UK Politics & Brexit Discussion

[DeadLinesman]

4 hours ago, LFCMike said:

I have to completely disagree with this. The threshold for inheritance tax that Labour have proposed is maybe a little low but I don't know how you can use that as a reason to look beyond the corruption and severe austerity that this government has imposed. If you won't vote Labour just because of this policy without taking into consideration their other policies and the last nine years of this conservative government then you're a selfish cunt and sum up the attitude of most in this country

You got me 

Exhibit A, the reason you shouldn’t discuss politics with people you don’t know. You’re automatically a cunt because they’ve assumed everything about you without knowing fuck all about you.

I’m out. Crack on 

[Fairy In Boots]

On 19/11/2019 at 12:59, RandoEFC said:

@Fairy In Boots many good points made as usual, it would be better if we had more Conservative/Brexit posters on here as you'd get to see things from both sides a bit more.

It will never happen mate look below as an example as to why this thread becomes a labour echo chamber despite them blatantly being behind in the country. 

On 21/11/2019 at 07:40, Stan said:

Cor Priti Patel is a slimy bitch as well isn't she? 

One of the worst of the 'elite'. They just really do not get it do they? 

 

On 21/11/2019 at 16:21, LFCMike said:

Rachel Riley is a vile cunt

 

4 hours ago, LFCMike said:

I have to completely disagree with this. The threshold for inheritance tax that Labour have proposed is maybe a little low but I don't know how you can use that as a reason to look beyond the corruption and severe austerity that this government has imposed. If you won't vote Labour just because of this policy without taking into consideration their other policies and the last nine years of this conservative government then you're a selfish cunt and sum up the attitude of most in this country

Lovely sentiments there, a real welcoming discussion board, the result is the below

1 hour ago, DeadLinesman said:

You got me 

Exhibit A, the reason you shouldn’t discuss politics with people you don’t know. You’re automatically a cunt because they’ve assumed everything about you without knowing fuck all about you.

I’m out. Crack on 

Not saying deadlinesman is a Tory, but you guys have got what you deserve in this thread tbh. That a fucking tedious echo chamber. 

I stick around and give it back because I’m a bit of a cunt who likes to troll a bit but I can’t devote the time to seriously debate it all nor should I. 

most on the politics board will have been chased off from debate with this sort of nastiness in reality. 

Odd that it’s from the same types who usually are the ones whinging about politics of hate too. 

A shame for the forum really and politics as a whole. 

[Stan]

1 minute ago, Fairy In Boots said:

It will never happen mate look below as an example as to why this thread becomes a labour echo chamber despite them blatantly being behind in the country. 

Sorry but outing Priti Patel for her insensitive comments is not part of a 'labour echo chamber'.

Outing Rachel Riley for her actions also isn't either. 

Got nothing to do with supporting Labour. Just saying how I see it. Even if I wasn't Labour, I'd still be severely worried by seeing that. 

Do you think what they said/did were positive?

[Fairy In Boots]

9 hours ago, Stan said:

Sorry but outing Priti Patel for her insensitive comments is not part of a 'labour echo chamber'.

Outing Rachel Riley for her actions also isn't either. 

Got nothing to do with supporting Labour. Just saying how I see it. Even if I wasn't Labour, I'd still be severely worried by seeing that. 

Do you think what they said/did were positive?

Think you’re missing the wider point Stan, by a mile. 

Haven't paid attention to any of the incidents mentioned nor do I really care. I’m talking about the tone of the posts, aren’t going to welcome debate “slimy bitch” and “vile cunt” aren’t exactly screaming “let’s have a civilised debate”.

Step back from it Stan would you say taking to or about a women like that is ok? 

I acknowledge I’m probably guilty of it from the other side of it sometimes to.

But there’s clearly a left bias here so the point I was making is that although you’re probably the minority (which given the fact left wing politics in this country is the minority) you’ve monopolised this platform of debate by making it uninviting for differing opinions. 

Why would you put yourself out as a Tory supporter to invite the shit that comes with it here? I get tagged in random threads about random stuff whenever There’s a mention of racism with stuff like “bet fairy likes this”  it doesn’t bother me more than the inconvenience of wasting my time. But if you’re right on a particular issue why would you even bother putting your hand up for this shit? You wouldn’t hence why polling is starting to be fucked and “shy Toryism” is a thing. 

Civil discourse has broken down. That mate is more worrying than anything because that’s how society & cohesion breaks down. 

Disagree with it all you want mate, it’s your forum I’m just telling you why this section is fundamentally broken and has become a none event of a discussion board

Edited November 23, 2019 by Fairy In Boots

[Inverted]

I don't think it's anything to do with tone that most people who post on this site are sick of the Tories.

