UK Politics: Unboldy Go There Where No Country Has Gone Before

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

British worker rights did erode heavily under Thatcher and afterwards, but then recovered after EU worker right laws became legal in the UK and then New Labour passed various laws (starting with the minimum wage) to improve things. The coalition rolled some of these back after 2010 but worker rights in the UK are still at a reasonable level.

What a Blairite thing to say. New Labour was a sell out project, and only Jeremy represented true Labour values.

[Rippounet]

Thanks for the answer Wert, don't have anything to add on the serious stuff.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

The scenario you outline sounds "technically" correct (once the deductions for accommodation and uniform are accounted for) but it's very borderline. The UK minimum wage in 2007 was £5.52 per hour, so £220.80 per week for a 40 hour week and £883.20 per month. I hope the accommodation was nice because that sounds like a BS deal otherwise.

I kept those pay slips in a folder with all my other papers right next to my computer (I'm that kind of guy). The year was 2002 (fuck, I'm old), and the pay was 747£/month (797 actually, but there was about 50£ of insurance). Accomodation and uniform were closer to 80£/week. So yeah, it was a BS deal all right. Though as a student it was still a great experience (partying in the UK was great fun), and I got to keep those uniforms for gardening ^^.
Left me with the wrong impression though, obviously. Glad to hear things changed.

[HexMachina]

53 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Thanks for the answer Wert, don't have anything to add on the serious stuff.

I kept those pay slips in a folder with all my other papers right next to my computer (I'm that kind of guy). The year was 2002 (fuck, I'm old), and the pay was 747£/month (797 actually, but there was about 50£ of insurance). Accomodation and uniform were closer to 80£/week. So yeah, it was a BS deal all right. Though as a student it was still a great experience (partying in the UK was great fun), and I got to keep those uniforms for gardening ^^.
Left me with the wrong impression though, obviously. Glad to hear things changed.

This was actually quite a bit above the NMW for 2002 (3.50 or 4.20, depending on your age) unless my maths is way off. Which is entirely possible.

[Rippounet]

31 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

This was actually quite a bit above the NMW for 2002 (3.50 or 4.20, depending on your age) unless my maths is way off. Which is entirely possible.

To be clear the problem wasn't the pay itself, the problem was having to pay 80£/week for a small room. 

[BigFatCoward]

3 hours ago, Rippounet said:

To be clear the problem wasn't the pay itself, the problem was having to pay 80£/week for a small room. 

In 2005 I was paying 100 a week. That doesn't sound to bad (depending on where exactly it was). 

[Which Tyler]

54 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

In 2005 I was paying 100 a week. That doesn't sound to bad (depending on where exactly it was). 

Agreed - the room rental seems about right for the time (my rent doubled between 1995 and 2003 from £50 to £100 a week, in a cheap part of Bournemouth) - the problem is that the location was compulsory

[Which Tyler]

 

[mormont]

I mean, that, but also the point I made earlier about how labour isn't a uniform resource. If there were 2m 'low-skilled' jobs in the UK and 2m unemployed people, we'd still need immigrants, because unemployed people can't necessarily do just any work that's available. 

[Heartofice]

Things are getting bad in the UK / EU Powerpoint war. 

Apparently the EU has been a bit deceptive in its bubble sizes!

https://www.politico.eu/article/sliding-flaws-eu-publishes-misleading-brexit-chart/

 

Quote

Take Japan: Its trade volume with the EU stood at some €117.1 billion in 2018, compared with the U.K.'s €516.6 billion. That means the bubble representing the U.K. should be about 4.4 times larger than the bubble representing Japan. On the EU's chart, the U.K. bubble is more than 16 times larger than Japan's.

David Spiegelhalter, a professor of the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University, said the Commission's approach was "indefensible" and went against "standard graphical practice."

"It's also the biggest mistake to make. It's incorrect to use diameter to represent volume," he said, adding that it was "the sort of thing a junior person would do."

 

[Rippounet]

5 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

In 2005 I was paying 100 a week. That doesn't sound to bad (depending on where exactly it was). 

Middle of nowhere or thereabouts.

[Which Tyler]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

I mean, that, but also the point I made earlier about how labour isn't a uniform resource. If there were 2m 'low-skilled' jobs in the UK and 2m unemployed people, we'd still need immigrants, because unemployed people can't necessarily do just any work that's available. 

Especially with the Tory definition of "low-skilled" often meaning "3 year degree + 2 year practical experience"

[Heartofice]

Let's hope the person who wins the next labour leadership contest listens to Tony Blair. I guess it's unlikely seeing how unpopular he is with the Labour membership, but as one of only 2 people born in the last 120 years to have won an election for Labour they might want to consider what he is saying. Right now it looks like the Labour party is going to be stuck in opposition falling over itself talking about issues that aren't going to get them elected. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/20/tony-blair-only-a-complete-renewal-of-labour-will-do
 

Quote

“You’ve got to distinguish between the advocacy of certain things that are right, whether it’s about gay rights, transgender rights, whatever it is,” he said in a Q&A session after a speech to mark the 120th anniversary of the founding of the party.

“You’ve got to distinguish between that and launching yourself politically into a kind of culture war with the right. If you go, ‘Transgender rights is our big thing’, and the right goes, ‘Immigration control is our big thing’, you’re going to lose that war.”

