Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

[Rorschach]

This a Marxist premise from all the way back in 1848! My question to you is, where do we freeze human expansion? Would you have stopped our quest for growth and development in the eighteen hundreds? Or mid-twentieth century or now? Would you want to freeze human growth (in the biggest sense) now, when we are so polluting? Don't we need to innovate, develop and change now more than ever?

Shouldn't the narrative be about expansion into the appropriate areas? About harnessing our existing structures of eduction, commerce, innovation, and knowledge sharing but in the appropriate direction? We don't want to shut down growth, but direct it better.

We should. This is more less the central tenet of Degrowth. Growth in the appropriate things for the appropriate reasons.

 

[Gutter Boy]

Don't know. I think it's been a trend for a long time, but people's memories fade:
- At the end of the tory reign in the mid-90s you had cash for questions but my dad tells me that followed a string of scandals that dogged the tories in the last days of Thatcher and under Major.
- New Labour were continually dogged by sleaze and corruption allegations:
- Labour had to return an undeclared donation from Bernie Ecclestone which the press linked to a decision to approve tobacco sponsorship of F1.
- Peter Mandelson had to resign when some murky financial dealings (again undeclared) were uncovered in the press. Think he got reinstated later on but had to resign again after giving misleading statements to parliament
- Iraq dossier/Dr Kelly/Hutton. Enquiry scandal.
- cash for honours, with Tony Blair threatening the Met Police with resignation if they chose to interview him under caution

A lot of the Major era stuff was adultery or 'sleeze' as it was called, which seems pretty irrelevant/pathetic in these more enlightened times. Michael Portillo admitting having been a bit gay at private school was a huge thing for some reason.

 

[Kompakted]

I understand what you are saying and yes you have made good points, probably i should have worded my post better. What i should have said i do not remember a time when both partys at the same time were as poor/bent/crooked as they are now.

Probably. And as you say it's being devoid of talent. Blair was at least a brilliant politician and wordsmith. He could hold a room and rarely if ever missed a beat with his messaging.

Minor things, but you can't imagine Blair, Cameron or Johnson for that matter, choosing to announce a general election in the pouring rain. Or standing up on a podium to ask Hamas to return the sausages. Just wouldn't happen. Sunak and Starmer never seem fully comfortable in their positions and everything seems forced. Then you look on the front benches of both parties and realised: oh actually they really were the best of a rotten bunch

 

[Muttley]

A lot of the Major era stuff was adultery or 'sleeze' as it was called, which seems pretty irrelevant/pathetic in these more enlightened times. Michael Portillo admitting having been a bit gay at private school was a huge thing for some reason.

Ssssshhh.....we've all been trying to get that picture of John Major and Edwina Currie out of our heads for decades

 

[Kompakted]

A lot of the Major era stuff was adultery or 'sleeze' as it was called, which seems pretty irrelevant/pathetic in these more enlightened times. Michael Portillo admitting having been a bit gay at private school was a huge thing for some reason.

It was a bit before my time of being interested in politics - relied on my dad as per post and as you say I think what that generation saw as a scandal would barely raise an eyebrow now

 

[parklane1]

Probably. And as you say it's being devoid of talent. Blair was at least a brilliant politician and wordsmith. He could hold a room and rarely if ever missed a beat with his messaging.

Minor things, but you can't imagine Blair, Cameron or Johnson for that matter, choosing to announce a general election in the pouring rain. Or standing up on a podium to ask Hamas to return the sausages. Just wouldn't happen. Sunak and Starmer never seem fully comfortable in their positions and everything seems forced. Then you look on the front benches of both parties and realised: oh actually they really were the best of a rotten bunch

I actually voted for Blair at the time as i was always a Labour man, however after he took us into a war on a lie that was it for me.

 

[Gutter Boy]

Probably. And as you say it's being devoid of talent. Blair was at least a brilliant politician and wordsmith. He could hold a room and rarely if ever missed a beat with his messaging.

