DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

Think this is probably more about the Internet creating a public forum for every vacuous bubble that floats thru people's brains rather than a major shift in attitudes.

internet's only one (but probably the most honest) part

Well IRL there's also the Tea Party - that's a pretty big trend. I'm hoping it's a blip but the volume of right-wing craziness and intolerance of the state on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment is getting me down.

We'll lose CB, other half earns just over HRT threshold, I'm at home with the kids (so shoot me). I challenge anyone to live in London with two kids on 44k and feel like they are a 'high earner'. But my main problems with the cut (apart from huge disadvantage to single parents) is a) child benefit protects NI contribs of the non-working parent and b) one of the main ideologies behind CB was to give some money directly to the carer (usually mother) and hence to the child. It is a huge assumption that in families where the working parent is a 'high' earner, any of that money gets passed on to the non-working parent and children.

I think they might wind up walking this one back.

absolutely no chance

they may change the way the thresholds work

I think they will look like a laughing stock if they roll back on the very first benefit cut they announce in detail. It would just be asking for trouble.

this ought to be one of the easier cuts to pass, but i guess actual poor people get less media shine than some of the richest people in the country so what do i know

Like I've been saying, the British public* have been broadly accepting of cuts as long as they remain in the abstract world of economic talk, when it hits home time and time again what they actually mean, things could be very different.

*Or enough of them anyway.

I say let them look like laughing stocks as they're already doing sterling work in that area. Also Osborne's forgotten the thing with taxation: there is no 'poor people paying for rich people to get benefits' because poor people are also paying for other poor people to get benefits, and missiles, and the NHS - I just want to grab the man and say THAT IS NOT THE POINT.

watching coverage of tory conference if ever there was argument for the validity of physiognomy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/04/osborne-child-benfit-war-families

won't someone think of the people with five children and a top-rated income and a reluctance to have the second parent go out to work?

i can see that the attack on the universal principle is a bad thing -- or would, except student grants, glasses, and dentistry (and prescriptions?) were all means tested iirc. tbh i was kind of surprised that child benefit was claimable by everyone :/

I don't have children, but I pay for it like every other Happy Families thing in the budget that I will probably never avail myself of - and I don't begrudge a single penny. Pretending that your specific tax dollars going to this specific government expenditure is about as silly as being in hospital and pretending, because it's food and you are nil-by-mouth, that the IV plugged into your arm is pumping out chicken tikka masala.

lol http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11470289

How's our oakum industry at the moment?

Home Secretary Theresa May has accepted Mr Gamble's resignation.

She said: "The Government recognises the importance of child protection and wants to build upon the work of Ceop, but does not necessarily feel this is best done by creating a new quango."

I don't have children, but I pay for it like every other Happy Families thing in the budget that I will probably never avail myself of - and I don't begrudge a single penny. Pretending that your specific tax dollars going to this specific government expenditure is about as silly as being in hospital and pretending, because it's food and you are nil-by-mouth, that the IV plugged into your arm is pumping out chicken tikka masala.

― are you robot? (suzy), Tuesday, October 5, 2010 1:10 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

ehh. not thrilled about public funds going on bank bailouts either; it's not about *my* money going on specific things, but 'how taxes are spent' is a legitimate matter for citizens in a democracy to discuss. there is some kind of anti-redistribution involved in paying out money to the rich. anyway, this is a 'pick your battles' moment.

not a pick your battles thing for me. i support this.

it was a lib dem manifesto policy fwiw.

i support it in principle i should say. sounds like an inept implementation.

as per ususual, it isn't clear where the lib dems stand:

http://www.libdemvoice.org/steve-webb-overrules-nick-on-universal-child-benefits-16240.html

I don't support it at all - it's part of a narrative arc that allows this government to do divide and rule to kill all the most sensible parts of the welfare state by making middle-class people less invested in the concept because they're being conditioned to accept the idea that universal benefits are too costly. Nobody losing this benefit will have been responsible for the financial meltdown so this is a shell game and it's more ideological than anything else. Banks are still handing out bonuses, after all.

Everyone I know who voted Lib Dems is embarrassed by their choice, caek - what is your excuse?

about as silly as being in hospital and pretending, because it's food and you are nil-by-mouth, that the IV plugged into your arm is pumping in chicken tikka masala.

