General Election, June 8th

[Guest]

Tory social care plans fail to tackle basic funding challenge, IFS says

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/19/conservative-tory-social-care-plans-institute-for-fiscal-studies

[Rincewind]

Still not had any information about my local candidates apart from Jon Ashworth. I will make my voting decision based on FoxesTalk rep points. So far Ashworth is winning

 

Earliest leaflet 1 rep point

Local resident 1 point

Has regular office hours open to public 1 point

Helped set up a foodbank 1 point

Has a good attendance record at the HOP 1 point

Has spoken out against cuts to mental and social services 1 point

Has spoken out in HOP about the NHS decline 1 point

 

That is a good start for him the other candidates will have to be special to overtake him. They are on -1 atm for no leaflet explaining what they intend to do for local people.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Rincewind said:

Still not had any information about my local candidates apart from Jon Ashworth. I will make my voting decision based on FoxesTalk rep points. So far Ashworth is winning

 

Earliest leaflet 1 rep point

Local resident 1 point

Has regular office hours open to public 1 point

Helped set up a foodbank 1 point

Has a good attendance record at the HOP 1 point

Has spoken out against cuts to mental and social services 1 point

Has spoken out in HOP about the NHS decline 1 point

 

That is a good start for him the other candidates will have to be special to overtake him. They are on -1 atm for no leaflet explaining what they intend to do for local people.

the theresa may party candidate will be strong and stable

[Guest]

This is a really long read but those of you that believe in the power of cuts and austerity to save the economy really do need to read it. It was printed within the Guardian in 2015 but don't let that put you off - Paul Krugman, who usually writes in the NY Times,  is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the City University of New York and was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2008. He knows more than you, me or any of our politicians. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion

[Rincewind]

The link I posted about 5 pages back said similar. As yet I have not seen any response to it. Or I may have missed the replies.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

 

Not been touched upon much in here... but I can't help feel the removal of school dinners policy shows how focus can be on the price of the policy rather than the value.

 

I've clipped a tweet from an interview Jamie Oliver did with channel 4 on this, because he put it better than I could and from a much more knowledgable base.

 

Now I know as a person he can be a bit marmite for some, but I'm not sure how any reasonable person could disagree on this. And arguments such as 'the kids won't eat it, why should middle class kids get free meals' completely miss the point - there are always question marks around any policy, but the minor negatives that could be raised in this case shouldn't override the massive positives this does and can continue to provide if maintained.

 

I can't tell you how disappointed this makes me feel about our elected officials that as a group they could consider a policy such as this 'reversible'.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

 

Ooooooooh! 

 

Got sent a survey by YouGov about voting intentions for the general election... looks like I'll be in their sample data for the next poll they release!

 

i feel so privileged ☺

[Guest]

.

[Jimothy]

53 minutes ago, DJ Barry Hammond said:

 

Not been touched upon much in here... but I can't help feel the removal of school dinners policy shows how focus can be on the price of the policy rather than the value.

 

I've clipped a tweet from an interview Jamie Oliver did with channel 4 on this, because he put it better than I could and from a much more knowledgable base.

 

Now I know as a person he can be a bit marmite for some, but I'm not sure how any reasonable person could disagree on this. And arguments such as 'the kids won't eat it, why should middle class kids get free meals' completely miss the point - there are always question marks around any policy, but the minor negatives that could be raised in this case shouldn't override the massive positives this does and can continue to provide if maintained.

 

I can't tell you how disappointed this makes me feel about our elected officials that as a group they could consider a policy such as this 'reversible'.

He started to touch on it at the start, but then when the interviewer brought up the £650m saving he didn't expand on the fact that it needs joined up thinking. Yes we could save £650m now, but how much is that costing us in the future in the NHS treating the things obesity causes. Politicians need to see how different areas connect and improvements and bit of extra spending in one place my subsequently bring improvements and even more savings in another area down the line. I don't see enough of that from anyone, nobody joins the dots. You're totally right, it's so disappointing elected officials could see this as the right thing to do.

