Senate The UK Politics discussion

Just got a brief about the shadow chancellor's planned speech for today at the party conference. I'm sure it's gratifying for them to think of everyone working in factories but didn't that kind of approach leave us going cap in hand to the IMF for a bailout in the 70s? Three day work weeks and such?

Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, will take to the stage at his party’s conference today to pledge a "manufacturing renaissance" under a Labour government.
He is expected to promise to protect the steel industry and will criticise the Conservatives’ plans to cut investment in scientific research, housing and transport.
Labour’s call for selective nationalisation has caused concern in some business quarters but McDonnell will say: "Be certain the next Labour government will be an interventionist government.”

If it means I have to drive one of these, I'm out of here.

 

Most rational people want the railways and utilities back under public control, since the public is paying for them anyway. I read somewhere that even most tory scum want the railways (and trains, and ticket sellers) renationalised.

From what I've seen of conference and Labour policy, the idea is to diversify the economy so we don't turn into an offshore tax haven as is the tory plan. I didn't think we'd ever produce anything again but I'm open to Labour's ideas, since they have them.

 

The term 'tory scum' rolls here? Cool. I've been out for most of today but I'll catch up on what labour vermin are up to at conference this evening.

 

It rolls off the tongue in a satisfying way, and it's my honest opinion of anyone who votes tory. You simply can't be a nice person and want more inequality, more hardship for vulnerable people, fewer social safeguards, etc. It's a fundamental truth of the human condition that tories are scum. Bad, selfish people who lack empathy, who are fearful of progress. Christ, just read the Hare check-list and tell me it doesn't perfectly describe a tory.

I hate Brown, but he was right in 2008. We need to do what Japan and Germany did after WW2 and invest heavily in r&d, infrastructure, and industry. Austerity has not worked, it has made Britain a nastier place to live.

 

Well I shouldn't worry there's not a hope of Corbyn and McDonnell ever getting anywhere near power to implement these policies... All Labour have done is ensure we'll probably have a longer run of unbroken Tory rule than the previous 18 years.

It's a fundamental truth that when Labour cast themselves off to the loony left the Tories have prolonged and extended runs of uninterrupted government.

The latest forecast from electoral calculus predicts the Conservatives would win a 100 landslide if Theresa May decided to have an election;

http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html

Given opinion polls tend to overstate Labour the real position is probably worse than even this forecast indicates.... Still Labour is enjoying their time speaking to themselves and being utterly irrelevant to the governance of the country so best leave them to it. They might come to their senses eventually? Or maybe not? Who knows?

 

I think it's adorable that the old guard left confuses signals that people want greater social equity with a desire to party like it's 1899.

slightly_unhinged, have you had issues with Labour's buddies the trades union movement over there pushing back on fleet vehicles having GPS installed because the information could show a 4 hr pub lunch and lead to disciplinary action?

Amazing. Those poor abused workers.

 

Ender Sai GPS devices in fleet vehicles would mean data analysts could do a bunch of work optimising routes, predicting delivery times with near pinpoint accuracy and helping drivers avoid heavy traffic and dangerous conditions. Everything would run more smoothly and everyone concerned would be better off. Especially the prostitutes who won't be murdered by lorry drivers because their GPS device will put them at the scene.

Obviously, this is backward thinking and we should all become progressive turnip farmers or go back to working in factories producing awful cars and maybe re-open the mines too because that was a fun way to earn a living.

Anyhoo - caught up with McDonnell's speech - £250bn to be spent on infrastructure, minimum wage to be raised to (at least) £10p/h. Obviously, this is great. Billions to go into the pockets of corrupt union officials and their cronies (with the rest spent on high wages for people to stand around in high viz jackets talking about 'elf & safety while mooching around causing massive disruption to existing infrastructure) and a stake through the heart of small businesses.

 

Oh yes, curse health and safety, that's right. Life was so much better when factory owners could just work their workers to death.

So Labour are unelectable, yet they're the biggest single party in the UK. And they're the ones living in a fantasy. Okay.

There there, tory scum.

 

Harking back to a time when Labour were relevant.

There, there, commie vermin.

 

You literally just brought up health and safety as a bad thing (while misrepresenting everything else in MacDonald's plan). Harking back to the glory days of the poorhouse when tory thinking was the accepted norm.

Meanwhile Labour have over 600,000 members while the tories have, what, 150,000? Just a few more than SNP. But sure, they're irrelevant. Cling on to that disordered and abnormal fantasy.

