The Labour leadership race - Who will win?

[MrHorus]

Christ, Labour can wave goodbye to any chance of power for a generation now.

The only reason that New Labour got into Government and was re-elected twice was that it was NOT Old Labour.

Nice to see the unions forgetting that and fucking themselves over!

 

[dysfunction]

Does anyone else think Ed Milliband looks like a Creature Comfort character?

 

[ECA]

I thought Ed Balls when defending new labour came across as a giant douche sandwich but on post-loss interviews he's seemed pretty decent and so has david miliband, ed comes across as a garbage pail creature

The conservatives must be grinning from ear to ear.

 

[Wij]

I thought Ed Balls when defending new labour came across as a giant douche sandwich but on post-loss interviews he's seemed pretty decent and so has david miliband, ed comes across as a garbage pail creature

The conservatives must be grinning from ear to ear.

No no no. Ed Balls is not decent in the slightest. He's the biggest prick in the UK. I hope to Jebus that Special Ed doesn't make him shadow chancellor. The guy thinks no cuts are needed for fuck's sake. A smarmy, slimey toad.

I think The Brown Years are on iPlayer at the minute. Really need to listen to them to see how dysfunctional Gordon and Ed were

 

[ECA]

Yeah he came across as a total smarmbox in office, but he seems to have lost that quality post-election loss*







* at least from the ~20 mins or so of TV I've seen him on

 

[Scouse]

The guy thinks no cuts are needed for fuck's sake

Well, to be fair to him - the Conliberaltives are using the recession as an excuse to make ideological cuts a lot more quickly and more agressively than they probably technically need to simply to reduce the deficit.

The Cons want to reduce the size of the state, so it looks like they're going to lay everyone off in a quick mass-sacking. Whilst this will achieve their state-size objectives it will put a load of people on benefits and reduce tax income - the very thing you want to avoid as it could technically dump us in the sh1tter.

TBFH. I'm almost past caring. Its bent as a nine bob note anyway. Remember, we owe this money to the Bank of England. Who we need to borrow the money off in order to pay it back :\



Edit: ALL the Labour candidates were massive sacks of wank, btw. I like the conservative idea of a "smaller" state, but it's a fucking big win-win (for them) lie.

The conservatives "give the power to the people" agenda seems set to make this country even more obssessively control-freaked than it was under Labour.

Do we really want to give local councils the ability to make laws for their area? How quickly will "no glass pint glasses" "minimum price of alcohol" "no noise after 9pm on a Friday" and "local environmental tax to pay for puppy-strokers" laws get passed by the legions of busybodies and control-freaks that make up local government?

Meanwhile the conservatives'll be celebrating a much more nazi-fied right-wing country whilst basking in the glory of the knowledge that we did it to ourselves

 

[Raven]

It costs less to pay benefits than massively excessive public sector wages and pensions.

It's not their fault, a jobs a job but they are leaches on the economy, half of them are in jobs which just aren't necessary. Why pay for something when you don't need it? In saying that it will cost to get rid of people because they have such comfortable contracts, given out like confetti under Labour.
A mate of mine is an HR manager at one of the larger councils and he agrees that they need a cull, he says he is surrounded by dead wood. A hell of a lot of middle management and consultants that don't seem to serve any real purpose except take up a desk and a salary.

No private business could run the way the public services have been run under Labour yet their executives get private sector salaries. The whole system is full of aids and the sooner it is sorted out the better.

They don't need to reduce frontline staff, they need to reduce middle management and general costs. Do they really need to send everyone on that lesbian tree frog awareness seminar? etc etc

 

[Scouse]

It costs less to pay benefits than massively excessive public sector wages and pensions

With our bent monetary system it doesn't quite work like that.

Sack a load of people, even from government, and they're not paying taxes any more, they're not buying goods and services any more and they're just sat at home in pure take-out mode rather than giving money back into the economy.

The difference between a government worker who's out of work for a very short time before they find a new private sector job and a government worker who sits on the dole for a bit is where this could hit us.

Unless there's a shedload of private sector jobs for these people to walk straight into then it could be a disaster. And at the moment there's not that many private sector jobs...



If you want to reduce the size of the state the best way may be to do it incrementally - so the economy can absorb any losses and the private sector has the time to expand organically. However, the conservatives can't do this over the long-term because the public won't put up with the huge argument that's gonna brew, strikes, possible civil unrest etc. etc.