[Guest Kopfkino]

5 hours ago, toddybad said:

This is a really long read but those of you that believe in the power of cuts and austerity to save the economy really do need to read it. It was printed within the Guardian in 2015 but don't let that put you off - Paul Krugman, who usually writes in the NY Times,  is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the City University of New York and was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2008. He knows more than you, me or any of our politicians. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion

 

So what you've done is found a staunch Keynesian economist, looked at his titles and decided that makes him right, particularly as he agrees with you? Well Hayek won a nobel prize and was professor at LSE for a bit, he would have approved of 'austerity' and was professor at LSE for a bit. Friedman won a nobel prize and most likely would have approved of 'austerity.

 

There are holes in his argument, he is not an infallible economist, but instead has become a one-issue campaigner whom tries to appeal to the populist and thus has begun to neglect economic thinking. What Krugman is very good at is presenting a misleading argument using the IS-LM model and assuming that this simple two-dimensional beast explains everything. 

He even disagrees with you. "An economy where interest rates cannot go any lower is an economy awash in desired saving with no place to go, and deficit spending that expands the economy is, if anything, likely to lead to higher private investment than would otherwise materialise". Time and time again you have said that growth is being fuelled by private debt, well Krugman seems to suggest that there's too much saving in the UK given the interest rate is so low.

Also he uses Germany and the US as examples to compare to the UK. The US reduced it deficit between 2010 and 2014 but still saw reasonable growth, whilst Germany's deficit was less than a third of the UK's so the situation is quite different. But then if Krugman believes Germany to have fared better than the UK, maybe he's just made the argument for cutting the deficit. It's strange how he doesn't really look at the situation of Japan either, but then why would he when it doesn't fit what he is saying.

How about the fact that he's pretty much been shown to be wrong in saying that monetary policy is ineffective at the zero lower bound.

How about the fact that UK employment has been strong and the reason for low growth is low productivity. His theory doesn't give a reason for why productivity is low but employment is high, nor will deficit spending mean higher productivity. (Of course government can use spending to boost productivity but that isn't the point that Krugman makes, probably because it wouldn't make for such populist reading)

 

I would retort further to the Guardian piece or offer times when Krugman has been wrong but I'm off to Newmarket in half an hour. Ricardo Reis is a new keynesian who isn't much of a fan of Krugman, we had a whole lecture on it ish. 

 

Fair play to Krugman, he's put out some decent pieces and was definitely a big player. Then he won his Nobel prize and decided to go and make money instead of carrying on. America got bored of listening to him so he came and gave it a go here. And then he decided to become Clinton's biggest fan. He does indeed know more than me, I'm sure, but what a silly thing to say or maybe you believe in Plato's idea of the philosopher king and we should therefore bow down to Krugman with his Nobel prize and his place at CUNY.

 

[Rincewind]

For many families School dinner is just that. It is not lunch. When the kids get home they have tea not a second dinner.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, KingGTF said:

 

So what you've done is found a staunch Keynesian economist, looked at his titles and decided that makes him right, particularly as he agrees with you? Well Hayek won a nobel prize and was professor at LSE for a bit, he would have approved of 'austerity' and was professor at LSE for a bit. Friedman won a nobel prize and most likely would have approved of 'austerity.

 

There are holes in his argument, he is not an infallible economist, but instead has become a one-issue campaigner whom tries to appeal to the populist and thus has begun to neglect economic thinking. What Krugman is very good at is presenting a misleading argument using the IS-LM model and assuming that this simple two-dimensional beast explains everything. 

He even disagrees with you. "An economy where interest rates cannot go any lower is an economy awash in desired saving with no place to go, and deficit spending that expands the economy is, if anything, likely to lead to higher private investment than would otherwise materialise". Time and time again you have said that growth is being fuelled by private debt, well Krugman seems to suggest that there's too much saving in the UK given the interest rate is so low.

Also he uses Germany and the US as examples to compare to the UK. The US reduced it deficit between 2010 and 2014 but still saw reasonable growth, whilst Germany's deficit was less than a third of the UK's so the situation is quite different. But then if Krugman believes Germany to have fared better than the UK, maybe he's just made the argument for cutting the deficit. It's strange how he doesn't really look at the situation of Japan either, but then why would he when it doesn't fit what he is saying.

How about the fact that he's pretty much been shown to be wrong in saying that monetary policy is ineffective at the zero lower bound.

