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

I met the Director of Policy for the Labour Party at a wedding last year and greatly regret not taking the opportunity to shake him repeatedly by his lapels and maybe slap him a few times.

Got an idea for a pic to put here, but probably too soon with emotions still running high.

My parents have a private rental agreement dating back to the early eighties and are covered by Registered Fair Rent legislation. Their rent can only be increased "fairly" by agreement with a council board, i think. It doesn't go up in line with the insane market rates . They pay about half as much for a gorgeous two bed flat in Highbury as i would for a shoebox in Finsbury Park.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/jun/01/fair-rent-tenants-sitting-comfortably

Abolishing that was almost as much of a social disaster as selling off the social housing stock.

Unfortunately the property market has over-inflated since then to such an extent that any attempt to bring in rent controls would be pretty nominal - even the amount required to cover a mortgage and nothing else would still be very high, especially in the SE.

My friend's kid is actually at nursery with some mini Milibands - she's very old Labour and her parents were refugee Communists (oh, the irony). Like most of us, she has the feeling Ed isn't blind to poverty and access issues, but is choosing to fellate the Tories out of a misguided idea of electability. There's more voters who turned away from Labour because of Iraq and the Blairite tendency than will ever swing Labour's way from the middle ground, but I suppose they're not in the constituencies that need to swing. And all parties are in thrall to neoliberalism, where the market is free but individuals no longer are.

Renters used to have assured tenancies similar to the ones still given to council tenants, and there was no council tax, only rates for property owners. I still believe private renters should not pay council tax, because it's based on the value of your landlord's asset (and you'll already be paying a fuckton to live in a really nice flat that belongs to someone else). With social housing, the rents are smaller so I'm more receptive to paying CT because my rent plus that is still far cheaper than a rented room in most parts of London, and I'm living somewhere that belongs to everyone, including me.

Her HA loudly trumpets their current rent freeze, but they just raise the service charges to compensate.

"Normal citizens" have nothing to fear from UK intelligence gathering, says UK Foreign Sec @WilliamJHague after GCHQ spying claims #MarrShow

This fucking guy...

Abnormal citizens will have to buck their ideas up, though..

If that's his thesis, Hague must be shitting himself, really.

The document, prepared by Rothschild investment bank, was submitted to the business department in November 2011, but is understood to still be under active review. It has never been made public, or been seen by higher education professionals.

Any move to increase the interest rates on loans already taken out could add extra years of repayments even for those who left university long ago.

In the report, dubbed Project Hero, the authors suggest a script for ministers to persuade graduates to accept the worsening of their conditions. "We all live in difficult times," they suggest ministers argue. "You have a deal which is so much better than your younger siblings (they will incur up to £9,000 tuition fees and up to RPI+3% interest rates)".

A statement from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills confirmed that ministers were still looking at how to privatise the pre-2012 student loan book. It noted: "The government has not made any changes to the pre-2012 loans interest rate terms … Work on the feasibility of selling the pre-2012 student loan book is ongoing."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/jun/13/raise-interest-rate-student-loans-secret-report

These fuckin guys

These fucking guys mostly went to university for FREE.

Project Hero

^

Probably stands for something daft like Higher Education Refinancing Order. There is actually an education service provider called Project Hero. Imagine they are thrilled rn.

I won't pretend to really know how student finance (or mathematics, for that matter, works) but my back-of-a-napkin calculations suggest that if you borrowed £9,000 a year to cover fees and £2,000 per term to cover your overpriced UNITE housing, books, etc, at 3% you'd have to be earning something like £32,000 a year before you started meeting your interest payments. Might not be correct, though.

But the debt gets written off, anyway, after, um, how many years is it?

current situation: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-repay

see the table "When are outstanding loans wiped?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsW9MlYu31g

George Osborne was the victim of an unlikely case of mistaken identity at this week’s G8 summit, after US President Barack Obama confused the chancellor with a black soul singer.

The chancellor’s attempts to explain the complexities of tax avoidance to G8 leaders were thrown off course when Mr Obama interjected on three occasions to indicate that he agreed fully with “Jeffrey”.

...

Mr Obama explained that he knew who Mr Osborne was, adding: “I’m sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favourite R&B singer.”
It is unlikely the chancellor has previously been confused with Jeffrey Osborne, a well-known R&B and soul singer from Rhode Island who has had countless hit singles and albums in his illustrious career.

100% real. Article is gold. http://t.co/HPo4TB6Usc

Mr Osborne said: 'Those first seven days should be spent looking for work and not looking to sign on.'

I don't know how much I can take of these cunts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/26/generation-y-young-voters-backing-conservatives

and the kids are eating it up.

today's under-34s

normally I'd be pleased to scrape into a "young person" age range quite so narrowly but...

