UK Politics VIII

[ljkeane]

The number of people who are going to vote for the Lib Dems in the next election continues to shrink then.

[Lummel]

Didn't some liberal democrats sign some kind of pledge or other that they wouldn't increase tutition fees before the election (or could it even have been that they pledged to get rid of tutition fees?). It will be interesting to see how many of them have been since seduced by the smooth taste of coalition government.

I still think we should round up any lib dem voters and put them to the question.

[Maltaran]

Didn't some liberal democrats sign some kind of pledge or other that they wouldn't increase tutition fees before the election

I believe they all did.

[Altherion]

It really takes an extraordinary level of dedication to come up with a solution this bad. Fees tripled

Whoa. At that rate, you guys will have caught up to American universities in no time at all. In fact, after the conversion from GBP to USD, the 9000K becomes 14.5K which is already more expensive than most US state schools (though still pretty far from private schools). Aren't the students protesting or something?

[mormont]

Aren't the students protesting or something?

Yup. For all the good it'll do.

[Geddon]

yeah, this is about as bad a solution as could conceivably have been found.

Not if your aim is to stop those dreadful poor people from taking the university places (and hence the well paying professional jobs) that should naturally fall to the sons and daughters of the well to do.

After all, Rupert is going to need a banking job in the city and somebody is going to need to drive the train that gets him there and to make the cappuccino he buys on the way. The more expensive we make higher education the more easily the right kind of people will find their way to the right level.

[ants]

I suppose I'm particularly unhappy wiht the numbers side of things. We have this policy announcement but we don't know how many households and how many indidviduals will be affected, so we have no idea how many of those will be working and might need public transport (and for the hard up we are talking busses and many chnages rather than the "relative" convenience of train travel) to get to their jobs, no idea how many are going to school and for whom additional schoolplaces will be required in new locations, and no idea of what level of additional capacity will be required at Doctors' surgeries and so on.

Given that Housing Benefit is paid out by local councils (who collect details of size of household, employment, earnings etc as part of the application) the Government could have collected the data and publically stated how many people would have been affected and to what extent before they made their policy announcement but it appears that they prefered to leep first and let the facts on the ground work themselves out somehow or other. It's only peoples lives after all, not like its anything important.

Edit: in a our market economy there are inevitably going to be people who are employed and people who are poorer than others. The question is if we are going to treat them as scum or as fellow citizens (or as fellow subjects of Her Majesty).

Well, given how much money its meant to save, we can both say they probably know exactly how many will be impacted, and that its a lot of people.

[ants]

Dare I ask why exactly people on housing benefit should be entitled to live in houses which the vast majority of taxpayers cannot and will not ever be able to afford themselves? I can't say I have much sympathy for people who will have to move out of central London and move to zones 2/3. It is, after all, what the rest of us have to do.

I notice nobody has touched on this.

I think its a really tricky question. I think some of the examples shown in the media I go "yes they bloody should move", while some I think no. It will depend on your view of how beneficial (or not) having mixed societies is as well.

But certainly something will stick in the craw of anyone living worse than someone living off your taxes.

[Werthead]

The Guardian asks if there is a case for abolishing the armed services, thus saving ourselves about half the costs of the budget cuts.

That's extreme, but there are some cogent points there. The fact that us, as individuals, are far more likely to be the victims of crime than of attack by terrorists or other states, yet the police only get £6 bn as opposed to the armed forces' £40 bn is indeed somewhat bizarre. Also, when it comes to our nuclear capability, the only states that could threaten us with nuclear weapons would trigger WWIII in the process, sparking a response from other nuclear-armed states such as the USA. As such, the UK doesn't itself need a nuclear arsenal, and the failure of our nuclear weapons to deter, say, the Falklands War shows that it isn't good for anything else.

