Jezza Corbyn

There were parts (by no means all) of John McDonnell's speech that resonated, particularly the fair taxation of large corporations. I am not sure if the sums raised would indeed be sufficient to wipe out the deficit (as Corbyn states they will) but an increase in tax revenue from corporations could (and should) lead to personal tax cuts for the general public across the board. However, they are (depressingly) continuing to follow the same old mantra of taxing the middle classes at a higher rate.

I can't see how they keep failing to understand that the "middle class" is a far, far bigger segment of the population that it was when this Old-Labour doctrine was originally formulated. Wishful thinking aside there is relatively little real "working class" in the UK anymore. You cannot win elections by sucking up to an ever dwindling cohort of voters.

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

So now the other self proclaimed knight has joined in.

Trying to get my head around your reasoning that the BBC licence is more etc, etc!

Are you serious?

I'm not sure how to say this without causing offence...

"Sir Francis Drake" is not my real name.

Yours faithfully

Sir Walter Raleigh

(almost my first ever ATD post there!)

Thatchers... buy your council house... was a right wing stroke of genius....which the poor are now paying for by having to pay private rent barons a fortune to live in near slum conditions.....because there are not enough council/housing association homes to go round. This moved many people to consider themselves middle-class being home owners.

bjorn_yesterday wrote:

There were parts (by no means all) of John McDonnell's speech that resonated, particularly the fair taxation of large corporations. I am not sure if the sums raised would indeed be sufficient to wipe out the deficit (as Corbyn states they will) but an increase in tax revenue from corporations could (and should) lead to personal tax cuts for the general public across the board. However, they are (depressingly) continuing to follow the same old mantra of taxing the middle classes at a higher rate.

I can't see how they keep failing to understand that the "middle class" is a far, far bigger segment of the population that it was when this Old-Labour doctrine was originally formulated. Wishful thinking aside there is relatively little real "working class" in the UK anymore. You cannot win elections by sucking up to an ever dwindling cohort of voters.

It isn't about the middle class and, anyway, that sector is as busy shrinking as it is hard to define. It's about the distribution of income first and foremost. As inequality gets ever more unequal the income of the top few, the "1%" if you like, accounts for an ever larger proportion of total income for everybody.

You must be familliar with the saw "85% of the wealth is owned by 7% of the population" (or whatever the figures currently are). A small increase on the wealth and/or income of the "7%" would knock any contribution the "middle class" might make out of the ground.

Which is what it is all about.

zyph wrote:

Thatchers... buy your council house... was a right wing stroke of genius....which the poor are now paying for by having to pay private rent barons a fortune to live in near slum conditions.....because there are not enough council/housing association homes to go round. This moved many people to consider themselves middle-class being home owners.

There is much in what you say except many of those who consider themseves middle class would not benefit from the micturition of those who really are if they were on fire and they'll never be accepted as one of them. "An ex-council house in Leigham? Yes we looked at one of them for our boy but decided on Wembury instead. Very up-and-coming, so I hear....".

bjorn_yesterday wrote:

There were parts (by no means all) of John McDonnell's speech that resonated, particularly the fair taxation of large corporations. I am not sure if the sums raised would indeed be sufficient to wipe out the deficit (as Corbyn states they will) but an increase in tax revenue from corporations could (and should) lead to personal tax cuts for the general public across the board. However, they are (depressingly) continuing to follow the same old mantra of taxing the middle classes at a higher rate.

I can't see how they keep failing to understand that the "middle class" is a far, far bigger segment of the population that it was when this Old-Labour doctrine was originally formulated. Wishful thinking aside there is relatively little real "working class" in the UK anymore. You cannot win elections by sucking up to an ever dwindling cohort of voters.

For all the waffle about deficits, The Conservatives arent interested in removing it one bit, the interest for them is cutting public services so that private companies can move in and make money out of them. If the Tories were interested in balancing the books they probably wouldn't have added more new borrowing to the national debt than every Labour government combined, they haven't even halved the deficit they claimed would have been eliminated by now and they wouldnt have lost the UK AAA rating.

If thats economic competence, I'd like to give Chaos a go.

