Senate The UK Politics discussion

The privatised railways in the UK are an absolute joke, Southern case in point but just one of many, really. And they're ****ing expensive. No qualms about renationalising them at all.

 

I like how I've explained this but you and Alpha Red just can't get your heads around it.

The right to strike is important when you are talking about redressing an imbalance.

What we have in our modern countries, that you don't in your backwards and society-less country, are ridiculous strong trades unions who become their own little power fiefdoms.

Case in point: London is brought to its knees when TfL wants to scrap redundant jobs at Tube stations, by the union. or when RMT, the union, managed to secure salaries of £70,000 for tube drivers, despite the drivers doing little more than pressing a button to stop the train if someone leaps heroically in front of it.

The bill requires time limits on strikes/industrial action, and as you state, a majority ballot to take action. This is very reasonable. Unions cannot operate as pissing contests for its leaders.

Having a strike to protest bad legislation is not the same as protesting to get paid more than most skilled professionals for doing essentially nothing.

 

I wouldn't be against denationalizing the railways but I remember British Rail and it was nothing to wrote home about - I would say the service now is about the same as it was under BR (poor) but at least the rolling stock is more comfortable now (though it is VERY expensive to let the train take the strain)

 

NHS has been hit by ransomware in England : BBC News . Hope no one here is affected by this. Apparently it's a worldwide attack. Jeremy Hunt isn't having a good day.

 

As long as I can get from St. Pancras to Sheffield on a non-stop train at a decent time for not that much money, I don't care what you do with your rails. Unless you want to make them faster?

 

NSA info dump recently hit the dark window, with their Windows exploits to penetrate large networks. Hackers got a hold of the data I see..

 

dark window lol I meant dark web

 

If they wanted to add a cake service to the trains, I'd like that too?

 

OK, £5 a slice then?

 

Like GrandAdmiralJello I would prefer a slice that designates it's not for peons.

 

Well, actually, as you're a banker it'll be £10 a slice. Jay would be eligible for the satanic lawyer rate of £7.50.

 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/speakerscorner/2017/05/manifesto-madness

But it is in the length and breadth of the 2017 manifesto that it most closely resembles its august predecessor. Once again, Mr Corbyn tries to prove that there is a socialist policy on everything. Thus on page 89 Labour pledges to expand the role of the Grocers Code Adjudicator, while on page 112 the party promises to “protect the right to a nomadic way of life”. All, again, in no particular order. The vital Benedict Cumberbatch/Eddie Redmanye issue, of there being too many toffs in the theatre, appears on page 92. Readers may be forgiven for flagging before they get to national defence on page 120, where a plan to drive up standards in “service accommodation” gets the same amount of attention as Labour’s commitment to a nuclear deterrent.

The Corbots are already accusing the Economist of being a pro-Tory paper.

I love that about modern democracy; bias, bias everywhere! Not the prospect that something is actually off-putting to people, no. It's Righteousness made to suffer the indignation of Personal Agenda.

lol @ Labour

 

The New Statesmen was protested by Labour activists for being Tory. You know, the well-known British left wing publication.

 

I've been using the term "Corbot" to describe them. Deaf from the resonance of their echo chamber, they have to shout more loudly with each passing moment.

Keen to hear JC socialists address the issues of toffs in theatre though.

 

Well, that was unexpected - Tories versus pensioners. Will the gray vote now go commie?

I see only one clear, absolute winner from this election - the bookies.

 

Well, if middle class pensioners want decent social care then they have to pay for it. Can't expect the grandchildren to do it.

I see Tim Farron has, somehow, taken Corybn's spot as the biggest idiot in politics. I know ol' Tim in real life (and he really dislikes me) and his leadership has gone 100% as I thought it would - evangelical christian, with social conservative views does not mix well with a secular liberal party.

Hard to preach liberalism, if you think gay sex upsets Jesus and women are wrong to have abortions. Even though I suspect the polls, like tradition, have overstated Labour support, it won't be a bloodbath at the general election. Farron has ensured no moderate left voter will embracing the Lib Dems after his disastrous campaign so far.

 

Ah, but people will say they have paid for it - via taxes.

 

Social care isn't covered by the welfare state. So, they haven't.

 

Just try telling them that.

 

Believe me. I've tried.

 

Congrats, you just took an impossible mission. Success rate?

 

2% lol

Is up there with convincing voters the foreign born population is less than 15% and the recent immigrant population (here 5yrs or less) is between 3-8% - nobody believes you.

 

That's... Actually pretty good.

Look, you know we don't need expertise and knowledge of any kind nowadays, yeah?

