O/T - general election 2019

[Grist_To_The_Mill]

If I remember right ledsom gove Johnson and rabb all got positions on front bench then they quit and other useless sods took their places.

I can’t see me ever voting for a Tory and this Labour Party doesn’t represent me in any shape or form democratically or policy wise.

It’s ether brexit party or staying at home for me mate at the moment I’m looking at the latter, because I still think idiots will vote for comrade corbyn Labour Party, funny enough this same party are saying they want another referendum because most who voted brexit have died. Most of which have voted labour all their life.

At one point the Labour party WAS the north, now the north has been dumped by the London centric Labour executive

Maybe they will pay for it at the election.

[Silly-miller]

At one point the Labour party WAS the north, now the north has been dumped by the London centric Labour executive

Maybe they will pay for it at the election.

Got more chance on winning lotto mate than labour losing a seat around here pisses me off because our mp is a complete elite fascist pin head. I can’t believe a lot of labour mps come from a media background, they spend a life time brainwashing others to vote labour then they become a mp and the guy who takes his old job spends his life time in media pumping pro labour BS. That’s so ****ing wrong no one who’s worked in media should be able to become mp and yes that includes labours John Healy and boris Johnson

[Exiletyke]

Corrupt from bottom to top

https://www.aol.co.uk/news/2019/11/2...ly-door-knock/

[Godsend.F.C.]

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/bu...funding/25/11/

Dire warning from the IFS for social care in the future.

https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/25/tory-...aunch-11214646

One for rolymiller, he likes his opinion polls, for a bit of fun.
Don't know why they're usually way out.

[Silly-miller]

Corrupt from bottom to top

https://www.aol.co.uk/news/2019/11/2...ly-door-knock/

Pretty much

Like the interviewer says he suspects more do it iv seen John Healy do it too never got it on camera and microphone like he has but I did find out one of photos he had taken was with a woman who used to work for him before he became a mp. Not sure why he did it there’s enough twits who will have a photo with the git.

[rolymiller]

https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/25/tory-...aunch-11214646

One for rolymiller, he likes his opinion polls, for a bit of fun.
Don't know why they're usually way out.

Think Labour will get a bit back before the election but not enough to get a majority in the h of p. Think the tories will probably get a small majority again and then we will be back to square one again...

[KerrAvon]

Message for Kerr – no time to whizz through to find your posts. I said I’d link to economists who were supportive of the labour manifesto. A quick whizz now finds three:

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...eology-economy

https://www.newstatesman.com/politic...s-credible-too

https://www.thecanary.co/trending/20...ur-propaganda/

You say you read the Guardian? I’m amazed you don’t get a more balanced view in there as there have been several articles that have spoken for the Labour manifesto, as well as against. But I agree with earlier comments on here from other posters that you can only look on both manifestos through the filter of your own ideologies, and it seems blinkered to not recognise that. No one, including the IFS can predict how the markets and business will react to such moves. You can suppress wages, but justify that to your workers? You can raise prices, but justify that to your customers when competitors will seek to take advantage. In these cases, the market economy can help check such basic responses.

It is a very ambitious manifesto, and not without risks. I would prefer a more modest advancement from the 2017 manifesto as I’ve already said, I think that Labour made it too easy to be attacked on the manifesto. In saying that, even modest wealth redistribution proposals would still be rabidly attacked so not sure how much difference it makes. I would like more people to be contributing more towards the tax increases, but we have seen that this isn’t electorally successful, so is a non-starter. But we still then have a choice: either continue with more of the same, keep getting what we always get; look at the country and towns we see around us and decide if we need and want a fairer economy and better funded services and if so, then look at the manifestos to see which one we feel is likely to have an impact towards the country and towns that we want to see. The only real certainty, looking at the Tory manifesto is more of the same, no plans to deal with service decline, social care provision, homelessness, poverty.

Re: Labour’s plans relating to economic neighbours, this article compares state size, spending and services between a low state/tax economy in the USA and an opposite in Sweden: https://www.theguardian.com/business...look-at-Sweden arguing that, despite the IFS inability to see anything other than the neo-liberal ideology, that economies with higher tax and state presence can prosper economically.

I see that you are doing the old Gisjbert Bos shimmy there, raging. You promised me ‘financial institutions’ that disagreed with the IFS view and you gave me columnists from The Guardian and the New Statesman and someone who puts up videos on The Canary.

Please tell me that a link to The Canary was a joke? I know that you invite people to comment upon the ‘facts’ put out by Russia Today and also put up links to Skawkbox in support of your arguments, but, surely not The Canary?

I’m not going to bore myself and others by critiquing the articles for you save in two respects; both articles assert, in terms, that if a government somehow manages to stop the companies hit by the tax rises passing the additional cost onto their workers and customers then it’s just the shareholders who will bear the cost. The rich, apparently.

