Labour Party politics

[Badger11]

Rubbish - loads of decisions get changed/reversed, surely it's a positive. Did Thatcher apologise for the poll tax or was even asked to? Of course not.
What about the pasty tax or the self employed NI rise - both reversed within weeks.

What is apparent is the overblown reaction to this.

With pension credit no pensioner in the country is on less than c£12k a year (£227 p.week) so £200 a year is less than 2% and £300 for over 80s is 2.5%. It is also paid to the most wealthy pensioners such as Fred the Shred Goodwin, Paul McCartney, Richard Branson and Jeremy Corbyn off the top of my head.

Pensioners have the triple lock so their weekly payments have been rising by more than inflation over the last few years.

For those also getting some private pension the freezing of the tax thresholds since 2021 (introduced by the Tories) will have had a greater impact than the winter fuel payment but this is never mentioned.

If Keir Starmer admits he was wrong he'd be heavily criticised and called weak. By not saying he was wrong he's also criticised and called a lair - he can't win.

Ultimately the right decision has been made.

Your making my point. Thatcher didn't apologise for the Poll tax and she should have.

I don't think it weak to own up when you get it wrong.

 

[Hrolf The Ganger]

Rubbish - loads of decisions get changed/reversed, surely it's a positive. Did Thatcher apologise for the poll tax or was even asked to? Of course not.
What about the pasty tax or the self employed NI rise - both reversed within weeks.

What is apparent is the overblown reaction to this.

With pension credit no pensioner in the country is on less than c£12k a year (£227 p.week) so £200 a year is less than 2% and £300 for over 80s is 2.5%. It is also paid to the most wealthy pensioners such as Fred the Shred Goodwin, Paul McCartney, Richard Branson and Jeremy Corbyn off the top of my head.

Pensioners have the triple lock so their weekly payments have been rising by more than inflation over the last few years.

For those also getting some private pension the freezing of the tax thresholds since 2021 (introduced by the Tories) will have had a greater impact than the winter fuel payment but this is never mentioned.

If Keir Starmer admits he was wrong he'd be heavily criticised and called weak. By not saying he was wrong he's also criticised and called a lair - he can't win.

Ultimately the right decision has been made.

Let's not hide behind figures.

The fact is that Labour tax and spend. They always do. Unfortunately, there wasn't much room to do it.
They had to find a way to make tax and spend seem credible yet again, so they claimed that the Tories had messed up the economy, hence, they invented the 'black hole'.
They seemed to forget about Covid and the Ukraine war, and miraculously managed to find big pay rises for the members of their big union buddies as soon as they were in office.
In the mean time they are doing nothing to stop the ever increasing massive bill that the tax payer is funding for illegal immigrants and making our energy more expensive with their absurd green policies.

Now suddenly, and only for political reasons, they do a massive u turn on payments to pensioners when we know that we will all be paying for it in the Autumn.

Let's not even get into locking up people for hurty words.

Labour are a disgrace. They are everything that is bad about politics.

 

[Badger11]

Civil service headcount hits 19-year high despite Labour's squeeze vow

The workforce grew by 2,000 in the first three months of this year to 550,000 people, according to official figures.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[ASCPFC]

Civil service headcount hits 19-year high despite Labour's squeeze vow

The workforce grew by 2,000 in the first three months of this year to 550,000 people, according to official figures.

www.dailymail.co.uk

I kind of have an opinion that it's better to have people in relatively pointless jobs, if it means less welfare people.
I thought the same about DOGE in the USA. Sack all those people, what do they do?
One thing is certain, they're not going to vote for you after being sacked. It's hardly going to help those areas with unemployment and tax income either. It reminds me of the way that, in my opinion, even if the mines in England weren't particularly viable, it wasn't worth destroying those areas over it. Keep them working.
I think that has been economically proven in the case of the miners too but have never particularly researched it.
We can't all work for the gig economy - even if it looks like our governments might want that.

 

[beak]

I've posted about it a couple of times, likely on this thread, but Labour are absolutely terrible at politics. They don't understand anything about it at all. For instance, nobody really rated Truss or Sunak - they're a bit of a joke. But no one really hated them. I saw Sunak the other day at the cricket chucking a couple of deliveries. I was thinking, if that were Starmer, no one would want to see it. He seems pretty hated to me. England fans chanting wasn't surprising - he's managed to do a Thatcher with football fans and he hasn't even done anything to them. So totally naive and inept at politics and presentation that it will likely be their downfall. They need to learn the dark arts, I don't know who's around - maybe Campbell or Mandelson? Not being Tory being their selling point has worn off very quickly. They're like a bottle of milk you opened and it was slightly nicer than the old bottle. A week later, you throw it away after smelling it in disgust.

Is milk still sold in bottles?

 

[ASCPFC]

Is milk still sold in bottles?

Plastic ones but maybe they call them cartons? Do people still get glass? There is a milkman but it's cartons or plastic bottles here. I could ask the PM to define a bottle, I guess?

 

[beak]

Plastic ones but maybe they call them cartons? Do people still get glass? There is a milkman but it's cartons or plastic bottles here. I could ask the PM to define a bottle, I guess?

Plastic,bottle,carton a new imbecilic game foe ITV to replace shag island.

 

[ASCPFC]

Plastic,bottle,carton a new imbecilic game foe ITV to replace shag island.

Could be combined with Naked Attraction. Guess which one is inserted?

 

[Rudi Hedman]

‘’Fully costed’’

 

[CPFCSaturn]

Let's not hide behind figures.

