199 replies to this topic

[Mike]

Gloriously, Nigel Farage of the anti-EU UK Independence Party has criticised Cameron's actions in Brussels this week, calling the situation we are now in 'the worst of all worlds.'

[Mike]

Clegg on Andrew Marr just now. Popcorntastic.

By trying to paint Cameron's decision as being not his fault but the result of the anti-Europe backbenchers in the Tory party, Clegg's just making him weaker.

Monday Cabinet is going to be hilarious.

YOU FUCKER MARR! UNEXPECTED MICK HUCKNALL! LOW BLOW SIR, LOW BLOW!

[David Meadows]

Danny Alexander on Today this morning seemed to be trying to say that the coalition wasn't really split because we didn't yet know exactly what the Eurozone countries were proposing and therefore the government hadn't decided how to react to it... despite Cameron and then Osbourne telling everybody exactly how they were going to react to it... but the key thing is that the coalition is in agreement that we inherited the economic mess from Labour!!!

I wasn't convinced Alexander believed what he was saying. Actually, I'm not convinced he even knew what he was saying, he was just the guy next up on the Lib Dem's duty roster for trotting out the standard mantra.

[Arjan Dirkse]

I like how Cameron is saying "he defended the city."

I think he imagines himself as a medieval knight posing defiantly on the city walls, pushing back wave after wave of barbarian invaders. Every politician wants an Aragorn moment like that.

[Ben the Obiwomble]

He's really taking the piss now isn't he?


http://www.guardian....m-families-cash

David Cameron faced questions over whether he has found enough Whitehall cash to effectively help the 120,000 problem families said to cost nearly £8bn in state support.

Cameron announced £448m of funding and said he hoped a further £675m would be advanced by local councils over the next three years.
The cash from Whitehall is designed to fund caseworkers to help tackle deep-seated problems faced by "chaotic families", and co-ordinate the often overlapping work of local agencies.
Local councils will not receive the £448m cash until they can show Louise Casey – the new "troubled families tsar" – that their interventions have cut truancy, antisocial behaviour or addiction.

Now let's see, what was being cut again? Oh yeah, all those woussy, airy-fairy, arty-farty community support programmes! But, not to worry, this new scheme will do it all with £448m found down the back of the sofa! Damn, but it's hard being skint!
And then there's Lansley's 60 indicators to measure the NHS, no, they're not targets, really.
And, most mind-boggling of all, everyone just accepts this. Is there something in the water that makes us very pliant to an upper-class accent or something? I expected the line about Labour causing the entire global economic crisis to have lost credibility some time back, but nope, it's still going, not that Labour's spinelessness here is helping.

[David Meadows]

This is completely unrelated to "current" affairs but I thought it was interesting.

From Thomas Macaulay's 1848 "History of England":

[W]e are under a deception similar to that which misleads the traveler in the Arabian desert. Beneath the caravan all is dry and bare; but far in advance, and far in the rear, is the semblance of refreshing waters... A similar illusion seems to haunt nations through every stage of the long progress from poverty and barbarism to the highest degrees of opulence and civilization. But if we resolutely chase the mirage backward, we shall find it recede before us into the regions of fabulous antiquity. It is now the fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noblemen were destitute of comforts the want of which would be intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a riot in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a week was a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry, when men died faster in the purest country air than they now die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the coast of Guiana.

.................................

We too shall in our turn be outstripped, and in our turn be envied. It may well be, in the twentieth century, that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself miserably paid with twenty shillings a week; that the carpenter at Greenwich may receive ten shillings a day; that laboring men may be as little used to dine without meat as they are now to eat rye bread; that sanitary police and medical discoveries may have added several more years to the average length of human life; that numerous comforts and luxuries which are now unknown, or confined to a few, may be within the reach of every diligent and thrifty workingman. And yet it may then be the mode to assert that the increase of wealth and the progress of science have benefited the few at the expense of the many, and to talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as the time when England was truly merry England, when all classes were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy the splendor of the rich.

[Mike]

Bus adverts for the Iron Lady have been sighted around London.

Happy New Year Britain! HEEEEEERRRRRRRREEEEE'S MAAAAAAGGGGGIIIEEEE!

