Suella. “Dreams do come true”.
Westminster Politics
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I blame all those lefties in the Tory government.
I'd certainly agree that the definitions seem to have merged in people's minds, however I think that's mainly due to the correlation in western democracies of authoritarianism and ring wing politics (tough rhetoric on immigration being the biggest one). I'm sure if you were in China there would be far more of a correlation between left wing politics (e.g. Central planning) and authoritarianism given their record; with them seeing a correlation between the more right wing politics of western democracies as synonymous with freedom/protection of civil liberties.
I would say the current government are more left wing than Osbourne/Cameron, even in coalition with Clegg; and they're certainly far more left wing than Thatcher. I'd also argue given current tax levels and spending to GDP that they are left of Blair/Brown who were the archetypal centrists. Given the amount of money being spent as a proportion of GDP and the current tax to GDP , there's an argument that this government are the most left wing since Atlee.
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A remarkably stupid man
Yes, and what choice would a low income couple have in this regard? Would they even be able to do it at all ? I think you are correct that people would like choices, but this is a system whereby most people likely have no choice at all. Or not very attractive ones.
Human rights activist complains to Tory party after MP tells him to ‘go back to Bahrain’
Exclusive: In video footage, Bob Stewart MP heard telling Sayed Alwadaei ‘you’re taking money off my country’
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...arty-after-mp-tells-him-to-go-back-to-bahrain
Stewart has been on two trips to Bahrain, paid for by the country’s government, since 2021. Last month, according to the register of members’ interests, he visited the Bahrain airshow and met the foreign minister, declaring a cost of £1,245.56 for the five-day trip.
He also declared another trip in November 2021, including flights, accommodation and meals with a value of £5,349 as part of the parliamentary delegation to the IISS Manama Dialogue.
Exclusive: In video footage, Bob Stewart MP heard telling Sayed Alwadaei ‘you’re taking money off my country’
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...arty-after-mp-tells-him-to-go-back-to-bahrain
Stewart has been on two trips to Bahrain, paid for by the country’s government, since 2021. Last month, according to the register of members’ interests, he visited the Bahrain airshow and met the foreign minister, declaring a cost of £1,245.56 for the five-day trip.
He also declared another trip in November 2021, including flights, accommodation and meals with a value of £5,349 as part of the parliamentary delegation to the IISS Manama Dialogue.
Without being an expert in US healthcare my understanding is that there's different subsidised Medicaid programs that allow for different hospitals / care.
Naturally though like every product and service the poorest people in the country end up with the most basic.
That is the whole point of universal free healthcare. So that the poorest people do not end up with either no healthcare or the most basic healthcare.
Problems you may have seen specific to the NHS statistics are a problem with our current government's execution not the concept of universal free healthcare. Over the last 12 years they have executed a similar ideological predisposition as you seem to hold regarding private healthcare and the (illusion of) choice in the "free market".
' there's an argument that this government are the most left wing since Atlee.'
Jaw-dropping.' there's an argument that this government are the most left wing since Atlee.'
Thanks for the answer. Obviously we'll disagree, but for me that level of government minimalism will only ever work in a textbook.
A government relying on charity to look after the poorest in society and hoping that the wealthy fund it is failing in its basic duties for me. It seems a way to fast-track the ever-growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor and ensure we're living in an Elysium (crap film) type society. The closing of non-profitable transport routes would isolate communities and basically kill off some villages and towns, resulting in increased urbanisation.
Having the choice of hospital works for you as someone with the money to pay for what you want -and best of luck to you both with the twins btw- but not the poorest.
In Singapore there is great wealth disparity, but every citizen has access to subsidised accommodation, as well as food, with some basic healthcare provision for the poor. Admittedly that's easier with a population a tenth that of the UK no doubt, but even the deregulation poster child values social cohesion and provides the basics for the wider community.
There's no real way of avoiding a two, three or several tier offering for any commodity.
In the UK I avoid using buses and trains in favour of private transportation. I avoid using the NHS wherever possible by using private GP's and Bupa. In a few years I'll avoid the education system by sending my children private. I avoid using social housing by buying my own property. In the future I'll avoid using government social care as I've seen the standard of care and would want far better. I'll also avoid relying on a government pension as I'd want more than the most basic retirement. Hell I even avoid using the congested and pothole-filled public roads in favour of the M6 Toll whenever my trip allows it (and I wish there were far more private roads to use).
Bear in mind that these poor services across the board are despite record high taxes, a record budget deficit and record spend to GDP across government. Therefore it simply isn't the case that all these departments are underfunded; quite the opposite in fact.
The question then is if a trillion pound spend alongside record taxation results in poor healthcare, a poor education system, awful adult social care, terrifyingly underfunded childrens care, low pension payments, low unemployment payments, poor social housing infrastructure, a terrible transport network, an underfunded army/navy/airforce with outdated equipment, rapists regularly going unpunished due to an underfunded policeforce, an underfunded prison system with inhumane standards and non-existent rehabilitation, squalid conditions for asylum seekers and a judicial system at breaking point, to name but a few... What's the solution?
