O/T DUP still not playing ball..

[KerrAvon]

You should get yourself over to Brussels pup and show the tories how to negotiate .

Handing over billions of pounds for basically nothing in return seems to be the best they can do and we haven't got to the hard part yet .

The Republic of Ireland have just pulled the UK's pants down using the DUP as camouflage and they didn't even see that and still haven't worked it out .


Good fun though .

Handing over billions for nothing? Is it your view that the UK can walk away from the pension liabilities accrued during the years of our membership? If that is so, I hope you won't be criticising Phillip Green again.

The DUP and the ROI government played politics for a few days largely for the benefit of their 'domestic' audiences and then compromised. That was always going to be the case.

I reckon you've got at least four and half more years of fun. Enjoy.

[ragingpup]

You’ll have to excuse me as I have been incredibly busy over the last few days and have neither the time nor the inclination to answer all the posts on this thread that I could take issue with, but thought this to be interesting.

My immediate reaction when I saw your questions was to wonder what you think the point in my answering would be. Some weeks ago I told you that I had never voted Tory in General Election, but you dismissed that out of hand as it did not serve your purpose so why would you not do the same if my responses to your questions continued not to suit you?

My second thought when I read your questions was that I didn’t particularly want to answer them. I generally choose to be a private individual and leave posting about lifestyle, education, holiday habits, occupation and wealth to others. I find it a bit cringeworthy when people do and, in any event, I note that on the thread where you dismissed the comment about my voting record, you also ignored the line where I said: In my typical working day I have to be able to interact and relate to people from across the whole range of society, to the point where I sometimes joke to the interested that I have to be several different people every day and sometimes forget who the real me is.

So I’ll talk in hypotheticals. It’s possible that I was educated at South Grove - hardly a privileged start, but one for which I’m very grateful. In our first year the lad who sat next to me in the form room disappeared for several weeks. When he returned he was asked by the teacher where he had been and replied that he hadn’t been able to attend as he had no shoes. This was in the mid-70s with a Labour government in power. Perhaps he hadn’t got the memo that it is only Tory governments that impoverish people?

I think some people on here already suspect what I do for a living (others dismiss it and say that I am merely an avid Wikipedia user, which is fine with me). Hypothetically speaking I have worked within the Criminal Justice system for more than 30 years. As I hinted in the passage that I referred to above and which you ignored, that means interacting with people from all walks of life from Appeal Court judges through to heroin addicts who have no life beyond stealing to fund their habits.

It’s possible that I have visited clients at home when it has been the only way to get instructions out of them. Many of the people who come into the system have fallen through the cracks in the pavement of society and I recall one home visit where I had to avoid the dog sh1t on the floor and the syringes on the settee where I sat. It’s also possible that I have spoken at length in cells and interview rooms with many homeless people - some of them so often that we will greet each other on first name terms when I see them on the streets of the cities where I work. I’ve heard at length about the many complex reasons that put them there.

Hypothetically speaking again, it’s possible that I do a deal of pro-bono (i.e. free) work – peaking at close to 20% of my time one year. That generally involves helping people to get access to justice where they can’t afford to pay and are ineligible for legal aid. It’s also hypothetically possible that I have volunteered in a Citizen’s Advice Bureau providing advice or pointing people in the right direction on a range of subjects including debt and housing.

And of course, anyone working in the CJS will have seen cuts in the Police, CPS, Courts, Probation Service (or NOMS as they prefer to be called) and Prison Service. Earnings from Legal Aid have been on the real-terms way down for twenty or so years (because ‘fat cat’ lawyers are an easy target) with many solicitors firms stopping to undertake that work because they can’t bear the losses involved.

I may even know a BHS pension holder.

All of the above is hypothetically true. If it is actually true, you can understand why I might look at some of the posts on here and wonder what their bigoted, plastic revolutionary, Wolfie Smith wannabee authors have actually done whilst others have, at times, taken on ‘the establishment’. If I were inclined to do so, I might actually post that in response to some of their posts, but I am not sufficiently rude or stupid to do so as I accept the possibility that some of them might have actually come out from behind their keyboards, blinked in the daylight and actually done something at some point in their lives.