[Arjan Dirkse]

He's really taking the piss now isn't he?


http://www.guardian....m-families-cash

Louise Casey – the new "troubled families tsar"

Troubled families tsar?? What, like the Romanovs?

[Jason Moncrieff]

Fractures widening:

Running scenarios through my head, I'm not sure what the best case scenario even is any more.

Carry on as we are, with a Tory Government hellbent on introducing far wider and deeper changes to the infrastructure of British politics and society than they proclaimed even in their manifesto let alone the coalition agreement, propped up by an increasingly weak looking Liberal Democratic party that is in danger of becoming a parody of itself? How long before Clegg faces a challenge from within his own party from those claiming to represent the true values of his party?

Have Clegg force an election now? What would we end up with? The best-case scenario would probably be a Labour majority, but Ed Miliband is a weak Leader of the Opposition and I have no reason to expect him to be a stronger potential Prime Minister. Do enough of the country feel strongly anti-Europe enough to return Cameron with a majority? - in which case, gods help the NHS. Or would we end up with a farcical comedy where Parliament was hung and the Lib Dems climbed into bed with Labour instead of the Tories, the coalition we all thought was the most likely one we'd end up with after the 2010 election? I can't see how Clegg could continue in good conscience as Lib Dem leader in that case, though you could argue it'd serve as some continuity of Government I suppose.

I suppose Cameron could soldier on with a minority Government, as Major did in the wake of his own European crisis, but I think it'd be inherently unstable, particularly given the other Bills his Government is trying to get through.

Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband combined have been massive disappointments as far as I'm concerned. Before the 2010 election I really believed Clegg might represent a genuinely different way of doing things, and was sadly mistaken. Miliband the Younger, for a brief shining moment, looked as if he might be what his party needed more than his calm, measured elder brother who was perhaps too tainted by association with the previous Labour Government - but in retrospect, it's more than clear that the wrong brother won that contest.

If David Miliband were leader of the Labour party, and had proven his mettle as Opposition Leader over the last year, I'd feel a lot more confident about a snap election.

In Scotland, support for the SNP has risen to over 50%, partway through an electoral cycle following on from an election that itself saw them gain an absolutely unprecedented and unpredicted majority. I've been saying around these parts for a long while that there was always a chance Cameron might be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as it is currently constituted; I think those odds are shortening. If Salmond can come out with a coherent Scottish response to the current European problem, and state what his Government's approach to Scotland in Europe would be and have it make sense, there is a real chance for him to parlay the upcoming referendum into something genuinely historic.

Well I am no fan of the tories at all (in fact Im not a fan of any of the political parties in westminister), but there is something a good number of people don't understand. In the present social and economic climate, and welfare capatalism, the UK is in one of the worst positions in the world. If the UK pulls back from its massive austerity program (which is going to cause the london riots in 2012 on steroids) then the rating agencies will start downgrading the sovereign debt of the UK, and if things start going tits up in the gilts market for the UK, its game over. I'll point to this chart:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2011/12/World%20debt%20to%20GDP.jpg

Which quite clearly shows the UK has a total debt to gdp ratio of nearly 1000%. We would become worse than greece before long. The reason the markets are just ignoring the UK really is because if it goes under, the whole western financial system will collapse and we will have absolute anarchy on the streets of every country. We might even have it when the euro starts breaking up. Greece HAS to leave the Euro, because it is destroying the country. There are people commiting suicide because they cant get jobs. Drug users are infecting themselves with HIV to get the last of the state benefits that are only given out if you have HIV. People are setting themselves on fire, there are riots on the streets. No way are Greece going to stay in the euro.

Quite frankly no politician can sort this mess out, so it doesnt really matter who we have. The economic model designed for industrial revolution counties will not work anymore, just like if we tried to introduce serfdom, it would not work. The debt based financial system is imploding, and austerity makes it worse, stimulus makes it worse. The only solution is wiping out all debt, and again that will destroy completely the fabric of society as we know it.

[garjones]

The UK always has the highest debt in the financial part of that graph because London is the biggest financial centre in the world. Over 90% of financial transactions in the EU are carried out in the UK and it is a larger sector of the economy than in any other country.