 

Economist is having a field day savaging Corbots and Labour:

http://www.economist.com/news/brita...form-effective-opposition-tories-labour-unfit

BagehotLabour is unfit even to lose
Jeremy Corbyn’s party is in no shape to form an effective opposition to the Tories

print-edition icon Print edition | Britain

May 18th 2017

THE aim of British elections is not only to produce a government. It is also to produce a plausible opposition. Its task is to provide a check on Britain’s overmighty executive, a voice for the losers in the ruthless first-past-the-post electoral system and, by holding ministers to account for shoddy legislation and bad behaviour, to act as a spur to good government. A vigorous opposition is all the more important at a time when Britain is embarking on a revolution in its relations with the European Union on the basis of a narrow result in a single referendum.
Alas, the chance of a robust opposition emerging from this miserable election campaign is vanishingly slim. The Labour Party is not so much an organised political group as a battlefield between two rival ones: Jeremy Corbyn’s gang of far-left zealots and the parliamentary party of moderates. Until recently the moderates hoped that Mr Corbyn would do the honourable thing if he leads Labour to defeat and resign, leaving them to embark on the laborious work of rebuilding their party. Now it looks as if that is the last thing on Mr Corbyn’s narrow mind. He is busy shoring up his base by campaigning in safe seats and redefining “success” as getting the same share of the vote that his predecessor, Ed Miliband, got in 2015. His aim may be to survive until Labour’s annual conference in late September so that he can introduce a vital change in the rules for selecting his successor, reducing the proportion of MPs and MEPs needed to nominate a candidate from 15% of the parliamentary party to 5%. This would not only increase the chances of Labour’s next leader being another hard-leftist but also help to shift control of the party from the MPs to the grassroots.

If Mr Corbyn stays on, the issue facing the Labour moderates will be the timing of the bloodbath. Should they wait for the party conference in September to try to dethrone the left, or strike quickly and form a separate parliamentary party after the election? Some plotters point out that they are well prepared for the conference, with lots of sensible delegates. Others argue that the far left is too entrenched and that immediate action is necessary. There is talk of a hundred Labour MPs forming a separate parliamentary Labour Party after the election. One thing is clear: holding the Conservative government to account will be a secondary concern. If Labour splits, then Theresa May will be confronted with two warring opposition parties; if it holds together until September, she will face a divided party obsessed with allotting blame for its election defeat and fighting leadership battles.

Even if Mr Corbyn resigns it will be a long time before Labour is fit for opposition. The party will spend time finding a new leader. Possible left-wing successors include Rebecca Long-Bailey and Clive Lewis; in the centre, Yvette Cooper and Chuka Umunna are expected to stand. Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, and Tom Watson, the deputy leader, may also run. Whoever wins will hardly have an embarrassment of talent to call on in forming an opposition. The parliamentary party is dominated by courtiers to Tony Blair or Gordon Brown who have spent their lives in politics (such as Ms Cooper) and members of political dynasties (like Stephen Kinnock and Hilary Benn).

The wilderness years have deprived Labour of bright sparks. Some high-flyers such as Tristram Hunt have abandoned political careers and others have decided not to embark on them. The party has also been deprived of ideas. The battle between moderates and extremists has been so all-consuming that neither faction has done much fresh thinking. This week’s manifesto is an uneasy compromise between Ed Miliband’s policies and Mr Corbyn’s. Mr Blair’s Labour Party held John Major’s Conservatives to account because it had a self-confident leadership replete with new ideas. Whatever happens after the election, it will be years before Labour is again in that position.

What about the other opposition forces? The second-biggest is likely to be the Scottish National Party which, by its nature, is uninterested in much of the government’s business in the rest of Britain. (The SNP is bad for the art of opposition because it simultaneously entrenches one-party-rule north of the border and deprives Labour of seats and talent.) The Liberal Democrats will not win enough seats to act as an alternative opposition, and may be engaged in a leadership struggle of their own given Tim Farron’s mediocre performance. Lord Ashdown, a former Lib Dem leader, is among those promoting a “progressive alliance” of anti-Tory forces. But forming alliances is difficult even when the parties involved are not in chaos. And the Labour Party is too large and proud to compromise its identity by forming anything other than the loosest of pacts. The great problem with Labour is that it is too weak to win an election but too strong to cede the position of the official opposition.

Strong and unstable government
The enfeeblement of the parliamentary opposition is already generating talk about extra-parliamentary resistance. On the far left, groups such as Momentum argue that the “real” opposition must come from the streets. On the moderate left there is talk of the BBC stepping in to fill the void, or the Supreme Court or even European institutions. These ideas are noxious: the far-left version of extra-parliamentary opposition would turn Britain into the Weimar Republic and the soft-left version would politicise institutions whose authority lies in being above politics.
Yet it is easy to see why so many people are entertaining them in the face of Tory hegemony. The late Lord Hailsham, a Tory grandee, wrote that the danger of the British constitution is “elective dictatorship”. Parties that win majorities have no restraint on their powers other than the ones that the opposition can conjure up. Thanks to Labour’s civil war and the fragmentation of the other parties, Britain is about to engage in a period of revolutionary upheaval without the safeguard of an opposition.