UK Politics: Labour Is In Trouble

munroburton wrote:Well, well. It's starting to look like the SNP MPs may provide better support to Corbyn than quite a few of his Labour backbenchers.

Salmond's still taking the "Divided Labour is unelectable" line, though. Evidently that's the SNP's official position which I suspect is to try and safeguard their new powerbase in the Western Central Belt - the "I didn't leave Labour, Labour Left" me crowd like Mhairi Black.

I'll quote this little snippet from the "Total War Center" forums about the conundrum that a Corbyn led, genuinely Left Wing, Labour Party may pose to the SNP:

I think a more interesting question is the effect it may have on middle class unionists and nationalists (e.g. those of the more Tartan Tory bent). If the SNP choose to lock themselves in some kind of death embrace with Corbyn, then it could undermine them in more affluent Scottish communities (Edinburgh, Renfrewshire, Stirlingshire, Aberdeenshire etc), where they may look like dangerous radicals by association. Simultaneously if they attack Corbyn then it could undermine them in more left-wing and deprived Scottish communities. The SNP has spent a long time building contradictory images of themselves in communities across Scotland, as both radical lefties and also cautious conservatives. Will be interesting to see whether they must ditch one of these personas.

Mike.

I've temporally hijacked this thread to share a funny story about a US citizen's UK experiences. As an Aussie who visits the UK often, I agree with many of his observations.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-tra ... 7560143070

Daryl wrote:I've temporally hijacked this thread to share a funny story about a US citizen's UK experiences. As an Aussie who visits the UK often, I agree with many of his observations.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-tra ... 7560143070

Some real gems in there.

Others... WTF? Some of those look more like regional or local eccentricities. Some are plain rubbish.

"By law, there are no crappy, old cars." Nah, the UK just has 'innovative' financing or long-term leasing deals and a previous government(Labour, incidentally) ran scrappage schemes where they paid you to scrap your old car if you bought a new one or gave you quite a large subsidy to buy an electric or hybrid car. The rest of it is keeping up with the Joneses - Labour's tenure at the turn of the millennium saw the Ford Mondeo Man become the BMW 3 series Man.

Indeed, annual safety testing regulations get less stringent when the vehicle is older. Generally, they only have to pass what the standards were at the time the vehicle was built.

Daryl wrote:I've temporally hijacked this thread to share a funny story about a US citizen's UK experiences. As an Aussie who visits the UK often, I agree with many of his observations.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-tra ... 7560143070

While it´s clearly written to be funny and has some "ooopsies" and exaggerations included, overall they´re actually kinda accurate.
(a lot more so than that kind of lists usually are)

You don’t have to tip, really!

This one for example i know americans tend to be weirded out by here as well, it seems to be unthinkable that staff can actually have a viable salary without tip.

Many doorknobs, buildings and tools are older than America

When the sign says something was built in 456, they didn’t lose the “1”

And those kind of things, americans have a tendency to just zone out for anything from before 1770s, and extremely so from anything before ~15th or maybe 16th century.

The Wasa and the Medieval museums in Sthlm always has a steady stream of tourists from USA.
And it´s often funny to look at when there´s also large "pockets" of Japanese tourists there at the same time.
The interests and how they look at things are so totally different...

Daryl wrote:I've temporally hijacked this thread to share a funny story about a US citizen's UK experiences. As an Aussie who visits the UK often, I agree with many of his observations.

http://www.news.com.au/travel/world-tra ... 7560143070

Remember the Xenophobe guide series? I loved the one on the united states!

http://www.xenophobes.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Xenophobes-Guide- ... B0070D3UA2

Labour have done a U-turn and are against the whole "The UK should run as a profit so as to avoid getting further into debt, or getting into debt again once the current one is paid off" stance that the Tories are using.
This is an interesting stance since it strongly implies that Labour wants to rely on ever-increasing debt mountains to pay their way into the future.
Have these people never read Charles Dickens?
To spend more than you take is the way to poverty and unhappiness.
Are they hoping to bankrupt the entire country just so everyone is equal in having nothing at all?

