UK Politics: It's Time To Think The Unthinkable But This Lot Can't Even Think The Thinkable

[Derfel Cadarn]

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

 

May I suggesta weekend when most of the major football clubs in London have a homegame. The plebs will love it, and some will already have bought train tickets just for you Chuck.

[Heartofice]

It’ll probably be really popular. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[Derfel Cadarn]

13 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

It’ll probably be really popular. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Not so popular with people who can’t afford food or heating, but I’m sure the bunting-shaggers will love it. Those yearning for the empire, who believes in magical Brexit unicorns. 
How’s the £350 mill a week extra for the NHS coming along? Last I heard, the Tories want to charge for appointments and A&E visits. I’m sure the people who can’t afford to heat their water won’t have a problem paying…

[Varysblackfyre321]

18 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Not so popular with people who can’t afford food or heating, but I’m sure the bunting-shaggers will love it. Those yearning for the empire, who believes in magical Brexit unicorns. 

Eh they’re not a distinct group.https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1716065/king-charles-coronation-queen-consort-camilla-royal-family?utm_source=ourcommunitynow&utm_medium=web

unfortunately we haven’t civilized enough to where a lot of people won’t prioritize spending a lot of money on upkeeping fictions that denigrate them than actually trying to improve the material conditions .

 

[Heartofice]

48 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Not so popular with people who can’t afford food or heating,

You’d be surprised 

[Raja]

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Not so popular with people who can’t afford food or heating,

This idea has been debunked over and over again, it is a terrible policy that does nothing. There's lots of evidence. Sajid just has no idea about health policy.

I work in A&E every single day and the issue is not that people can walk in or call the ambulance free of charge, that is what is *good* about the NHS. Same with GPs.

I'm really tired of morons like Javid trying to cook up ideas that are absolute nonsense, the man has no experience in health care or health policy.

Our health system is suffering because of poor workforce planning, chronic underinvestment, local cuts to councils thereby reducing the safety net & social care not being funded.

[mormont]

Spent a bit of time in A&E today myself (I'm fine) and just want to reiterate - a top quality healthcare experience, apart from a small wait (hour or two). I'm fairly sure you would not achieve anything with a charge other than making people with genuine injuries stay away because they can't afford it. Charging to reduce demand for an essential service is the idea of a man for whom £66 is pocket change, not the total weekly grocery bill.

[Raja]

1 minute ago, mormont said:

Spent a bit of time in A&E today myself (I'm fine)

Glad you're okay

[mormont]

6 minutes ago, Raja said:

Glad you're okay

I'm dumb enough to play with swords, got a little poke in the eye, is all. It was my own sword, too, I'd loaned it to one of my students!

[Raja]

Oof. That does sound dangerous lol.

As an aside, what I would say is that plenty of people have bad experiences in A&E and I'm totally cognizant of those, and we need to fix that, but not the way Javid is suggesting we should.

[ants]

On 1/20/2023 at 1:37 PM, Zorral said:

Right. Elderly never do childcare, never care for other elderly people, never have jobs, never do community service, never perform volunteer work like helping immigrant and other children learn to read.  They never do anything at all, but just sit there, useless mouths, as Hitler called them, just like women who weren't producing children.

Sure, create a strawman. Because I absolutely said that the elderly were useless and there was no point spending money on their health, and hell I also said the same about woman. Oh, except I didn't say that. 

What I did say is that across the board, health spending on them doesn't drive economic growth like investment in other areas does. And although there will be exceptions, that's generally the case. 

On 1/20/2023 at 2:50 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

Fair cop. Though I would still argue that the slant of those paragraphs combined implies deficit spending on the health system over the next 10 or so years, which is how long it would take as a minimum to deploy that spending to get the NHS back in reasonable shape, is not an overall benefit. "Some can be good" I would argue that should read most health care spending would be good.

Also what @Zorral said.

But we're not just talking about deficit spending. We're talking about more deficit spending. The UK is already significantly borrowing every year to fund itself. Some investments will be much better than others, and health isn't a bad one for younger people. And I'm not saying don't invest. You yourself originally said "there is absolutely nothing wrong with running moderate deficits for several years in order to invest in vital areas of public need", which I totally agree with. But the UK isn't in that position. It's just made itself considerably poorer, and can't sustain its current spending without a huge deficit. Let alone considerably more. 

My original point is that the UK may not have the money to spend on everything people want to spend on, even with raising taxes, because its poorer than it was, having made bad decisions and under invested for years, and then self-hurt itself with Brexit. And thinking that you can just spend your way out of the hole with deficit spending or printing money with no consequences, or that all types of government spending has beneficial impacts on future productivity and government revenue.  

And that with an ageing population and restrictions on worker movements, things are going to get tougher not easier on government finances. 

On 1/20/2023 at 2:50 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

I think it is important to understand that the only times in history when inflation has been a really serious problem (i.e. hyper-inflation) has been due to either massive corruption and / or major supply shocks. This time is no different. The inflation we're seeing everywhere today are largely a combination of those two factors. It's not about demand. The supply problems (including labour supply, which includes the health sector) need to be fixed and the corruption (in the form of outrageous profit taking, and maybe also the corruption of awarding massive govt contracts (esp COVID response contracts) to companies and businesses who failed to deliver) needs to be dealt with. It is certainly not the case that people want to eat more or use more energy to heat their homes or drive their cars than they did in 2019.

