Politics Thread (encompassing Brexit) - 21 June 2017 onwards

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Strokes said:

 

If capitalism is so bad and broken, why do love EU membership so much? That has also been part of the system for 40 years, you seem fearful of change on one hand but ready to torch a whole system on the other. Strange guy.

There is no right system.

 

The financial crisis of 2008 was a worldwide event. The failure of our current system is the inability to recover from it. Individual figures don't matter, what's important is the economies effect on households and at the moment there's nothing positive to say.

 

Contrary to what the incoming Thatcher government told everybody (much like the Cameron government in 2010), it wasn't socialism that failed in the 1970s. In the early 1970s oil prices practically quadrupled overnight causing a global economic crisis. The us had a similar recession to ours. Labour weren't even in charge when the three day week, miners strikes and power rationing were brought in. The issue, though, was that the system in place at the time couldn't pull the economy into recovery. There was actually the beginning of decent growth in the late 70s but the huge inflation levels meant the 5% pay rises on offer would never be enough to stop the strikes. Ultimately a new system replaced the old through Thatcher and the economy was turned around, albeit causing unemployment to jump from 1.5m to 3.2m. Unemployment was never successfully tackled by the Tories after that.

 

There is no perfect system. There are pros and cons to both that we've seen in the last 50 years. Pretending one has all the answers and that the other led to apocalypse is a misnomer.

 

 

 

[Webbo]

8 minutes ago, toddybad said:

There is no right system.

 

The financial crisis of 2008 was a worldwide event. The failure of our current system is the inability to recover from it. Individual figures don't matter, what's important is the economies effect on households and at the moment there's nothing positive to say.

 

Contrary to what the incoming Thatcher government told everybody (much like the Cameron government in 2010), it wasn't socialism that failed in the 1970s. In the early 1970s oil prices practically quadrupled overnight causing a global economic crisis. The us had a similar recession to ours. Labour weren't even in charge when the three day week, miners strikes and power rationing were brought in. The issue, though, was that the system in place at the time couldn't pull the economy into recovery. There was actually the beginning of decent growth in the late 70s but the huge inflation levels meant the 5% pay rises on offer would never be enough to stop the strikes. Ultimately a new system replaced the old through Thatcher and the economy was turned around, albeit causing unemployment to jump from 1.5m to 3.2m. Unemployment was never successfully tackled by the Tories after that.

 

There is no perfect system. There are pros and cons to both that we've seen in the last 50 years. Pretending one has all the answers and that the other led to apocalypse is a misnomer.

 

 

 

Socialism did fail. The state ownership of industry was a disaster by any measure. It didn't lead to lower prices or better service and any one of them that didn't involve a domestic monopoly lost money. Over regulation and union dominance held private industry back as well.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Webbo said:

Socialism did fail. The state ownership of industry was a disaster by any measure. It didn't lead to lower prices or better service and any one of them that didn't involve a domestic monopoly lost money. Over regulation and union dominance held private industry back as well.

Private industry that is universally tax payer funded through in work benefits you mean? 

[Webbo]

Just now, toddybad said:

Private industry that is universally tax payer funded through in work benefits you mean? 

It wasn't in the 70s.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Webbo said:

It wasn't in the 70s.

What?

Private industry only claims to be competitive now because 95% of it is allowed to pay wages that people can't live on so the taxpayer has to fund in work benefits. I bet if this was taken into account private industry would look a whole lot less 'efficient'. 

[Webbo]

The govt chooses what benefits are paid and to who. If they weren't paid business would still go on. Maybe wages would be higher, maybe they'd be less people employed but life would go on. Its a political decision, you can't blame private enterprise for that.

[Strokes]

All these global crashes just happing on Labours watch

Do we really want to elect one of the unluckiest parties in history right after brexit  

[Alf Bentley]

7 minutes ago, Strokes said:

All these global crashes just happing on Labours watch

Do we really want to elect one of the unluckiest parties in history right after brexit  

 

 

So, we're back to Gordon Brown bankrupting Lehman Bros and Alistair Darling selling subprime mortgages to low-income Yanks and flogging dodgy derivatives on Wall St? 

 

1973 recession under Heath's Tories? 1981-82 recession under Thatcher's Tories? Early 90s recession under Major's Tories? 

 

Plus Tory policies exacerbated several of those crashes. Whereas Gordon Brown responded to the 2008 global crash by saving the world.

I never tire of this.....

 

[Strokes]

20 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

 

So, we're back to Gordon Brown bankrupting Lehman Bros and Alistair Darling selling subprime mortgages to low-income Yanks and flogging dodgy derivatives on Wall St? 

 

1973 recession under Heath's Tories? 1981-82 recession under Thatcher's Tories? Early 90s recession under Major's Tories? 

 

Plus Tory policies exacerbated several of those crashes. Whereas Gordon Brown responded to the 2008 global crash by saving the world.

I never tire of this.....

 

Saved the world, he did save us from Tony Blair putting us in the Euro, which we would never have been able to leave the union then. I’ll credit him that.