 

V-2, surely you have to agree it's ridiculous that a person gets paid £80K a year to sit in the front of a self-driving train, merely because if they're not the union will grind London to a halt?

I don't dispute the need for society to utilise the collective resources of its tax-payers to ensure that barriers to entry are removed for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that a safety net needs to exist to stop people falling through the cracks. I also don't believe healthcare should be modelled on the American system, because they're barking mad.

But it galls me that unions can absolutely institutionalise unfair and inefficient practice which white collar workers would and should be sacked for. This is not about what's fair for workers when collectively bargaining - this is tribalism and throwing power around. It's indefensible, and the mere fact they provide materiel for the Labour party ought not be sufficient grounds to justify their behaviour and outcomes.

 

Ender Sai no, no. You have to either support every single tory policy or every single labour policy so that the world can be neatly divided between scum and rational people.

However, since you too are aberrant - having developed a mind beyond that of an over-earnest 14 year old - I agree absolutely.

Tory policy, the welfare reform bill in particular, has been horribly punitive to the most vulnerable people in society and I find that abhorrent. I'm also concerned by the slow collapse of the NHS (which is at least as much to do with internal corruption and hopeless inefficiency as it is to do with funding*). This is part of the reason I don't vote tory.

However, as much as trade unions were needed 100 years ago, and as much as labour government after WW2 was exactly what this country needed, that **** is no longer relevant.

The unions are an anachronism. There are no more cotton mills. We no longer need train drivers. Coal mining cannot be done here in an economically viable way. We don't have the education system, the infrastructure or the natural resources to be successful as an economy based on manufacture. As for 'elf & safety, it's no longer the business of saving lives and preventing serious injury. It's now farcical and obstructive. No one uses ticket offices anymore but we're supposed to employ an army of people to sit idle in those offices because of 'elf and safety. It takes 16 self-important idiots in high viz to supervise a vehicle emerging from the bay to the side of London Bridge station because of 'elf and safety. The cost of all that stupid, pointless **** is then borne by the ticket & tax payers, many of whom are actually doing something useful with their lives for far less pay.

The workers who are genuinely ****ed over are those in service industries and the crisis that really needs to be addressed if the goal is social equity is housing. Labour being stuck up its own **** in a 1970s time warp isn't helping.

Trying to turn back the clock to build some kind of second industrial age is painfully absurd and would take us down a ruinous path. I haven't voted in a general election since 1997 because I've always found all candidates to be disgusting belly-crawling lizards and every manifesto to be laced with **** that horrifies me. However, if someone put a gun to my head and forced me to choose a party at this point, I'd choose tory scum over labour vermin as the lesser of two evils.

* this isn't a reason to vote tory, however... while always keen to point out all the wasteful inefficiency in the NHS/civil service, they never actually do anything about it. As for the corruption, they're in it up to their necks along with their labour counterparts... how many of those cretins (on both sides) have interests in food/pharma? It's not just GPs lining their pockets while shovelling public funds into those industries to the detriment of the people.

 

Your personal issues with trade unionism mean you'd fit in the American Republican party. I don't really care that a tube driver gets paid more than you. If you're jealous of the power that unions can wield, join one.

 

lol

 

These days there are so many people wearing high-viz clothing it's ceased to mean anything. I've seen people walking their dogs on the Thames towpath in my area wearing yellow or green vests - during the daytime when they can be seen!

 

Wearing high visibility clothing doesn't mean anything, as evidenced by the people in high visibility clothing that you see. Okay.

 

This sounds awfully similar to the worst excesses of capitalism. Like when not particularly nice and not particularly hard working people manage to earn vast amounts of money just because they have found a niche in the market or good fortune.

 

How very dare you insinuate that these fine folk are not nice or hard working? It takes a razor sharp mind and an almost frightening athleticism to push a button to open the doors and close the doors at stations. Tube drivers are the Übermenschen. Look:



See?

Yes, ok, the whole system is automated so they don't actually drive the trains. And, sure, the doors can be set to automatically open and close at stations BUT if they weren't there the entire network would be overrun by tigers and velociraptors eating people to death. 'Elf & Safety. They absolutely deserve to be paid more than most architects, dentists, doctors etc. and to enjoy 45 days paid holiday a year, free travle, double time on bank holidays, various bonuses etc. The hazards of sitting down and occasionally pushing a button far outweigh those of, say, firefighters or spec ops military who are paid about half as much with far fewer benefits.

 

There's a gulf between the socially damaging excesses of unregulated capitalism and the (perceived) excesses of benevolent unionism.