The complexities of it all boggle my mind but it's more normal than it may appear.

Austerity programmes will not affect that at all. They will affect the government section of the bar and if you look at that again it's fairly average.

[Jason Moncrieff]

Well the point is, the UK financial sector has massive amounts of debt. This means you cannot transfer the debt from private to public debt books. For example when RBS went tits up, along with Northern Rock, they nationalized, and took the debt on to the gov books. You cannot transfer this debt to the government, and therefore if institutions start going pop in the UK, there can be no bail out. So the situation is very dangerous in the UK - luckily its almost so bad that they choose to ignore it, because as you said most of the banking sector works in London.

[Mike]

Well I am no fan of the tories at all (in fact Im not a fan of any of the political parties in westminister), but there is something a good number of people don't understand. ... Quite frankly no politician can sort this mess out, so it doesnt really matter who we have.

It does matter, and it will matter.

While I agree that whomever had won the 2010 election would have had a difficult job, the approach the Tories have taken is driven as much by ideology as it is by economic sense or necessity. They are using the excuse of the global financial crisis to systematically achieve things that even Thatcher never dreamt were possible, to attempt to pare Britain back and reshape what's left into the Tory vision of perfection.

We, like virtually every Western economy out there, are faced with an economic outlook that can be described as bleak at best. No-one is going to magically wave all the problems away; it's going to take time and likely a wholesale revision of the way we think about our economies. But there are still clear ideologically driven differences between the political parties in the United Kingdom, and choosing between them still offers a chance to at least determine some of the shape of what ten years from now will look like.

[Jason Moncrieff]

Well I agree that the tories are following ideology, but I still feel that no politician has a grasp on what needs to be done.

Unfortunately technology is slowly wiping out jobs, and profit driven economics will never ever take into account the well being of people. The only reason things have not been worse for the last couple of decades is because of a monetary system that allows for the constant expansion of money, which is now imploding. So the private sector will never in the long term absorb the workers that will be taken from the public sector.

This is what I mean when I say it doesn't matter. The politicians are a result of our flawed economic model, and none of them have any idea to solve things.

[Ben the Obiwomble]

Bus adverts for the Iron Lady have been sighted around London.

Happy New Year Britain! HEEEEEERRRRRRRREEEEE'S MAAAAAAGGGGGIIIEEEE!

And it gets... better / worse / horrific ?

http://www.guardian....-commons-debate

Conservative MPs have called for a House of Commons debate over The Iron Lady, the Oscar-tipped film about Margaret Thatcher which stars Meryl Streep as Britain's formidable first female PM.

Ahead of the movie's release in UK cinemas next month, Tory MP for Reading East Rob Wilson said Phyllida Lloyd's biopic presented an "intrusive and unfair" picture of Thatcher, having chosen to depict her as "old, lonely, fragile and suffering from dementia" in some segments. He argued that Lloyd and screenwriter Abi Morgan ought to have focused more closely on the younger years of the Lincolnshire-born grocer's daughter, who became the UK's longest-serving 20th century leader.

Edited by Ben the Obiwomble, 20 December 2011 - 11:58 PM.

[garjones]

Unfortunately technology is slowly wiping out jobs,

They've been saying that since the Spinning Jenny was invented in 1764.

I do agree though we need to rethink the way we approach economics.

[Ben the Obiwomble]

Get out your smallest violins for these unfortunate individuals born lacking any ability of common sense.... which they will now pay for courtesy of the French criminal justice system!

http://www.guardian....g-party-tory-mp

The French state prosecutor has opened a preliminary investigation into the Nazi-themed stag party attended by the Conservative MP Aidan Burley in the Alpine ski resort of Val Thorens.
Burley was sacked from his role as a parliamentary aide after he was pictured at the party, where one guest was shown in SS uniform making a Nazi salute.
Under French law, it is a crime to wear uniforms, insignia or emblems linked to the Nazi regime, unless they are being used for a film, play or historical exhibition.
The prosecutor's office in Albertville, Savoie, confirmed an inquiry was opened on Wednesday night but refused to comment further.

