleyweb]

I think the trouble is too many people don't respect the fact that the only reason they live in a civilised society is because of a backbone of public servants who do everything from looking after the sick, keeping the country healthy, saving us from fires or crime, fighting for our freedom, educating the kids etc. they are the backbone of society.

The Murdoch right has for 30 years tried to portray these people as slackers and blusters etc and created this sense of entitlement In elements of the population where they believe only work in pursuit of money is worthy and that they deserve more.

You always talk about hard work deserving reward yet constantly imply those working to teach our kids, protect our streets, working in casualty at night are less deserving and u assume less hard working.

I work as a CFO for a sub region in a multi national and I work hard but I don't work as hard as some nurses , doctors and police I know who do much more stressful and hard work for a lot less money!

I would also love to understand how you morally think punishing children is a good way to improve society as you constantly talk about taking benefits from people with kids. Many find the protection of vulnerable kids more important than punishing adults

i constantly talk about taking benefits from people with kids do ?I! Here's one huge saving idea - make final salary pensions in the public sector not include the calculation of overtime hours in the last two years of service. Would save billions and billions! Biggest fiddle of all time.

Anyway without wishing to sound like ducado - I am not debating with you as I will loose by death by waffle as per the ched evans thread and the kids have just told me I have to rescue a hedgehog stuck and drowningin our drain. May debate later when I have done my bit for the animal kingdom.

Can you tell me what jobs in public sector get their overtime include in their calculations because it certainly doesn't happen in the fire service, and I for one am glad that final salary pensions have gone in the service what a con that was, but you cant blame people for taking advantage of a flawed system. Many of the waste/wasters to me are in the higher echelons of the public service there are some outrageous salaries for middle management and higher, I mean how can some chief execs get paid more than the PM? Yet it's constantly the people on the ground that get the brunt, look at a soldier in Afghanistan get a redundancy notice while he's on the frontline, that's not the sort of government I want, life maybe not fair but have some fucking dignity and compassion about how you go about your business.

I would give every nurse and soldier a pay rise tommorow - there is so much inefficiency it is frightening. I work with manchester council and salford council daily. There is so much innefictency it is untrue. Oh and my mrs is going from 24 hours a week to 36 to get on this pension fiddle.

 

[EalingBlue2]

I understand the Left's point that restricting child benefits will harm the child rather than the parent.

However, can you not concede that there is a huge problem when someone can be given a decent 'salary' and is put up in a house out of the price range of their working peers just because they've had a few kids? It's totally unfair on the working frugal who wait until they can financially support a family before they start one.

The issue then is how you solve it. Surely there is a middle ground option between giving these people nothing, causing children to suffer, and giving them what they receive now.

There are other ways that are more expensive than benefits and can help actually solve the issue , but usually they cost more. If those kids got better nutrition etc through schools, if there were more clubs , more mentors and support to families who need it and other ways to look after them, if benefits were perhaps worth more but usable only on certain things or food, kids clothes etc. if more pre school was offered with food for kids who can't afford it . Etc

The problem is they are all more nanny state and all more expensive and governments prefer to chuck benefits at people because it is cheaper and easier than really trying to address the issue.

 

[SWP's back]

Spot on! Anyone who thinks someone's interests are determined purely by their race or nationality misses the point of humanity. the idea that any economic policy is in all the interests of England or Scotland is utterly farcical. As with everything any policy will be in the interests of some north and south of the border and not in others.

Also the talk of English and scots is made even more farcical when you actually think how many people in both countries are not English or scots or indeed are scots in England or English in Scotland.

Keep seeing people for who they are.......

Once again you totally misunderstand the point.

The Scots want financial autonomy. They want to be able to decide their own levels of income tax and corporation tax. They want to be able to decide how much they use for public spending. They will now get that. It will save the English a few quid.

It's kind of an important point, your post was literally just words without any meaning.

I am at a loss as to how you can post so much and miss the point each and every time.

My meaning is very simple the interests of individuals are determined by wealth, ability, age, the constituency they live in, what their profession is etc far more than their nationality. I am fed up with nationalist English or scots thinking they can solve their problems through nationalism rather than by tackling the real issues. I actually think that the SNP have many of the simplistic attitudes that UKIP do. Unfortunately sAlmond like Farage is a very very able politician, unfortunately able politicians are not always great leaders.

You seem to always talk about a collection of individuals with different needs as one bloc of people with one interest that isn't true. Scottish nationalism is just people who feel they have a raw deal wanting more with able politicians exploiting this , not as different to UKIP as they would want everyone to believe, both want to divide to suit self interest!

You're still not following. The chat was about SNP having the power to raise their own taxes in Scotland.

This would mean that they could achieve their high tax, high spend, anti austerity dream. It would also mean the end of the Barret formula and save England £5bn.

It's not about little nationalistic anyone's. It's about self determination whilst remaining within the union and I can't see a downside (apart from for wealthy Scots in Scotland). Everyone's a winner.

