Be Excellent To Each Other

Meh, EBG is a goliath of vitriolic ranting, it just so happens his rants come from the side of the fence as yours.

If my response and reactions are borne of emotion, then so be it.

Grrr! Behold my vitriol! People should make careful decisions about their life! Incoherent statement of rage! And so forth.

Sigh. Yeah, even when we fundamentally disagreed in this very discussion (not that I object to anything he's said, he's entitled to his opinion and has made interesting points as far as I'm concerned).

Whatever. Still, well done for deflecting onto personalities etc., as ever thanks for your positive contribution.

It's more that you're doing an awful lot of arguing against something EBG isn't saying. I don't agree with a lot of what he's saying here, but can you see a single place where he's once mentioned that disability benefit spending should be cut?

I don't mind him disagreeing, and I think I've shown I'm at least up for discussion on the topic. He does however seem determined to accuse me of something I haven't said, and hasn't at least asked what I think the scenario he's outlining before lambasting me for my non-stated view on it.

FWIW disability allowance is one aspect that should never be cut, although 'cut' is too simple a term to cover the variety of adjustments to a policy that may or may not be applicable for certain scenarios. You can't talk generally, or assume a general position on something so intrinsically granular. It's a political football.

If you're incapable of work due to chronic injury or disability, then absolutely there should be a liveable allowance with support. If you're partially disabled needing additional support, it should be funded. I don't think anyone that's ever been a member of this forum has ever said, in one way or another 'Fuck those lazy disableds'. A controversial government measure is the attempt to get disabled people to work as much as they can, and again it depends on people's behaviours and individual situations.

There are lots of jobs, for example, a paraplegic person can do, and may want to do, and it certainly hasn't stopped lots of others. Or you could be a person that says 'Look, my legs don't work, I'm disabled, give me the benefits', and I don't think it's reasonable to be accepting of that position any more than you would some lazy git who just can't be arsed to work at Maccies. I'm not saying there are lots of people like that, or that such an attitude comprises any majority of such people. Merely that it's an acceptable response to have when presented with that scenario.

Yeah, a lot of it comes down to whether you believe that you actually are being confronted with a given scenario to a significant extent. There is little doubt that the mass support for welfare cuts comes from quite a large disconnect between people's estimations vs the actual facts, as Grim... alluded to earlier. It seems to me that the Tories are only too happy to perpetuate and exploit many of these misapprehensions in order to further their ideology.

There are elements of DLA that should be cut or means tested. However, having seen the previous and current shenanigans on qualification tests, then I wouldn't trust any administration to correctly manage the few adjustments that I think could be due without fucking everything up, and costing more money than the savings.

I haven't said EBG has said that, I did directly pull him up on the 'don't have kids you can't afford' statement (which he did make, with the suggestion we should all be planning about twenty years ahead from the age of around 21) and then branched out into disabled benefits of my own accord as I was getting cross, and also because the two things are very much conflated in the public conscience IMO. (I mean, we've all seen The Daily Mail, right? I just go there for the bikini pics.)

Plus the Tories are hacking at benefits across the board, and the disabled have arguably suffered more than most. (And yes I know it was the last Labour government that brought ATOS into the fray.)

And this debate makes me angry which doubtless comes through in my posts, because outside of a tiny fringe of people who are undoubtedly milking the system and living a life of fecklessness and idleness (and it's a tiny fringe of people according to the DWP's OWN FIGURES), all that's really happening here is the folks at the bottom of the ladder are getting kicked and stamped on. (Oh yes and the under 25s, because fuck them.)

I think I probably am a rags to riches story to be fair. I've been homeless, I've worked horrible soul destroying rubbish jobs for a pittance, lived in areas where the neighbours send their kids round to chap the door so they can peer in and see if there's anything worse stealing etc etc. Now I can barely remember what it feels like to be terrified to put my bank card into a machine incase it got swallowed, or to do the run round the house searching for change to buy a bag of rice. I don't even really register payday anymore.

Of course people shouldn't be stopped from having children but it's so infuriating that some people can just pop them out without even caring about it and claiming benefits and not even bloody looking after them and I can't. If I want kids I have to spend >£1000 just to have one shot at it and it might not even work. Biology sucks.