So they're making the chop quick and clean. Yep it could be bad short-term (and disastrous for those without jobs) but I reckon they figure if they don't do it quick they may not be able to achieve their aims.

To the conservatives getting what they want at all costs is a viable strategy. They really don't give a fuck about the little guy.

 

[cHodAX]

They don't need to reduce frontline staff, they need to reduce middle management and general costs. Do they really need to send everyone on that lesbian tree frog awareness seminar? etc etc

We agree on something.

 

[rynnor]

Well, to be fair to him - the Conliberaltives are using the recession as an excuse to make ideological cuts a lot more quickly and more agressively than they probably technically need to simply to reduce the deficit.

The wheeze of ideological cuts its just a way for Labour to defend moaning about cuts that they themselves would have made.

Making them later would just waste more money on inflated interest payments and is basically the position of those who want to put off cuts forever.

 

[rynnor]

Sack a load of people, even from government, and they're not paying taxes any more, they're not buying goods and services any more and they're just sat at home in pure take-out mode rather than giving money back into the economy.

Lol - so once unemployed they dont live anywhere or eat - I think you'll find even the unemployed pay tax and venture out of their houses. God forgive they might even get another job in the private sector...

 

[rynnor]

To the conservatives getting what they want at all costs is a viable strategy. They really don't give a fuck about the little guy.

Labour screwed our economy and now everyones going to pay for it - if you can get your head out of 70s socialist mode reality would make a lot more sense.

 

[ECA]

Scouse - you run up 20k in credit card debts, and you make 15k/year, fuck me if you aint gonna have to stop living beyond your means to pay it back*
















*Unless there is a free money tree somewhere you know the location of?

 

[Wij]

Lol - so once unemployed they dont live anywhere or eat - I think you'll find even the unemployed pay tax and venture out of their houses. God forgive they might even get another job in the private sector...

Very good point that should be brought up more often that.

 

[Scouse]

if you can get your head out of 70s socialist mode reality would make a lot more sense.

Lol at the standard predictable response here. I'm not defending Labour ffs!

I'm having a reasoned pop at the conservatives. They're going to wield the axe in a brutal fashion - 'tis their way. They really don't give a fuck about the little guy. It's their raison d'etre.

Saying that a blanket axe, for ideological reasons (which I think is true) is bad doesn't make me a commie, red, socialist, any other brain-dead can't-be-arsed-to-make-a-cogent-argument label.

Scouse - you run up 20k in credit card debts, and you make 15k/year, fuck me if you aint gonna have to stop living beyond your means to pay it back*

*Unless there is a free money tree somewhere you know the location of?

ECA, I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment of fiscal responsibility. If you've spent too much you have to cut back.


However, if the money you spend is actually the leaves from the free money tree and the only reason you're in the shit is because the free money tree wants more leaves back than dropped off its branches then wouldn't you take an axe and "negotiate harshly" with the free money tree?

Maybe you'd say "hey, free money tree, all you do is sit there and pull money out of your ass all day and charge interest for the sheer pleasure of it. How's about a bit of fucking slack? You know, like when you used to throw half your leaves at the UK government interest-free as opposed to the few dirty stragglers now? It'd really help with the suicide rate of jobless people, n'all that"...


Fuckin' Henry VIII and his legalisation of interest charges





Edit: Yep. 3 hours sleep in the last 48

 

[ECA]

Ed Miliband:

Lyle Beaker:

 

[Raven]

That's pretty accurate too! And Bob Crow is the hand.

 

[Scouse]

Nice

 

[MYstIC G]

Well, to be fair to him - the Conliberaltives are using the recession as an excuse to make ideological cuts a lot more quickly and more agressively than they probably technically need to simply to reduce the deficit.

The Cons want to reduce the size of the state, so it looks like they're going to lay everyone off in a quick mass-sacking. Whilst this will achieve their state-size objectives it will put a load of people on benefits and reduce tax income - the very thing you want to avoid as it could technically dump us in the sh1tter.

We're going to fall off the fence one way or another. Option A keeps a bunch of useless twats in state service on fat pensions for doing fuck all, Option B sends those useless twats to the employment line like everyone else.

