Be Excellent To Each Other

Should be fun at the very least.

According to the IFS, it's forecast to raise £3.2bn in 2014/5. So increasing it from 6% on most stuff to 20% across the board would raise a bit less than £7.5bn extra. Seems like a pretty nastily regressive tax, though. I don't think it's a good idea to discourage the less well off from having motor or home insurance.

Politician says something at odds with something he previously said 6 years ago, shocker! That's never happened before! And exclusive to the Tories, would you believe! Amazing.

I don't know why politicians go for this frantic last minute scatter-gun approach to policy promises. The same was true in the run up to the referendum and you'd better fucking believe all three major Westminster parties were at it in those last 3 weeks before September 18th. Fairly typical of this forum only to point that brush of criticism at the Tories though.

The bottom line is I'll overlook these 12th round wild swings still knowing I've backed the right fighter.

In the interests of balance, I'll note that I've yet to hear a Green spokesperson applaud that fact that recent GDP figures suggest we're abandoning growth.

You love your sweeping generalisations. No wonder you're getting a lot of respect from others on here.

To push the weak undecideds into their camp. On 'PM' last night they noted that polls are suggesting almost a quarter of voters are unsure, far higher than previous years. Anything that can switch someone into the correct camp at this stage is worth doing, and anything to put people off is not worth doing. We're entering late night drunken break-up text territory now.

Question 1: will the ROYAL BABY 2.0 benefit the incumbent or the challengers?
Question 2: do we even care?

The whole copyright term cockup thing was, well, a cockup too, although at least they retreated fast rather than tried to stick to their guns; but I don't buy that it was a typo and not just a silly policy.

I still have no idea who to vote for. I dislike all these people.

From the Guardian:



WHERE'S THE MONEY COMING FROM, DAVE? The poor, disabled and vulnerable again?

Governor Marley. When there's only one candidate, there's only ONE choice.

You can make any ludicrous policy you like this time around. You're lining up things in your manifesto that are easy wins to give away in the coalition negotiations.

Scroungers. Sorry, "scroungers."

~£75bn -- almost half of all benefit spending -- is pensions. So clearly we'll see some cuts to pensions in proportion with everything else, right?

I presume the question mark at the end of your post there was a typo?

Yes, conceded.
The Euro referendum is indeed dangerous, not least because hitherto, I've not seen any quality, industrial-grade arguments from media quarters as to why the UK should stay in? I'm seriously hoping that if it does come to pass (as I believe it will), this'll force a decent public debate, as opposed to an unedifying diet of shrill tabloid headlines and platitudinous soundbites from our politicians. Yes, I am the eternal optimist...

I'm ambivalent to be honest. On the one hand, it's clearly the case that the Eurozone is the UK's biggest export market - but we are a net importer, so they benefit even more than we do? Also, democracy can be pretty scary; for me, we stand on the brink of an SNP landslide which I personally find terrifying and utterly incomprehensible (given their woeful policy handling of Indyref and the almost immediate falling apart of their economic white paper), in equal measure. But you know, I have to accept the people don't always vote what I want to see happen, so it's just a case of sucking it up and getting on with it.

The Euro ref will be high stakes, possibly with a bad outcome, but in the final analysis in my view, letting the people (finally) have their say on matters which affect them so greatly, as opposed to the political class treating us all with contempt, has to be a good thing as regards the long overdue correction of democratic deficit. Labour appears to think we're none of us grown up enough to take such decisions...

This has triggered a half hour discussion with my IPT expert in the office. Well, he calls himself the expert but I tell him what to do.

We've done some back of the fagpacket numbers from industry stats, and reckon that no more than 35% of the burden of IPT falls on consumers direct. We've then done another fagpacket calc and reckon our insurance cost as a firm breaks down as c£2,000 per employee against a personal insurance cost per year of c£500. Non representative I know but suggests our 35% is overcooking it.

