Politics Thread!

[PFVA]

Teachers have been on strike on and off since December and have done a couple of big national demonstrations in Lisbon, besides camping outside schools, or rotating the strike by districts. Nurses have been on and off on strike since December too. Doctors striked for 2 days this last week. Train drivers stopped their strike last week but will start again next week.

Farmers are protesting too and there have been a couple of demonstrations with tractors but they have not come into Lisbon yet. One of the ones protesting the most were the beekeepers stating they don't get the same support fm the government as others.

People are on their side because cost of living is making things difficult for all.

[gilesgoat]

So .. "what parts of the systems are failing" ? ..

The impression is ( maybe by cause-effects-all-is-connected ) "almost ALL the world is in crysis" and "things that were going ok before (*) are no more going".

"Overall" in quite some places there seem to be :

- "an increase in Nationalism" ( probably as "distraction/scapegoating mechanism" )
- "an increase of right movements/politics"
- "more and more unequal distribution of wealth"
- "costs of living rising but not sure if directly related to 'real reasons for' "
- people getting poorer
- some still getting uber rich
- "scapegoating in general to foreings/immigrants"
- poor people in shit still voting for those that actually put ( and will put even more ) them into shit in the first place
- no more "real politics" with "real ideals" only stuff that is "more popular" at the moment and will procure more votes at any cost
- problems that apparently no one can solve/want to solve/even try
- people actiing baltantly againist the will of many people and not giving a crap not even trying to hide it
- incompetent people in power places ( very dangerous )
- religions that after all "don't give any real help" ( I mean they don't work to make people "better" - as they used to ?? )

It's like a bit like "in essence every country seems to experience the same prolbems AND reacting to them the same way"
i.e. "applying things that lead to the problems listed above"

And overall seems "a self increasing feedback" where "what is done increments even more the problems" and more drastic "solutions" get things even worse.

This is really "a recipe for disaster" that doesn't seems to stop but the fact is that "everyone" ( or many ) seems to be into this same shit.

How comes we got to that ?

Maybe because "everyone was trying to apply to ultimate capitalist system ?".

It really looks a case of "too many thing gone out of control because they never had any control in the first place" ( and/or it's been removed ) .

Are we all doomed ?

[PFVA]

Well I think the system is wrong.

Last night after I wrote that I heard on the news explanations for some of the increases. For example on the case of the onions which after the potatoes is the 2nd product with the biggest increase it's because the Netherlands are having a big drought. Apparently they produce the onions for the EU. On the case of the olive oil is because of our 3 years drought. The rain came too late for the olives.

I don't like this system of concentrating the production of each item in one place. It's bad for the environment, it's bad for the economy.

Besides that, the profits of companies were published and the big supermarkets chains made a lot money in the last year.
(which it may explain why I have so many supermarkets around me now, besides Continente, we have Auchan, and Lidl, Mercanona (Spanish) just opened, and one more national chain is moving in. It's not a crisis that leads them to close down or having a decrease in the profits, au contraire, they are making lots and lots of money. I find that suspicious.


And banks also had their best year in a long time due to the increase in interest rates. I find that suspicious too.

[PFVA]

Ow, this is getting better.
Besides the train drivers, the employees of the bars of the Alpha trains are on strike too because they haven't received their wages in a while, several months. The bar service is contracted to a private company, whose owner seems to have vanished 3 weeks ago. It's only 130 people and all of them are out protesting. (They make minimum wage).

Why do they privatise these things? The bars on the Alpha which I used to get to Porto and back lots and lots of time worked wonderfully before the privatisation.

[gilesgoat]

Yes "privatisation" seems to be another root of evil

It should IN THEORY ( or maybe NOT EVEN in theory ? ) provide "better service at better price" but more often than not the reality is the complete opposite of that.

( Almost ) every time something get privatised after a not so long while the service gets worse and the prices increase therefore negating any supposed benefit.

[KlaxonCow]

Yes "privatisation" seems to be another root of evil

As I've covered before, a problem with privatisation is that it's got this big "moral hazard" sitting right slap bang in the middle.

Perhaps you remember the term "moral hazard" from the 2008 Banking Crisis.

But the quick recap is that, for the banks, if they take a big risk and it's successful then they're massively rewarded. But if they take these big risks and it fails... well, they're "too big to fail". We can't let the banks collapse, as folks would lose their money and there'd be a run on all the banks - folks fearing that their money's going to vanish as well - and it's economic disaster. So the governments of the world were forced to bail out the banks. Because they were "too big to fail".