For example, the rail unions are fighting the government's plan to remove train guards and platform attendants. It can be demonstrated that accidents occur more frequently and with worse outcomes when there's nobody there to help, and they're also trying to secure the careers of their members. So the government feel that people dying and being crippled is a price worth paying for employing fewer people in public transport, while the unions do not. Fighting those good fights is not damaging to society (it rather seeks to undo/prevent socially damaging policies), and for every negative example Rectal Enderscope and his bizarrely toxic tory chums can cite, there are thousands of examples of trade unions doing unquestionable good for society as a whole.

 

V2, I asked a pretty reasonable question above and I think if your intent was to make you look like an anachronism then you wildly succeeded.

We had a very politically motivated Royal Commission into the trades union movement here. The report found a widespread culture of wilful illegality and corruption.

You may have heard of a union for incredibly vulnerable workers - the Heath Services Union, who represent among their members overworked, underpaid and underresourced nurses - having their leader give his own company a non-tendered computing contract, and two senior figures (one later a Labor MP) using their credit cards for private school fees (!), prostitutes, and private goods.

Let's be clear here; the benefit of workers who are unskilled, or generally lacking the leverage and security as one worker that they don't lack as a collective, being able to bargain as a collective, is not a bad thing. I do not oppose this.

What I oppose is a group of people whose job it is to form miniature cartels and extort for their own benefit, at the expense of company, worker, and society.

I was going to say I couldn't understand why Labour hacks don't see the damage inherent in that system, but then I realised that the Labour party is the ultimate destination for these folks so of course they have a vested interest in protecting it.

So, I shan't expect much more from you on this that isn't hilariously partisan or akin to sticking fingers in your ears and saying "la la la can't hear you la la la".

 

You're a risk analyst, so you must, in your tedious calculations, place some value on complacency. Have a ponder on that in terms of health and safety, employment rights, and human rights law in general.

So because the government of your shamefully right wing and racist country commissioned a report finding criminal behaviour in unions, and because of some examples of well paid union members in the UK, all unions are bad, m'kay. You must be failing to communicate some nuance because all I'm seeing is irrational hatred backed up with cherry picking.

 

Well, no, you're not seeing the point because of your blinkers.

Please read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Services_Union_expenses_affair

I know you didn't, don't worry.

The Royal Commission found that unions are not exceptions to this rule, here. They found that a lot of the union leadership, the "management", is the problem. Corruption, coercion, standover tactics, intimidation, bullying and bribery were all common tactics. As I very clearly stated, I do not resent or deny the right and value of workers to collectively bargain, though knowing you you'll respond as if I did.

My question is - do you not see examples of union leadership lining their own pockets at the expense of all other outcomes, and is that not problematic?

This was also what I said above, but your blinkers are strong so I expect another top shelf answer.

 

(also, I love the irony of someone form a country that invented skinhead culture, voted "leave" in Brexit because of a hatred for migrants and subjugated continents full of non-whites calling anyone else racist. Ties with the irony of someone from a country with entrenched class systems and New Labour calling any other country right wing. If you had any urge to get a job, V2, imagine what sort of career you'd have in comedy! You could sell out just like Alexei Sayle!)

 

"I'm actually pleased that we know that this happened because it's the lesson for us is making sure it never happens again and never allowing a couple of disgusting individuals get away with stealing money out of the pockets of hard-working, low-paid health workers or any other union members in this country..... "If we have a dodgy trade union official who rips off those workers, we need to hunt them down too, hunt them down too to make sure they pay back what they took from the hardworking men and women of the Health Services Union."
— Paul Howes, senior union official, at the 2012 ACTU congress.

Sorry but White Australia trumps any example you just gave. I don't even need to mention your illegal offshore prison camp for refugees and migrants, or the forced adoption of indigenous children into white families. The idea that Brexit and Ska music (which is not a racist movement) trumps White Australia is comedy. You could go on the road with self-knowingly racist humour like that. You could be like Brendon Burns.

 

Asserting that unions aren't corrupt isn't comedy?

In other news, I'm used to my work making it to the national media but getting covered by the Daily Mash is a new and excellent highlight for me: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/...ghly-trained-as-brain-surgeons-20160920114073

Ok, so they didn't use any of my stats from the press release, but the spirit of the piece is perfect. Much better than this feeble **** from the Beeb: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37403702 or the Mirror: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/charity-calls-ban-estate-agents-8866191

Letting agents are possibly even more revolting than tube drivers. Not quite as belly-crawling as union officials but they're definitely up there.