So there you have it. Feel free to ignore it as it is only hypothetical and I appreciate that it won’t suit your purpose. The better reason for ignoring it, however, is that it is completely irrelevant to the debate, as is your experience of life. Politics in the country means choosing between two sets of lies. You can have the Tory lie that the NHS and other public services are funded to the degree that they need to be to deliver what the people of this country want, or you can have the Labour lie, that they can tax, borrow and spend to the degree that would be necessary to put them right without any adverse consequences. The real difference between you and I is that you can see nothing threatening within Labour policies, whereas I can. Dis-incentivising businesses to operate, employ people and pay taxes in this country is not the answer. Borrowing to nationalise the utilities and Royal Mail for purely ideological reasons (if there is any other reason nobody on here has been able to articulate it) is not the answer and slipping the leash on the TUs certainly isn’t; I appreciate that the 2017 Labour manifesto said very little about industrial relations, but I also appreciate that Len McCluskey spends a lot of time standing next to The Great Leader (with practise, I fully expect him to start ostentatiously drinking a glass of water whilst The Great Leader speaks)

In other words, re-hashing the failed policies of the 70s will not help this country.

Thanks for theresponse. First of all I don't think I did dismiss that you have never voted Tory out of hand. I simply said that I find it astonishing that you have put forward such passionate defences of the neo liberal economic organisations, following almost exact conservative arguments yet you say that you have never voted Tory? What I wanted to know, and still do, is who you have voted for? And why? What stops you voting Tory?

I'm interested that you say that the two parties are two separate lies and in fairness you attack the Tory claims that public services are adequately funded as a lie. But you only ever seem motivated to challenge the 'lefties' on the board on economic arguments. Maybe you have and I missed it? You certainly don't seem very politically neutral! And this is also not to dismiss what you're saying, just to be clear. Like your statement that you are not a Tory voter, I'm just asking more about where you're really coming from and what you actually want from society and where you think you might get it.

interesting that you have had experience of cuts to your profession and the personal experiences of homeless clients. Yet you make no mention of personal or family reliance on health and social care services. Do you and your family have private health insurance? Not knocking that if so but if you do, doesn't that put a barrier up between you and what the majority of people experience? And if you don't, how does it feel when you and your family (not your clients) experience the stress of cuts to essential services?

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

They are a strange set are the DUP they actually try to carry out the wishes of those that voted for them

[ragingpup]

I see that you are following the current Labour line of attack. Labour put up Kier Starmer (a thoroughly decent bloke) for the Today programme on Wednesday and you have mirrored his words. Even The Great Leader seems to have spotted the problem with that stance, however:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...-jeremy-corbyn

I do wonder if the Labour position means that they have given up any hope of an early election and are now intent upon simply nipping at the government’s heels with criticism of this type. I say that as I can’t believe that Labour would seriously run such a line in an election campaign.

The fact is that is the EU have always made it clear that access to the Single Market is inextricably linked to freedom of movement and for that reason, I think running upon such a policy would open up the real schism in Labour, between the socially liberal people who run the party and the grassroots where views on immigration are often closer to those of UKIP or even further right. You say that the Leave campaign created hostility towards immigration whereas I think they tapped a well that was already there. Try Tykes Mad, where the politics of the average poster is skewed further to the Left than on here, but where animal’s pre-referendum comments about people speaking Polish around him at work are mild compared to some views expressed on there. Exile Tyke has posted that I am a Muslim seemingly as a form of abuse.

The EU cannot budge on freedom of movement and, hence, Single Market membership with the UK as to do so would upset the relationship with the EFTA countries and the carefully crafted fudge with Switzerland:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ations-with-eu

1) We are not Switzerland. We have our own position in the world economy and we should expect to go into negotiations with our own circumstances in hand, what we can do for the EU countries in a trade agreement and aim for the best deal we can with that in mind. It makes no difference what has happened before with other countries, and what the EU have postured pre-negotiations. We have a different economy and circumstances. We surely should be going on there and and pointing out (as if we need to!) the areas of our economy that benefit the EU and vice versa? I didn't hear Starmer's interview that you refer to. Just seems commonsense to me.

