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

love this, from the comments page:

To equate these schemes with "slave labour" is an offense to genuine slaves around the world, which is the real crisis.

lol@ that guy giving a fuck about genuine slaves.

Well you know what Poundland's like, all cheap imitations of the genuine article, including their slaves

DEATH TO FALSE SLAVES

So...

Has anybody else been invited to the Labour People's Policy Forum to decide what 'One Nation' is actually all about? I'm baffled as to where my name came from, having never even been vaguely involved with the Labour party, but I'm half tempted to go.

First thoughts from the literature they've included:

The new Labour party logo looks really like some kind of BNP offshoot, and using "one nation" alongside it doesn't help.

The language used feels like a BNP hybrid too - lots of emphasis on the country needing to act together and become great again, focus on heavier/better policing and protecting children/the family from the scary 'future' Britain. "On immigration where those in power seemed to ignore the public's message that high levels of migration were having huge impacts on their lives. We must work to make sure that never happens again." (my emphasis) There are only about 10 paragraphs of text, so including it shows it's one of the main points of policy focus.

Personally, "Britain Isn't Working" is a mis-step. Feels like they would have gone with "coalition isn't working" for the complete Thatcher vibe if they thought they could have got away with it.

It's "invitation", not "invite".

The "Your Britain Policy Den" where you get the opportunity to "pitch to Labour's Policy Dragons" is just hilarious.

Whoever chose the photos of Ed in the booklet should look for a new job. My favourite is 'feeling a giant pair of invisible boobs at a picnic table', although 'Ref! I got the ball!' is good too.

Perhaps life would improve for everybody if policies were not shaped to appeal to the stupidest and most reactionary white people, who never tire of reminding people they're oppressed worse than anyone while excusing others' poverty with 'this ain't Africa'. No child of immigrants has any business pushing shite like that.

Indeed, fuck one Britain

go, aldo, and express as much disgust as possible.

According to YouGov something like 43% of people consider "immigration" one of their top voting priorities. So either there are a lot of stupid and reactionary white people in this country or there's something else going on.

Immigration issues are usually housing or employment issues in disguise, they COULD make that clear but that would require a level of intellectual and moral leadership that is beyond the modern Labour Party.

People are always saying immigration is one of their top voting priorities and then ignoring it come election day - and voting on the economy as usual

Seriously, who thought this was a good idea?

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8528/8478225797_4da8f699f5.jpg

Pass to me!

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8110/8478221367_e431d09c9e.jpg

Giant invisible boobage

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8234/8478216371_220dbd0291.jpg

Alex Salmond?

Just realised something about this:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8089/8479310206_b5ac9a9c3b.jpg

So the leader, the shadow cabinet and the policy advisers will all be there for you tell them what their policies should be. Isn't there a shorter way to announce you and your entire team have no ideas?

Biggest politicians imaginary breasts I've ever seen. It's lucky he's talking to a woman of such slender build, or the picture might go seriously viral.

"Under a Labour-run NHS you'd get a free operation to make them this big."

One Nation Labour - i'm guessing the nation is the Duchy of Grand Fenwick

Clueless tool surrounded by clueless tools...
Comic Relief: David Cameron appears in One Direction video

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/65931000/jpg/_65931746_65931744.jpg
Four people in this picture are a waste of space and irrelevant to the future of Britain...

Is that the David Cameron Madame Tussaud's waxwork?

Not unless they've had a wax shortage and have started filling them full of shit instead.

is this where we're discussing that big hoohah about benefit claimant Heather Frost and her 11 kids, a mansion and a horse?

I got a bit fed up of bickering about it on Facebook, so I did a rare opinion-based blog about it - http://charlieframe.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/about-the-lady-with-the-11-kids-a-horse-and-a-mansion/ Never sure how these turn out, it's probably pretty obvious stuff to most people here anyway.

how would you fix the system so that it both helped ppl and prevented widespread abuse or 'scrounging', that's the thing.

For all you say 'fix the system', i've worked for years in 'the system' over here and if even a majority of those able to work were actually willing to do so or to engage honestly with services, then the 'system' would function much better. That hasnt been my experience tho, and i'm not talking about only since the crash.

It's as overly simplistic to blame the apparatus as it is to focus on a single claimant, but i mean idk would i be tsk-tsking ppl if they're annoyed reading about individual cases like the one in question. Sure, it's cliched mailbait and all that but dismissing anyone it pisses off as not being highminded or politically pious enough is writing off a large % of yr fellow man tbh, wherefore macgregor theory x then eh?

benefit claimant

I believe you mean DOLE QUEEN.

It's fine to be annoyed about people playing the system so transparently but the objective here is clearly not to merely limit abuse but to reduce sympathy for all benefit claimants. At the same time, the government is actually keeping families in B&Bs and temporary accommodation for longer than the law allows.

So, we have this policy where people waiting for council housing are being told to leave private let flats that cost over £250/week in London, but they are moved on to B&B or temporary accommodation which can cost at least twice as much as that (they have housing need as judged by the council, so if your council isn't trying to transport them away from their families/schools/etc, this is where some wind up). Statutorily homeless people in hostels often have ridiculous 'service charges' added to the cost of rent - I mean, I don't know if places that provide 'breakfast' really need to charge another £100 a week to the claimant/the council for low-quality breakfast food, but it must be a nice scam on top of all the other private-sector money-shifters going on in this sector in Britain.