Generation Y: why young voters are backing the Conservatives

i'm going with "because they're pig-ignorant products of a fucked society and a fucked education system"

fair enough but that doesn't explain any change from the previous generation

Looks like the student loan book is definitely going to be sold to private finance.

http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2013/06/danny-alexander-confirms-student-loan-book-will-be-privatised

It is as though they had decided borrowing to invest was a good thing, but they'd rather pay higher interest rates than they have to in order to keep it off the books

This. what a shower of shits.

are they really going to increase the interest rates? for the money involved the political losses would be huge

Vince Cable has ruled it out but that's about as small a comfort as you can get.

im trying to envisage some way in which they enable the rates to be increased at a later date but conceal it initally

most likely they just leave it open-ended so that some future govt has to decide how to cover the shortfall in investors' expectations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/2013/jul/03/immigrants-levy-healthcare

It's an easy way of appearing to be 'tough on immigration' as a way to win votes.

AAAAAAAAAAARGH. Dogwhistle bullshit. This is another fake problem.

I came here at 22 and didn't need to see a doctor about anything serious/expensive for 15 years - and I didn't even register until I'd stopped playing flatshare roulette at about 27 because my health was barely-a-cold good. Most of my healthcare between then and now has been ob-gyn exams and/or prescriptions for birth control. Non-EU migrants do not have recourse to any other public funds, unless they've been here for five years, and it's indicated on any visa we have (which we have to show when we first register with a GP). But I paid tax and NI from the moment I entered a workplace and was right to expect the NHS to be there if I needed it.

Like me, anyone from outside the EU with a work visa will be paying tax and NI from day one at their new job, as will any other working migrant. Most people who come to the UK for six months to work (eg. BUNAC student exchanges) will also be paying tax and NI from day one, and students who are working up to 20 hours a week will, too. These students pay fees two or three times those of UK/EU students already. The vast majority of the people under discussion will be without dependants, under 30 and in excellent health; after registering with a GP, these people will probably not need to actually use the NHS that much, unless there is an accident or emergency (where anyone through the door is treated... eventually). People on corporate transfers will also have private insurance through their employer as part of their 'package' and the richest of these think nothing of paying £250 for a private GP callout because they aren't with a local, NHS GP. This is obviously base, selfish bullshit designed to rile up the poorly informed useful idiots who moan about immigrants as a drain when we are anything but, and it's also congenitally stupid about public health management.

It might be more than a dog whistle. The government has a policy of cutting net immigration to the tens of thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands. Because of the way the figures are counted, that's impossible to do without effectively putting university students off coming. This is exactly the kind of thing that led Australia to accidentally decimate its education industry - i wonder if it's being done on purpose this time. A few universities would probably go out of business, but not the ones that they send their children to. A few regional economies will be trashed (how much does the University of Hull contribute to the local area, for example?) but probably not Conservative areas.

The message being sent out to students, migrants filling skills gaps and people who want to get married to a British partner (who are pretty much the only people who can get visas these days) is "don't come here because we're horrible, horrible people".

My point is that the non-EU migrants who do come here contribute from the second we arrive, so it's incredibly deceitful to paint us as a drain on services. I don't have kids, but don't mind paying to educate and vaccinate other people's.

Bearing in mind the Australian problems mentioned, I wonder if this is another bit of Lynton Crosby wank? He's the non-EU migrant causing the most damage to Britain right now, as far as I can tell.

This is also a way of getting charging/billing mechanisms in place across the NHS, the fuckers.

^That, too. Keep an eye on who the IT contracts go to, and check their recent political donations.

The message being sent out to students, migrants filling skills gaps and people who want to get married to a British partner (who are pretty much the only people who can get visas these days) is "don't come here because we're horrible, horrible people".

^^^^^ this

^^^^ if a guest comes to your house and cuts their finger while helping you prepare dinner, only an asshole would refuse them a plaster.

ffs healthcare should be a right, not a privilege

The message being sent out to students, migrants filling skills gaps and people who want to get married to a British partner (who are pretty much the only people who can get visas these days) is "don't come here because we're horrible, horrible people".

Fair enough, we are horrible, horrible people

I don't think we are. I think some of us are. I think it's up to the rest of us to balance that out. I'll grant you, it's hard.

I don't think most people have any objection to "genuine students", would necessarily want to keep "genuine couples" apart or want to deny services to the small number people who come to the UK to work in industries in need of highly-skilled workers. The problem is that the papers and the government have convinced them that these categories are a tiny fraction of the people coming, rather than the vast, vast majority.

Good luck with that balancing act (xp)

wonder what percentage of british born students are genuine

Introducing 'genuine' to describe anyone in the groups under discussion should be resisted at all costs because framing.

Breaking news: Home secretary Theresa May announces herbal stimulant qat is to become class C drug against advice of experts.

fuck the experts, what do they know anyway amirite?

The herbal stimulant drug khat is to be banned, the BBC understands.

The decision goes against the recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), the government's official advisory body.

In January the ACMD said khat should remain a legal substance, saying there was "insufficient evidence" it caused health problems.

But Home Secretary Theresa May has decided to ban it, BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said.

An official statement is expected shortly.

Mrs May's decision is thought to be based on wider security and international considerations, in particular the use of the UK as a transit route for khat to other European countries, our correspondent said.

Khat is traditionally used by members of the Somali, Yemeni and Ethiopian communities.

Perfectly reasonable I'm sure you'd agree

Khat is traditionally used by members of the Somali, Yemeni and Ethiopian communities.

Good enough reason innit.