And "moral hazard" refers to the intrinsic, well, moral hazard that this creates. Take a big risk, and you either win big or, don't worry, the government will take all the pain for you. So, if you're a bank, the unfortunate logic is that you should just take big risks. If it pays off, you're laughing. If it doesn't, the taxpayer takes all the consequences for you. Might as well.

Or, as Wikipedia has it:

In economics, a moral hazard is a situation where an economic actor has an incentive to increase its exposure to risk because it does not bear the full costs of that risk.

We can see how this infrastructure "moral hazard" plays out in the various UK privatisations.

With the railways, the privatised "Railtrack" was replaced by "Network Rail" (which is, according to Wikipedia: "an 'arm's length' public body of the Department for Transport with no shareholders, which reinvests its income in the railways"). In truth, the infrastructure was re-nationalised and it's taxpayer's money funding it, in a "not for profit" way.

The government had to step in because trains were derailing and crashing, and investigations into these incidents found serious lack of investment, of expertise or due diligence. In the investigation of the Hatfield train crash - where 4 died and more than 70 were injured, when the train derailed - the Zone Quality Standards Manager for Railtrack is on record saying: "I do not have knowledge of railway engineering nor railway safety". Which, you know, is basically denying the role's very job description (!).

Moving to the energy market privatisation, we can remember George Osborne rushing in, like a knight in shining armour, announcing investments that "will keep the lights on".

Which is all very nice, George. But, umm, the energy market is privatised. So why is the taxpayer stepping in to pay for infrastructure investment?

And we can also see this in the telecommunications privatisation. As governments like to boast about ensuring everyone gets "superfast broadband" and they dole out taxpayer cash to fund rural broadband. But, again, why is government paying to fix the private companies' infrastructure neglect?

The "moral hazard" here being that, like the banks collapsing and everyone's money disappearing, it's intolerable to let basic infrastructure collapse.

George Osborne might have proudly declared that he was "keeping the lights on". But, truth is, no government could actually just sit there and let the lights go out, and just claim "ah, it's privatised, so that's nothing to do with us anymore".

They're morally obliged to act and the private companies know this. Just like the banks know they're "too big to fail" and will get bailed out by the taxpayer, if their gambling doesn't pay off for them.

Infrastructure is expensive. So the calculation that these private companies make is that they could invest a billion pounds of their own money fixing and improving the infrastructure... or they could, in fact, do nothing and let it fall apart - quite deliberately so - knowing that this is morally intolerable and that governments would step in, and fund the rescue (e.g. Osborne's "keep the lights on" investment for the taxpayer to pay for all these new power stations, effectively as "free gifts" to the private energy companies - as they'll run and profit from all this investment, without having laid down a penny of their own cash to pay for it).

Infrastructure is expensive, but its loss is completely intolerable. And the private companies know this - so do nothing and let it reach the brink of collapse, as then the government will be forced to step in and throw free taxpayer money at you... "to keep the lights on", to bring superfast broadband to rural areas, to put an end to train derailments and crashes that were killing and injuring people.

Privatise the profits, but nationalise the losses.

And the broken logic of privatisation - the "moral hazard" - is that, if you're a private company looking to maximise your profits, then you're incentivised to do nothing and let the expensive infrastructure side of things rot to the brink of collapse. You'd be a mug to invest a few billion of your own money in building the new power stations that you're going to profit from, when - if you hold your nerve - the government will inevitably come in, with "free" taxpayer cash, to build all the new infrastructure, as it's morally intolerable for them not to do so. A government can't just sit there and "let the lights go off". Just as they can't just sit there, let banks collapse and everyone's savings are lost.

Vital public infrastructure is "too big to fail".

Put it this way, we've all seen recently the energy companies posting record profits of billions. So, you know, why should it be the taxpayer, therefore, that has to "keep the lights on" by investing in pipelines and power stations? It should be the private companies investing in their own future, as it'll be them profiting handsomely from the gas or electricity running through these pipes and wires, after all.

We've all heard the rhetoric of why nationalisation is bad, as the free market neo-liberals - the Thatcherites - have been telling us over and over. The problem there is "why try harder?". If you're a local council employee then you'll always get paid anyway - as it comes out of taxes, that the law compels us to pay - so why innovate new products and services? Why improve anything? As being backed up by taxpayer money guarantees that you'll get paid every single time, so all "competitive pressure" - that a private company would experience - is just missing for a nationalised industry.