How about the fact that UK employment has been strong and the reason for low growth is low productivity. His theory doesn't give a reason for why productivity is low but employment is high, nor will deficit spending mean higher productivity. (Of course government can use spending to boost productivity but that isn't the point that Krugman makes, probably because it wouldn't make for such populist reading)

 

I would retort further to the Guardian piece or offer times when Krugman has been wrong but I'm off to Newmarket in half an hour. Ricardo Reis is a new keynesian who isn't much of a fan of Krugman, we had a whole lecture on it ish. 

 

Fair play to Krugman, he's put out some decent pieces and was definitely a big player. Then he won his Nobel prize and decided to go and make money instead of carrying on. America got bored of listening to him so he came and gave it a go here. And then he decided to become Clinton's biggest fan. He does indeed know more than me, I'm sure, but what a silly thing to say or maybe you believe in Plato's idea of the philosopher king and we should therefore bow down to Krugman with his Nobel prize and his place at CUNY.

 

I put up the link to give people an opportunity to inform themselves, not because every word of the article agrees with my points. 

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Facecloth said:

He started to touch on it at the start, but then when the interviewer brought up the £650m saving he didn't expand on the fact that it needs joined up thinking. Yes we could save £650m now, but how much is that costing us in the future in the NHS treating the things obesity causes. Politicians need to see how different areas connect and improvements and bit of extra spending in one place my subsequently bring improvements and even more savings in another area down the line. I don't see enough of that from anyone, nobody joins the dots. You're totally right, it's so disappointing elected officials could see this as the right thing to do.

This is true of so much of what government does. One department blindly following policies that will negatively affect 4 others. 

There are some examples of better thinking - both within the current and previous governments - but all too often governments of all party stripes don't seem to be pulling in one direction. 

[Strokes]

I'm not sure who I will vote for, the conservatives have always been my go to but I don't feel I can endorse that manifesto. I'm at a bit of a crossroads and I'm genuinely not sure if I will even vote this time.

[Guest MattP]

1 minute ago, Strokes said:

I'm not sure who I will vote for, the conservatives have always been my go to but I don't feel I can endorse that manifesto. I'm at a bit of a crossroads and I'm genuinely not sure if I will even vote this time.

Having read the manifesto in full I'm disappointed, a big majority coming and this was the chance to finish off the free market economy Thatcher started and we've got some quite terrible state intervention instead and some absurd grabs for the middle ground. The only positive I can give it is its realism, it's not a litany of unaffordable bribes the so called opposition have put forward knowing they are heading for defeat.

 

I'll be voting for them purely to make sure David Davis is there to lead our Brexit negotiation, little else is driving me to the ballot box.

[Jimothy]

10 minutes ago, Strokes said:

I'm not sure who I will vote for, the conservatives have always been my go to but I don't feel I can endorse that manifesto. I'm at a bit of a crossroads and I'm genuinely not sure if I will even vote this time.

I'm the same but coming from the direction of Labour. Not sure what to do. 

[Buce]

16 minutes ago, Strokes said:

I'm not sure who I will vote for, the conservatives have always been my go to but I don't feel I can endorse that manifesto. I'm at a bit of a crossroads and I'm genuinely not sure if I will even vote this time.

 

Interesting.

 

What aspects do you specifically have a problem with, Strokes?

 

 

4 minutes ago, Facecloth said:

I'm the same but coming from the direction of Labour. Not sure what to do. 

 

As above.

[Webbo]

26 minutes ago, MattP said:

Having read the manifesto in full I'm disappointed, a big majority coming and this was the chance to finish off the free market economy Thatcher started and we've got some quite terrible state intervention instead and some absurd grabs for the middle ground. The only positive I can give it is its realism, it's not a litany of unaffordable bribes the so called opposition have put forward knowing they are heading for defeat.

 

I'll be voting for them purely to make sure David Davis is there to lead our Brexit negotiation, little else is driving me to the ballot box.

I feel the same. There was never any chance I'd vote for anyone else, we're hardly going to get less intervention from another party, but I'm concerned with the direction of travel.

[Alf Bentley]

12 minutes ago, Strokes said:

I'm not sure who I will vote for, the conservatives have always been my go to but I don't feel I can endorse that manifesto. I'm at a bit of a crossroads and I'm genuinely not sure if I will even vote this time.