 

[worsleyweb]

Slightly off topic but I have just saved a hedge hogs life! It was drowning in the drain I scooped it up with a spoon and took it to the hedge hog hospital in withington. The women who runs it is getting an OBE for services to hedge hogs!!

 

[union city blue]

And this, everyone, is why the Tories won. They managed to convince economically illiterate people that the finances of a country are in any way similar to the finances of a household (even though the main reason to stay out of the Euro is to control their own money supply, i.e. print their own money when needed for their own economy!)

And how convenient that the solution to this problem just happens to be what the Tories like to do whenever they get in government anyway, which is to cut public services to fund tax cuts for the rich and corporations, and sell off public assets to their rich friends. Except that they were proven so wrong in the first few years of their government, when the economy flatlined, that even they had to concede defeat and put down the knife to help the economic recovery.

I expect a similar thing (this) time. Loads of "necessary" cuts in the first few years, followed by enough government investment to create an upturn in the economy just before the next election, confirming that the cuts were indeed necessary and we're now seeing the fruits of their tough decisions.

It was utter bullshit this time, and it'll be utter bullshit next time. Oh shit, we really need to reduce the debt in this time of historically low interest rates. The government are like someone who sells their house to pay of a debt to the Student Loan Company rather than just waiting until they earn enough money.

I'm with I'm with Stupid!

This is the time to be refinancing the country by floating more long term debt, retiring older more expensive debt, and fixing basic infrastructure on the cheap (cheap money, cheap labor, and cheap and easy politics!). In a global environment, this will not have the usual negative effect of driving inflation, as DEflation is the more pressing global concern.

Two great posts.

I've not yet heard a good explanation of how taking money out of the economy is going to stimulate growth and create a surplus. It didn't work in 2010-2012, as Britain found out. It killed growth in the economy and caused the doule dip. The risk is that this will happen again, especially with the added uncertainty of the EU referendum. Inward investment is going to dry up over the next two years. There is surplus capacity in almost all of Europe and there are Governments who are prepared to invest in infrastructure to support business. These destinations will look more and more attractive to external (to the EU) businesses.

A former Social Democrat leader in Sweden (Juholt) asked an interesting question: How could the economies in the 1900-20s afford to build such large scale public infrastructure but we can't today when the ecomomy was so much smaller then and so much poorer.

Economics has undergone a huge reformation over recent years. It has become a genuine science, able to use mega data analysis and huge computing power to see what has actually happened in economies, rahter relying on the postulations from "gurus" that have no base in fact. Economics has changed from alchemy to chemistry, from astrology to anstronomy, and the message is clear - economic equality with small differences in the wealth gap promote and protect growth, inequality and increasing wealth differences stifle growth and cause collapse. This is why the Tories have only ever been able to offer boom-and-bust.

"Austerity", and the non-sensical comparisons to running a small business or household economics, are simply an excuse for cuts in the public sector and increase the flow of money via the trickle-up effect.

Amongst the best posts I have seen on this forum in months.

 

[cibaman]

I understand the Left's point that restricting child benefits will harm the child rather than the parent.

However, can you not concede that there is a huge problem when someone can be given a decent 'salary' and is put up in a house out of the price range of their working peers just because they've had a few kids? It's totally unfair on the working frugal who wait until they can financially support a family before they start one.

The issue then is how you solve it. Surely there is a middle ground option between giving these people nothing, causing children to suffer, and giving them what they receive now.

There are other ways that are more expensive than benefits and can help actually solve the issue , but usually they cost more. If those kids got better nutrition etc through schools, if there were more clubs , more mentors and support to families who need it and other ways to look after them, if benefits were perhaps worth more but usable only on certain things or food, kids clothes etc. if more pre school was offered with food for kids who can't afford it . Etc

The problem is they are all more nanny state and all more expensive and governments prefer to chuck benefits at people because it is cheaper and easier than really trying to address the issue.

My niece had three kids by the age of 25, and got the council house. Her parents have always been extremely hard working. But the crowd she got into as a 16 year old, through the father of her first child, all bought into the "working's a mugs game"mentality. She could give me chapter and verse on how much money she would lose if she worked rather than having kids.

She's in her 30s now, long since ditched the waste of space boyfriend, and runs a successful small business with her husband. She completely regrets her late teens / early twenties (although not the kids).

 

[SWP's back]

So the right Milliband reckons it will take Labour ten years to recover from their worst election in 30 years.

It'll do the party good to move back to the right again. A move to the left to appease Scottish Labour will simply lessen their chance of ever getting a majority in England.

 

[Lucky13]

So the right Milliband reckons it will take Labour ten years to recover from their worst election in 30 years.

It'll do the party good to move back to the right again. A move to the left to appease Scottish Labour will simply lessen their chance of ever getting a majority in England.

Heard an English Labour MP suggesting that the SLP should be separate from the Labour Party, it's their only chance of gaining seats again.

 

[EalingBlue2]

Slightly off topic but I have just saved a hedge hogs life! It was drowning in the drain I scooped it up with a spoon and took it to the hedge hog hospital in withington. The women who runs it is getting an OBE for services to hedge hogs!!

Good lad