Yes, it is regressive. All indirect taxes are, but in terms of preventing people taking out insurance, the thinking is that hitting the increase during the right point in the motor cycle would negate a general fall in premiums to give a net year to year cost of nil. Also 14% on the base premium of motor insurance is a tiny percentage increase in the cost of vehicle ownership in a year. Home insurance costs are typically low and again an increase wouldn't be huge other than on the very poor, who tend not to have that in place already.

All in all, from a political perspective, we think it can be hidden quite well (which is of course the aim of any chancellor on a tax increase) if timed correctly.

Not how I said it in my head.

One cold winter.

I find it much more effective than your gurning rants at DAVE.



Yes I think you're right there. The people who are pretty firm won't get turned off by this middling policy, but it might just be enough to push someone easily led enough into the blue camp. It's very disappointing and quite transparent.

The only real pitfall is in thinking this behaviour is unique. It's not. Politicians are inherent flip-floppers trying to appease everyone with a few empty words.

All I can gather following US politics is that people choose their candidate based on who can profess his love of family, God, and country most. We're not at that stage, yet.

I agree. It surely can't come as any surprise to anyone to learn that politics, and politicians of all shades and persuasions are deeply cynical and opportunistic? Or that manifesto commitments are somewhat glib, uncosted, ill conceived and/or half-arsed?

It's hardly some bloody killer bombshell. If people honestly think that Cameron is somehow orders of magnitude worse than Messrs. Miliband, Clegg, Sturgeon and Salmond in these regards, well, that's being partisan to the point of foolishness IMO.

And since nobody had pointed that out before I did, I think my 'generalisation' about the tedious anti-Tory commentary of the forum was bang on.

Just over a week to go, and then we'll get our hung parliament and weeks of uncertainty/market decline before some kind of half-arsed compromised deal with someone is done. Then whoever forms a government can weakly amble along, struggle to get anything done, and we can all rejoice that we have such subtle and diverse political ideals in the modern world. Hoorah.

I think we were quite anti-Labour when they were in power too. Or was it just anti-Jacqui Smith?

Antiestablishmentarianism, innit?

That's the point, isn't it? There's always going to be many more examples of rank hypocrisy demonstrated by the incumbents. It's not being partisan, it's just there's more meat to get stuck into.

I'm anti-everyone, more or less; I just get more lulz from the Tories at the moment. I had as much to say about Blair back in the day, although that predates this forum. In fact, I probably had more, because the Tories are only being Tory, but Blair was supposed to be a bit closer to where my personal politics lie. Hence my /violent/ dislike of Blair* also has some potent feelings of betrayal mixed in.

* Who is an absolute warmongering cockend, to remove all traces of doubt.

Not that you'll be reading it, sadly, but for me, therein lies the essential mindset difference.

I loathe Socialist/Labour/left leaning politics more than most, but only on the basis of an earnestly held belief that they don't work, and I'm constantly reviewing this. Believe it or not, I was a fervent Labour supporter until well into my mid 20s!

However, and this is the key point, I absolutely do not question the earnest goodwill of almost every Labour politician who ever went into politics in the first place, from the most humble councillor, right up to the top of the tree - and most certainly not Labour voters. These people genuinely believe what they're doing is right, and for far more admirable reasons than your average Tory, which I'm the first to admit.

So really, deep cynicism and misanthropy isn't the answer, in terms of politics, debates about politics and even life in general. Actually I think it's this mindset that causes an awful lot of unintended aggro in these types of threads, which is such a pisser, as I enjoy them immensely for most of the time and frankly, I miss our science and maths chats.

(Yeah, I know, that's quite 'deep' for me, but I'm in a rare philosophical mood)

For balance: I'm not in a philosophical mood, bollocks to all you belm merchants

I don't know why anyone goes into politics. I'm not sure I believe there exists anyone that just wants to genuinely represent the people. I suppose such people exist but I doubt they're in any of the main parties. The amount of palm-greasing, door-step knocking and local party club ingratiation you have to do to even get in front of a selection committee seems to require a certain mindset. I certainly don't have it.

I think that some people get into politics because they genuinely want to represent, do right by and change society for their fellow humans, but then they realise that just isn't how the system works, and that to do anything at all they have to play the game. At that point they seem to either leave the game all together or slowly let go of all their original principles to become part of the political machine.