It's probably more to do with most people on here being young-ish adults, with a bit of education, in the early stages of their career who've seen their career opportunities constrict, their wage prospects stagnate, their living costs increase, and their chances of owning a home basically evaporate in the last 10 years. 

I'm sure if there's a forum where most posters are middle-aged blokes with paid-off mortgages, it would be much more sympathetic to the Tories. 

Edited November 23, 2019 by Inverted

[Burning Gold]

12 hours ago, Stan said:

Sorry but outing Priti Patel for her insensitive comments is not part of a 'labour echo chamber'.

Outing Rachel Riley for her actions also isn't either. 

Got nothing to do with supporting Labour. Just saying how I see it. Even if I wasn't Labour, I'd still be severely worried by seeing that. 

Do you think what they said/did were positive?

Rachel Riley wore a t-shirt with some words. I'm really, really at a loss as to what she's supposed to have done wrong

[LFCMike]

14 hours ago, DeadLinesman said:

You got me 

Exhibit A, the reason you shouldn’t discuss politics with people you don’t know. You’re automatically a cunt because they’ve assumed everything about you without knowing fuck all about you.

I’m out. Crack on 

My apologies, the selfish cunt thing was out of order. The rest of my point about taking into account policies that may not benefit yourself but perhaps millions of others stands though

[Fairy In Boots]

50 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

My apologies, the selfish cunt thing was out of order. The rest of my point about taking into account policies that may not benefit yourself but perhaps millions of others stands though

It’s the politics of envy always has always will be with this current Labour Party. 

Although I saw something earlier that summed your arguments up. 

“

For those of you reciting the 'Tories defend the rich' argument, read this. It's worth it, I assure you.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to £100...
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this...

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay £1.
The sixth would pay £3.
The seventh would pay £7..
The eighth would pay £12.
The ninth would pay £18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay £59.

So, that's what they decided to do..

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by £20". Drinks for the ten men would now cost just £80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes.

So the first four men were unaffected.

They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men?
The paying customers?

How could they divide the £20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?

They realised that £20 divided by six is £3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.

So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.

And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).

The sixth now paid £2 instead of £3 (33% saving).

The seventh now paid £5 instead of £7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid £9 instead of £12 (25% saving).

The ninth now paid £14 instead of £18 (22% saving).

The tenth now paid £49 instead of £59 (16% saving).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.

"I only got a pound out of the £20 saving," declared the sixth man.

He pointed to the tenth man,"but he got £10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a pound too. It's unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get £10 back, when I got only £2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!"

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works.

The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore.

In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.”

you’re the guy drinking for free . 

Also as Johnny Mac is involved this sums him up perfectly to

 

[The Artful Dodger]

The tory part is the politics of deference and defending class interests. We have been a low tax, low wage economy for nearly 40 years. Our country is one of the most unhappy in Europe, has social problems that other counties simply don't have and is on the brink of recession, again. Things are not working at all. 

What a terrible analogy that is Fairy, probably written by someone with either no friends or terrible friends. That analogy completely forgets the spirit of friendship, not surprising given its from a tory perspective. The analogy would also work better if the wealthy man was drinking the finest cognac and the poor the landlord's piss, thst would better sum up the UK at the moment. 

We live in a country which is inherently selfish, and it shows in our culture, politics and economics. Corbyn's policies are barely even radical. We've been Americanised. Britain is dead and it is only going to get worse and worse. 

Edited November 24, 2019 by The Artful Dodger

[Inverted]

On 23/11/2019 at 12:37, Burning Gold said:

Rachel Riley wore a t-shirt with some words. I'm really, really at a loss as to what she's supposed to have done wrong

Editing out an anti-Apartheid message in order to score a cheap blow for the Tory party, who very actively supported Apartheid, is pretty racist. 

 

Edit:

I'm also very annoyed that I took the time to re-read that rambling and economically illiterate screed of an analogy about beer and taxes by some no-name American mid-Western lecturer - who by the way actually denies he wrote it .

 I think I'll stick with the academic near-consensus forming that deflationary economics has persisted for far too long, and that it serves no purpose in either reducing national debt, or promoting economic growth. In fact, you don't even need to read the academic opinion - its common sense.

There's a reason that interest rates are fucking rock-bottom - there are fucking piles of money lying around that people literally can't think of uses for. There are hoards of savings floating around looking for returns, but the investment opportunities literally don't exist, because overall economic activity is slowing and stuttering. It's basic supply and demand - interest is the cost of borrowing money. If there's lots of money lying around and not many people looking to borrow, interest rates will be low.