You might be right that they won't budge, but for gawds sake, if we're a string economy, as most Brexiteers have been saying for the last 2 years, surely we could make an argument for tariff free trade?

2) I didn't claim that the leave campaign created hostility to immigrants but I agree that it was tapped into in the leave campaign. The Conservative Party however gained a huge amount of votes in the last election on 'leave' based promises that I have been arguing on here will come back to haunt them. After last week, and the responses I have had from my old 'euro-sceptic' friends oop North to the EU compromises, that seems to be the case...

[KerrAvon]

Whether I have medical insurance is my business. More importantly, it is irrelevant to the discussion. You appear to believe that my beliefs are based solely upon my own circumstances. They are not. I think I would be worse off under a government led by The Great Leader, but only because I think the whole country would be.

Nobody likes living with cuts. They have undoubtedly had adverse effects on many people, but that really isn’t the issue. What you should be thinking about is who has the best solution to the current situation of flat growth and a budget deficit that is coming down only very slowly, because that is the only way that the improvements confirmed within MMM's JRF report can be put back on track.

Some years ago I had some involvement in a ‘boiler room’ fraud case. It was a typical such case – the fraudsters would cold call people and offer them the ‘opportunity’ to buy shares in a company upon the promise of a significant return. The victims would be persuaded into making online transfers of, at times, significant sums of cash, which would disappear into a cat’s cradle of banking transactions and eventually into the fraudster’s pockets. The shares didn’t exist of course.

In the cold light of day, it beggars belief that the victims in that case were caught out. Everybody knows that you can’t have something for nothing – that there’s no such thing as a free lunch etc. But, as far as I can see, that is exactly what Labour is currently trying to sell. They are trying to sell the notion that people can have significantly increased spending on the NHS, social care and other local authority services, free tuition fees for their kid’s university education, big pay rises for civil servants etc. with the tab being picked up by a very small number of high earners and by companies who are going to shrug off increased corporate taxes with a smile - big returns for no cost.

Dishonesty and politics go hand in hand, but I accept without hesitation that the vast majority of Labour supporters simply want what they believe would be a better path for the country to take (although there are, of course, a smattering of embittered class warriors amongst them – you know who you are), but I believe they are falling into the trap that the fraud victims did – believing something because they want to rather than because it stands up to any kind of rational thinking or scrutiny.

And I’m still waiting for someone to advance a compelling argument as to why it’s a good idea to borrow vast amounts of money to privatise the utilities and the Royal Mail.

[KerrAvon]

1) We are not Switzerland. We have our own position in the world economy and we should expect to go into negotiations with our own circumstances in hand, what we can do for the EU countries in a trade agreement and aim for the best deal we can with that in mind. It makes no difference what has happened before with other countries, and what the EU have postured pre-negotiations. We have a different economy and circumstances. We surely should be going on there and and pointing out (as if we need to!) the areas of our economy that benefit the EU and vice versa? I didn't hear Starmer's interview that you refer to. Just seems commonsense to me.

You might be right that they won't budge, but for gawds sake, if we're a string economy, as most Brexiteers have been saying for the last 2 years, surely we could make an argument for tariff free trade?

2) I didn't claim that the leave campaign created hostility to immigrants but I agree that it was tapped into in the leave campaign. The Conservative Party however gained a huge amount of votes in the last election on 'leave' based promises that I have been arguing on here will come back to haunt them. After last week, and the responses I have had from my old 'euro-sceptic' friends oop North to the EU compromises, that seems to be the case...

Were the EU to give us membership of the Single Market without freedom of movement the Swiss, the EFTA countries and some EU members would all kick off and ask why they can’t have a bit of that. That’s why the EU can’t afford to budge on the point and won’t do so. In addition, it would be the equivalent of cancelling a gym membership, but then expecting to be allowed access to the pool and the changing rooms. And the gym.

