Be Excellent To Each Other

I never really understood the value of the Lords only being able to delay legislation.

Parliament Act can be used to force through/bypass the Lords IIRC, but it would be 'bad form' to say the very least in this case, they'd never do it.

Surely this has to be a good result? The worst excesses of hard, ideological Conservatism reined in by a coalition of social democrats, the church and one nation conservatives - it's all very 'patrician' IMO and all the better for it, the Lords are doing their job so it's back to the drawing board, Osborne.

Most sensible people know Tax Credits require reform but this is too much, too harsh, too quick. I feel distinctly uneasy about penalising those who get up in the morning to do a day's work, in a low-paid job but with heads held high with justified pride, whilst plenty of others keep their curtains drawn until late morning. There are far, far more worthy targets out there besides the hardworking poor, and I still can't understand how we can afford to cut inheritance tax whilst attacking people who have next to nothing and no seven-figure nest egg bequeathed to them, yet still working hard!

Edit - also, you know, Cameron's express pledge on TV, just before the election? No wonder he didn't want full TV debates; I'm a Conservative but for heaven's sake, you can't just lie through your teeth like that and get vulnerable people to vote for you on an entirely false prospectus!

I know I've changed my working hours but there's no need for this.

Labour used it to force through the foxhunting ban, didn't they?



Yep, completely agree.

yeah sorry man!

Fuck us, right Myp?

Yeah.

Foxhunting was a manifesto promise, whereas Cameron specifically denied there would be cuts to working tax credits shortly before the election. That colours the matter a bit in terms of the debate about a "constitutional crisis."

Lots of tough talk from Osborne today about "unelected Labour and Lib Dem peers" (presumably unelected Tory peers are alright..?) and "constitutional crisis." Doesn't sound like the cabinet is getting ready to back down. Shades of the poll tax, here -- almost universally unpopular change the government is hell-bent on -- and that didn't end well for the sitting government of the time...

You say that... http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... redit-cuts

Trouble is that "lessening the impact" could be a trivial change in the rates that reinstates £50 out of £1000 that might be lost.
Still technically correct, but doesn't really achieve much.

The most obvious thing to do would be to lower the ludicrous budget surplus target (or abandon it completely).

Or maybe collect the corporation tax effectively 4.7-12 Billion is lost every year to avoidance depending on how you count it.

That's just the start, there are so many ways to avoid tax if your out of PAYE and it takes years of pissing around to close them off.

A lot of the contractors who work for me use complex off shore shell companies and loans, the net result is they are seeing 85p in the £ back with the rest going to the shell in fees.

I think its out of line they can do this, we are not talking about people on minimum wage, they should pay their share.

Well yes, but I was thinking of things the Tories wouldn't actually mind doing. Ensuring the rich pay their fair share of tax is not on their agenda.

Very true but Labour were little better!

They weren't, but they were last in power nearly six years ago and their shadow cabinet is completely different now, so it's hardly relevant to today's discussions.

They still won't tax the rich, as if they are public about this they will never get in power and if they did get in power they will soon discover the establishment are the real power and its full of rich people with lots of self interest.

We'd be happy with them blocking stuff from the elected House we didn't agree with, but with that would come the ability the block stuff we did agree with (look at how long it took to repeal section 28, then read some of the debates at the time!)

The current balance, plus their Lordships' increased willingness to send things back for rethinking since the majority of the hereditaries were kicked out in 1999, feels right. They need to be massively culled though - I suggest a lottery so we can go down to around 400, after which it becomes strictly one-out-one-in.

Corbyn sure would, which is why all the rich people who own newspapers are spending millions of pounds on discrediting him!

House of Lords debates pron, bishop not bashed.

I love how they all talk as though it's always about other people, as though not a single one amongst their fucking Lordshipnesses ever watches porn. While everyone else in the country reckons that they're probably a right bunch of filthy old bastards.

I do think everything should be done to block child porn, also agree that there is a lot to be concerned about with teenagers watching legal porn and this in turn shaping their behaviour towards relationships and sex.

This should not be the role of the government alone, Parents should be aware of what their kids are doing online and manage access. I was aware that some sort of option was in place (or going to be) for the blocking of adult content, never seen anything from BT about this to date?

Easy for me to say working in IT, but when my son gets access to the internet there will be content filtering in place

I am not too sure many men would object to having a porn trained teenage girlfriend.

And it's absolutely fine that as a parent you introduce and monitor that.

(Of course, he'll be better at computers that you and will find his way around your contact filters without much difficulty, but that's life)

I'm not cool at all that there be a centrally managed content filter. It's almost obvious that special interest groups will start getting extra things they feel should be blocked added to the list. Start with child porn and how to build a bomb, no real objections to that. But it'll move to drugs, then to god knows what else - blocking protest organisations most likely.

I wouldn't mind a centrally managed filter, but only with each element 'opt in'.