 

[Seli]

On 2/19/2020 at 11:29 PM, williamjm said:

The Government does seem to think there are a lot of Schrödinger's British Low Skilled Workers out there who are simultaneously fully employed and unemployed because those pesky immigrants have stolen their jobs.

And of course (and UK government is hardly unique in this) low pay jobs don't take any skills and anyone can be a fruit-picker, nurse, cleaner, teacher, construction worker, warehouse worker. And be good at it.

[Chaircat Meow]

11 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Let's hope the person who wins the next labour leadership contest listens to Tony Blair. I guess it's unlikely seeing how unpopular he is with the Labour membership, but as one of only 2 people born in the last 120 years to have won an election for Labour they might want to consider what he is saying. Right now it looks like the Labour party is going to be stuck in opposition falling over itself talking about issues that aren't going to get them elected. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/20/tony-blair-only-a-complete-renewal-of-labour-will-do
 

 

Yep, Blair has been talking nothing but sense recently. If he was Labour leader again I would vote for him. 

*

[mormont]

Yeah, no. Blair is talking out of his backside on this one, as he has done a number of times recently.

All this is, is a demonstration of how marginalised trans people still are. There exists no other minority group about whom Blair would dare to suggest that equality and respect for that group should be soft-pedaled and put on the back-burner in order to win votes.

Also, the idea that the manifesto was the problem in 2019 is one that Blair probably finds agreeable but for which there is little evidence. It lost, after all, to a manifesto which was also making wild unfunded spending pledges, so that right there shows he hasn't bothered to stop and think about his criticisms. These are just the knee-jerk reactions of a man whose relevance has gone.

[Heartofice]

10 minutes ago, mormont said:

Yeah, no. Blair is talking out of his backside on this one, as he has done a number of times recently.

All this is, is a demonstration of how marginalised trans people still are. There exists no other minority group about whom Blair would dare to suggest that equality and respect for that group should be soft-pedaled and put on the back-burner in order to win votes.

Also, the idea that the manifesto was the problem in 2019 is one that Blair probably finds agreeable but for which there is little evidence. It lost, after all, to a manifesto which was also making wild unfunded spending pledges, so that right there shows he hasn't bothered to stop and think about his criticisms. These are just the knee-jerk reactions of a man whose relevance has gone.

You genuinely think trans rights is the hot button issue that the UK public is worried about then?

[Chaircat Meow]

8 hours ago, mormont said:

Yeah, no. Blair is talking out of his backside on this one, as he has done a number of times recently.

All this is, is a demonstration of how marginalised trans people still are. There exists no other minority group about whom Blair would dare to suggest that equality and respect for that group should be soft-pedaled and put on the back-burner in order to win votes.

Also, the idea that the manifesto was the problem in 2019 is one that Blair probably finds agreeable but for which there is little evidence. It lost, after all, to a manifesto which was also making wild unfunded spending pledges, so that right there shows he hasn't bothered to stop and think about his criticisms. These are just the knee-jerk reactions of a man whose relevance has gone.

It doesn't follow that because objectively, taking Brexit into account, Tory promises were as wild and naïve as Corbyn's (more so, actually) therefore the Labour manifesto wasn't a problem: it was. For a variety of reasons it got a rougher ride than the even stupider plan to get Brexit done but that says nothing about it not being a mistake. 

 

[HexMachina]

The fact that Chaircat (Tory) and HoI (no comment needed) are the ones saying Blair is correct about the direction the Labour Party should be taking is rather telling, no? 

[mormont]

14 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

It doesn't follow that because objectively, taking Brexit into account, Tory promises were as wild and naïve as Corbyn's (more so, actually) therefore the Labour manifesto wasn't a problem: it was. For a variety of reasons it got a rougher ride than the even stupider plan to get Brexit done but that says nothing about it not being a mistake.

Policy is a distant third on the list in this survey.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/23/their-own-words-why-voters-abandoned-labour

The fact is, the Labour manifesto was hardly discussed during the election, aside from the Brexit policy. The vast majority of coverage was about Corbyn, antisemitism, and Brexit.

Blair can't be regarded as a credible critic on this: his religious views aside, his use of the hackneyed 'all sorts of difficult issues to resolve first' excuse for chucking trans people under the bus is an absolute hallmark of anti-trans commenters.

[Chaircat Meow]

2 minutes ago, mormont said:

Policy is a distant third on the list in this survey.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/23/their-own-words-why-voters-abandoned-labour

The fact is, the Labour manifesto was hardly discussed during the election, aside from the Brexit policy. The vast majority of coverage was about Corbyn, antisemitism, and Brexit.

Blair can't be regarded as a credible critic on this: his religious views aside, his use of the hackneyed 'all sorts of difficult issues to resolve first' excuse for chucking trans people under the bus is an absolute hallmark of anti-trans commenters.

I don't think Blair was claiming the manifesto was a bigger problem than Corbyn himself though. His analysis clearly involves other factors putting people off Labour, like perceived lack of patriotism. The claim is just that if Labour had been more moderate, including having a more moderate and credible manifesto, they would not have done as badly as they did. And I think this is right.