I would love to be politics. Make of that what you will.

I deal with a load of councillors and politicians at work.

Nutters.. the lot of 'em. You wouldn't trust the majority of them to run a bath let alone run a council.

I would love to be in politics, but I'm pretty sure I'd turn out to be as bad as the rest of them once push came to shove. I'd mostly just rely on my appointed moral guardians to tell me if something I was doing was evil.

I actually did join the Lib Dem party around the time of the last election, as their policies are on the whole most aligned to mine (though obviously I don't agre with everything they say; that's another annoyance about politics... people act like because you vote for a party you have to agree with everything they say about everything, which is of course utter hogwash). Unfortunately, I'm not the kind of person to put in the hard yards of spending a few years knocking on doors and cold calling people, so, meh.

Bad news Cavey, its up for debate.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... tive-party

I know people ignore me so I'll put the CPDR (Cobracure Posted Didnt Read) version here:

A letter of support for the Conservatives from 5,000 small business owners has begun to unravel after it emerged it was orchestrated by the party’s central office, contained dozens of duplicate names and one person who said they had never signed it.

http://rt.com/uk/253077-uk-rich-fortunes-double/

CPDR:

UK’s super-rich double wealth over past decade

The combined assets owned by the 1,000 wealthiest individuals in the UK have hit a new high of £547 billion ($831 billion), up from £250 billion posted in 2005

(They may as well buy the UK, gets us out of most of the debt, if they become the new landlords)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 74953.html

CPDR:

The pay gap between bosses of Britain’s biggest companies and their average employee has tripled over the past 15 years.


Actually, I'll leave it for now, and that's just Mondays posts quickly looked through.

Some people live in a Vanilla Sky world.

Are we actually surprised that those in a position of wealth are able to capitalise on their success to earn even more money? How did they become successful in the first place? It is all a question of luck and are they all undeserving? And if they are bosses of enormous companies, that means they must be turning over enormous revenue to justify such salaries. That's the success story of capitalism. This doesn't actually make bosses evil. Is the resentment towards giant salaries not just sour grapes? These are the super-successful 0.1% - so there's not actually millions of them. They're notable for their success and exceptional because such a position is rare.

Now, unless they're directly involved in cover-ups or are secretly murdering people or knowingly employing slave labour in horrible conditions, they're actually just very successful people. That there's a giant gap between them and the common employee is not surprising. Why is it assumed that because someone is doing well, they must necessarily be fucking over someone else? It's astoundingly simplistic reasoning to try to point the finger at the rich for all of society's ills.

I defy absolutely every member of this forum not to take home a giant salary if they could - assuming they didn't have to murder babies to do it. I say once again, I'm not a rich person but a lot of this whole rich/poor divide grouching just seems like jealousy, and being poor confers no more nobility or morality than being rich makes you immoral or underhanded.

Criticise individuals on their merits by all means, but you can't just say 'Herp derp, fat cats, top 1%, pay gap!' and think you're actually adding anything to the debate.

Are you permanently angry? Or just when you have your internet browser on?

Ok did I say bosses were evil, no that was in your mind. What I was pointing out, is the % gap between those at the top has tripled. It wasn't that long ago it was 40x between those at the top and those at the bottom. That's not being evil, thats greed. Who generates the wealth, those at the bottom. Who are shifting boxes, taking phone orders, keeping customers happy... DOING THE WORK??

What I dont want is Britain to get as bad as USA, it seems our politicians are intent on copying USA though. Who had heard of food banks in 2005???

This.... this is stupid:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathryndill ... e-earners/


There are a huge number of people who would be quite happy with being paid a living wage (£7.85 per hour) in Britain but because of factors that most informed people know about, its often £6.50.

Do you know any care workers? Maybe you dont, I do though. They only get £6.50 per hour when they are there, they dont get that whilst travelling between their desperately ill patients.

So they get even less than the minimum wage. So when you or one of your relatives relies on one of them for their 15 minute visits, think on that when you put your X, because we are all getting older and so are our parents.