Child porn, yep, I'd personally be happy for that to be blocked outright, accessible by nobody.

Beyond that, categorised filters:
All porn
Rape fantasy porn
(List other types of porn)
Various religious fundamental groups
Drugs
...

Basically, a list of categorised filters that web users could opt into or out of as they wish, whether to stop themselves accidentally stumbling on content they may find distressing or as a guard for kids.

As far as web filters are concerned, though, unless they are applied at device level somehow, how do you guard against content viewable on 3G (4G for rich peeps)?

Well a ISP managed filter would apply equally to mobile networks as to broadband networks.

If you can think of a way of reliably cateogorising the entire web to flag this objectionable content with, say, a 99.9% accuracy then Google will probably pay you any number you choose. Some of your categories (what constitutes religious extremism, exactly?) could be argued about forever by skilled humans without reaching a conclusion, let alone training a computer to find it. Even child porn is harder than it sounds. An 18 year old in America was recently convicted of possessing child pornography... it was a nude selfie he'd taken of himself to send to his girlfriend last year, when he was 17.

I think you said 'alone' when you meant to say 'because'.

Unfortunately government do love (talking about) treating a symptom instead of a cause.

Hey look, it's the fucking SNP being interfering cunts again:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34780273

Good way of signalling that unlike Labour they are on the side of unions. Although their stand would have more force if, as with the fox-hunting debacle earlier in the year, the SNP were opposing a policy that wasn't already the situation in Scotland.

As Kern says, the last para of that piece seems to illustrate best what the SNP are all about, i.e. 'politicking' and fomenting any chance of disquiet along fault lines within the Union, whether or not this means cutting their nose to spite their face and/or if it leaves people who actually voted for them worse off etc., "professional shit stirring" if you like? It's independence at any price and entirely regardless of the economic demerits of this or indeed any other consideration. For me, they sum up this new grievance and delusion-based 'post-truth era' politics perfectly (and I'll have no truck with it myself; piss and whinge to the moon for all I care, dicks).



Still, chin up everyone. In other, vastly more important and uplifting news, another half a million new jobs created in this Union since same time last year, and another massive fall in unemployment to only 5.3%:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34785758



Those nasty old Tories eh, what with their massive private sector job creation programme and giving millions of people who were on the dole the opportunity of work. They must be doing something right, eh readers?

Well, they're helping to make life worse for thousands upon thousands of the poorest people, so that's something.

Still, at least the Prime Minister is not completely ignorant of his own policies, and unable to even do something as basic as count.

Oh no wait, he is:

http://gu.com/p/4e4kq/fb

Must admit, I refuse point blank to read Monbiot's laughable outputs. Zoomer-fodder IMO.

Awesome debating skills there Cavey, for a moment I hoped you'd actually post a picture of you sticking your fingers in your ears.

It's an interesting article, reproducing in full a letter from David Cameron to a Tory council leader in Oxfordshire.

Said council leader has to explain, as if to a small child, the impact that imposed spending cuts are having on the county, and why frontline services are being cut to the 'disappointment' of Cameron.

When the leader of a Tory council in one of the richest areas of Britain has to tell the prime minister that 'I cannot accept your description of a drop in funding of £72m or 37% as a slight fall', there's a problem.

Well, you know me of old, man. Fecking *awesome* debater, me.

(But seriously, sorry, I know it's lame but I just cannot read this guy. He's seemingly willfully delusional in my opinion, and life's just too short to be wound up by people who's profession it is to wind people up. )

Monbiot aside, you should read the letter from Cameron and the reply. Even presented without comment they are a shocking indictment of how out of touch Cameron is.

And this is in a wealthy Tory borough, where the effects of the cuts are felt less harshly than in inner cities.

How many of those new jobs are decent full time positions paying a reasonable salary, and how many are 16, 8 or even 0 hours contracts on minimum wage or so close to it as makes no difference? My other half's job search experience suggests that most are in the latter category but I have no idea if that's the case nationwide.
It always annoys me to see positions at "Exceeds minimum wage" and when you look at the details it's actually 2p an hour more.

Don't read the article. Just read the two letters embedded in it, the one from Cameron to the Oxfordshire council, and the reply from the (Conservative) head of the council. Amongst other things, Cameron confuses annual saving with cumulative total saving to date, writes off a cut of 37% as unimportant, and appears to have no grasp of what central government funding cuts is actually doing to frontline services.

Number of workers on zero-hours contracts up by 19%. Office for National Statistics says number of people reporting that they work on contracts with no minimum hours has risen to 744,000. As of Sep 2015.

If Cavey thinks a zero hour contract represents some glittering aspirational goal that unlocks a lifetime of productive work... well, I don't know what to tell him.

Also, if the jobless total is so low, and we're all so prosperous, why is food bank usage trending inexorably upwards again? I'm confused about that.

This is my hot take: the Tories are bad.