I think one of the best things to do for people from areas of traditionally high unemployment would be to show them what employment looks like. Basically exactly what you're sayng, inspirational employment. It's not some unacheievable notion of suddenly earning £30,000 a year but even working a low skilled job you can suddenly afford to go on nights out and buy clothes and choose your meals for the week and maybe even learn to drive. I think not having anything to aspire to must be a huge part of the problem for some people. What are you aiming for when you don't know what it looks like?

As for 'affordable housing'. We're buying a new build and in our new estate there is going to be some affordable housing. I have literally no problems with that at all, but I have to admit if I knew it was going to be local authority housing I would probably be less pleased. Not because I think that everyone who lives in local authority housing is a bad person, or a potential criminal or a druggie or anything. There has been a time when I would have burst into floods of happy tears to be offered a council house. But simply because as a very (very) broad generalisation, home owners take more care of their home than people renting.

One thing that I'm sure would help is some basic financial education in schools, to give people a proper idea of what "grown up stuff" costs, and how much you need to earn to pay for the lifestyle that you want.
Lets face it, at the start of our GCSE courses did anyone really have a good idea of any of that kind of thing.

That could mean picking a few example jobs then going through the calculations to work out take home pay over a week/month/year, then looking at what that will pay for in terms of rent/mortgage/car/bills and so on.

If you sit them down and get some realistic aspirations, then work back to see how you can pay for it kids are more likely to see the value of hard work and studying.

I don't think it's particularly egregious to say that renters don't take as much care as owners. For an owner their investment is worth a couple of hundred grand at least, so it's worth keeping tidy. The most a renter expects to lose is a bit of their deposit even if they've practically set the place on fire before leaving.

I don't think I earn loads of money, but I'm careful with it and I exploit all of the moneysaving tips where I can. Cashback on pretty much everything, cashback bank accounts, credit cards. Shifting money about for best interest, lowest fees. Changing energy suppliers. Buying things in bulk when some insane deal is on offer. Little things all over the place that add up over time. Topcashback puts my lifetime cashback earnings at over £1000 and that's just on stuff I would have bought anyway. Even then I'm not as tight I could be, and none of these requires a superior level of intelligence to exploit.

I had an ex that, unbeknown to me at the start of the relationship, had £25k of debt that she'd racked up because of spurious purchases and terrible money management. I spreadsheeted the everloving shit out of every single account, with balances, payments and future interest repayments calculated to the penny. Worked up a monthly budget and repayment plan for each account, hitting the ones with the highest interest first, or consolidating others for best cashflow. None of it needed anything more than basic Excel formulas - you just have to want to do it. She also just didn't appreciate how much money she spunked on stupid shit - like spending £35 getting her nails done every two weeks, or paying £12/month for a website she'd never set up. Wastage everywhere and she had a massively hard time accepting that things like her nails weren't essential purchases.

She managed to write off her car by driving through deep water, and when about £6k of insurance money came through she didn't understand why she shouldn't spend it all on a new car instead of using it to consolidate or draw down on some of her overdrafts. After some discussion she thought maybe 3-4k was the acceptable minimum for a car. This is the girl that lived less than 2 miles from work and didn't need a car for anything else. I told her she could spend £1000 on something that was perfectly serviceable and more than sufficient for her usage. She really didn't understand why. Eventually her coddling mother stepped in to buy a £2k car for her, paying half of it herself.

The other thing is that she lived in a 3-bedroom semi-detached social housing (that she was living in under the false pretence her mum was still living there, which she wasn't....), in a nice area. Paying £350/month for the whole fucking house. She earned £24k a year and had no dependants other than a cat. By the time we broke up about 6 months later her debt was down under £20k with a projected payoff of 3 or so years, none of which would have happened if I wasn't guiding every single basic financial decision.

I really do struggle for sympathy for people that are just incapable at managing LIFE. This girl was privately educated and she couldn't even manage herself. No excuses, no mitigating circumstances, no personal tragedies. We eventually broke up because the stress was making me ill.

So all along the politicians have been getting it wrong, and the problem isn't as complex or intractable as it appears.

More spreadsheets is what's needed here.

EXCEL FOR ALL.

I don't want no scroungers using their benefits to pay for Excel, when Sheets is free.

Not everyone is poor or in debt because society has conspired against them. Some people are just really fucking shit at managing themselves.

So naturally Hearthly pipes up to assume I'm assigning that label to absolutely everyone in society, of course. Logical and rational both.