One of the happy side-effects of this, is the massive financialisation of the housing market. Everyone with any savings realises that one of the easiest ways in the world to make money - since just keeping it in the bank isnt very profitable, and there's no actual productive activity to invest in - is to hoard housing, rent it at insane prices, and then vote Tory to make sure the housing supply never meaningfully increases. Lots of profit, very little real contribution economically - in fact in many ways it hampers growth. 

All the while, there are innumerable societal issues that actually desperately require money. So many communities, especially outwith the South-East, where a small injection of money could actually create a massive, productive, material economic benefit. But who wants to invest in Northumberland or Wales, potentially creating real value, when you can get guaranteed returns by investing in the London buy-to-let market, and essentially just playing economic hostage-taker?

So it seems we have a bit of market failure here. Resources are evidently not being allocated effectively - some areas are over-invested to the point of ridiculousness, most are gasping for investment. Apart from a small lunatic fringe, economic theory has basically always had a role for the state stepping in to correct these kinds of market failures, and in fact the ability of the state to do so is the foundation of the modern capitalist welfare state which we all take for granted.

The New Deal in America, Labour in 1945, the West-German Soziale Marktwirtschaft, the Scandinavian model. To pretend that somehow its illegitimate for the state to correct these kinds of inevitable blockages and quirks of the market, is to deny the very thing that has essentially made the West so socially and economically advanced.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Inverted

[RandoEFC+]

Three more weeks. Feels like absolutely nothing is happening during this campaign. Discussion of the manifestos seems superfluous as we're in that place now where the majority of people have known since the start of the campaign where their vote is going. The only thing that's changed really is Farage stepping down all of those candidates which has cushioned the Tory lead in the polls.

The only ways the polls change much now will be if the Lib Dems and Labour do something but I can't see it happening. With the current status quo, I expect the Lib Dem vote share will continue to shrink very slowly as people shuffle back to Labour. If there is a major youth turnout as well, then Labour will get a better vote share than the polls currently suggest. It's all about the constituencies though, obviously.

The only other thing I can think of that would hamstring the Tories is if something came out about that Russian report. People don't seem to care about the renaming of their Twitter account or Johnson bumbling unimpressively his way through Question Time on Friday night. If you're on board with him and the Tories now after his career it's going to take something big to change your mind I think.

So yeah, a big feeling of wishing the actual election was tomorrow so we can just get it over with to be honest. Fingers crossed there's something to upset the current apple cart in the time that's left.

[Inverted]

 

Why can't Lib Dems just go back to their middle-management jobs and school parent councils and spare us this nonsense.

 

Edited November 25, 2019 by Inverted

[God is Haaland]

When you have to concentrate 100% trying to keep a straight face...

[LFCMike]

Anyone seen that Tory MP bullshitting about the pledge for 50,000 extra nurses on Good Morning Britain?

[Inverted]

1 minute ago, LFCMike said:

Anyone seen that Tory MP bullshitting about the pledge for 50,000 extra nurses on Good Morning Britain?

A black Labour MP fudges a number - becomes a meme forever. 

Tory MPs like Truss, Gove and Morgan relentlessly fuck-up their random made-up numbers on air - nobody cares. 

What a coincidence. 

[Inverted]

Private media dominated by pro-government interests. 

Public broadcaster systematically biased in favour of the government. 

And we're meant to act surprised when the relentless villification and disinformation results in public violence against Labour supporters. 

England is sleepwalking into becoming a one-party state. 

[Burning Gold]

9 hours ago, Inverted said:

Editing out an anti-Apartheid message in order to score a cheap blow for the Tory party, who very actively supported Apartheid, is pretty racist. 

Eh. Maybe I'm being too charitable, but it's not like she's deleted the original picture from existence, and it's quite clearly a gag not intended to mislead. I doubt the sincerity of her concern over antisemitism, to be honest, but in this particular instance... 

Also, I edited out the rest of your post because of its length (not trying to prove a point ), but... nicely put

Edited November 25, 2019 by Burning Gold

[Inverted]

26 minutes ago, Burning Gold said:

Eh. Maybe I'm being too charitable, but it's not like she's deleted the original picture from existence, and it's quite clearly a gag not intended to mislead. I doubt the sincerity of her concern over antisemitism, to be honest, but in this particular instance... 

Also, I edited out the rest of your post because of its length (not trying to prove a point ), but... nicely put

There's plenty of photos of Corbyn out there. Even if you particularly want a photo of him holding a sign, there's loads. 

Picking one which specifically refers to a major racist force in history, and literally erasing it in order to put your own hysterical agenda centre stage, is an actively racist choice. 