Minor things, but you can't imagine Blair, Cameron or Johnson for that matter, choosing to announce a general election in the pouring rain. Or standing up on a podium to ask Hamas to return the sausages. Just wouldn't happen. Sunak and Starmer never seem fully comfortable in their positions and everything seems forced. Then you look on the front benches of both parties and realised: oh actually they really were the best of a rotten bunch

You choose substance over performance though if you cant have both. Its quite refreshing that Starmer is a bit of a boring details guy, after the last few Eton Prince Georges

 

[Kompakted]

I actually voted for Blair at the time as i was always a Labour man, however after he took us into a war on a lie that was it for me.

I voted for Blair also. In hindsight a lot of the structural problems we have in this country can be pinned on his government's decisions:
- Destabalisation in the middle east/ISIS/rise in home-grown Islamic extremism/terror attacks
- Mass immigration/population explosion/rise of far right support and anti-EU sentiment
- Financial crash in 2008 and flatlined interest rates caused by delegation of fiscal control from tje treasury to the BoE, deregulation of the banking sector and overstimulating of the economy relying on cheap credit to boost growth and a failure to intervene when the economy showed early signs of overheating (remember "this is the end of boom and bust" - in hindsight that may as well have translated to "this is the end of government management of the economy"

 

[Kompakted]

You choose substance over performance though if you cant have both. Its quite refreshing that Starmer is a bit of a boring details guy, after the last few Eton Prince Georges

As long as he gets the big calls right...

 

[Danishfurniturelover]

Yeah, this is also how I see the world. What I would ponder is whether the management of COVID is perhaps representative of how other key areas of government are managed day to day in Whitehall. COVID was a period in our history that sort of has a start and finish date, at least to a normalisation period of what we manage with the virus today. That is not the same as education, health, DWP etc which are just one big continuum. If governments are managing these areas as badly as they did COVID then we should be worried.

I'm not certain a change of personnel under Starmer will suddenly bring in all the missing competencies required, but we have to give it time.

Well not really the same because every government that is formed knows they have to deal with education, health DWP the Conservative government firmed in 2019 did not know the was going to be a pandemic.

Labour have not just suddenly been elected not knowing they would deal with education, health etc.

It had a shadow cabinet as the Conservative do, as a shadow cabinet you are entitled access to civil servants and impartially shown the state of the countries finances through audits.

The Conservatives will have access to that as well in opposition. So I do not think things like having to run education and DWP will come as a shock.

If the Thames barriers burst and Labour are slow to respond and in the benefit of hindsight years latter could have done things better. I would not blame them and give them leeway as it is an unregular occurrence as is a pandemic.

 

[Muttley]

I voted for Blair also. In hindsight a lot of the structural problems we have in this country can be pinned on his government's decisions:
- Destabalisation in the middle east/ISIS/rise in home-grown Islamic extremism/terror attacks
- Mass immigration/population explosion/rise of far right support and anti-EU sentiment
- Financial crash in 2008 and flatlined interest rates caused by delegation of fiscal control from tje treasury to the BoE, deregulation of the banking sector and overstimulating of the economy relying on cheap credit to boost growth and a failure to intervene when the economy showed early signs of overheating (remember "this is the end of boom and bust" - in hindsight that may as well have translated to "this is the end of government management of the economy"

Would some of those just happened anyway though. Thinking the middle east / terrorism are a global issue, as are a lot of the economic indicators like crashes. I think the anti-EU sentiment was coming anyway, no more heightened than when Cameron said we should fight the wrongs from the inside.

I voted for Blair. What I found interesting was that his first 4 years overlapped with Clinton's last 4 years. His last 4 years overlapped with Bush's first 4 years.

 

[thfcsteff]

This a Marxist premise from all the way back in 1848! My question to you is, where do we freeze human expansion? Would you have stopped our quest for growth and development in the eighteen hundreds? Or mid-twentieth century or now? Would you want to freeze human growth (in the biggest sense) now, when we are so polluting? Don't we need to innovate, develop and change now more than ever?

Shouldn't the narrative be about expansion into the appropriate areas? About harnessing our existing structures of eduction, commerce, innovation, and knowledge sharing but in the appropriate direction? We don't want to shut down growth, but direct it better.

I think it'd be great if inappropriate labels were not used. It is not 'Marxist' to say that, it is happening before your eyes. I mean, fine, go ahead and label it as Marxist if you like, the fact remains that we are in an era of 'steroided capitalism' that is increasingly pushing human resources to a brink. The days of middle ground are (temporaily I hope) over, and it is now extremes on all fronts, from viewpoints to economic policies.