If the Tories are so keen on making work pay, why are they going after low earners by cutting tax credits? It seems mental to be targeting people who are already working full time and trying to get further along in life economically.

Sorry guys, work shite, not been able to post...

But in the interlude, hopefully something to raise a giggle, some cheeky sod sent this to my phone

Banks, not Labour, to blame for blowing up the economy. Corbyn is correct and is reaping the rewards.

Includes stats and facts to back the argument up.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/201 ... ial-crisis

How many more times, man?

The banks "blew up" for two reasons:

(1) Um, the banks.
(2) Lack of competent regulation from the then government.

Even Millipede conceded point (2) during the last GE and, frankly, the only people refusing to acknowledge this most fundamental fact of governmental responsibility are revisionists and fantasists, regardless of political hue.

Really can't be bothered trotting it all out again. As for Corbyn, man, I hope you're right. If he wins, I doubt anyone will be celebrating more than me as it'll spell the end of Labour as an electable party of governance - and probably the end of them full stop.

Alistair Campbell not convinced by Corbyn.

Ooft. Quite extraordinary language; schism is coming methinks.

Say what you like about Campbell (and believe me, I do), but one thing you could never say is that the man isn't media-savvy and doesn't know a PR disaster when he sees one. For me, given all of this, the fact that he's gone nuclear like this tells its own story.

Me? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't enjoying every second of every minute of this; schadenfreude isn't the most pleasant of human emotions but hey. Just desserts IMO.

While I don't actually belive that there was much the UK government could have done in terms of preventative regulation without global buy in to remaking the whole system so don't entirely agree there was much blame to place directly on Labour (as opposed to the entire global banking-blind unregulated political mess), I can't exactly say I'm shocked and startled that a Labour leadership candidate would choose to not blame Labour for what happened.

Clearly you know much more about this than I do Cras, but wouldn't it be fair to say that between them, London and New York were more or less the global financial market back in 2002-2008? London clearly wasn't some bit player in all this; for me, "world buy in" has to be viewed in this context of London's vastly skewed significance in the whole thing.

The successful regulation of 'The City', London (and Edinburgh come to that) was clearly of vital importance in world terms.

So, at the time the Tories were calling for stricter regulation of the banks?

Absolutely, but the political capital required to secure the changes that would have been required to prevent the crisis (banning of the house-of-cards risk model in CDS products, strengthening tier-1 capital ratios to ensure banks can handle with that level of debt write-off) absolutely didn't exist to get an agreement that would be meaningful. It was only after the disaster happened that people realised these sorts of changes were needed. Any agreement that didn't have the US, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Britain, Germany, France and a whole host of others as signatories would never have been of any use in preventing the crisis.

An additional point to that - say the UK had banned CDS trades in 2005, all the banks (including the UK-based banks) would have just run those transactions through countries where they weren't banned. Wouldn't have even needed to move people or their base of operations. If you've got a license to trade in another country, you can just make use of that country for any cowboy trading you feel like. That's why this stuff had to come with real motivation and in a true global sense.

Nope, I don't think so, but it depends which Tories you're talking about to an extent.
Look, we're not going to agree, clearly, because we've been here many times before. In my opinion, I couldn't give a rat's arse hypothesizing about what the Tories would, or would not have done; we can infer stuff but it's ultimately unknowable - and more importantly irrelevant.

From my side I can point to the fact that Gordon Brown, in his wisdom, tore down the previous regulatory framework (fact) and replaced it with something which did not work (fact), some 10 years later. What else is there to say? If I'm the MD of a PLC for 10 years and it goes belly-up after a decade of my stewardship, how valid a defence would it be for me to say either (a) it was all the last bloke's fault (despite my changing everything) and/or (b) everyone else was doing it/the other bloke would've done the same, honest guv.

It's called accountability, basically. The Tories weren't in power, Labour were. I'm the first to concede many of the manifold failings of the Tories whilst in government, particularly when amply demonstrated by actual irrefutable events, but the Left never does. It's all a bit silly and conceited IMO, but whether graciously conceded or steadfastly denied, the facts remain the same I'm afraid.

You talk like parties not in power must be meekly silent for five years. Sure, that's not what the fuckwits running Labour are doing, but it doesn't have to be that way. In opposition, MPs can still sit on committees, still make public statements, still ask questions at PMQs, still campaign to shape public opinion, can still vote on every single measure passed before Parliament. They can, in short, oppose.