Both models have their intrinsic problems in their own way. Indeed, the next time a free market advocate raves about their ideology, put them on the spot: "is the free market perfect?". When they should inevitably say "no", because nothing is perfect, ask them what the flaws and weaknesses of privatisation are. You can concede that nationalisation ain't perfect either, and that, yup, that image of the council employee just lazily sitting around in their van, not doing much of anything, as they get paid either way (which is why Blair and others, trying to tackle this, introduced the notion of "targets" - as a kind of artificial "competitive pressure", to put back in what taxpayer funding naturally takes out) is an actual problem. But what we've not heard enough about, to balance the debate, is what are the similar, but different, intrinsic drawbacks of privatisation. It's not perfect - nothing is - so what are the faults and broken incentives there?

Well, as I say, there's this intrinsic "moral hazard" regarding vital public infrastructure. Indeed, though all the profits are private, it's still rightly referred to as "public infrastructure" because it's "too big to fail", so the public can't let it fail and governments have to step in to avoid it rotting and collapsing.

Even though, you know, once the taxpayer's paid billions for a new power station, it'll be private companies actually making the cash from using it and supplying energy. The government will invest in "superfast rural broadband", but it'll be the private companies - such as BT - who'll send out the bills and make all the profits from it.

And, with the railways, "Railtrack" got so bad - was so badly mismanaged - that it was lethally incompetent and folks were dying and being injured from intolerably frequent infrastructure-related accidents, such as the Hatfield rail crash. The government had no choice but to step in, dissolve "Railtrack" and set up "Network Rail" in its place - which is, as that Wikipedia article states, "an 'arm's length' public body of the Department for Transport with no shareholders, which reinvests its income in the railways" - it's basically a government department in disguise, owned ("at arm's length") by the govenment and dipping into taxpayer cash to fund the most expensive bit of maintaining the rail network infrastructure itself.

Privatise the profits, but nationalise the losses. And if you're a private company in any of these markets, then why on Earth would you ever do anything so foolish as use your own money to invest in infrastructure improvements, when you know - "moral hazard" - that the government has to step in and save your arse, when it threatens to reach the brink of collapse?

The gas pipelines should be paid for by the gas companies who're going to be profiting handsome - very handsomely right now - from using it to charge us all for gas. It's privatised - the whole point here is that the taxpayer has stepped away, and the private companies should be doing this off their own back, to guarantee their own future market. If governments could just sit back and "let the lights go off" - if that were morally tolerable - then that's exactly what ought to happen, right? They have to fix the wires and pipes, and upgrade the infrastructure... or how do they propose making a profit tomorrow, if the vital infrastructure to deliver it isn't working?

Free market ideology says that you should sit back and let bad companies collapse. If they're no good, then let them go out of business. As that's the motivation they need to make themselves better, invest in their infrastructure to ensure continued ability to trade in future... they must feel that "competitive pressure" to urge them onwards.

But this is broken when it comes to vital public infrastructure. The pipes and wires. The rails. The fibre optic cables. The network can't be allowed to collapse, so the government has to step in and use taxpayer cash to "rescue" it all from the brink of disaster. It's the most expensive bit as well - indeed, the whole logic of privatising national industries is to off-load this burden. Except that's not what happens at all.

"Network Rail" is an arm's length division of the Department for Transport. We hear governments making the "superfast broadband" pledges, or talking about building new power stations to "keep the lights on". But, hey, it's all supposed to be privatised - isn't the whole point that governments should now have nothing to do with any of it anymore, as it's all privately run?


p.s. Another example of "moral hazard" is in the fossil fuel industry. If the cost of climate change were factored into the price and costs of it all, then there's no way anyone could afford it.

For example, with sea level rises, large swathes of cities like London and New York will be lost. They'll be underwater. And, before that, there's the expensive costs of flood defences to keep that inevitability at bay for as long as possible. Such as, you know, the Thames Barrier.

But it's not factored in. "Big Oil" and "Big Gas" do not have to go purchase insurance against "loss of large swathes of the city" and pay for it when it eventually happens. Indeed, the cost of such losses would be incalculably gargantuan. Insuring yourself against loss of parts of the two biggest mega-cities on Earth to flood waters would simply be too large for any insurer to take on.

Carbon emissions - greenhouse gases in general - cause this, we know. But there's not the link there that those producing the carbon end up taking the consequences for all the bad shit it creates. When those wild fires were setting homes alight in the 40C Summer last year, it's not BP and Shell and others made to compensate everyone, even though its their actions that have worsened the climate to ultimately cause these things to increasingly happen.

"Free market" logic breaks when there's just not the link between actions and consequences. It creates "moral hazard" - where we take all the profits, but all the bad consequences are on others, so why should we give a shit about that? That's their problem. Even though it really, really should be our problem, by all moral right.