 

We don’t blame them usually on external influence, we blame the handover  

Major was crap, Heath was Paedo lying shitbag. Thatcher was sorting out the socialism mess. Blair and Brown had just had 10 years of successive growth and no money in the pot when it went bang. That’s a bit more than a poor decision.

Edited 14 October 2017 by Strokes

[Alf Bentley]

4 minutes ago, Strokes said:

We don’t blame them

 on external influence, we blame the handover  

 

 

[Buce]

 

Public beginning to regret voting for Brexit?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/13/labour-flags-up-brexit-poll-which-suggests-public-regret-decision

[Buce]

Public opinion of Brexit negotiations:

 

[Bellend Sebastian]

CRUSH THE SABOTEURS

[davieG]

It's a well known fact that the media love reporting and over egging the not so good news at the expense of any good stuff so opinion is bound to be swayed towards the negative. That's why politicians lie about what they are going to do.

 

No surprise there. MrsG is sick to death of hearing about it.

[Alf Bentley]

16 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Public beginning to regret voting for Brexit?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/13/labour-flags-up-brexit-poll-which-suggests-public-regret-decision

 

If so, it's very early days. A 42%-47% poll won't have any politicians changing their stance. If we start getting polls regularly at 22%-67%, it might be different.

 

Similarly, with the poll showing that negotiations are "going badly", some of the respondents will blame the EU for that, not the UK government.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Strokes said:

All these global crashes just happing on Labours watch

Do we really want to elect one of the unluckiest parties in history right after brexit  

The problems of the 70s happened under tory watch.

[Sampson]

15 minutes ago, toddybad said:

The problems of the 70s happened under tory watch.

They really didn't! They happened because of the post-war Keynesian consensus - which couldn't deal with the oil crash (which no one could realistically have predicted) - the oil crash was a small recession for other countries but it was exasperated in the UK when it wasn't elsewhere (unlike the 2008 crisis) because of high government spending and a government in the late 70s who just bent to the wills of the trade unions.

Heath was a Keynesian and even though I don't rate him one bit and he absolutely was partly to blame (as was the whole damn post-war Keynesian consensus), you've got to be doing some serious revisionism not to think Callaghan and Wilson exasperated the problem because they tried to spend their way out of recession and kept giving into worker and trade union demands. Thatcher was the one which brought that recession under control when it had been brought under control years earlier everywhere else but was spiralling further and further out of control in the UK.

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Sampson said:

They really didn't! They happened because of the post-war Keynesian consensus - which couldn't deal with the oil crash (which no one could realistically have predicted) - the oil crash was a small recession for other countries but it was exasperated in the UK when it wasn't elsewhere (unlike the 2008 crisis) because of high government spending and a government in the late 70s who just bent to the wills of the trade unions.

Heath was a Keynesian and even though I don't rate him one bit and he absolutely was partly to blame (as was the whole damn post-war Keynesian consensus), you've got to be doing some serious revisionism not to think Callaghan and Wilson exasperated the problem because they tried to spend their way out of recession and kept giving into worker and trade union demands. Thatcher was the one which brought that recession under control when it had been brought under control years earlier everywhere else but was spiralling further and further out of control in the UK.

My point was that the problems of the 70s started under Tory rule - which they did - in response to strokes making out they always happen under labour watch.

 

Heath and Wilson.we're both culpable. Callaghan possibly less so as he had got growth moving in the right direction but ultimately NOT giving in to the unions was what caused the winter of discontent. 

 

Thatcher clearly did bring inflation (recession had ended long before then) under control but did also more than double unemployment doing it. Unemployment didn't really start dropping until the Blair government - it was still over 3m during the Major government when that government brought recession about themselves.

 

The crash of 2007/8 was clearly a global phenomenon. 

 

And the whole western world was in recession for 2/3 years in.The 1970s, it really wasn't localised to the UK.

Edited 14 October 2017 by Guest

[Claridge]

6 hours ago, toddybad said:

What?

Private industry only claims to be competitive now because 95% of it is allowed to pay wages that people can't live on so the taxpayer has to fund in work benefits. I bet if this was taken into account private industry would look a whole lot less 'efficient'. 

What a load of rubbish.

Millions of people in this country live excellent lives through working for private industry.The private industry that funds the bloated public sector by the way

 

[Sampson]

6 hours ago, toddybad said:

There is no right system.

 

The financial crisis of 2008 was a worldwide event. The failure of our current system is the inability to recover from it. Individual figures don't matter, what's important is the economies effect on households and at the moment there's nothing positive to say.

 

Contrary to what the incoming Thatcher government told everybody (much like the Cameron government in 2010), it wasn't socialism that failed in the 1970s. In the early 1970s oil prices practically quadrupled overnight causing a global economic crisis. The us had a similar recession to ours. Labour weren't even in charge when the three day week, miners strikes and power rationing were brought in. The issue, though, was that the system in place at the time couldn't pull the economy into recovery. There was actually the beginning of decent growth in the late 70s but the huge inflation levels meant the 5% pay rises on offer would never be enough to stop the strikes. Ultimately a new system replaced the old through Thatcher and the economy was turned around, albeit causing unemployment to jump from 1.5m to 3.2m. Unemployment was never successfully tackled by the Tories after that.

