O/T DUP still not playing ball..

[animallittle3]

A very bold statement about Neo Liberal policies and reductions in poverty Kerr. Evidence please or is this some sort of Kerr parallel Universe you have been living in.The problem with neo liberalism is that the wealth is meant to trickle down but it never does because of greedy bas tards at the top who would really not like to part with their money.I will give you a good example of how neo liberal policies work. Have a look at the football league pyramid. It is the reason why less wealthy clubs like ourselves will never get in the premier league. Massive Parachute payments to the big wealthy clubs means they will always be rich and wealthy while the poor buggers at the bottom never get on the first rung. You should know that being a millers fan but then again maybe the millers are in the prem in your parallel neo lib universe.

The UK and Norway were instrumental in extracting oil from the North Sea .

Norway's sovereign wealth fund has just reached $1 trillion US dollars , the UK's profits went errr to a smaller pool of fish shall we say , the usual suspects running with a neoliberal ticket .

Just one example of neoliberalism .

[KerrAvon]

A very bold statement about Neo Liberal policies and reductions in poverty Kerr. Evidence please or is this some sort of Kerr parallel Universe you have been living in.The problem with neo liberalism is that the wealth is meant to trickle down but it never does because of greedy bas tards at the top who would really not like to part with their money.I will give you a good example of how neo liberal policies work. Have a look at the football league pyramid. It is the reason why less wealthy clubs like ourselves will never get in the premier league. Massive Parachute payments to the big wealthy clubs means they will always be rich and wealthy while the poor buggers at the bottom never get on the first rung. You should know that being a millers fan but then again maybe the millers are in the prem in your parallel neo lib universe.

What proof would you like? Are you disputing the Joseph Rowntree report that MMM linked to? They are a well respected body and the report clearly states that: Over the last 20 years, the UK has dramatically reduced poverty among people who had traditionally been most at risk – pensioners and certain types of families with children. In other words, poverty in this country has been dramatically reduced whilst it was pursuing 'neo- liberal, policies. Are you disputing that assertion and, if so, what proof do you have?

I don't think that any meaningful parallels cane drawn between football and national economies. It makes no sense to try to do so.

And what is Labour offering other than policies that have been proven not to work time and time again?

[KerrAvon]

The UK and Norway were instrumental in extracting oil from the North Sea .

Norway's sovereign wealth fund has just reached $1 trillion US dollars , the UK's profits went errr to a smaller pool of fish shall we say , the usual suspects running with a neoliberal ticket .

Just one example of neoliberalism .

No, Norway's oil wealth went to a far smaller pool of fish. The UK and Norway have extracted broadly similar amounts of oil, but Norway has a population of around 5 million - well under a tenth of that of the UK. In addition, Norway did not have to deal with the structural problems of the type that the Tories inherited in 1979.

[sawmiller]

Would like to see some facts about this. I have Norwegian friends and worked there in my late ***** for two years in their forests. My understanding is that they were a country of relative paupers before the oil, with nothing like the infrastructure that we had. Geographically, their country is far larger than ours, and yet even the more remote places have very good roads, railways, bus services, cycleways, hospitals, schools etc... To cover all of that ground is not cheap, and they are maintained to a pretty good standard. They have a far flatter, less class divided society where to stand out is frowned upon. Some of the difference really is fundamentally cultural, and their mainstream politics would be called communist over here right now. In short, it's a complicated picture, as is so often the case

[animallittle3]

Would like to see some facts about this. I have Norwegian friends and worked there in my late ***** for two years in their forests. My understanding is that they were a country of relative paupers before the oil, with nothing like the infrastructure that we had. Geographically, their country is far larger than ours, and yet even the more remote places have very good roads, railways, bus services, cycleways, hospitals, schools etc... To cover all of that ground is not cheap, and they are maintained to a pretty good standard. They have a far flatter, less class divided society where to stand out is frowned upon. Some of the difference really is fundamentally cultural, and their mainstream politics would be called communist over here right now. In short, it's a complicated picture, as is so often the case

Nothing really complicated about it saw in my opinion .

Norway works for the whole of their society using their assets .

The Uk works for 1% with systems and influence designed to keep it that way .

Anyone thinking outside of that is branded a Marxist , Militant , Looney Left etc etc .

As a result this country is a very divided and unequal and the tentacle's from this lead to all kinds of problems , problems that the tories and new labour didn't or don't want to address .

They are coming home to roost now .

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

Norway is run by a centre right coalition, and it has a monarchy

Seems ok to me.

[animallittle3]

Norway is run by a centre right coalition, and it has a monarchy

Seems ok to me.

I think you will find Grist with all due respect their centre right and monarchy are very different animals to our version .

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

Maybe, but they do have opposition that holds the country back just like we have.

[sawmiller]

Their system is proportional representation - many Norwegians I've spoken with find our system somewhat bizarre i.e. PR more readily reflects the total percentage of votes cast i.e. the will of all the people. Probably because they suffered horrendous occupation their system is set up so that right/left parties invariably are contained towards the centre ground of politics.

Their Conservatives are probably like Blair was here

[tony260674]

Of all the ****ed up things happening right now, the one that sums up what a ****ing mess we have made of western civilisation is the EU/Ireland/Apple fiasco. The EU has ruled that Apple must pay tax on their profits within the EU and as they are based in Ireland for those operations they must pay 13 billion euros to the irish government. This is more than enough to run the Irish health service for a year! The Irish government are appealing the decision as they want to keep Apple in their country. (they don't want the money) Apple paid the equivalent of 0.0005% taxation on their profits and as such an individual earning 200,000 euros would be contributing more tax than the worlds largest company. If that isn't ****ed up then I don't know what is.
Anyway Apple has now put the 13 billion euros into a holding account whilst the appeal is pending. I believe they found it down the back of a sofa at their corporate HQ.
The next story I saw was Frank Field telling parliament about a guy who went to see him at his surgery to talk about Universal credit and how he wanted to kill himself because he couldn't feed his family. His neighbour had invited him to a funeral, not because he knew the deceased but because he would be able to get something to eat at the wake.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/poli...-a3711346.html