The problem is that neither columnist bothers to identify the shareholders... Large amongst them will be the pension funds that millions of working people rely upon to grow their money in order to provide pensions. Those working people will face either increased contributions or lower levels of pension.

The second issue is that neither article addresses the central point that companies will react to being taxed. They will not stand there waiting to be rinsed by McDonnell like cows in the fiscal milking parlour. As I mentioned to Wan yesterday, I am yet to see anyone put up a coherent argument against that. The stock response is to put head firmly in sand and to mutter about ‘neoliberalism’.

The articles are little more than a repeat of the myth that is being peddled on the doorstep that people can have better services, but someone else is going to pay.

You promised me a response to my query about where your assertion came from that Labour's plans would leave us with tax rates on income and corporates being the same as Germany and lower than France? The statement from the IFS that Labour’s plans will increase the overall tax burden on companies to the point where they are the highest in the G7 and well in excess of both Germany and France was based on maths, not ideology and it was a statement made before McDonnell gave an on the hoof pledge to find yet another £58bn for the WASPI women, presumably in an attempt to shift the opinion polls.

[KerrAvon]

Only done one session in Chingford so far and yep a few are not getting beyond the Corbyn name but more than that are angry that he isn’t supporting Remain, or that he didn’t support the referendum earlier. I would imagine that voters in Rotherham are saying the opposite!

I think Corbyn will go, and the best time for that would have been 12 months ago. But I disagree that the replacement will be a Momentum replicant! Most labour members who will vote, certainly those who I know (which is quite a lot) are quite happy for a more moderate candidate such as Starmer or Philips if they keep the broad thrust of a genuinely transformational manifesto, although I fear they have over reached on this occasion. A more moderate leader, if than can be a unifier, can take it back a little, but also with added plus of having less historical baggage and being more of a likable figurehead.

That said, I fear that whoever comes forward, even moderate will, come next election, will receive the ‘Red Ed’ treatment and we will start the usual dance again. Out of interest, was Red Ed too Red for you in 2015?

(You still haven't said what you think is best to be done in order to raise more money for improved services and social care. How would you go about it personally?)

You will do what John Lansman tells you to do and will have Rebecca Long-Bailey, or ‘Becky’ as John McDonnell knows her.

And she will be a disaster.

I can't really remember Ed Miliband. And that was the problem. The job that the press did on him was completely unacceptable, particularly the piece the Mail did about his ‘Britain hating’ father. The problem you have at the moment is that the press don't have to make stuff up for Corbyn. He does the job for them.

[KerrAvon]

The Institute for Fiscal Studies is deeply unimpressed at what it deemed a “lack of significant policy action” in the Conservative Party manifesto.

The Tory social care crisis for Britain’s elderly and infirm that Johnson had promised to fix when he became PM did not even get a mention in the manifesto. Johnson had previously claimed that he had a plan ready to sort it out.

The IFS concluded that the manifesto plans meant people expecting relief for Britain’s public services after a decade of austerity would instead see “cuts to their day-to-day budgets of the last decade baked in.”

Economic researchers at the independent think tank calculated that the National Insurance threshold rise to £9,500 that Boris Johnson appeared to have lied or been mistaken about will actually only save most in paid work “less than £2 a week” and highlighted the “notable omission” for any plan to deal with the crisis in social care funding.

Nigel Edwards, chief executive at the Nuffield Trust, an independent health think tank, said he was “bitterly disappointed” to see “unnecessary delay” in tackling the issue of social care.

IFS director Paul Johnson said: “If a single Budget had contained all these tax and spending proposals, we would have been calling it modest.

“As a blueprint for five years in government, the lack of significant policy action is remarkable.”

Perhaps Kerr could give us his spin on this

What the IFS says is already pretty well spun in that article. Here’s a link to the real thing:

https://www.ifs.org.uk/election/2019...fs-researchers

Secondly, I would have thought that how animal and raging spins it would be more interesting than what I think. I’m a fan of the IFS whereas they have both spent time branding the them as neoliberal enemies of the revolution and mouthpieces of the bourgeois hegemony or whatever the current buzz phrases of the Left are. Are they going to a do a 180?

The IFS analysis is hardly surprising. The Tory manifesto was rather ‘beige’ to say the least.

[Exiletyke]

What the IFS says is already pretty well spun in that article. Here’s a link to the real thing:

https://www.ifs.org.uk/election/2019...fs-researchers

Secondly, I would have thought that how animal and raging spins it would be more interesting than what I think. I’m a fan of the IFS whereas they have both spent time branding the them as neoliberal enemies of the revolution and mouthpieces of the bourgeois hegemony or whatever the current buzz phrases of the Left are. Are they going to a do a 180?

The IFS analysis is hardly surprising. The Tory manifesto was rather ‘beige’ to say the least.

Something amiss here Kerr you have failed to sign off your post with your usual bile on Labour
Are you not feeling well?