There is nothing silly about this. Been there, etc. for about 2 months.

suzy, are you opposed, in principle, to the idea of reducing government spending given the present circs? if not, why? if so, what would you not spend instead? you can't pick anything that's already been spent (e.g. bailout).

i vote in a constituency in which it's either ld or conservative. if it's any consolation, the libdem lost and we voted in a truly insane ultra-religious crank, which i'm sure pleases the you and tom d.

xpost Not to step on your bona fides, Mark, but my mom invented this gambit for me (only it was hot dogs and Tater Tots in the IV) when I was four and being treated for cancer. I thought it was annoying/silly by the time I was five (and I hope you're not having to make up stuff to make a sick kid feel better, if you know what I mean).

Nobody would elect me because I would raise taxes! On millionaires! I would look raise NI and income tax slightly for those making between 20 and 100K and look at people on PM's wage and over to make a larger additional tax contribution because they're precisely the fuckers who know how to loophole.

did you vote for one of the parties with "raise income tax and NI" in their manifesto then?

Fair enough. (xpost to Suzi)

It's mainly because most people go "Oh how awful, don't you pine for some real food?" etc, when actually you don't feel hungry at all.

Anyway, back to the libtors.

I'm not a British subject, caek, so I can't vote. YES I SAID 'SUBJECT' because LOL, when push comes to shove, taking this crap is not something a citizen does.

so this is a shell game and it's more ideological than anything else.

i don't doubt that the tories relish doing what they're doing, but it's dishonest to say that you could go on without cuts. even socialist governments (like spain) are cutting back

if yall have a counter-move, say so

it's part of a narrative arc that allows this government to do divide and rule to kill all the most sensible parts of the welfare state by making middle-class people less invested in the concept because they're being conditioned to accept the idea that universal benefits are too costly.

it's pretty rich of the, well, rich, to support the welfare state only as long as they also get money shoved at them. im not an economist, but kind of feel like giving money to the rich nullifies the effect of giving it to the poor, prices being determined by 'what the market can bear' etc. idk, but this is hardly one of the most sensible parts of the welfare state.

suzy, are you opposed to this as a point of principle in re: universal benefits (in which case i trust you support the elimination of means testing throughout the benefit system: income support, job seeker's allowance, pension credit, housing benefit, council tax benefit)?

if so, what would you not spend instead?

Trident? I read a comment somewhere (on here possibly) that we should just pretend we've got it and use the money for something else. Sounds as good a plan as any.

Is there a handy chart showing how this "all in this together" works? By which I mean, how much each level of income, etc is losing/gaining? Given as we're getting a 3% cut in income, how does that compare to, say, George Osbourne or a single person with no kids?

I'm more opposed to sticking around here when I have 2000 words to write on inappropriate tits and David Bailey. You know, REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF.

think of all the jobs lost if they cut trident

srsly tho, im all for cutting trident, but if you're going to use it as something you'd rather cut than _________, might it be better saved for something that affects the poor?

it was a lib dem manifesto policy fwiw.

Hmmm...not sure that means much now. Or about as much as Clegg telling Paxman during the election that "we're not putting child benefit into question..."

cutting trident is better than a poke in the eye, assuming the perfect lib dems can get it past labour/conservatives, but it would not qualitatively change the amount of money the treasury has. £100bn over a lifetime of 40 (?) years was the LD figure, but i think even that was generally agreed to be a grotesque exaggeration.

that was horseshit, it's about a fifth of that -- and you have to weigh up how much the replacement nuclear deterrent would cost. unless the g-d hippies have taken over.

true. the LD policy was no like-for-like replacement, not no replacement. god knows where they got the number from. i think we both derided it at the time on one of the debate threads.

I don't support it at all - it's part of a narrative arc that allows this government to do divide and rule to kill all the most sensible parts of the welfare state by making middle-class people less invested in the concept because they're being conditioned to accept the idea that universal benefits are too costly. Nobody losing this benefit will have been responsible for the financial meltdown so this is a shell game and it's more ideological than anything else. Banks are still handing out bonuses, after all.

Actually some of the people losing this benefit, probably several hundred if not several thousand of them, WILL have been responsible for the financial meltdown. Mortgage lenders, derivatives traders and investment bankers get child benefit too.