Edited November 25, 2019 by Inverted

[Michael]

1 hour ago, Inverted said:

Private media dominated by pro-government interests. 

Public broadcaster systematically biased in favour of the government. 

And we're meant to act surprised when the relentless villification and disinformation results in public violence against Labour supporters. 

England is sleepwalking into becoming a one-party state. 

This is disgusting, how anyone can physically attack a 72 year old man is beyond me. Politics in the UK has become seriously toxic, it has to be said. I only returned to Ukraine from England a week ago and when I was there, I myself noticed the tension that arose every time people were discussing the elections. It really is ridiculous! I understand that people feel strongly about certain policies, but getting so worked up about it, to the point people want to fight each other, is ludicrous!

But this attack on the 72 year old Labour supporter is reprehensible and the perpetrator should be locked up for many years in my opinion. In all likelihood though, he'll probably get a slap on the wrist, or a relatively soft sentence. One thing I will say, is that the law is too soft in the UK, the punishments often don't fit the crime.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Michael

[RandoEFC+]

So today is the first time a friend of mine told me he's moving abroad in 2021 because Brexit and the Tories in general have left him so disillusioned with this country.

#TakeBackControl

[Stan]

2 hours ago, LFCMike said:

Anyone seen that Tory MP bullshitting about the pledge for 50,000 extra nurses on Good Morning Britain?

Absolute madness how she kept trying to defend it by repeating the same bloody thing. 

'because it's more!'

'But how? How is it more?'

'Because there's going to be 50,000 more!'

'It's 31,000 more and 19,000 retained'.

'it's 50,000 more nurses'.

'How?'

'there's 50,000 more nurses'

 

[The Artful Dodger]

11 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

So today is the first time a friend of mine told me he's moving abroad in 2021 because Brexit and the Tories in general have left him so disillusioned with this country.

#TakeBackControl

I'd say to any young person, leave now. This country is only going one way now.

[Inverted]

I must admit this is the most demoralised I've ever felt about an election. 

Any real ambition has been replaced by the sole objective of preventing a Tory majority. That's the only realistic aim, and even then the odds seem impossibly stacked in the Tories favour. 

I've never been more convinced that the government needs to be removed urgently, and never so sure that they would win. 

In my own seat the Tories have basically no chance anyway. Obviously I would prefer Labour to stay rather than the SNP win it, but as I said  the most important thing is that the Tories not get a majority. I can't really make a difference in that sense. 

If the Tories are denied a majority, some chance of resolving Brexit in a reasonable way remains. If they win a majority, we get No Deal, we're plunged into deeper economic chaos, and the possibilities of repairing the social and economic damage become slim to none. 

[RandoEFC+]

As much as I hope the post-Brexit struggles open some people's eyes I'm still mostly resigned to the fact that the majority won't admit that they voted to make their own lives and the lives of people around them worse. In this age of personality politics and blind partisan support "you're either with us or you're against us" people would rather keep lying to themselves than admit they were wrong even if it continues to make their lives worse.

"At least we've got our country back". Good luck paying for food, housing and your kids' futures with that sense of 'sovereignty' that the Daily Mail told you to feel.

Why can't they move all the 17.4 million (Copyright) to one end of the country, and leave the rest of us in the rest of the country, still part of the EU, hard border between these two new states, and just see how each half is getting on in a few years' time? I'd love to see it.

[Inverted]

https://www.ft.com/content/d6f56834-0f78-11ea-a225-db2f231cfeae

Almost 200 economists including from the LSE, Oxford, and UCL, have had a piece published in the FT advocating Labour's economic plan. Blanchflower, the leader, has a track record of opposing Corbyn. 

Quote

 

The results are now plain. We have had 10 years of near zero productivity growth. Corporate investment has stagnated. Average earnings are still lower than in 2008. A gulf has arisen between London and the South East and the rest of the country. And public services are under intolerable strain — which the economic costs of a hard Brexit would only make worse. We now moreover face the urgent imperative of acting on the climate and environmental crisis.

Given private sector reluctance, what the UK economy needs is a serious injection of public investment, which can in turn leverage private finance attracted by the expectation of higher demand. Such investment needs to be directed into the large-scale and rapid decarbonisation of energy, transport, housing, industry and farming; the support of innovation- and export-oriented businesses; and public services. It is clear that this will require an active and green industrial strategy, aimed at improving productivity and spreading investment across the country.

 

 

Its important to stress - the Tories have nothing but Brexit and racial hysteria. Of course in England that is enough to win, but nonetheless it's important to realise there is no serious reason that the Tories should be winning. 

Edited November 26, 2019 by Inverted