I think the concerns are more about the unhealthy trajectory of wealth distribution and the fact that the money seems to have begun trickling upwards. So whilst trickle down economics worked up to a point it seems that when the system plays out it just ceases to function the same way. It's nothing to do with people being evil, just a broken down system that needs some serious attention.

Have a read of this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Capital-Twenty- ... 067443000X

Or don't and just dismiss it as "sixth form level nonsense" or whatever.

Cobracure's reply was quite mangled there. A vague accusation that I'm 'angry'. You then point out again that there's a big gap, and then tangent on foodbanks and carers. I say again, why are you presuming that one informs the other? It doesn't, not even slightly.

The very few at the very top earn a lot more than those earning minimum wage. Not a shock, not a surprise, and not the cause of all the world's ills.

Mark as much as I'd like to read a 696 page book to respond to your comment, you're right that I won't. I did read the reviews however which seem to pitch the book at a really good economic evaluation of history with some debatable conclusions about the future.

I'm reminded about this comment from Marge, particularly from 1 min onward:



You might despise her and have danced on her grave when she died, but you can't deny that she knocks the bollocks off any modern politician's resolve.

To be fair I didn't read it either, I listened to the audiobook.

Sandi Toksvig is forming a new political party:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32531750

Good work demonstrating how seriously you take what she's doing, BBC - by posting that in the Entertainment-Arts section instead of Politics.

Its in the election 2015 section to - that's where I saw it first.

Yep - but that's just a link to the same article, written and posted by the entertainment desk.

I might be doing their website

*does a little jig*

I don't trust politicians because I don't understand why they'd want to be one. I'd only consider becoming one if things were affecting myself, my family and my community, and my becoming a politician was the only way to solve those problems. (Which presumably means we've tried hitting it or setting it on fire).

I especially don't trust politicians that have never done anything else but being a politician. It basically means you're crusading on thoughts you had whilst you were a lot younger, that have since been shaped by whatever party you happened to join at University.

Jesus fucking Christ, if I was the BBC I wouldn't take this seriously either:



The good old Wage Gap fallacy. Maddox nailed this one recently.



The Equal Pay Act is enforced. It's illegal to pay one sex more in the same job than another. It's really, really simple to understand. A man earns £5 an hour and works for 5 hours, and earns £25. A woman earns £5 per hour and works for 3 hours, and earns £15.

OMG PAY GAP. WOMEN ARE BEING PAID LESS THAN MEN IN PART TIME WORK. Except not, the man is actually just working longer for the same pay per hour.

Except in the entertainment industry

http://www.washingtonpost.com/postevery ... rtchanged/

Y'know I find it funny how these 'Feminists' fighting for 'equality for everyone' start by headlining primarily women's issues while paying a bit of lip-service by saying 'oh and men too' to avoid the obvious accusation of bias.

Why not simply call it the Equality party, phrase it all in terms of 'men and women'. Not 'women, oh and men too'. and headline issues that affect both. End violence against women? Great! What about violence against men? Doesn't exist? Is only perpetrated by other men so it can be ignored?

I also assume the 'equal parenting rights' aim will work tirelessly to ensure that primary custody in divorce cases is strictly 50/50 rather than 92/8, because equality. You might argue that women are better caregivers and that explains the disparity, at which point I could say that maybe men are better board members, and that's why there's more of them. Both statements are ridiculously fucking false but it's amazing how you can ignore the basic hypocrisy of the stated aims that fall apart under even a small amount of scrutiny.

Haha, another article that tries to perpetuate the 77 cents myth.

Entertainment is even easier - this is the simple power of negotiation, if not by the actors themselves then their agents. If they can't or don't negotiate for 7 vs 11% for whatever reason that's on them. The ability to negotiate is an entirely individual ability. This example will say nothing of the other male actors in the world that don't negotiate as well as others, but that's on them too. The same is true for any job. You negotiate hard for what you can leverage based on your demonstrable skills.

Fucking hell.

Must.. resist... urges...

Can you ask when White History Month is? Because then I think I've hit bingo.