Michael Everett wrote:Labour have done a U-turn and are against the whole "The UK should run as a profit so as to avoid getting further into debt, or getting into debt again once the current one is paid off" stance that the Tories are using.
This is an interesting stance since it strongly implies that Labour wants to rely on ever-increasing debt mountains to pay their way into the future.
Have these people never read Charles Dickens?
To spend more than you take is the way to poverty and unhappiness.
Are they hoping to bankrupt the entire country just so everyone is equal in having nothing at all?

Depends on HOW they expect to do it.

It´s certainly not a way i would run anything, but it actually can be realistic.
For example, if the debt increase less than inflation, then it´s not really a problem.

If debt increases while decreasing as compared to GDP, that´s not great but it´s still not a big problem.


So, probably bad but it doesn´t automatically have to be.

Michael Everett wrote:Labour have done a U-turn and are against the whole "The UK should run as a profit so as to avoid getting further into debt, or getting into debt again once the current one is paid off" stance that the Tories are using.
This is an interesting stance since it strongly implies that Labour wants to rely on ever-increasing debt mountains to pay their way into the future.
Have these people never read Charles Dickens?
To spend more than you take is the way to poverty and unhappiness.
Are they hoping to bankrupt the entire country just so everyone is equal in having nothing at all?

So this fiscal charter Osborne got passed last night, making a law that says the government must produce a budget surplus.

Fine sentiment coming from a man who in 2010 promised to balance the books by 2015. We're currently running a deficit of 107 billion pounds per annum.

Come to think of it, I vaguely recall him getting Parliament to pass laws requiring the government to bring the deficit down. After repealing Gordon Brown's Fiscal Responsibility Act(requiring the Government to halve borrowing by 2014) in 2010, calling it vacuous and irrelevant.

IMO, the Tories are buying a world of hurt by continuing to cut everything. It's true that there is always waste in government spending, but most of that would have been slashed over the last term. More and something somewhere will break, whether it's the police dealing with surges in crime, hospitals dealing with people who got sick because they couldn't afford their prescriptions, children slipping through the gaps because of underresourced schools and social services.

Let's face it, the debt is never going to be completely paid off. Reasonable governments should attempt to run deficits and surpluses on alternating years once the interest payments are manageable. There are two ways to improve the GDP-to-debt ratio. Pay the debt down. Or...

Increase GDP. Which will also increase revenue. The big bank bailouts in 2008 were bad enough but they've had hundreds of billions more in "qualitative easing" since - if that money had been invested in UK infrastructure to generate jobs, new industries and improved education programs, the UK would be in considerably better long-term position.

munroburton wrote:Increase GDP. Which will also increase revenue. The big bank bailouts in 2008 were bad enough but they've had hundreds of billions more in "qualitative easing" since - if that money had been invested in UK infrastructure to generate jobs, new industries and improved education programs, the UK would be in considerably better long-term position.

Definitely an SNP man, then. That's almost straight out of their manifesto.

All I'm going to say is "easier said than done". In order to invest in infrastructure, you have get cash from somewhere, so, where would the SNP get it?

Borrow more, thus increasing Public Debt, or get the Private Sector involved?

Mike.

munroburton wrote:So this fiscal charter Osborne got passed last night, making a law that says the government must produce a budget surplus.

Fine sentiment coming from a man who in 2010 promised to balance the books by 2015. We're currently running a deficit of 107 billion pounds per annum.

Sounds pretty much exactly like Anders Borg here in the previous rightwing government.
He was always quick to critique the "lefties" for everything, along with constantly guaranteeing that next year would have a budget without a deficit.

And the prick kept that going for 8 years.
If he got called on it, it was oooobviously never HIS fault, oh noes...

munroburton wrote:IMO, the Tories are buying a world of hurt by continuing to cut everything. It's true that there is always waste in government spending, but most of that would have been slashed over the last term. More and something somewhere will break, whether it's the police dealing with surges in crime, hospitals dealing with people who got sick because they couldn't afford their prescriptions, children slipping through the gaps because of underresourced schools and social services.

Yeah, rightwing "prudence" equals saving 1 pound now and paying 10 extra next year instead. Stupidity. It´s what above mentioned rightwing idiots spent 8 years doing here.

munroburton wrote:Let's face it, the debt is never going to be completely paid off.

Nah, it can be done. It´s a matter of sane politicians being willing to take responsibility.

Göran Persson is a man i detest, but i still have to respect him for taking on a bad situation and doing what was required to get results.