Choice is ridiculously overrated. Do people even want that much choice in the basics in life? I mean I can't even be bothered to choose jeans.
Sack the manager, bring someone competent.
The solution is don't allow the government and their privateers to rip off the vast quantities of public money that they currently do, invest in infrastructure and education to grow the economy, redistribute money from the ultra wealthy down the food chain to improve the tax take and grow the economy, and in the long term stop fecking borrowing so much money such that our interest payments become ever more crippling.
Oh and while we're at it we could consider rejoining the Single Market and/or EU.
British are rubbish at making choices, voting for a left wing Tory government and then Brexit and afterwards complaining what a sh*thole the UK is.
Obviously records amount are being spent. Inflation alone would tell us that we need to keep increasing the amounts that are spent to keep the services the same.
So why are they getting worse? Because for the last 12 years the country has been run by a politic party whose main goal seems to be asset stripping the country. Just look at the PPE contracts awarded during Covid or the Test and Trace scandal.
There was so much money being thrown around and there was such a panic, that they got sloppy, I'm sure they have been doing this on a more discreet scale for years.
The issue is not that public services are by definition worse, it's that they are purposely being made that way and to seem inefficient.
Hear Hear. It comes down to cronyism and incompetence in my opinion, before we even get into any Right / Left debate.
The conservatives are corrupt. They exist to serve the needs of themselves and their class, the rest of us be damned. If the last decade hasn't proven that to people by now, I'm really not sure what to say.
I find it quite insulting that @finneh is trying so hard to convince us that this UK government, this fecking UK government, is left-wing, using the typical word salad around "authoritarianism", and focusing almost exclusively on public spending. People like him are simply, very likely in bad faith and hoping that us peasants won't realise it, obfuscating an actually very simple thing, and doing their bit in pushing the Overton window, even if it's just at a very small scale in a football forum. The argument of the money spent in particular is so spurious that it's impossible for me to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he is debating in remotely good faith. Maybe someone with more patience and a better command of the English language will indulge him and get into the actual reasons why the argument is spurious, but I won't, because I'm not that person. I just wanted to express my disgust at his blatant attempt to convince us that the piss on our faces (your faces really, as I don't live there) is just a tiny bit of warm rainwater. Enough is enough.
Sacking every single manager in health, education, civil service, defence, police etc would certainly be one idea!
However you have to ask if every manager is failing simultaneously whether it's the lack of incentives that's the root of the problem, rather than thousands of people being coincidentally incompetant.
Where is all the money coming from to set up completely new infrastructure so that public bodies don't have to rely on private companies (which they've been doing for decades)? Likewise to invest in infrastructure? Presumably growing the economy also requires a chunk of governmental spend, given that you're taxing wealth creators more in your manifesto which will cause an economic contraction that would need offsetting? Tax is already at it's highest and most distributive for decades so will hammering the wealthy further actually raise more funds or will it kill investment and end updoing the reserve? Bear in mind that if the top 10 richest people in the UK donated their entire net worth to the treasury; it would run the NHS for just over a year. You'll very quickly run out of the ultra wealthy and end up needing to hammer small and medium sized businesses, the middle classes and then the lower-middle, which is exactly where we are now.
Also how are we doing all this if we're reducing borrowing at the same time, given that the budget deficit is £100b and being spent on public services?
To not only stop borrowing more but to reduce the budget deficit conservatively lets say you're raising another £80b a year in taxes. Add on infrastructure and educational investment and you're looking at, what, another £45b so £125b total per annum? You start out by taxing every billionaire an extra £10m per year (£1.77b), you then tax the people who earn £1m+ per year an extra £100k on top (£1.9b). You then tax every single personal earning £150k+ an extra £10,000 per year (£6b). You not only increase corporation tax to 25%, but decide to triple that and go to 37% (£6.6b). You then go after the 4.3m higher rate taxpayers (£50k+), having them pay another £2500 (£10b). You also assume that this aggressive taxation has no detrimental effect on consumer spending, employment, business investment etc and are what less than a quarter the way there?
It's common sense that the 19,000 people earning £1m per annum, or the 177 UK billionaires are a drop in the ocean when compared to an annual budget of a 1000 billion and a deficit of 100 billion every year.
I don't think he understands what he's talking about. He really believes that everyone has an equal choice. He does because he's well off.
Having had surreal discussions with him in the past like why he voted for Brexit because that would enable Nigerian farmers to sell their milk in the UK.
I'm so glad I don't live in the UK either.
It is not just British people, humans in general are just not very good at dealing with choice. Give people too many choices, they just use shortcuts to narrow it down to one or two, not necessarily effectively. So the more choice, the worse the decisions. Look at the shitty choices rich people make.
Usually 'more choice' as a policy objective is just a smokescreen for something less palatable.
I don't disagree but rich people can usually make shitty choices and survive.
There is no way on earth that taxing the rich more causes an economic contraction. The fact is that accumulating wealth at the top is almost entirely economically unproductive (evidenced by the fact they get disproportionately richer every year so cannot be spending it) and bringing that money back into the "everyday" economy via taxation is the only sensible way to attain growth.