The fact is that Labour tax and spend. They always do. Unfortunately, there wasn't much room to do it.
They had to find a way to make tax and spend seem credible yet again, so they claimed that the Tories had messed up the economy, hence, they invented the 'black hole'.
They seemed to forget about Covid and the Ukraine war, and miraculously managed to find big pay rises for the members of their big union buddies as soon as they were in office.
In the mean time they are doing nothing to stop the ever increasing massive bill that the tax payer is funding for illegal immigrants and making our energy more expensive with their absurd green policies.

Now suddenly, and only for political reasons, they do a massive u turn on payments to pensioners when we know that we will all be paying for it in the Autumn.

Let's not even get into locking up people for hurty words.

Labour are a disgrace. They are everything that is bad about politics.

I think this sort of lazy, myopic analysis is everything bad about politics - we get the quality of politicians we deserve, and huge swathes of the population just can't move past some vague tropes they were taught decades ago, treating their political support more like a football team than a moveable thing that can and should change based on evidence.

Can you compare the tax burdens and expenditure of this government versus the previous Tory one..? And explain how 'tax and spend' is a Labour problem?

This government are s***, I have no issue with that conclusion - but they're not s*** because of 'tax and spend' or 'the unions'.

 

[Hrolf The Ganger]

I think this sort of lazy, myopic analysis is everything bad about politics - we get the quality of politicians we deserve, and huge swathes of the population just can't move past some vague tropes they were taught decades ago, treating their political support more like a football team than a moveable thing that can and should change based on evidence.

Can you compare the tax burdens and expenditure of this government versus the previous Tory one..? And explain how 'tax and spend' is a Labour problem?

This government are s***, I have no issue with that conclusion - but they're not s*** because of 'tax and spend' or 'the unions'.

Are you saying that what I said was incorrect?

If so, how?

 

[CPFCSaturn]

Are you saying that what I said was incorrect?

If so, how?

I don't know if it can really be correct/incorrect, but I think it's an analysis based on tropes more than reality.

There are many things I would criticise this government for, but they are hardly over-spending or even spending particularly liberally - what spending commitments have they even made so far..? I wish they'd do some more spending in public services, but they are essentially still running an austerity program.

What have they done to increase the tax burden?

 

[georgenorman]

I don't know if it can really be correct/incorrect, but I think it's an analysis based on tropes more than reality.

There are many things I would criticise this government for, but they are hardly over-spending or even spending particularly liberally - what spending commitments have they even made so far..? I wish they'd do some more spending in public services, but they are essentially still running an austerity program.

What have they done to increase the tax burden?

This government and recent past governments have massively overspent and overtaxed. Excessive government and excessive taxation are the root of many of our problems.

 

[CPFCSaturn]

This government and recent past governments have massively overspent and overtaxed. Excessive government and excessive taxation are the root of many of our problems.

If we accept that to be true, it's very difficult to make the assertion that 'tax and spend' is a Labour problem, which is exactly the point I'm making.

 

[georgenorman]

If we accept that to be true, it's very difficult to make the assertion that 'tax and spend' is a Labour problem, which is exactly the point I'm making.

I agree, it is a problems with all of our political parties and governments in general.

 

[Stirlingsays]

Truss was the last politician who actually tried to do something about it.

But the city wouldn't let her....got rid of her.....They are all about keeping the economic body on life support for as long as possible until it dies....sucking what they can out of it. With Truss they weren't interested in any electric shocks to the economic body's heart to see if the economy had a chance....too much risk for them.

None of them believe it can be revived.

 

[Hrolf The Ganger]

I don't know if it can really be correct/incorrect, but I think it's an analysis based on tropes more than reality.

There are many things I would criticise this government for, but they are hardly over-spending or even spending particularly liberally - what spending commitments have they even made so far..? I wish they'd do some more spending in public services, but they are essentially still running an austerity program.

What have they done to increase the tax burden?

Tropes?
It is either true or it isn't.

Labour spend money, and they raise tax to do it. The problem is that they often don't spend the money wisely.
When they got in this time, the tax burden was already high. They had to invent the black hole in order to justify raising it even higher. Predictable and predicted.

We have seen an increase in employers national insurance that will hit jobs and hurt people's pockets indirectly. Will they break another election promise and raise income tax?

Reeves keeps coming up with money to sling it here and there. Have they filled that black hole already?

 

[Rudi Hedman]

Truss was the last politician who actually tried to do something about it.

But the city wouldn't let her....got rid of her.....They are all about keeping the economic body on life support for as long as possible until it dies....sucking what they can out of it. With Truss they weren't interested in any electric shocks to the economic body's heart to see if the economy had a chance.

None of them believe it can be revived.

It was probably all too immediate to be deemed possible without a big risk of trashing the economy. Maybe if it was staggered a bit more…

 

[CPFCSaturn]

Truss was the last politician who actually tried to do something about it.

But the city wouldn't let her....got rid of her.....They are all about keeping the economic body on life support for as long as possible until it dies....sucking what they can out of it. With Truss they weren't interested in any electric shocks to the economic body's heart to see if the economy had a chance.

None of them believe it can be relived.

That's a very generous take on Truss.

We haven't had a proper economic change in direction since Thatcher and the outcomes of Thatcher's neoliberalism (or whatever you want to label it) are clear to see; declining living standards, failing public services, exploding wealth inequality - the idea that we just need even less state intervention to fix it is absurd to me.

 

[Stirlingsays]

It was probably all too immediate to be deemed possible without a big risk of trashing the economy. Maybe if it was staggered a bit more…

Thatcher's economic medicine was far more radical than anything Truss was doing.

She was able to do it because that was an era where government still retained power over the markets.

Since that time and due to borrowing at insane levels over decades, this country is now a slave to the unelected bosses in the city. If they don't like your prescription you're out.

As Truss found out.