Fair enough gentlemen, point conceded (with a few small caveats ).

Cameron displays breathtaking ignorance as to the impact of his own government's policies, there; the very notion that a swinging 37% cut in funding will have anything other than a devastating effect, is absurd and speaks volumes - agreed.

Of course, it's worth noting *why* such huge cuts are considered necessary in some quarters, ergo the complete collapse of the UK economy for lack of effective Banking regulation by the preceding Labour government; hopefully you will appreciate I'm a relatively fair-minded, not-too-conceited guy (see above) but I'm sorry, for me at least there's just no getting away from this, though doubtless none of us wants to redo the entire UK govt-vs-world banking crisis thing again, least of all me. That is my view, for reasons previously stated at length.

It's also worth noting that, although as a 'one nation Tory' I oppose the Tax Credit cuts as they currently are (not to say, though, that I wouldn't want to see working benefits cut to middle class earners of £40k or even ~£50k who apparently still receive these benefits, truly absurd and not what the Welfare State was ever conceived for), I also find the notion that no further wholesale savings and efficiencies being possible in your average Local Authority as absurd. Have a frank, honest conversation with any friends who work in such places, or the NHS come to that, chances are they'll candidly tell you about waste on a pretty large scale? (Sorry, I know this falls into the "anecdotal pish" category and I'm not offering this up as scientific evidence or something, but I think as a broad discussion point it's valid)

Is this not just a case of the Tories effectively changing the definition of "unemployment", as they seem to be keen on doing with the definition of "poverty" ?

Well, that makes me "a bit of a twatto" then, as I'm half Liberal.

Granted, Labour weren't much cop here, but the Tories (even while in coalition with the Lib Dems, who would presumably have supported such action) have had 5 years to do something about it.

Have they?

Sounds like you've swallowed the Tory rhetoric from the last seven years. Labour did not cause the *global* financial crisis. We'd have been fucked no matter what happened. Labour ran a surplus until 2002 and then a manageable deficit until the banking crisis, which the Tories completely agreed with and would have done the same (in fact the Tories wanted LESS regulation!) (source: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2013 ... -last-did/)

But hey, it's easier than blaming the bankers, I guess.

How many people in total are working though, Doc? According to that link I posted, it's 31.21 million. So, if 744,000 of these are zero hours contracts as per your post, that means that only ~2% (1 in 50) of the working population are in zero hours contracts, which doesn't strike me as a huge proportion?

Also, of course I don't think this is all-so-wonderful with no caveats, but to my admittedly hugely simplistic way of thinking, surely a half-decent zero hours contract or whatever is better than bugger all? This is not some uncaveated endorsement! Nor is it claiming "we're all so prosperous" either, come on man. All I'm saying is that this unemployment fall has to be good news and I really don't see how that could be viewed as massively controversial.

Oh mate, I most certainly *do* blame the bankers, really I do.
As for the Tories would've done the same (or worse) - quite possibly - probably, even (albeit they resisted the temptation to do something similar, and on such a scale, back in the 1980s, Thatcher's "you cannot buy yourself out of recession" rhetoric, so who knows?) Thing is, though, so what? They weren't in power. Please note, I am not saying the Tories are perfect, they wouldn't have done it or indeed anything about the Tories - merely that Labour were in power and they did do it.

The voting records show this. Feel free to have a look.

You're not wrong. The really useful statistic though would be what proportion of the recently touted growth in jobs is in 0-hour contracts? I bet it's a huge amount higher than that 2%



I'm not sure such a thing exists as a 'half-decent' zero hours contract. If you can offer an employee enough hours to earn a basic wage, you don't give them a zero-hours contract. The very important thing about them is how much they interfere with unemployment benefit. Payment of unemployment benefit is so inflexible that if you work a full week on your zero hours contract then have no work for the following three weeks, it's not like you can just pick up an unemployment cheque during those weeks you're not earning. Zero-hours contracts are aimed almost exclusively at those on the lowest wage brackets - and those are the ones who can least afford the insecurity of not knowing whether or not they're going to earn any money next week.

Sure, but also the swings in the jobless proportion aren't that large. This latest move, the one to take unemployment down to the figure you quoted, was 103,000 people moved from the "unemployed" to "employed" buckets (over the period June-September). Against those numbers, 744k on zero-hours contracts (as of April according to the ONS) is clearly significant.

Also, although zero hours contracts are an easy thing to talk about, they are also only part of a wider picture of (some say) under-employment and swingeing benefits cuts whilst cost of living -- especially housing costs -- continue to rise. The gap between average wage and average housing within the M25 is dozens of times what it was a generation ago. Unemployment falling is not a bad thing, within reason (total employment is economically disastrous.) But it also isn't a sign that people are any happier or economically more secure than they were. And if people aren't better off, if all this purported growth only benefits employer's offshore bank accounts... what's the point?