I'm not denying this is an ideological assault on the state, obviously it is. Treasury research commissioned by George Osborne has already found that Alistair Darling's proposed cuts would be sufficient to reduce the deficit. (Actually Osborne went mental when it was discovered there was no black hole in the public finances). Any further cuts are ideological and Cameron has already admitted as much by saying they won't raise spending once the deficit is under control. But I'm not sure you can get out of this situation by taking no cuts at all.

I'm not saying I agree with Darling's plan - it still leans too heavily on cuts relative to tax rises - but you shouldn't really be raising taxes OR cutting spending at this stage. What you should be doing is encouraging growth - 1% growth equates to about £10bn off the deficit. Think what would be decimated by cutting that much public spending. Doing either risks cutting off that growth.

I'm dismissing the "the markets will grind us into dust if we don't cut public spending" for the dishonest hubris it is.

to be fair, big defence spends always overrun. imo the lib dems have been fatally unclear about why they want to cut it -- their defence guy said, literally, that it would shaft labour. that's not a solid argument.

xpost

the problem with the election campaign was that alistair darling didn't really propose any concrete cuts, did he? kind of passed me by. he just said there would be cuts on a thatcherite scale, so cutting child benefits for the rich would have been a likely measure.

I'm dismissing the "the markets will grind us into dust if we don't cut public spending" for the dishonest hubris it is.

wish we had that luxury, tbh

the problem with the election campaign was that alistair darling didn't really propose any concrete cuts, did he? kind of passed me by. he just said there would be cuts on a thatcherite scale, so cutting child benefits for the rich would have been a likely measure.

He didn't, but neither did Osborne. Alistair Darling's cuts would still have been severe and painful and would have led to widespread civil disobedience and even more unpopularity.

There are other issues as well, the longer you maintain public spending at the level it is, the more you have to borrow, and the bigger the interest payments get. That's not a trifling issue, they must be enormous.

are there any developed economies that operate without a systemic deficit that is not several (tens of) % of gdp?

There are other issues as well, the longer you maintain public spending at the level it is, the more you have to borrow, and the bigger the interest payments get. That's not a trifling issue, they must be enormous.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, October 5, 2010 10:10 AM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark

it's almost as if the markets would grind us into dust [via interest raises]...

are there any developed economies that operate without a systemic deficit that is not several (tens of) % of gdp?

― caek, Tuesday, October 5, 2010 10:11 AM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark

dunno if china counts but they run a surplus iirc

god knows where they got the number from.

Some commie generals or something?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7103196.ece
Actually they only out it at £80billion.

Greenpeace (yeah, them) put it at £97billion.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/media/reports/firing-line-hidden-costs-supercarrier-project-and-replacing-trident

I'm not sure about your 40 years either. More like 25-30.

yeah, 40 was a guess. my point is it's not a panacea even at that level, and it's not free money (jobs, non-like-for-like replacement costs).

No-one's saying it's a panacea but, say, £3b a year is 3x as much as this CB cut will raise.
If I really thought this was some kind of "all in it together" thing I would be in favour if it. But it's clearly not. A £1300 cut for us will make a big difference. It will make fuck all difference to fucking George Osbourne.

apparently the reason they're implementing it in this stupid way is because it's logistically simple (quick, cheap) and it avoids having the change be called "means-testing", the principle of which is apparently enough of a vote-loser to worry about. i certainly haven't heard anyone try to make the moral case that a two-income family with an income of £80k deserves cb, but a one-income family with an income of £45k does not.

i don't really understand why the conservatives think the principle of means-testing is toxic enough to avoid though, especially when doing so results in such a trivially idiotic implementation. don't know many people (outside this thread) who feels that strongly about the principle of universal benefits, and none of them are voting conservative or lib dem.

means-testing involves bureaucracy, is part of it, they say, and in this complicated world of unmarried couples, who knows what tangles they could get themselves into. of course it's ridiculous that couples earning £80k shd get child benefit.

FFS

Conservative sources admitted the aim was to push poor, workless families out of inner London and force down rents in the private rented sector – the key driver of the ballooning housing benefit bill.

Tory officials said: "The ultimate effect is that some people will have to move to less expensive areas, but that is fair since if their working peers cannot afford to live in central London, why should a workless family be allowed to remain?"

Cunts.