Taxing earnings is also not the only way to claw back obscene wealth, I'd be all in favour of a wealth tax, even if only as a short term measure to pay down some debt or pay for infrastructure projects / investment. I'd also be in favour of taxing some businesses differently - the big tech companies for example pay a very small fraction of their earnings as corporation tax because they have many ways to make the profit disappear to a tax haven. So either we could find ways to prevent the money ending up in the tax havens (the network of British-affiliated tax havens is extensive), or we could just find more ingenious ways to tax large companies who pay low tax rates e.g. tax revenue in some way or tax transactions.
Clearly investment doesn't work instantly so expecting government debt to drop instantly would be foolish, which is why I say the long term aim should be to stop borrowing. You'll note that the government's aim has (notionally) been to reduce spending to cut borrowing for the last 12 years and yet the debt has kept skyrocketing. Almost like you can't cut your way to growth, and actually public services have a great economic value.
This is Sunak's answer....
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You know damn well I meant the tories.
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Finneh, I honestly can’t remember your last political post that had foundations in observable reality. And you post all the Fcuking time about politics.
Ending free market Capitalism. It ain’t hard buddy. You just can’t hear the answer as you’ll pay £20 for a 30 minute Uber instead of £6.50 for a 34 minute tube journey.
Live your life however you want, but your answers always seem to come from this weird nouveau riche point of position that enjoys pissing away money if it means you don’t have to meet anyone that’s not exactly like you.
He thinks it’s sad as in he thinks they should all feckin starve instead of getting free food.
Its sad that they exist BUT I’m let’s talk about inflation
Not cutting spending so much in the first place that those services are left to ruin and then need fixing? Don’t we lag behind most other developed nations in terms of public health spending vs both GDP and per capita anyway?
Some forward thinking by our leaders to come up with plans to solve issues before they become massive problems? All the government has done for the last decade is be reactive. Have they actually tried to anything progressive for the majority of the country?
I'd like to know the volume of my posts regarding politics compared with the majority of others who regularly post. I'd imagine I would be way, way, way down the list. Albeit I'm one of the few who don't think Ryan Giggs is right wing.
Sunak repeatedly refuses to confirm if he’s looking to take UK out of the ECHR…
Whilst he uses Putin as an excuse for fecking everything, he wants to join him be leaving the ECHR.
Whilst he uses Putin as an excuse for fecking everything, he wants to join him be leaving the ECHR.
I simply want decent healthcare for my family and far, far better education for my children than the public sector gave to me in the 00's.
If you see that as pissing away money then fair enough; I'm sure you have far more important things you're saving for like overthrowing capitalism.
and do you think you'd be banned from doing that with better universal services? Has it crossed your mind that the standard of private provision has to be higher if public services are of a higher quality? (The competition you crave perhaps?)"the chef we hired gets the best ingredients but constantly eats them all and gives the patrons beans on toast, which always results in explosive diarrhea. Clearly the only way to fix this is to give the patrons sawdust and charge 10x more for the proper food."
There’s no point in using words when you just make up the meaning of them. Right wing and left wing are not just descriptors of your economic ideas and preferences. They describe your social values too. Yet you’ve completely stripped out that second dimension to paint a picture of a “right winger” that sounds good to you.
Obviously you have right wing economic ideas and want to distance yourself from right wing social values, so you’ve gone to the trouble of inventing definitions that feel right to you. But when they don’t align when the academic consensus nor the cultural consensus then all you’re doing is arguing with your own imagination, and dragging people into the argument.
Spot on. We cannot pretend that "right wing" is just economic ideas and policies, it's also a foundation of cronyism, and a bastion of racism, discrimination and disregard for anyone who is not rich. You can't say "I'm right wing, but without all the bad stuff".
The whole commentary started when someone was confused that a right wing donor might be turned off by the Tory party lurching to the left (the implication being that the current party is very right wing).
I was challenging that viewpoint as a key tenet (id argue the key) of right wing politics is low taxation and the current crop have increased taxes to a higher level than we've seen in 70 years. We've also seen the kind of social programs I've not seen in my lifetime in the form of furlough; again not the kind of policy you'd associate with a right wing government.
We've also seen unprecedented governmental intervention in a free market commodity via price capsà (energy), way before gas prices increased several-fold. We've seen the rates of tax frozen for a decade meaning hundreds of thousands of middle earners being dragged into higher tax rates.
We've seen a raid of businesses in the form of increasing not only corporation tax by a third, but also business rates, insurance tax, payroll taxes. We've seen entrepreneurs relief slashed. We've seen council tax increase massively.
If the counter to this plethora of left wing taxation, social "investment" and free market intervention is "yeah but they must be far right because even though net migration is at a record high they have an authoritarian nutcase as Home Secretary" or "Brexit something something culture wars"; then I'd disagree
Now if anyone wants to put an argument together as to why this government (since Bojo & Sunak's tax and spend spree) is far right without talking about Brexit (note Mick Lynch and the RMT were heavily pro-Brexit) and immigration/culture wars then fair enough.