UK Politics: Iain Duncan Smith introduces death penalty for poor people

[paddington]

Dissapointed beagling isn't posh dogging :(

More seriously. I wasn't expecting prision sentences for Brookes&Coulsin before this. I am not so sure now, I can see them getting a slap on the wrist for doing it to celebs and regular people. Doing it to the royals could spell big trouble for them if found guilty.

edit: min beat me to it

[Derfel Cadarn]

I'm displaying my ignorance, I know, but I'm also wondering how one 'nearly' gets shot by blanks.

I'm not a gun expert, or even novice, but I *think* shooting at someone with blanks is still considered risky. If there's any debris in the gun barrel it basically gets turned into a bullet when the blank's powder ignites.

[paddington]

I think there is still wadding and stuff in blanks.

[Liffguard]

I'm not a gun expert, or even novice, but I *think* shooting at someone with blanks is still considered risky.  If there's any debris in the gun barrel it basically gets turned into a bullet when the blank's powder ignites. 

Even without debris in the barrel, the force of the explosion can still project quite a long distance. Blanks are not inherently safe by any stretch of the imagination.

[King Hammer]

To be fair it's probably more like £10 a year. And yes, on PAYG

It's because I'm 47 and only use a mobile for emergency and so that I can be contacted when away from home/work. I probably make about half a dozen calls and a similar number of texts a year, but I do also use it to access weather data, train times etc when travelling.

Anyway, back on subject, obviously most here don't agree we me so I'll not say much more. But I think this is worth mentoning:

If you give a man a fish he eats for a day

If you teach a man to fish he eats for life.

I don't see food banks as a solution - IMO they only perpetuate the problem. I suspect that a lot of those using them would be better given help with budgeting and sorting out their priorities, ensuring they are claiming whatever benefits are due to them and even in some cases being taught how to shop and cook. And I suspect IDS would tend to agree with me. I wouldn't ban food banks, but I do question whether they are really helping in the long term.

As I'm on a very low income, despite being self-employed (and also running a charity for which, incidently, I am paid £0.00p per year), I receive nearly £50 a week Working Tax Credit. If I didn't smoke and drink (too much!) that would be more than enough for all my living costs excluding rent, council tax and utility bills. I appreciate my circumstances are unusual (for a start, I'm single so that helps!), but I do believe people can survive on a lot less than they think, but it's something you have to learn to do. And no, Christmas is not ruined if you can't afford the new Xbox!

That's not to say people should have to survive on such a low income, but that's a whole different story ....

If you subscribe to the absurd belief that all wealth is justly earned and that the poor are poor because of loose morals and bad choices, then I suppose this makes sense.

Conservatives: blaming individuals for systemic problems since (forever).

[Darth Visenya]

If you subscribe to the absurd belief that all wealth is justly earned and that the poor are poor because of loose morals and bad choices, then I suppose this makes sense.

And the rich are rich because of loose morals and good choices.

[Maltaran]

Now I know that Wills is the heir to the throne and therefore, by definition, one of the most upper-class people in existence. But I still find myself shocked, shocked I say, that anyone under the age of 50 actually still goes beagling.

I would suggest that this is more of a rural/urban and class divide than an age-related one - horsey people of any age will enjoy any excuse to go out riding.

[Lummel]

...Conservatives: blaming individuals for systemic problems since (forever).

Steady on old chap! This is the UK politics thread, not the US one, remember! Tories, not conservatives - you've gotta stick to the right nomenclature

;)

I would suggest that this is more of a rural/urban and class divide than an age-related one - horsey people of any age will enjoy any excuse to go out riding.

Beagling eh. I supposing the likes of them are too grand for common or garden dogging like the rest of us commoners. (Must make mental note to ask HM Liz II

if she still enjoys Corgiing at her age).

[The Marquis de Leech]

Beagling eh. I supposing the likes of them are too grand for common or garden dogging like the rest of us commoners. (Must make mental note to ask HM Liz II

if she still enjoys Corgiing at her age).

I wonder if the more adventurous upper-class make love "beagle-style".

[SeanF]

I wonder if the more adventurous upper-class make love "beagle-style".

According to the Sloane Rangers' Handbook Buggery and being beaten are the favoured options.

[SeanF]

Indeed. At the last election - two years after the biggest economic implosion in seven decades - there were 61,500 people relying on food banks. Earlier this year - with the economy starting to recover - it was estimated at 347,000, representing a fivefold increase until the Coalition government. At the debate, it was suggested the latter figure is highly conservative and the true figure may be between 500,000 and 600,000, including dependents.

It was bad under Labour. It's a catastrophe under the Tories and LibDems. The Coalition has taken a problem and made it far worse.

A large part of which was caused by the global economic situation. In addition, the Tories spent pretty much every nanosecond from 1997 to at least the end of 2007 taking credit for the economic boom, in which case they must also shoulder some of the blame (the credit-fuelled recovery which did set the scene for the recession did begin under Major, after all). Given how much of the worse excesses of the crash were caused by the banking sector, deregulated and lacking oversight since Thatcher's day, Tories really can't start throwing bricks around about who's to blame for the economic situation.

Unemployment went from about 1.5 to 2.5 million, which is serious but not as damaging as the 1980s and 1990s recessions, when it hit 3 million (out of a smaller population as well). The most severely damaging impacts of unemployment have also been felt under the Coalition government.