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to find ways of growth being directed better, and also agree that shutting down growth is not the way forwards. Sadly, for that to be a genuine and realistically helpful for society proposition, those that drive growth have to have a greater scope of what (exactly) a decent society is, how it operates, what it comprises, and how to achieve it.

 

[Muttley]

Well not really the same because every government that is formed knows they have to deal with education, health DWP the Conservative government firmed in 2019 did not know the was going to be a pandemic.

Labour have not just suddenly been elected not knowing they would deal with education, health etc.

It had a shadow cabinet as the Conservative do, as a shadow cabinet you are entitled access to civil servants and impartially shown the state of the countries finances through audits.

The Conservatives will have access to that as well in opposition. So I do not think things like having to run education and DWP will come as a shock.

If the Thames barriers burst and Labour are slow to respond and in the benefit of hindsight years latter could have done things better. I would not blame them and give them leeway as it is an unregular occurrence as is a pandemic.

Yes, but the decision processes aren't so dissimilar for any ministerial department.

Where I always gave the government some benefit of the doubt on Covid was data. They had to build new data sets that previously hadn't existed. I don't give any government the same benefit of the doubt on the other areas. An example is the natural relationship between energy and house builds. We can all tell our own story of the sheer quantity of new houses that have shot up in the areas we live in. How many of us tell a beautiful story about these houses all having new solar panels on that are supporting the grid using smart technology? We always knew that Hinckley Point C was a long term build that could only go live in this next half-decade. We always had a decent idea of the electric vehicle roadmap. We also knew more recently the implications of Brexiting on anything that is an import, including energy.

However, it still took Putin to invade Ukraine for the entire area of energy and our need for self sufficiency by 2030 to be elevated as a major topic. Now we're seeing more investment into important areas like solar and wind farms. However, energy shot up because of the import dependency on energy. This entire cycle has been reactive, not proactive. Imagine if every one of those 1.4m houses built in the last decade were solar enabled.

That was only my point. Yes, poor decisions were made during COVID, but are they still being made in all of the ministerial departments today?

 

[Gilzeantoscore]

Ah yes, and had Labour been in power during this period there would have been none of this going on at all of course. Facts are our politicians regardless of party are all the same, all have their own self interests as the priority. Give Labour a few years of running the country and there will be scandals left right and centre for them too....

Of course there will be, all contrived by the right wing media. They had a good go with the Angela Raynor flimflam, but it failed to stick.

 

[Gilzeantoscore]

I don't think to much can be read into the government so soon after its come to power.

They deserve a chance to govern and the country voted them in with a big majority. Do think they have brought some of the criticism on themselves by the way they went after the previous government. But I guess that's the nature of the beast.

The covid contracts were a fcuk up by the tories, but unless people are accusing them of starting covid themselves i will let it go.

It was a mad time and they were under pressure to get PPE equipment, it always smacked of incompetence rather than deliberate fraud.

Which was my view of Johnson, incompetent and lazy but not really criminal.

How come so many contract went to Tory mates and donors then?

 

[Crab.C.Nesbitt]

I imagine the way the new government have started if the tories stop eating themselves, make a sensible leadership choice and do some sort of deal with Farage that huge labour majority could well evaporate at the next election. I'm actually quite surprised. Most business leaders were looking forward to a change of government but that good will has largely evaporated. The overly negative tone and outlook has impacted the growing economy confidence.

I get that it was tempting to maximise blame on the outgoing government for hard economic yards that remain post-covid and in the current geo-political environment, but claiming there was this hugely unexpected black hole in uk government spending when pretty much every economist has been pointing to it in at least broad terms for the best part of a year makes them look like amateurs because they've overegged it to the point where the markets actually believe Reeves and Co are genuinely shocked at what they've got to deal with rather than politicking. Similarly, most of us expected Labour to abandon their "fiscal rules" once in power similarly to how Starmer threw out his socialist manifesto he sold to Labour members as soon as he got the top job.

Currently there's no sign of that and even Starmer today in his "sausage" speech was talking about fully costed budgets being a hard rule when no country on this planet runs a fully costed budget.