The bit on the footage where the toast proclaimed is 'in praise of the thought and ideology of the Third Reich' is damning in its portrait of arrogance and stupidity in equal measure.

[Jason Moncrieff]

They've been saying that since the Spinning Jenny was invented in 1764.

I do agree though we need to rethink the way we approach economics.

True mate. It's something I have pondered before, and to a degree you are right because there has always been another sector to soak up the jobs. But I feel we are now at a crunch point - I think the last number of years things have been okay in terms of employment because of a faulty economic model that has basically created a world wide ponzi scheme. Unfortunately these things usually come crashing down nastily - 2008 possibly being a bump down in the ride.

For example, what happens when we can create robots that can do ANY job a human can do? And believe me, we are already very close if not already there. Robotics, electronics and every other technology is ramping up - it is the nature of it. When robots can do any job (self service tills in tesco for example) then humans are replaced, because they work 24/7 dont complain, dont need insurance, dont need holidays, dont phone in sick. Another example that we will all see more regularly soon is restaurants with no waiters - just ipads or other tablets at the table. You will just order your food. If you actually think about it, it is so much more sensible. A waiter is only there to relay an order to the cook - why make a human waste their life doing it?

So as I said, people always complain about capitalism and how we need to end it. Don't worry about it, it will end itself because it is impossible to sustain in the long run.

[Arjan Dirkse]

So as I said, people always complain about capitalism and how we need to end it. Don't worry about it, it will end itself because it is impossible to sustain in the long run.

You could say capitalism has ended itself a while ago. Many of the countries in the world that are called capitalist have several safety nets - social security etc. Perhaps the most capitalist countries nowadays are China and especially North Korea - turning human beings into a cheap resource that is good for little else than slaving away in factories, and with no recourse to human rights. Humans as financial assets. That is something which is pretty much unthinkable in the West right now.

[garjones]

True mate. It's something I have pondered before, and to a degree you are right because there has always been another sector to soak up the jobs. But I feel we are now at a crunch point - I think the last number of years things have been okay in terms of employment because of a faulty economic model that has basically created a world wide ponzi scheme. Unfortunately these things usually come crashing down nastily - 2008 possibly being a bump down in the ride.

For example, what happens when we can create robots that can do ANY job a human can do? And believe me, we are already very close if not already there. Robotics, electronics and every other technology is ramping up - it is the nature of it. When robots can do any job (self service tills in tesco for example) then humans are replaced, because they work 24/7 dont complain, dont need insurance, dont need holidays, dont phone in sick. Another example that we will all see more regularly soon is restaurants with no waiters - just ipads or other tablets at the table. You will just order your food. If you actually think about it, it is so much more sensible. A waiter is only there to relay an order to the cook - why make a human waste their life doing it?

So as I said, people always complain about capitalism and how we need to end it. Don't worry about it, it will end itself because it is impossible to sustain in the long run.

The issues faced today are a failing of the system but I can't see technology being part of it. If you read 'Conscience of a Liberal' by Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman he dedicates a chapter to how it isn't a significant factor.

In the early 80s we saw film on news reports of how robots were building cars and the same fears arose but before the crisis in 2008 unemployment was at one of its lowest levels ever. There are literally millions of jobs already made obselete by technology and in all seriousness it does go right back to the spinning Jenny.

If we consider that before the 1980s most married women didn't work the number of people being employed was higher than ever. When I started work in 1997 we had no email, no sharepoints or other technological time saving advancements, yet jobs didn't start being lost by that company until 2008, they still employ more people now than then. We outsourced thousands of jobs but after that process there were 2000 more people on staff in the UK. They were doing different roles, maybe more sales based, but there were more people in work.

History tells us that if the robot waiter gets perfected then we'll pay people to dance to amuse us while we eat or something similar because as flawed as capitalism can be it isn't necessarily suicidal and needs consumers to exist and to have consumers you need to pay them a wage..

Strict free market beliefs are suicicdal as they continue to increase the gap between the rich and poor which will just deliver uis back to the early 20th century (charts will show the US is back to how it was in the 1920s) and eventually the same fights for greater rights for working people.

[Mike]

I do hope the Duke of Edinburgh isn't about to die.