There is much ooey talked about the deficit. "We can't and shouldn't borrow more" they say. Except we can and should and, despite what Mr Osborne might have you believe, we are. This country has rarely been able to borrow money more cheaply than it can now. Not borrowing it, even if it is only used to pay off existing loans payable at a higher rate - and, hence, more expensive than new loans would be, is negligent and using it for long-term investment in infra-structure is actually a very good idea.

Hugh nails it above. It isn't and never has been about the deficit and economics in any recognisable sense; it is about smaller government, more privatisation and contracts handed out to Virgin This, G4 That and Serco The Other. A fact that has not escaped Lord Turnbull (an ex-head of the Civil Service).

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Except some things like the NHS and BBC rather annoyingly are popular, work, deliver excellence and do it all at an incredibly low price because despite what they would have you believe they are incredibly efficient compared to their privately-owned competitors.

Which is why they need to be bad-mouthed and under-funded at every opportunity. Create a crisis, label it as too costly to fix and then send it out for tender so that their mates in the City can make a killing. It's the Tory way. It's happening now before our very eyes.

Not only that, tenders are weighted in favour of who offers the lowest price. meaning Servo or whoever can undercut the NHS and win the contract regardless of whether it can deliver it but the best bit is, if doesnt make them enough money. THEY CAN WALK AWAY and guess who picks up the pieces? I eriously do not know how anyone can seriously vote for them, I suppose its like Iggy's Iron Gates theory, if the population can be conned into thinking they are affluent then they will take the bait, be interesting to see what happens when the axe falls on tax credits.

That, of course, was exactly what happened with Olympic security. G4 had the contract and several years (!) to get it sorted. Shortly before the event the realised they couldn't deliver at the cost they had anticpated, pulled out and the millitary stepped in.

It's not only about whether the private sector is cheaper than the public sector but about whether it can do the job at all - and often it can't.

Regards the NHS and privatising it by the back door. This is one of the main reasons the proposed TTIF agreement with the Yanks is so controversial and could basically make a publicly run NHS illegal. Very few voters have bothered one jot to actually understand just what a threat it could be to our democracy. Basically, their private health companies muscle in  and can just undercut any tender temporarily, and the contract would legally have to go to the foreign private company, who then, in pole position, do what they've always done. Make a killing, while forever breaking up the publicly built networks. Many NHS staff will tell you much of that sort of thing is already underway.

And that's before we even get onto the disaster that is the Blairite/Thatcherite PFI programme legacy that has resulted in billions going to NHS private landlords for decades to come
When these sort of things are given proper airing by one of the two accepted main parties, people may just start waking up. They may not, but we'll see.

Sir John Hawkins wrote:

The war refugee thing is top priority, and Three quarters of the people who would support "Trident" do so as a given mantra, and haven't a clue as to the other options out there to effect our defence.

Give me a clue here please.

I'm afraid you'll just have to follow the debate as it unfolds if you're that interested Tone. See if anything makes sense to you.

I suspect though, your dots are already joined up, as often such matters follow well worn emotional paths, rather than logic. Establishment indoctrination is a powerful thing. Just look at Pasoti.

You boys are the ones that don't get it. Your favoured brand of government isn't wanted. We've had a Tory(ish) government since 1979 and just like the Cold War, capitalism won the argument.

Along comes Corbyn to throw a spanner in the works. Great. However you are not going to convince enough people to jeopardise their way of life.

All your economic theories, percentage of GDP, Growth, etc is wasted on the general public.

They are not interested.

Something really has got under your skin Rollo. geddon Jezza. We wouldn't be doing this if Cooper was heading Labour to more of the same.
Capitalism won the argument ? do me a favour. It was a bulk standard stand off of the two most militarised nations of the time. Happens all the time, way before capitalism was " invented".

China couldn't be less capitalist if it tried, in fact overly planned for my liking, yet they're doing ok these days in your beloved terms considering there's 1.5 billion to feed. Quite extraordinary really.

I would tend to agree with you that most people couldn't care less about GDP etc. I certainly couldn't give a monkeys. Makes you wonder why it heads the UK news every evening. Basically, it's a nursery rhyme repeated every evening. Everything's fine, mother is cooking the tea, or, watch out there's a fox in the garden.