We shall have to see.....they're still learning clearly.

One of their big problems is they do t have any sensible leaders! Both jenrick and bad Enoch would be laughably brick

 

[Crab.C.Nesbitt]

I don't personally like the public/private debate in relation to anything.

In healthcare the comparison is always (and perhaps understandably) made with America. During Covid pandemic, the performance of our health & social care system was compared unfavourably with particularly the German, Japanese and South Korean systems. But of course none of those three countries operate a free-at-the point of service universal system. They do all supplement their essentially private health & social care systems with state-backed safety net for those that need it and all three offer consistently better health & social care outcomes than we receive in the UK.

I don't have an aversion to public ownership, of for example, utilities or rail, but as a child of the 80s with Scottish mother and London the constant trips to see family using British rail and memories of constant power cuts growing up tell me that public ownership isn't a panacea to fix all problems.

The important thing for me isn't ownership or sector, it's how do we deliver good outcomes.

On public sector pay, we need to talk about the elephant in the room: pensions. Public sector pensions are defined benefit schemes underwritten by the government. So if you pay nurses £73K a year you are committing to underwriting what will likely be hugely significant scheme shortfalls for what will end up being millions of people (when we say there are 800K nurses in the UK obviously this is a revolving conveyor belt of people moving in and out of these posts and picking up pension entitlements as they go).

So the cost of paying a nurse £73K a year to the NHS is an order of magnitude higher than the cost of a private sector employer paying someone the same wage.

I don't believe the alternatives you've put forward are a different system they are all possible in the current "system" and as per reference to BR, public owned utilities etc, have all been in place in previous decades.

During Covid pandemic, the performance of our health & social care system was compared unfavourably with particularly the German, Japanese and South Korean systems. But of course none of those three countries operate a free-at-the point of service universal system. They do all supplement their essentially private health & social care systems with state-backed safety net for those that need it and all three offer consistently better health & social care outcomes than we receive in the UK.

Just wanted to pick up on this point. Back in 2010 the NHS was a world beating healthcare system with as positive outcomes as any of these countries.

Poor decisions under the tories such as

1. poorly researched austerity cuts
2. Attempts to drive privatisation of the NHS and
3. Restructure the NHS as a commercial venture with competing Trusts (when it is and should always remain a public service)

Have led to the deterioration of the NHS to the condition it finds itself in today.

Reform is necessary to address the inefficiencies but not privatisation. The NHS needs good strategic direction governance and funding as it once had under Labour. It does not need privatisation.

Surely by now we have seen enough failed attempts at privatising public services in this country to understand that privatisation is not the answer to improving public services?

 

[Gutter Boy]

During Covid pandemic, the performance of our health & social care system was compared unfavourably with particularly the German, Japanese and South Korean systems. But of course none of those three countries operate a free-at-the point of service universal system. They do all supplement their essentially private health & social care systems with state-backed safety net for those that need it and all three offer consistently better health & social care outcomes than we receive in the UK.

Just wanted to pick up on this point. Back in 2010 the NHS was a world beating healthcare system with as positive outcomes as any of these countries.

Poor decisions under the tories such as

1. poorly researched austerity cuts
2. Attempts to drive privatisation of the NHS and
3. Restructure the NHS as a commercial venture with competing Trusts (when it is and should always remain a public service)

Have led to the deterioration of the NHS to the condition it finds itself in today.

Reform is necessary to address the inefficiencies but not privatisation. The NHS needs good strategic direction governance and funding as it once had under Labour. It does not need privatisation.

Surely by now we have seen enough failed attempts at privatising public services in this country to understand that privatisation is not the answer to improving public services?

The first thing to do is exempt the NHS from the EU competition and tendering rules we've rolled-over. That's how all the money leaks out into private sector profits

 

[Gutter Boy]

One of their big problems is they do t have any sensible leaders! Both jenrick and bad Enoch would be laughably brick

Tugendhat looks the competent one and the one who might attract the Blair/Cameron swing voters. But no way their rabid members would ever select him. They'll need another Duncan-Smith 2nd/3rd term in opposition before holding their noses for someone electable

 

[Danishfurniturelover]

How come so many contract went to Tory mates and donors then?

Maybe because they were in Business.