Politics Thread!

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Seems there's a spate of it

[pogo]

I know. But only one of them had to apologise afterwards. Plus he looks an utter tool in that photo.

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They should all have the good sense not to be doing that in the first place and apologise if the did IMHO.

I'm not defending Ed, he's obviously shit, but some even handedness in the aprobrium would make you sound less of a Bufton Tufton.

[pogo]

Pfft. If I want to post a picture of an idiot appropriately captioned I'll do so. Sad thing is if Labour win it will be because of him. It's Kinnock all over again; the policies don't really matter, the more exposure he gets the less prime-ministrial he looks.

[(o)(o)]

Pfft. If I want to post a picture of an idiot appropriately captioned I'll do so.

Having overt personal bias in political discussion isn't something to brag about.

It kind of undermines everything you say.

Anyway he's a practitioner of Zen - much more sorted in the head than you'll ever be!

[Dio]

It's hardly displaying political bias to call Milliband an idiot though. I mean, I'm a genuine left-winger, and the most charitable I could be about Milliband is to describe him as a wet fish.

[(o)(o)]

It's hardly displaying political bias to call Milliband an idiot though. I mean, I'm a genuine left-winger, and the most charitable I could be about Milliband is to describe him as a wet fish.

It is if you selectively attack Miliband for doing something all the others are doing too.

I don't think Milliband is an idiot.. not even a wet fish.. he's just too laid back for the average 'bloke' who wants to see 'leadership qualities'.. as with Gordon Brown, it's a personality thing. He's in a different gear than he needs to be to fit in with the rabble.

[pogo]

I'd agree it is a matter of perception, i.e. how he comes across. So there's room for everyone to have a different opinion of him, and none of us is necessarily right.

The problem for Milliband is more people think he's not a good leader than think he is. He wasn't members' or MPs' choice for leader, and doesn't have broad support among Labour supporters. And he's not improved in people's eyes since. The more people who've got to see him (as he was pretty unknown before) the more have got to dislike him, or at least think him a bit odd and not very prime-ministerial. Being a practitioner of Zen probably doesn't help.

And sadly for him the vote often comes down to that, which of the leaders looks the job, at least among undecideds who don't have a set party allegiance.

[c64audio]

Millipede seems to be politician first, man with convictions second. It makes it very difficult to believe in his sincerity.

[pogo]

He probably believed what he was saying in the first half of this parliament: that the government was cutting too hard too fast. He didn't do enough to distinguish himself from the more extreme "no cuts" movement, and didn't say what he would cut, but being in opposition he had the luxury of not having to make policy decisions.

The problem is his dire predictions about the consequences haven't transpired. The recession Tory policies would cause? Didn't happen, we only had one recession and it ended in 2009. Mass unemployment because of civil servant cuts? Again didn't happen, after rising because of the recession unemployment has been falling for two and a half years. The employment rate has been rising even longer, for almost three years (so all but a year of this parliament), and is close to an all time record.

So his convictions about the economy have been proven very wrong, since when he's been grasping at straws to find something to replace it. He's been unwilling to admit to Labour's part in the 2008-2009 recession, which makes many suspicious that he would make many of the same mistakes of the Brown-Blair government. A year until the election, so lots of time to come up with a policy platform and manifesto, but he's still got a lot of work to do.

[merman]

He probably believed what he was saying in the first half of this parliament: that the government was cutting too hard too fast. He didn't do enough to distinguish himself from the more extreme "no cuts" movement, and didn't say what he would cut, but being in opposition he had the luxury of not having to make policy decisions.

The problem is his dire predictions about the consequences haven't transpired. The recession Tory policies would cause? Didn't happen, we only had one recession and it ended in 2009. Mass unemployment because of civil servant cuts? Again didn't happen, after rising because of the recession unemployment has been falling for two and a half years. The employment rate has been rising even longer, for almost three years (so all but a year of this parliament), and is close to an all time record.

So his convictions about the economy have been proven very wrong, since when he's been grasping at straws to find something to replace it. He's been unwilling to admit to Labour's part in the 2008-2009 recession, which makes many suspicious that he would make many of the same mistakes of the Brown-Blair government. A year until the election, so lots of time to come up with a policy platform and manifesto, but he's still got a lot of work to do.

We had a double-dip recession and narrowly avoided a triple dip. The rise in employment is on the backs of thousands of part-time workers who want to work more.

More people in poverty finding that work does not pay enough.
Food banks supplying more than a million people a year.
Prisons in chaos.
Passport office in chaos.
Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey presiding over scandalous waste and poorly run reorganisation of the benefits system.
Private companies running Government services into the ground and then skipping away unharmed.

You are now parroting exactly what the Tories want you to believe - that Labour will "tax and spend". The reality is the Tories put up VAT taxing everyone and borrowed billions to fill holes in Gideon Osborne's failing strategy.

[pogo]

We had a double-dip recession and narrowly avoided a triple dip. The rise in employment is on the backs of thousands of part-time workers who want to work more.

We didn't. A recession requires two quarters or more of consecutive decline and that only happened between '08 and '09. Growth was pretty flat between mid 2010 and mid 2012, but there was no second recession:

Spoiler: show

As for employment more people took part time work during the recession as that's all they could find but that's now gone into reverse as more full time jobs are created and the average hours worked is back where it was before the recession:

Spoiler: show

I've written before that most things wrong with the economy will be fixed by it recovering and that's now happening. More people in work, unemployment down, hours worked up, wages starting to recover. Labour's problem is their narrative, that the government's policies won't work, turned out so wrong. E.g. this from 2010.

[VNVObit]

The Tories don't have strategies, they have tactics and its all about remaining in power.
Iain Duncan Smith has been disastrous in managing the move to Unified benefit system and neglected to keep in mind people can move in search of work (resulting in reregistering for all the old benefits when moving from a pilot borough). Even where people remain they have difficulties

The "bedroom tax" may have sounded a good idea but they never planned it through as people are leaving 2 bed social housing (low rents) and moving to single bedroom private units on higher rents (paid for by benefits). And that's the ones that are fortunate enough to be able to. Others struggle and potentially could end up being evicted and needing to be rehoused (which will cost the taxpayer more).

Having a collection of tactics does not make a strategy

[merman]

We had a double-dip recession and narrowly avoided a triple dip. The rise in employment is on the backs of thousands of part-time workers who want to work more.

We didn't. A recession requires two quarters or more of consecutive decline and that only happened between '08 and '09. Growth was pretty flat between mid 2010 and mid 2012, but there was no second recession:

Spoiler: show

As for employment more people took part time work during the recession as that's all they could find but that's now gone into reverse as more full time jobs are created and the average hours worked is back where it was before the recession:

Spoiler: show

I've written before that most things wrong with the economy will be fixed by it recovering and that's now happening. More people in work, unemployment down, hours worked up, wages starting to recover. Labour's problem is their narrative, that the government's policies won't work, turned out so wrong. E.g. this from 2010.

And all the Tories have is excuses or blaming the last Labour Government,
Wages are NOT recovering, average rises are still below inflation.

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What's the deficit look like over the last 10 years pogo?