Be Excellent To Each Other

Famously, Corbyn called for annual leadership elections in 2003 when Blair was in power so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It doesn't make the MPs look good though, not respecting the democratic process of the party. Let's keep having elections until we get the result we want. It'll drive people away.

He's driving people away now. He's done naff all except put people off Labour. He cannot even pull a shadow cabinet together. His support are bunch of screaming elmos who are more pleased to tell their mates they are part of a political movement than concerned thattheir movement is causing more harm to the people they claim to care about because it has led to no credible opposition, Brexit, and Government doing what they want. They don't want power, they have said that, they just wamt to scream "it could be better". It's disgusting.

I've been re-reading part 2 of George Orwell's 'Road to Wigan Pier' recently (part 1 is about conditions in the north; part 2 is about the problems of getting support for Socialism). I'm quite fond of this line:



I might skim through the book again this evening as there were one or two passages I thought quite apt for the present time, notably about the lack of worldliness about the working class held by the middle class intelligentsia.

Yes yes, you've been on your soapbox for quite some time now, but I am specifically talking about the leadership elections. Is it right that MPs ignore the will of the people and keep holding them until they get the answer they want or hope he walks away? What credibility will they retain by doing this?

I can't see how anyone will come out of this with any dignity the way things are going.

What if, as is suggested by the option polls, the MPs' constituents are telling them not to support Corbyn? Should they ignore the will of the people?

Well maybe those constituents should join the Labour Party and influence the process in a manner which is already established and understood.

If I didn't like the way Burger King prepared their fries I wouldn't go to Boots to complain about the price of cotton wool and expect to get the results I was after.

So if I had wanted to lobby my Conservative MP to vote against a third runway for Heathrow because I was concerned about air pollution levels, I should have joined the Conservative Party?

Blaming the voters is just ignoring reality. The current problem in a nutshell.

That makes no sense. The process for choosing the leader of a party is a vote of the party membership. The process for deciding whether there's a third runway at heathrow isn't.

You seem reluctant to criticise him.instead, you whatabouttery, wanting to argue process and try to paint wanting rid of him to be undemocratic.

How do you think he's done? What do you think he has achieved?

I am a potential labour voter. (although not while that imbecile remains as leader)

But I'm not going to pay 25 pounds for the opportunity to have Jack all say in who is the leader.

However, I can say to any labour canvassers that there's no way that I'd ever vote for him. Which is broadly the message they're getting. Do you expect them to entirely ignore that message they're getting?

Happy to criticise him (and have done in this very thread!) I don't think he's done particularly well or achieved much of substance, for a variety of reasons: some his own fault; others fault of his own Party; others outside of his control.

If there were a credible alternative who shared the same values as I do, I would vote for them in a heartbeat, just to stop this stalemate, but there isn't. As it is I probably won't vote for either of them.

Bah. Screaming Elmos aren't old enough to be in a political party. (In fact they are specifically not old enough to play Call of Duty online). Get your Beexslang correct!

Eeeh.... so, Corbyn eh?

For me, it's now gone beyond farce and events are literally too absurd to even quote now. The Labour Party are truly beyond parody; show me the person who'd still vote for that lot to run the country, I'll show you an individual suffering major involuntary axial eye movements. I mean, seriously? They make Screaming Lord Such look like a viable choice - and he's been dead since 1999.

Heck, if only someone could've said Corbyn was an utterly absurd choice right from the off; that his election as leader was a Free Pass to the Tories; that said election would lead to massive schism and probable actual disintegration of Labour, all in short order. If only eh?

Oh wait.

I'm confused. You think Corbyn is bad, but the PLP are trying everything they can to remove Corbyn, but that makes the PLP... bad?

I'm sure you are confused Doc, yes.
Still, never mind. Not long to wait now. Bollinger on ice this end.

It must be some comfort. I can only imagine how much of an absolute cunt anyone must feel for having voted in David Cameron right now.

It's disgusting how Corbyn's bunch of goons are behaving. Acting like a left-wing version of UKIP activists, and just as divisive. Total voter-repellent.

It's terrible getting involved in Labour at local level at the moment. No fun for anyone who doesn't want "JOIN THE TORIES!!" and "BLAIRITE!!" shouted in your face by someone who hasn't been in the party for 5 minutes.

Seriously, if the PLP majority split off and form a new, mainstream centre-left party without the crazy tribute act to 1970s Marxist students, I'll join it ASAP. I hope that it doesn't come to a split, but if it does, I will not miss being in the same political party as a bunch of belligerent nutters.

Mate, if you're seriously suggesting that even DC and the whole Brexit fuck up even holds a candle to Corbyn/Labour's ahem, "woes", then you truly have my sympathy. Yeah, I'm truly gutted we didn't get "Ed Stone" as PM and his fine bunch of colleagues I'm sure....