It aint going to happen.

I can understand why Labour are taking the point, because, frankly, they don’t have much else to say on Brexit, but it’s just political posturing. It’s also dangerous for the party, because some of the people wo traditionally vote for them will notice that they appear to be flirting with free movement, which might just persuade them to go with UKIP again.

[millmoormagic]

Whether I have medical insurance is my business. More importantly, it is irrelevant to the discussion. You appear to believe that my beliefs are based solely upon my own circumstances. They are not. I think I would be worse off under a government led by The Great Leader, but only because I think the whole country would be.

Nobody likes living with cuts. They have undoubtedly had adverse effects on many people, but that really isn’t the issue. What you should be thinking about is who has the best solution to the current situation of flat growth and a budget deficit that is coming down only very slowly, because that is the only way that the improvements confirmed within MMM's JRF report can be put back on track.

Some years ago I had some involvement in a ‘boiler room’ fraud case. It was a typical such case – the fraudsters would cold call people and offer them the ‘opportunity’ to buy shares in a company upon the promise of a significant return. The victims would be persuaded into making online transfers of, at times, significant sums of cash, which would disappear into a cat’s cradle of banking transactions and eventually into the fraudster’s pockets. The shares didn’t exist of course.

In the cold light of day, it beggars belief that the victims in that case were caught out. Everybody knows that you can’t have something for nothing – that there’s no such thing as a free lunch etc. But, as far as I can see, that is exactly what Labour is currently trying to sell. They are trying to sell the notion that people can have significantly increased spending on the NHS, social care and other local authority services, free tuition fees for their kid’s university education, big pay rises for civil servants etc. with the tab being picked up by a very small number of high earners and by companies who are going to shrug off increased corporate taxes with a smile - big returns for no cost.

Dishonesty and politics go hand in hand, but I accept without hesitation that the vast majority of Labour supporters simply want what they believe would be a better path for the country to take (although there are, of course, a smattering of embittered class warriors amongst them – you know who you are), but I believe they are falling into the trap that the fraud victims did – believing something because they want to rather than because it stands up to any kind of rational thinking or scrutiny.

And I’m still waiting for someone to advance a compelling argument as to why it’s a good idea to borrow vast amounts of money to privatise the utilities and the Royal Mail.

I'll go back to front, i'll tell you why, because when in public hands it's for public good, money made goes back into the country...at the moment money made goes straight into offshore accounts, you keep harping about economics, give me a good reason why that is good for the country, as a whole, taking money out of it.

Your rational thinking means, in reality, that you accept more homeless people, families, you accept in work poverty as a norm, you accept kids being hungry day by day, in England, you wanna put labels on me and others as class warriors, fine by me, and there you go again, condescending the vast majority of labour supporters who "believe" what a better path looks like, priceless.

Labour and spending, again, what labour is proposing isn't anything thats gunna hurt the country, that's already being done, you see the difference between us is black and white, you're happy to walk past foodbanks and homeless folk, happy in the knowledge that millions of your fellow countrymen are in actual poverty, whilst in full knowledge of how much is being creamed into offshore accounts on the backs of the same folks, while i'm not, you keep deluding yourself that you're right, keep doing that when you're living in a Britain that resembles America, gated communities for the rich, the poor getting shot hand over fist, is that what you want, because we're on our way.

You talk about the tab being picked up by a very small number of high earners, sorry, but thats ballacks and you know it, the rich are getting richer, FACT.

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

The definition of fact isn’t “something made up that I like”

But hey ho, keep living on fantasy island (1970s version)

[millmoormagic]

The definition of fact isn’t “something made up that I like”

But hey ho, keep living on fantasy island (1970s version)

Somebody say something...

https://www.theguardian.com/business...h-since-crisis

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

Somebody say something...

https://www.theguardian.com/business...h-since-crisis

Lol an article from the Guardian

I assume your copy of the Beano has been delayed by the snow?