Rollo Tomasi wrote:

You boys are the ones that don't get it. Your favoured brand of government isn't wanted. We've had a Tory(ish) government since 1979 and just like the Cold War, capitalism won the argument.

Along comes Corbyn to throw a spanner in the works. Great. However you are not going to convince enough people to jeopardise their way of life.

All your economic theories, percentage of GDP, Growth, etc is wasted on the general public.

They are not interested.

Bigger fool them then.

It's galling when the data gets in the way of the dogma, isn't it! Much easier to just disregard it.

Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes a "truth".

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the gift that keeps on giving lol

Are gas-chambers idiosyncratic to jews? thousands of disabled, travellers, communists etc were also condemned to their fates. It's a clumsy analogy, nothing more.

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Are gas-chambers idiosyncratic to jews? thousands of disabled, travellers, communists etc were also condemned to their fates. It's a clumsy analogy, nothing more.

and what if a tory or ukipper said that?

A disabled tory? you're having a giraffe.

Mock Cuncher wrote:

A disabled tory? you're having a giraffe.

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there is one :O

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

When 24% of the electorate delivers 51% of the seats and that's democracy working fine but when a similar democratic process delivers a result you don't like it's a farce.

Have I got that right?

Not unless you were bitching when Blair got 55% of the seats with 22% of the electorate?

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Except we can and should and, despite what Mr Osborne might have you believe, we are. This country has rarely been able to borrow money more cheaply than it can now. Not borrowing it, even if it is only used to pay off existing loans payable at a higher rate - and, hence, more expensive than new loans would be, is negligent and using it for long-term investment in infra-structure is actually a very good idea.

Welcome to the thinking which brought you PFIs, £50 billions worth of infrastructure and only £300 billion to pay off over the next 30 years.

The Government is never a good vehicle to use to effectively spend your money.............FACT!

Mock Cuncher wrote:

Are gas-chambers idiosyncratic to jews? thousands of disabled, travellers, communists etc were also condemned to their fates. It's a clumsy analogy, nothing more.

A clumsy analogy which feeds the frenzy and millions of voters only see the headline.

Jezza and his pack of amateurs is killing off the chances of Labour challenging the Tories possibly ever.

In addition it is a ridiculous statement, the professional disabled lobby has been bleating since forever and we have been in the EU and subject to its laws since as long, the Tories will be Tories in or out of the EU, it's just typical lefty whining.

Yes the Tories are bad, Labour would be so much worse, the lesser of two Weevils, what we need is a real alternative.

Er, no, I don't mean UKIP, they have served their sole purpose in getting us a referendum.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Except we can and should and, despite what Mr Osborne might have you believe, we are. This country has rarely been able to borrow money more cheaply than it can now. Not borrowing it, even if it is only used to pay off existing loans payable at a higher rate - and, hence, more expensive than new loans would be, is negligent and using it for long-term investment in infra-structure is actually a very good idea.

Welcome to the thinking which brought you PFIs, £50 billions worth of infrastructure and only £300  billion to pay off over the next 30 years.

The Government is never a good vehicle to use to effectively spend your money.............FACT!

Nope.

That is definitely an opinion. FACT!

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Lord Tisdale wrote:

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Except we can and should and, despite what Mr Osborne might have you believe, we are. This country has rarely been able to borrow money more cheaply than it can now. Not borrowing it, even if it is only used to pay off existing loans payable at a higher rate - and, hence, more expensive than new loans would be, is negligent and using it for long-term investment in infra-structure is actually a very good idea.

Welcome to the thinking which brought you PFIs, £50 billions worth of infrastructure and only £300  billion to pay off over the next 30 years.

The Government is never a good vehicle to use to effectively spend your money.............FACT!

Nope.

That is definitely an opinion. FACT!

That we got £50 billion worth of hospitals and have to pay over £300 billion for it is a FACT!

That the government is an inefficient spender of money is of course an opinion, but I suspect one could travel a long way to find a sentient being who would disagree, especially when advised of the aforementioned situation pertaining to Labour's PFI boondoggle,