Okay, standing up to scrutiny was never their strongest suit and they've always had their looney-wing, but fuck me. It's like collective, group insanity right now, even among the merely "incompetent moderates" of their ranks.

What a bunch of utter fuck-tards, is all I can say. It's surely beyond any kind of dispute, now.

I'm not, but at least they haven't flushed the whole country down the shitter with them. But hey at least with this referendum masterstroke the Tory party have finally silenced their loony wing and put their EU problem to bed and it'll all be smooth sailing for them from here on in. Ha ha ha.

Tell me, which one of those scenarios has fucked the UK economy, and possibly the United Kingdom, irreparably?

At least Corbyn hasn't had a whiff of political power, and is very unlikely to.

@markg

Brexit? Completely anti as you know, and have admitted it (even apologised for it) repeatedly.

I still say the jury's still out, though. We'll have to wait and see on that score.

But Labour...? Fuck, it's like the chimps' tea party at the zoo, at it's getting worse (and very much nastier) by the day/hour.

Whatever you, or I, think about Brexit, it doesn't change a thing about Labour, nor how right I was about Corbyn amongst all the 'Labour must move left' and 'he'll be a good interim leader' tosh that was banded about when I was saying it.

Me? I'm glad, sorry. The whole thing's cheered me right up, the laughable tossers. LOL.

Yeah, that's a fucking nice thing to say to those of us with foreign partners. Thanks.

You're the most blindly partisan person I've ever encountered. Not admitting that the Tories have fucked the country up massively with their Euroscepticism, and in the longer term will have destroyed many people's lives and livelihoods. A major bout of in-fighting in the main opposition party is literally nothing compared to the shit the Cameron government has done.

*Tory Government accidentally nukes Swindon*
Cavey: imagine how badly Labour would have nuked random parts of the UK.

Cavey, a few weeks ago, close to blasphemy in the form of admitting that maybe the Conservative Party got something wrong:



Fortunately, Cavey is rediscovering his blind faith. The Conservative Party is the party of fiscal responsibility! Therefore everything it does must be fiscally responsible!



The Conservative Party can do no wrong! And so we must be wrong; and so we arrive here:



And so we creep along steadily towards the inevitable Cavey of the future who will somehow find a way to preclaim the Brexit referendum as Cameron's masterpiece. What an amazing journey, truly we are blessed to bear witness to it.

Yeah that's me, Pundy. Excuse me for wetting my pants at Labour's mega-belming.
Well, these sour grapes are all well and good, chaps, but y'know. The weekend calls and all that. Toodle-pip.

Marvel as the sharp edges of brittle cognitive dissonance are papered over with clichéd bonhomie!

Please tell me you're not as thick as someone I could mention (but won't, and never will).
I have admitted Brexit was, and is, a grave error, and blamed the Tories squarely and absolutely for it, despite Corbyn's woeful performances for Remain. I would never duck such a charge.

I've repeated that only today, in this very thread. I have not, even a little teensy little bit, retracted from this position. What I HAVE said, though, is that the jury is still out in terms of what is actually going to happen (e.g. how bad it's going to be), and have expressed (to my mind perfectly legitimate) surprise that "the markets" haven't reacted a damn sight more badly than they have post-Brexit anouncement. There is NO contradiction, shifting of position nor hypocrisy here; if Brexit even works out well for us (which I don't think it will btw, merely not as badly as feared, but I am an optimist), that STILL won't change the fact that (a) I was against it and (b) Am ashamed at the Tories' risking - then losing - this most crucial argument.

But still, you just titanically miss the point just like you always do, and throw stones at me, too, Doc, I've broad shoulders. After all, who else are you going to do it to? The Brexit/Tories issue is completely besides the point that I was making, of course (i.e. MY predictions about Corbyn were if anything under-egged) - but egos are bruised, pride is hurt, huh.

You'll forgive me, then, if I permit myself a little gloating and schadenfreude at Labour's woes, for I am only human, sorry. Cheers!

Some great work by Frank Field in excoriating 'Sir' Phillip Green. How what Green has done is in any way legal is astonishing.


Field's an interesting cove for a Labour MP. Big fan of Thatcher, Eurosceptic, listed in the top 100 most influential right wing people in the country, but voted for Corbyn and is massively into workers' rights and whatnot, and has refused to defect to the Tories despite being asked to on numerous occasions.

Yeah, Philip Green: only on his third yacht, as his poor, about to be jobless employees find their pension pots seriously depleted?
That these people give business a bad name is really quite the understatement.

Not my usual reading material, but even the flipping Guardian is doing pieces about the End Times for Labour. This one's quite interesting:



https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... esperation

Especially as Milne is sort of still emoloyed by the grauniad....

The Guardian have never been pro-Corbyn though. Plenty of articles criticising him.