I'm all for Option B. I can't remember the statistic or the source but it was definitely mentioned to me once that circa 20% of the country are civil servants and that's just bullshit. It's even more bullshit when you consider that everything is sub-contracted out. Why the fuck am I paying the council to employ some **** to organise collecting my rubbish for example. I'd rather just strike a deal with Veolia et al direct? Give me a 20% "sort it yourself" discount, happy days.

Edit: PS: I realise that the 20% may be wildly inaccurate but there are still too many people working under the umbrella of government imho.

 

[Scouse]

We're going to fall off the fence one way or another.

By falling off the fence I presume you mean double-dip recession. That's what the fear is tbh.

I don't take that view. We might go into double-dip but it's by no means inevitable.

It'd be nice to get rid of loads of people out of the civil service - I'm totally behind you on that tho.

 

[Wij]

Scouse - Income Tax isn't much of a benefit to the country when it's coming out of wages that are paid for by tax-payers in the first place.

 

[MYstIC G]

By falling off the fence I presume you mean double-dip recession. That's what the fear is tbh.

I don't take that view. We might go into double-dip but it's by no means inevitable.

It'd be nice to get rid of loads of people out of the civil service - I'm totally behind you on that tho.

I meant it more along the lines of it's a ***** choice. We're dammed if we do and we're dammed if we don't (everything goes to shit -v- bankruptcy).

I share your view that double dip isn't a certainty. I think this very much depends on how well the population "holds its own" so to speak. I for one know that where I am at the moment I can plug away, get rid of any debts, pay my mortgage and bills, etc, etc. without any issues despite the state of the economy. By way of example if interest rates suddenly jack up though, it might be a different story. That's a key problem in my eyes. It just feels as though the economy is a kind of pause / stalled state and that if any part of it moves, even slightly, it's going to start everything else moving and create a second shit storm and that would, of course, be very bad.

 

[Wij]

Darling's speech yesterday was a bit of a laugh trying to persuade us that the state of the economy was entirely due to banks and nothing to do with Labour.

Who let the banks do what they were doing ? Who missed the key Keynesian message that you put money to one side in the good times to cover the bad ? Who let levels of personal debt rise to the point where the bank can't raise interest rates even one jot as everyone will go bust ? Who let house prices rise beyond all proportion to wages ? Who was in power for 13 years while all this happened ?

Oh no, it was all the banks

At least he gave the not-so-coded message that Ed Balls should never be allowed to be shadow chancellor though. Couldn't agree more on that one.

 

[Scouse]

Scouse - Income Tax isn't much of a benefit to the country when it's coming out of wages that are paid for by tax-payers in the first place.

That would be true if we weren't operating a bent financial system. But as we are the differences are marginal. It's to do with the amount of money in circulation as opposed to tax receipts. I think.

I can't argue authoritatively on this as my grasp of the mathematics of it all is way too shaky.

 

[Ch3tan]

Darling's speech yesterday was a bit of a laugh trying to persuade us that the state of the economy was entirely due to banks and nothing to do with Labour.

Who let the banks do what they were doing ? Who missed the key Keynesian message that you put money to one side in the good times to cover the bad ? Who let levels of personal debt rise to the point where the bank can't raise interest rates even one jot as everyone will go bust ? Who let house prices rise beyond all proportion to wages ? Who was in power for 13 years while all this happened ?

Oh no, it was all the banks

At least he gave the not-so-coded message that Ed Balls should never be allowed to be shadow chancellor though. Couldn't agree more on that one.

There is at least one Labour supporter in OT who agree's fully with Darling. Which is sad.

 

[Scouse]

Who let the banks do what they were doing ? Who missed the key Keynesian message that you put money to one side in the good times to cover the bad ? Who let levels of personal debt rise to the point where the bank can't raise interest rates even one jot as everyone will go bust ? Who let house prices rise beyond all proportion to wages ? Who was in power for 13 years while all this happened ?

Whilst I totally agree that Labour spent beyond their means I disagree that their spending had anything to do with the financial collapse.

The amount of money we're in hock for is Labour's fault. The fact that we're in-hock in the first place, i.e. that there was a financial collapse, isn't*.

The arguments are getting very messy. Whilst intimately related to each other they're not necessarily causal.

If you look at the mechanism of the margin-loans of the Great Depression and the mechanism of the short-selling of the current financial crash then it seems quite clear to me that it was the refusal to provide liquidity by the central banks at the start of the crash that precipitated in this "adjustment".



*well, not really. Unless you believe they were "in on it". In which case, burn 'em