 

Which Tory manifesto policies do you find particularly off-putting, Strokes? Just curious....

 

 

Meanwhile, here's a good article by Jonathan Freedland about why Labour is still likely to be hammered despite having the more attractive policies ("rejecting Santa, embracing Scrooge") - "it's the economic credibility, stupid": 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/19/british-voters-rejecting-santa-embracing-scrooge-labour-popularity

 

Quote: "The coming rejection of an apparently popular platform will be a brutal reminder of a central truth about politics, that what matters is not just the product you’re offering but your perceived ability to deliver it. It comes down to credibility. Voters don’t believe Labour has a hope of fulfilling its promises.This is not a new problem. Labour lost in 2015 for similar reasons. Though this is billed as a Brexit election, and though austerity and the deficit are now mentioned rarely, this election still stands in the shadow of the 2008-2009 crash.Now many of us may well insist, to our last breath, that the crash was made on Wall Street not Downing Street, and that if anything, Gordon Brown handled a global crisis with great skill. But, thanks in part to the relentless message discipline of Cameron and George Osborne, the settled view is that Labour messed up by spending too much".

 

That's why it's electoral insanity to have made some of the pledges that Labour has (tuition fees, triple lock, multiple nationalisations). That's truer than ever in the current context - pending Brexit negotiations. It looks as if this won't be "the Brexit election", as the Lib Dems had hoped. But people are aware that Brexit is just around the corner. Whether they voted Leave or Remain, I reckon a lot of voters expect that times might get tough for a while as a result - even if they think it'll be beneficial in the long run. In that context, it is even more important to look fiscally prudent. Labour could have made certain popular pledges, say: investment in housing/infrastructure, reinstatement of bursaries for nurses, extra funds for social care to help the squeeze on the NHS, extra investment to train up young Brits to replace departing migrant workers.....and could have made a virtue out of being unable to make further pledges: "we'd love to abolish tuition fees, to keep the triple lock and to nationalise the energy companies, but times are going to be tough so we need to be prudent".

 

Corbyn might now get a lot of votes from students (helping him keep the leadership), plus a few extra votes from pensioners who don't like May's policies on funding for the elderly. But I reckon an awful lot of voters are going to think "Jeremy's Santa list sounds great, but times are tough and are going to get worse. It's not realistic. We can't afford it. We must be cautious and vote for Theresa Scrooge". I'd love to think that Labour could win and then jettison or moderate some of its more reckless pledges, but I just don't see them winning. Much of Labour's reputation for economic incompetence is unjustified (not all of it) and the Tories are economically incompetent in other ways - but that reputation is a reality Labour can't just ignore.

[lgfualol]

Tories dropped the ivory ban in their manifesto. 

 

I wonder how many times the Tories burst into evil laughter per day 

[leicsmac]

4 minutes ago, lgfualol said:

Tories dropped the ivory ban in their manifesto. 

 

I wonder how many times the Tories burst into evil laughter per day 

But muh strong and stable economy...

[Buce]

1 hour ago, lgfualol said:

Tories dropped the ivory ban in their manifesto. 

 

I wonder how many times the Tories burst into evil laughter per day 

 

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

But muh strong and stable economy...

 

Yeah, but there's good money to be made slaughtering elephants.

 

Get your priorities right, guys.

[Guest MattP]

The Tories are killing elephants now because there is good money to be made? New one on me.

 

[Realist Guy In The Room]

18 hours ago, toddybad said:

Im sorry but the extremely well off cannot hold society to ransom with threats of leaving. You're happy for nurses to pay a 9% tax simply for training for a pretty low paid job but won't accept 5% on the very wealthy. Let them go - or are you telling me the company will leave one of the world's richest economies and not fill the vacant posts?

This.  

 

I doubt any company would re-locate over a tax rise.  The increase only brings us into line with other major economic countries so what would be the point?

[Guest MattP]

7 minutes ago, Realist Guy In The Room said:

This.  

 

I doubt any company would re-locate over a tax rise.  The increase only brings us into line with other major economic countries so what would be the point?

Not if Trump and Macron get their way.