I've never really understood the hard right view of workers' rights being a bad thing. It seems pretty well proven that happy employees are productive employees, and that the cost of employee rights legislation isn't exactly a major drain on the economy. Yes, absolutely, I appreciate the impact of complex rights legislation and things like maternity leave on tiny businesses - but tiny businesses aren't exactly where the far right of politics seem to be focusing their interests. If you make it harder for employees to earn a living wage, you end up having to top it up with tax credits etc - which is the exact big government spending that the right seem so dead set against.

Unions as well. Small Government types should be pro-union - bargaining between workers and companies or their representatives should be far more desirable than legislation regarding wages / working conditions / employee rights and so on. However most libertarians i've come across are very anti-union.

As indeed am I; I'd go as far to say that, certainly for as long I've been alive, unions have been, and are, an almost entirely unmitigated curse IMO.
Just look at all the successful, growing, dynamic economies of the world; millionaires created by the thousands; hundreds of millions lifted from poverty through trickle-down economics, and not many of 'em having to deal with the likes of Len bloody McCluskey and his ilk, I can tell you.

Just look at the gun-held-to-head situation of tube drivers or similar, where we are blackmailed/fleeced into keeping people in unnecessary/superfluous jobs on near-constant pain of all-out, massively damaging to the wider economy strikes - it's the least-bad option (or so it is argued) to keep on appeasing and coughing up. This is bad enough for those last remaining, seemingly irreducible bits of the public sector economy - but by heck it used to be pretty much ALL of the economy, well within living memory for me, a man still only in his forties. (If it were up to Corbyn and the swivel-eyed, it still would be).

There was something in the Eye the other week, I'll see if I can find it later.

Did you mean this?

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/jer ... 44381.html

Obviously there's a balance to be struck between ever greater cost/overhead inflation to keeping people "happy", and hard-nosed, real world economy good business - especially when competitor countries/new economies are doing no such thing. Yeah, "race to the bottom yada yada blah blah" etc., but there it is - and it's most especially the smallest, leanest companies, the very tax-paying backbone of the British economy, who can most ill afford either the actual costs or resources needed.

forget that I assume you mean private eye...

Yeah. Private eye.

I think unions are a very tricky concept. Yes, there are undoubtedly situations where unions overreach to the detriment of employers and staff - the late 70s/early 80s had a number of such situations, and yes I think there's much to be said for the RMT doing the same in recent years. However, employees are weak - the threat of job loss is too high, and they can't afford to individually litigate, so the ability of a union to provide for collective bargaining is utterly essential. Union leaders, business leaders, and politicians have to work together to ensure the right lines are trod.

I shudder to imagine the state the NHS would be in now without union representation.

Yeah, the NHS.... Nothing to see there, huh.

I shudder to see the state it's in WITH union representation. If it was a company it would've gone bust a thousand times over.

Good business doesn't need to mean maximised profits though. You don't have to shave every expense to the bone to retain profitability - treat your workers well and you gain in retention, which means reduced retraining costs, higher overall skills base, lower costs of managing error. It is absolutely a balancing act, but I'm not sure I can think of a single piece of worker-protection legislation that's been put in place over the last twenty years that is actually detrimental to business interests - except in the instances where employers are actively trying to pull an arsehole move (like firing people for trumped up reasons to avoid paying redundancy).

Mate, I don't claim to know it all, far from it, but I've been running my little firm for nearly 2 decades now - you do pick up some stuff in all that time.
A sweatshop this ain't; I pay miles above average salaries and have just forked out £50,000 in (British made) state-of-the-art equipment in the last month alone. Fifty grand! Little ol' me!
Man-management absolutely must be sustainable, and loyalty swings BOTH ways, and has to be earned BOTH ways.

I don't think we're disagreeing, mostly

As someone actually running a business out there - is there employment legislation that is unfairly burdensome on your specific company, do you think? If so, what is it?

For us, as a tiny little firm bobbing like a cork on the ocean, the biggest issue is high corporate taxation. It irks me no end that I'm forking out £250,000 in taxes every year (cumulative Corporation Tax, employee NIC contribution, VAT), from the sweat of my brow, yet the big boys get away with paying next to nowt.

If ever we needed small-scale, sustainable entrepreneurs and investors in UK people and products to come forward, it's now; we should not be taxing them half to death. Sure, I'll no doubt get the "you seem to be doing okay in your Porsche and country pile" type comments - but so I, and others like me bloody well should be, with our houses on the line and years of working ridiculous hours and sleepless nights, not the asset-strippers, pension pot raiders, bankers and non-domiciled tax-evaders. But then, so it is ever thus.

Corporation tax isn't "employment legislation", it's taxation policy.

It doesn't take a massive amount of reading between the lines to realise that Cavey meant that corp tax is the most burdensome thing his company deals with, rather than any employment legislation.

I am interested in why you pay VAT though, Cavey?