A further Labour government would have had to have cut broadly in a large number of areas, yes. But they are unlikely to have undertaken the same ideologically-fuelled 'punishment of the poor' policies that the Tories have instigated. The Tories are using the cover and excuse of the recession to implement their ideological beliefs in small government, less welfare etc (and have once again started their, "Let's royally fuck

up the NHS to trick people into thinking it's shit so we can get away with privatising-it-by-a-thousand-cuts," masterplan), as proven when Cameron said recently that even if the British economy boomed he'd want to keep austerity in place because that's just how he rolls.

With a Labour government it is questionable if the British economy would have been in the shitter for as long (austerity is not and never has been the solution to such recessions), the recovery as pitiful as it has been and if the poor would have taken the brunt of the impact as opposed to those who actually caused most of the problems. I mean, if the chancellor had been Balls, clearly we'd all be eating rats right now, but with someone half-competent at the helm the worst problems could have been avoided

Tories jeering at poor people suffering as a direct result of the government's ineptitude is appalling, yes. Labour jeering the Coalition government's policies for a lack of growth and stubbornly high employment is much more understandable (personally I'd prefer it if no-one jeered at all, but politics is partially theatre).

Complaining that people are in such dire straights they need to use food banks in the first place is perfectly logical. Criticising the government for refusing to allow those food banks extra funding (from non-UK sources, even) now that they are necessary is also logical. I'm not seeing the problem here. In the seventh-largest economy in the world with enormous resources at our disposal, we should not need to be donating food to our own citizens. However, now that this situation has arisen, starving that process of the resources it needs is also completely incomprehensible.

If you're in power, you take the blame for what happens on your watch. Labour supported joining the ERM in 1990, but it was the Conservatives who, very properly, took the blame for the subsequent fiasco. So, Labour got it in the neck, when the economy shrank by 7%.

By most measures, the economy is in better shape than in May 2010. Employment is higher; unemployment, inflation and the public sector deficit lower. Now it may be that things would have been better had Labour been re-elected in 2010, but reasonably enough, the public weren't willing to take that gamble.

[The Iceman of the North]

I'm not a gun expert, or even novice, but I *think* shooting at someone with blanks is still considered risky. If there's any debris in the gun barrel it basically gets turned into a bullet when the blank's powder ignites.

I know of stories of fatalities caused by blanks. One was a soldier who were "wounded" during an exercise. He was moved on a stretcher with his rifle which went off blasting him in the head. There were also a stuntman who was killed when playing Russian roulette with a gun loaded with blanks.

[Maltaran]

Nick Griffin is declared bankrupt. The schadenfreude is strong.

[Clueless Northman]

So, I take it this is the general UK politics thread?

Because we have a winner:

http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2014/01/03/michael-gove-blasts-blackadder-for-spreading-left-wing-myths

[MinDonner]

Blackadder, eh? That's... topical. :wideeyed:

I'm now sorta morbidly curious as to his views on the other bits of history, if he thinks that WWI was a noble strike against dastardly German oppressive imperialism (as opposed to the good sort of imperialism that everyone else was doing). Not quite curious enough to let him loose on the curriculum, though.

[paddington]

There was 60,000 frigging British casualties on the first day of the somme 35k before bloody lunch, precursor to victory my arsehole. Almost 700,000 over the 150 odd days of the battle. n

edit: Maybe the volunteers weren't duped. There however was alot of pressure to volunteer, pals regiments, white feathers. Plenty of cohersion.

[MinDonner]

Apparently, to be a real patriot you have to be OK with those sort of casualty figures, indeed to demand them, as long as they are in the service of fighting foreigners.

[slim da reaper]

Michael Gove as a war hero makes the Spartan Race UK co-founder Richard Lee look credible as an ex mountain forces Royal Marine.

[Hereward]

Much as it pains me to say it, and his typically crass party political partisanship aside, he has got a kernel of a point. WWI is taught and portrayed in a very simplistic and often inaccurate way.

It is difficult to see how Britain could have stayed out of the war and not seen its independence compromised (leaving aside that it happened anyway 50 years later). The general population and the servicemen in general, were still largely behind the war, even after it finished. Disillusion didn't really set in until the 30s. And while there was incompetence amongst the generals, especially in the first couple of years, by the time 1918 came around, the British Army was the best trained, most capable and best led of all militaries, as is demonstrated by its crushing victories in the summer and autumn.

Some discussion of the credible alternatives to involvement in 1914 and some reflection of the successes of ther naval blockade and the victories of 1918 would be worth including in a more objective assessment in this centenary year.

[mormont]

I'm not sure that is, actually, Gove's point, though.

He appears to be complaining that: a, the conduct of the war is portrayed as a shambles; b, that this is laid at the door of the people in charge; c, that this somehow denigrates the patriotism, honour and courage of those who fought.

All of that is, of course, bilge. His principal argument is presented as 'the war was noble and just'. Well, these things are broadly recognised as true by the people he's criticising and are not in any way relevant to the claims above. A war can be noble and just and still be appallingly badly run. Volunteers can have bravely signed up from patriotic and honourable motives and still be sent to die needlessly by out-of-touch elites. His argument is basically just a naked appeal to patriotism as a means of invalidating criticism of the conduct of the war.