Here's some quotes from Freeing Britain To Compete, a 2007 report by Redwood and Wolfson and (one can reasonabily assume) endorsed at the highest levels of the Conservative party (the report was presented by Osborne, who was already shadow chancellor):


This is neither unknowable nor irrelevant.

Edit to say, this one really is a corker

You do this all the time. Why do you assume that anyone here with even the mildest of left-of-centre leanings likes the Labour party? We don't have a two-party state and we don't have two-party politics. Disliking the Tories is not the same thing as thinking Labour is the bee's knees.

Heh. Yes of course, Redwood was catastrophically wrong - conceded many times, as now.
But I'm sorry, Doc, you can't compare being in Opposition (and supposedly influencing Brown of all people oh-so-much I'm sure [lol]), with you know, being in government. IIRC Redwood wasn't even in the Shadow Cabinet and was a mere backbench MP.

Look, you're more than welcome to believe the Tories would've made the same catastrophic mistakes as Labour for all I care, seriously, or even that they're actually to blame themselves. Just as I'm welcome to think that's desperate, absurd and above all - irrelevant, for the reasons stated.

Labour are demonstrably and inarguably economically incompetent. Which you know, is principally why they lost.

Sorry Doc.
Look, we're just not going to agree, okay?

How terrifying would a Trump/Palin ticket be?

Actually less terrifying than a Trump/Cruz ticket, weirdly.

The people whom Americans seem to frequently elect to high office is a source of bemusement and incredulity to me. IDGI, basically.

No different from Boris Johnson, tbf, or UKIP (admittedly not the the highest)

Hmm, wouldn't say no different, Curio.

Boris Johnson? Yup, the guy acts the clown but he really isn't one. Actually he's a very intelligent, articulate and astute individual, expensively educated to a very high standard (whether you agree with his politics or not).

tbf - (?)

UKIP - well, yeah, except we haven't actually elected them though; one solitary MP (who's not their leader) doesn't exactly count as a landslide. I know they got a fair old percentage of the votes at GE, but fortunately good old FPTP saved the day ( ). A PR based system would've returned a massive Tory/UKIP parliamentary majority...

"To be fair" or "to be frank".

Ah ok, ta.

Or, if used by Craster, "To be flatulent".

He's frank much of the time.

"Trump for President"...

Johnson plays the clown at least in part to make him seem harmless and entertaining, when he's actually nothing of the sort. Which is certainly something that can also be said for the likes of George W Bush. He was expensively educated and clearly not the imbecile he was made out to be, but people (within his party) liked him because of his public persona.

Did he refuse to take you to the prom or something?

George Bush?

Nah.

As for Boris, I think he's hideously incompetent, and in areas where he might show competence is generally a bit of a dick, but he gets away with it because people somehow ridiculously fall for his 'Oh look, I'm a bit silly' schtick. That's fine for a TV presenter; not for someone in charge of spending money in a time where budgets are being cut to ribbons for essential services.

But who cares about the poor and the needy when he can waste £39 million on a lift shaft to nowhere, £5.2 million on lobbying for his ridiculous airport that never had any chance of being built, several hundred thousand on second hand water cannons that are not even allowed to be used (and are a fucking idiotic idea anyway), £60 million (proposed - half London, half government) on a garden bridge that looks like an utter folly, was promised would not impact London finances at all and yet will likely cost the City £3.5 million a year in maintenance, the absurd sums on the (admittedly cool) cable car between the O2 and the North side of the river (cool, but useless, expensive, and the contract apparently allows the Emirates to veto a sale to anyone they don't like, such as Israeli businesses), over a million quid EACH on the unpopular new routemaster buses, selling advertising on the 'Boris Bikes' at an absurdly low level etc etc etc.

But he's funny LOL! Who cares that practically all of the above involved his business interests and friends?

*RAGE*

He would call you an oik. The world would laugh.

Are you secretly in love with him?

Quite. And that is why all civilised people should weep.

[citation needed]

Can't really argue with any of the specifics and to be clear, I'm not exactly a fan.

However, can't say I can remember some great Golden Mayoral Age of the Livingstone Era either (with or without the GLC), where all monies were efficiently and wisely spent. From what little I can recall and know about it as someone not living in London, the guy and his administration seemed pretty hopeless to be honest.

He must be doing some stuff right - London is booming like as never before.