As to this particular family, there are only 109 families this size receiving out-of work benefits in the UK. Child benefit costs are a non-issue here. We complain that councils aren't building enough housing, but many councils (like Camden, where I am) are actually selling off the larger properties in their portfolios instead of putting large families into them. Most London boroughs have around 20,000 claimants each on their council-flat waiting lists, yet the only house-building happening is HAs building 'affordable' housing.

They should feed her horse to her children. In a box marked "lasagne or something".

(I won't read DM comments but I'd bet money there's one like that with up arrows galore)

Heh i'll assume that stands for daily mail

LOL

DM, saying what we're all thinking

So much for that AAA rating by which we were to judge Osborne

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21554311
fucking fucking fuck...

one of us, oooonnnneee offff usssssssss

disturbed that the tories are already attempting to have this parsed as, 'the aaa rating isn't important, but we're losing it because we're not shifting debt quick enough' rather than 'the aaa rating isn't important, but osborne's policies will guarantee that the economy doesn't grow'. the issue shouldn't be osborne's humiliation, delicious though that is, but the fact that austerity isn't working and should be discontinued forthwith.

reading these articles makes me realise i don't know what "credit ratings" or "bond yields" or indeed "growth" actually mean

The Bank has so far pumped £375bn into the financial system, creating money to buy-back government bonds.

this is just gibberish to me

i can't actually back up a single one of my left-wing beliefs with economic arguments, which probably proves what every RWer thinks about lefties

Relax, most RW types use the totally spurious housewife-o-meter to 'splain economics to the public, so...

yeah but i can't even counter THOSE arguments

tbh i still don't get why a household's economy isn't analogous to a country's economy, conceptualising it like that is the only way it begins to make the tiniest amount of sense to me

Don't worry - nobody gets it, politics usually takes over. If people's pockets are empty for long enough then maybe violence might be on the cards.

This has been in the cards since xmas even if not before, no surprises.

disturbed that the tories are already attempting to have this parsed as, 'the aaa rating isn't important, but we're losing it because we're not shifting debt quick enough' rather than 'the aaa rating isn't important, but osborne's policies will guarantee that the economy doesn't grow'.

Don't be disturbed, its par for the course.

I think it'll be even further humiliation if Osborne were to make a U-turn. There'll be a carrot or two dangled that might signal an A- plan in the budget next month, otherwise can't see the cuts not continuing till the next election. He can make the case that unemployment is coming down and so is the debt but mainly they don't have any other ideas.

In fact no one has very many ideas on how to deal with the debt...

so much of the complexities of economics are tied into explaining or defending the foibles of the existing economic system that i think you can safely not worry too much about it. it's a science for debating the best arrangement of deckchairs on the Titanic. your left wing beliefs don't really hang on whether endless economic growth is a good or viable way for humanity to organise itself.

(not advocating total ignorance, just saying that the struggle to save ourselves as a species and to create a world where genuine equality of opportunity and maximisation of human potential exists has got fuck all to do with the world of credit ratings)

Losing their AAA rating hasn't affected France or the US too badly, although both are in better positions economically than the UK. So Osborne is probably right when he's saying it's not the end of the world. But preserving the UK's AAA rating has been the government's reason for all this austerity in the first place. And if the credit rating isn't that important than hmmm maybe he had some other goal in mind?

I thought when we lost our AAA rating we'd as well to start eating horsemeat and talking Greek, wasn't the scenario painted by Cameron + Osborne to win them the last election, which they didn't win? Still, they can always count on the staunch support of their Liberal Democrat colleagues when it comes to fucking us over.

Also yeah insert some stuff about the ratings agencies failing the world economy in the build up to the crash in the first place.

My guess is that this combined with a defeat in Eastleigh combined with Osborne being forced to get up and admit that the deficit has actually widened in the last year will be disastrous for the coalition. People will only really accept austerity if it's seen to be working, especially given that the effects of austerity are only just becoming visible.

Overestimating the windfall from 4G spectrum by like a billion probably hasn't helped either.

I thought when we lost our AAA rating we'd as well to start eating horsemeat and talking Greek

Hey we've got the first bit sorted.

I'm somehow reminded of Gordon Brown's "End to boom and bust" howler

Rating dip seems more symbolic, but citing the lack of debt reduction as a reason for it means Osbourne at least feels he should do more austerity. The practical downside is that a lot of pension funds/401ks etc will have to get out of the British Government bond game, right?

the only cause i've seen cited for the rating dip has been lack of growth in the UK economy which if anything is a result of the austerity measures i thought

obv the Gov will lie like crazy about this but

the only cause i've seen cited for the rating dip has been lack of growth in the UK economy which if anything is a result of the austerity measures i thought

You and I might think that, but Moody's geniuses say one of the factors that might make them cut the rating further is "reduced political commitment to fiscal consolidation".