Isn't that convenient. For years economists have been saying a major reason you can't have governments just going around printing money for everything is inflation. Of which there are plenty of examples in the past. You then have the Western world do exactly that, but no, that didn't have anything to do with the current inflation. Do you really think that the huge amounts of money given out during COVID to both the rich but especially the poor, especially in the USA, didn't have a huge impact? Sure, the supply chain impacts exacerbated it, as did the Ukraine war. But inflation was taking off before the war, and the huge driver was consumer demand. Which hasn't reduced yet in much of the west despite the interest rate rises. 

What I really like is trying to have it both ways. The Republicans say give the rich tax cuts and it will stimulate the economy, and we on the left (rightfully) laugh at trickle down economics. But suddenly the rich got some of the COVID largesse/profits, and that's meant to have stimulated the economy into inflation? Because that was suddenly a new thing???? Either you believe in trickle down or not, don't say it doesn't work then blame the inflation on it. 

This was an entirely predictable response to the COVID spending, made worse by the supply chain issues and the Ukraine war. It is unfortunate as it shows that there are downsides to unlimited deficit spending, let alone printing cash (or the sneakier ways central banks have been doing that). Which means some of the dreamers on the left that believed we could deficit spend with no consequences if debt was in the sovereign currency are going to have to rethink that position. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

At this juncture absent crippling the Tory party, I don’t see why should people with left leaning economics or progressive social politics should continue to support labor.

If all they’re going to do is do what tories want

 

[ants]

Unfortunately, the problem with first past the post elections is you've effectively got to choose between the two main parties. It's not fair, but then most didn't bother voting or campaigning in the referendum which would have changed things. 

Quote

The referendum concerned whether or not to replace the present "first-past-the-post" system with the "alternative vote" (AV) method, and was the first national referendum to be held across the whole of the United Kingdom in the twenty-first century. The proposal to introduce AV was rejected by 67.9% of voters on a national turnout of 42%.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

13 minutes ago, ants said:

Unfortunately, the problem with first past the post elections is you've effectively got to choose between the two main parties.

At a certain point you have to threaten to withhold your vote on certain issues else you’re just supporting a party for the party’s sake.

If Labor only fears ever pissing the culture warrior right and can count on liberals, progressives, and leftists to back them, then they(labor)  just slide their policies to the culture warrior right.

If Biden today decided he’s going throw abortion under the bus  and start screaming about trans people being groomers to appeal to evangelical voters I will not vote for him again.

[Varysblackfyre321]

Tories want trans people dead or miserable enough to exist in public.

Quote

This article was amended on 11 January 2023. An earlier version described the list of approved countries as those “whose gender recognition certificates are automatically recognised by UK officials”; it has been amended to clarify that the list denotes those countries whose gender recognition certificates (or similar) are considered sufficient to automatically allow an individual to use the fast-track route to apply for a GRC in the UK. A reference to “reciprocal recognition” being withdrawn from some countries was removed (other than in direct quotes) to avoid the suggestion that the lists operate on the basis of agreed reciprocity. A response from the Cabinet Office, and some detail about the fast-track process, was also added.

 

[ants]

1 hour ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

At a certain point you have to threaten to withhold your vote on certain issues else you’re just supporting a party for the party’s sake.

If Labor only fears ever pissing the culture warrior right and can count on liberals, progressives, and leftists to back them, then they(labor)  just slide their policies to the culture warrior right.

If Biden today decided he’s going throw abortion under the bus  and start screaming about trans people being groomers to appeal to evangelical voters I will not vote for him again.

Similar to the USA, the main way of making these changes is to become members of the party and influence who is running for the party. Getting progressive parliamentary members who won't accept right-wing positions and put pressure for progressive legislation and governance is the most effective play.

Getting the Tories elected to push Labour left isn't going to help much long term, especially in the UK with five years between elections. 

There is also the safety net that any Labour government is probably going to rely on SNP votes to pass legislation and fight off votes of no confidence. This does mean that Labour will be restricted far more in how it governs than necessarily what gets it into Parliament. 

[mormont]

7 hours ago, ants said:

There is also the safety net that any Labour government is probably going to rely on SNP votes to pass legislation and fight off votes of no confidence.

This is a statement that's made repeatedly by people with little understanding of Scottish politics. I've addressed it in the past, in detail, but this is not a presumption that should be made with any confidence.

[Heartofice]

9 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

At this juncture absent crippling the Tory party, I don’t see why should people with left leaning economics or progressive social politics should continue to support labor.

If all they’re going to do is do what tories want

 

Thats a pretty standard bullshit take from Jones. One more to the list.

The bill isn't even popular in Scotland.

[Varysblackfyre321]

5 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Thats a pretty standard bullshit take from Jones. One more to the list.

Hopefully so—as transphobia—which I understand you deny exists—is really  bad. And I’d rather labor not support it

5 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The bill isn't even popular in Scotland.

This statement  literally has nothing to do what I or the tweet said.