[PFVA]

Coffee went up from 0.70€ to 0.90€ in town

At the automatic dispenser machine fm 0.45€ to 0.50€.

I heard a conversation near the pharmacy that it's not acceptable that the basic 'cabaz', (that's the basic food basket to feed someone weekly) for a period of 6 months has gone up more than the equivalent of 1 month of minimum wage it's time for something to be done.

People are getting upset.

And the extreme right has already jumped on the wagon. Their speech is that they are fm the right but not on the side of the rich.

[Harlequin]

And the extreme right has already jumped on the wagon. Their speech is that they are fm the right but not on the side of the rich.

Just like that nice Mr Trump, eh?

[gilesgoat]

Coffee went up from 0.70€ to 0.90€ in town

At the automatic dispenser machine fm 0.45€ to 0.50€.

I heard a conversation near the pharmacy that it's not acceptable that the basic 'cabaz', (that's the basic food basket to feed someone weekly) for a period of 6 months has gone up more than the equivalent of 1 month of minimum wage it's time for something to be done.

People are getting upset.

And the extreme right has already jumped on the wagon. Their speech is that they are fm the right but not on the side of the rich.

Coffee in Italy been since a while already at 1 eur cup .. but now .. it's MUCH worse, it's around 1.30 and in quite some places 1.50 !!!

I've been to Venice just no more than 6 hours .. I had to take *ONE* "bus" ( boat ) to go to a place that has no other ways to be reached as there are no bridges ( Giudecca island ) ... ONE return ticket for 5 mins cross ( you could walk yourself if there would be a bridge ) .. 18 EUR !!!

But overall even in Monfalcone prices of food/things are quite mental .. yet .. at least "apparently" I see people spending money like there's no tomorrow and I *ALWAYS* ask myself "where in the heck they find all that money", the usual answer I hear is "they are all full of debts" .. how they are going to repay them I have no idea nor how they find somoene still lending them money.

One of my cousins, I've seen the car, has recently got an Alfa Romeo something I think in the range of 40K eur .. he opened a mortgage for it .. "insane" !

Overall even "life in the stupid city" is "stupid expensive" and yet at least here I continue to see people "keeping up" with the latest fashion and bars/restaurants/etc. ALWAYS FULL TO THE BRIM, I've seen many signs "looking for waiters/barista/etc." ..

Actually they can't find those.

My mum "forbid me to buy esperssos" ( I sneak out/bought some without her knowing ) because "it's a waste of money, drink coffe at home" .. I haven't had any pizza yet nor any gelato or such .. she seems determined "not to waste money away" ( she ALWAYS been like that ).

So she brings me stuff "of the cheapest kind" the thing that really "makes me upset" and I told her many times, she buys don't know where she finds them those "huge bottles of dish washing liquid at a CHEAP PRICE" that "does not seem to wash at all", where you need to pour 5 times as much to wash anything .. WHERE IN THE )(*"£$*" IS THE SAVING IN THAT ??!!

Of course her favourite shopping places are LIDL and "those chinese shops that have everything" so I have stuff like if I'd be living in some poor chinese village BUT (*&"£(*$&£"(*$&£"($ HELL THIS WEEK END I AM GOING TO HAVE *ONE* PIZZA !

At this rate all that I'll feel about Italy is/will be "that's too expensive for me to even live in / get anything !!!" ...

Or at least not when mum is around.

You see my dilemma ...

[merman]

Today’s “Budget for Growth”... what a shambles.

Forcing over-50s back to work
Promising free childcare by increasing the ratio of children to staff, potentially making things less safe
Fiddling with the upper limit on how much you can save tax-free on your pension - utterly irrelevant for 95% of pensioners who are still getting one of the lowest state pensions in Europe
Investment Zones
Fudging the Corporation Tax rise by offsetting investment, meaning very little for small companies and a huge loophole for multinationals to exploit

None of it addresses the real problems. Extending the energy price cap is halfhearted (three months!) and the OBR report is basically crossing its fingers and hoping inflation drops rapidly.

Britain cannot afford the Tories.

[PFVA]

I've been to Venice just no more than 6 hours .. I had to take *ONE* "bus" ( boat ) to go to a place that has no other ways to be reached as there are no bridges ( Giudecca island ) ... ONE return ticket for 5 mins cross ( you could walk yourself if there would be a bridge ) .. 18 EUR !!!

.

Ow boy, and the dream of the 'powers that be', and lots and lots of people is Lisbon to become like Venice or Dubai in terms of tourism.

I want a wall separating this municipality from them.