On the other side of the coin, some other points are not well-thought-out. His suggestion that Britain rearmed overnight in 1940 is untrue. We rearmed over a period of several years leading up to that and, even with building planes made of wood, it almost wasn't enough. We simply would not be able to build aircraft carriers, jet fighters and tank battalions in the space of a few months or even a few years if a new threat arose. We'd need 10-20 years warning at a minimum, and that is unlikely to occur. He also states a lack of extant threats to the UK or its interests that the military could deal with, which to me is fairly wishful thinking. If Al-Qaeda or a similar organisation succeeded in toppling the governments of Saudi Arabia or Egypt (a remote threat, but not out of the question), they'd find themselves with a lot of top-notch American-supplied hardware which we'd need to deal with. Of course, it's likely Israel or the US would deal with that contingency, but that's certainly a possible problem. There's also the ongoing rhetoric by Argentina against the Falklands. A non-existent British military, combined with the discovery of oil in the region, would be practially inviting a re-occupation (as it stands now, our forces are probably insufficient to mount a similar operation to 1982, so we'd have to stop them landing in the first place which would be very difficult).

The argument for abolishing nukes and for dramatically reorganising our armed forces is certainly there, but full abolishment seems rather premature, given the current world situation.

[MinDonner]

If Al-Qaeda or a similar organisation succeeded in toppling the governments of Saudi Arabia or Egypt (a remote threat, but not out of the question), they'd find themselves with a lot of top-notch American-supplied hardware which we'd need to deal with.

Yeah but... would they really try to invade England? Why bother?

[The Iceman of the North]

Yeah but... would they really try to invade England? Why bother?

Maybe not England, but I hear there's rich pickings in Wales.

[MinDonner]

Pfft. There's a sodding Arkenstone under the Lonely Mountain, you'd be better off trying to nick that.

[Werthead]

Yeah but... would they really try to invade England? Why bother?

We are still members of NATO and a belligerent SA or Egypt puts them quite close to other member-states in southern and eastern Europe, so we'd have to come to their aid if attacked (although granted that the mostly likely previous target, Turkey, seems to be swinging away from its European ties). An extremely unlikely occurence? Sure. But not impossible, and that's where the problems kick in. Do you have no contingency at all, or a weak one, or a strong one when we can't really afford it?

[The Iceman of the North]

Can't you just ship some Chavs overseas if necessary?

[Werthead]

Can't you just ship some Chavs overseas if necessary?

"Chav the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."

[The Iceman of the North]

Solves two problems in one strike.

[Hereward]

There's also the ongoing rhetoric by Argentina against the Falklands. A non-existent British military, combined with the discovery of oil in the region, would be practially inviting a re-occupation (as it stands now, our forces are probably insufficient to mount a similar operation to 1982, so we'd have to stop them landing in the first place which would be very difficult).

You are right to say that Britain could not repeat a similar operation to the 1982 reoccupation of the Falklands, but it's important to remember we wouldn't need to. That Task Force was necessary because an undefended Falklands needed to be recaptured. The Falklands of today is anything but undefended as the forces based there are certainly more than sufficient to stop Argentina landing in the first place, even if they had the capability to do so..

[MinDonner]

I feel very lax for not having started my annual Guy Fawkes thread, but my heart's not really in it this year, must have used up all my anti-papist vitriol during the Pope's visit.

*half-arsedly sets fire to a picture of Mary cuddling a lamb*

[Hereward]

I feel very lax for not having started my annual Guy Fawkes thread, but my heart's not really in it this year, must have used up all my anti-papist vitriol during the Pope's visit.

*half-arsedly sets fire to a picture of Mary cuddling a lamb*

Me too. I was goint to change my avatar, but I just couldn't summon up the enthusiasm. Perhaps being a scab today is raising hitherto unrecognised moral qualms. :unsure:

Nah.

[VarysTheSpider]

I think its a really tricky question. I think some of the examples shown in the media I go "yes they bloody should move", while some I think no.It will depend on your view of how beneficial (or not) having mixed societies is as well.

I suppose my view of these mixed societies is partly soured by the fact that I'm not invited to do any mixing. Boris' talk of the "rich and the poor" living side by side unintentionally hits the nail on the head. The rich and the poor can live there, but no one else! That makes me cross. :angry:

Nevertheless I suppose one shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we have something of a housing crisis which causes the high rents in the first place. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like the government can do anything about it. Seems to me that the demand and (lack of) supply of houses are a bit out of control, but the causes (high population growth, lack of space, demographic shifts, concentration of employment opportunities) would be difficult to address even if there wasn't a deficit to pay down.

It's not a great situation for many people, but a cap seems sensible, and the level of the cap I've seen so far makes the hysteria a little surreal. The £250 a week cap on a 1 bed property, for example, is still 20% more than what I pay for a 2 bed property.