[gilesgoat]

I've been to Venice just no more than 6 hours .. I had to take *ONE* "bus" ( boat ) to go to a place that has no other ways to be reached as there are no bridges ( Giudecca island ) ... ONE return ticket for 5 mins cross ( you could walk yourself if there would be a bridge ) .. 18 EUR !!!

.

Ow boy, and the dream of the 'powers that be', and lots and lots of people is Lisbon to become like Venice or Dubai in terms of tourism.

I want a wall separating this municipality from them.

I tought that Lisbon had already "enough" tourism as it is, also what is ( was ? ) nice of Lisbon is that despite being " a big city " it wasn't "stupidly expensive" still a nice "common people liveable city".

You really DO NOT want it to become "something like Venice" .. it's a hell .. trust me Venice it's a hell ..

Why "everthing has to be big, super modern and expensive ?" .. some things I think are perfectly good as they are now/been .. one place where you can just walk around, buy some stuff that "just cost normal" and have some "normal fun".

Otherwise it's not "a place to live", it's a tourists trap and eventually even tourists will get tired of that.

[WiteWulf]

Radio 4 alluded to the fudging of the upper pension limit thing being specifically targeted at doctors who retire early when they can’t pay anymore into their pensions. It’s to get them to stay in work longer.

[Mat]

Fucking eejits don't understand that retirement is the reward most of us are working toward, and that extending the amount of time in someone's life they spend working directly impacts the time to themselves that people feel they have earned.
If people have enough in their pensions to live comfortably, the promise of more money isn't going to tempt them back to a life having to do tasks they don't want to do given to them by some uppity cunt they don't like.

Of course, the most obvious solution is anathema to the nationalist, racist cunts we have running the country.
We've got people so desperate to be living and working in the UK that they're risking their lives by crossing the channel in small boats. And instead of employing them, we're trying to fly them to fucking RWANDA at a cost to the tax-payer. It would cost far less to acclimatise these workers and put them through English classes to make them functioning members of the UK economy, and they'd end up contributing back to it by being legal tax-payers instead of being illegally indentured workers in illegal cannabis farms (oh yeah, that touches on another personal bugbear: legalise weed you fucking numpties, and re-adopt the "English System" for other recreational drugs).

Or the other option we voted ourselves out of? Freedom of movement by being part of the European Union, which resulted in lots of people coming across willing to do the jobs we as a nation collectively turn our noses up at these days, because our educational establishments have pivoted to training us for a lifetime in the financial and service industries.

A phrase being bandied around on Radio 4 a lot this morning is "the UK is the sick man of Europe".
I'd go further and say that we're the sick, paranoid, bigoted neighbour no-one in Europe wants anything to do with. We're suffering what amounts to dementia, on a national, governmental scale.

For example, there's a couple of things we could do as a nation that would immediately have a huge impact on our quality of life:
1: We could, as championed by KlaxonCow, move our energy generation to a 100% sustainable system that would cost the consumer next to nothing.
2: More contentiously, the DLR has proved that we can have rail services with next-to-no humans involved. That the strike-hating Tories haven't cottoned on to this boggles my mind. I'm a supporter of unions and worker's rights, but rail workers need to recognise that their jobs are not long for this world.

If we could leverage both of these ideas, we could end up with a nationwide network of self-driving trains that run on sustainable power, where the only costs would be related to upkeep and maintenance.
This is something we could start actioning RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, but there's too many dumb cunts blocking progress, probably because they have vested interests in the dying services and technologies these would replace.

Why the fuck automated trains haven't become a bigger thing is beyond me. It would seem to be a lot more attainable than self-driving cars, and would provide a lot of the same benefits, especially if the network was expanded.

For fuck's sake >:E

(This rant is primarily powered by the fact that working at NewsUK, I am constantly bombarded by Murdochian right-wing misinformation and bigotry. There's only so much concentrated stupid I can endure before something explodes.)

[Rhythm]

Fucking eejits don't understand that retirement is the reward most of us are working toward, and that extending the amount of time in someone's life they spend working directly impacts the time to themselves that people feel they have earned.
If people have enough in their pensions to live comfortably, the promise of more money isn't going to tempt them back to a life having to do tasks they don't want to do given to them by some uppity cunt they don't like.

The line being given by Hancock this morning is that this will disincentivise doctors and other medical consultants from retiring early. The logic being that, because they're highly paid enough to max out their tax-free pension allowance, they're now retiring early and directly impacting the NHS. Obvs it's cheaper/quicker to retain existing talent than to train new staff.

But the maths doesn't add up at all. Apparently we're spending £3bn per year on covering these absences with locums etc. But the tax intake we'll lose by doing this, by estimates I've seen, will be £4bn+ per year. I don't understand the logic.