 

There is no perfect system. There are pros and cons to both that we've seen in the last 50 years. Pretending one has all the answers and that the other led to apocalypse is a misnomer.

 

 

 

It absolutely does and Capitalism absolutely is a better system than Socialism! I just don't think you understand the difference between Capitalism and Socialism!

The UK has never been Socialist and wasn't Socialist in the 1970s it was Keynesian - which is still an overwhelmingly Capitalist system! The Soviet Union was Socialist, Maoist China was Socialist, North Korea is Socialist Cuba is Socialist, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was Socialist, Zimbabwe under Magbwe is Socialist, Venuzuela is Socialst. Modern day Nordic countries are nothing like Socialism - Socialism is and always has been when industry and business is collectively owned (nearly always by the state).

 

Again! It's this chopping and changing of the term Socialism to suit your own definition which is so dangerous and politicians still do it to sound anti-establishment and so they can rag on Capitalism and so they can sound "anti-establishment" and people eat it up just because it's anti-establishment.

What you are describing are just different forms of Capitalism - but all of which have the overwhelming majority of our industry in private hands, allowing for private ownership and run for profit (which is what Capitalism means and always has meant). The last time the "death of Capitalism" entered the public consciousness was in the 1930s awhich led to the rise of Fascism, Nazisim, Socialism and Communism because they were seen as the alternatives - it's dangerous shit to spread.

If you want to get behind Keynesian ideas (which is what I'm guessing by your posits what are actually refering to) then fine, but that isn't what Corbyn and Macdonnell are talking about when they talk nationalisation of industry, worker co-ops or workers taking controls of future technology rather than their bosses.

Edited 14 October 2017 by Sampson

[Izzy]

Sampson giving toddybad a schooling here 

[Buce]

Just now, Izzy Muzzett said:

Sampson giving toddybad a schooling here 

 

He really isn't.

 

Apart from schooling him in the excessive use of exclamation marks.

[Sampson]

30 minutes ago, toddybad said:

My point was that the problems of the 70s started under Tory rule - which they did - in response to strokes making out they always happen under labour watch.

 

Heath and Wilson.we're both culpable. Callaghan possibly less so as he had got growth moving in the right direction but ultimately NOT giving in to the unions was what caused the winter of discontent. 

 

Thatcher clearly did bring inflation (recession had ended long before then) under control but did also more than double unemployment doing it. Unemployment didn't really start dropping until the Blair government - it was still over 3m during the Major government when that government brought recession about themselves.

 

The crash of 2007/8 was clearly a global phenomenon. 

 

And the whole western world was in recession for 2/3 years in.The 1970s, it really wasn't localised to the UK.

But unemployment was a short-term inevitability. She sold off the mining industry because it was cheaper to by in coal from abroad.

The 70s and oil crash is what saw the world abandon Keynesian theories and protectionism in favour of globalisation and free trade.which I think almost everyone on both sides of the spectrum agrees are good things and have helped improve the lives of billions of people worldwide over the past 30 years or so.

Protectionism was dead - protecting national industry in favour of free trade and not allowing for the different specialisation of nations (as per the Production Possibility Frontier) was gone.

Look, I totally get it was hard for people who lost their jobs at the time, but what other options were there at the time other than to open up markets and international trade and sell off our industry? We would have had to open them up eventually. The coal mines in the UK would have to have been closed to input coal from abroad eventually - free trade was being embraced by the rest of the West and we would've been undercut on every international market had we not also embraced it.

 

I don't think she was perfect - along way from it - but she was clearly what the country needed back in 1979 and she helped pull the country out of its slump and into the modern globalised world.

Edited 14 October 2017 by Sampson

[fuchsntf]

17 hours ago, Sampson said:

Why? Because he believes in Economic Liberalism? So did all 3 major parties until Corbyn got into power (even Ed Milliband and Gordon Brown did) - like Theresa May said the other day - I thought there was a general political consensus on that until Corbyn.

It doesn't make you a Tory to believe in that. I believe in it and have voted for all 3 major parties in the past and will happily vote for all 3 again in the future if I feel I like their ideas at that particular election.

And I really don't think this dislike of individual parties and people looking down on them helps There should be no stigma on being a Tory or a Labour supporter - their ideas change drastically through time (which is why I've never supported one party) all it does is not allow people to take their arguments in.

It reminds me of that old Christopher Hitchens quote - who at the time was a well-known and self-confessed Trotskyite when he said he didn't vote in the 1979 election because he couldn't bring himself to vote Tory, but deep down he knew not voting would allow Thatcher to get into power which he secretly wanted (and he ended up becoming a great admirer of hers) - because he could see like everyone else that the Wilson and Callaghan governments had been a disaster and they constantly bowed to the whims of the trade unions and gave them anything they asked for which was bankrupting the country - why allow that stigma to ever come into play, vote for who you think's best for the country at that particular election, regardless of the name of the party.

And I still find it strange people don't appreciate Thatcher if I'm honest - regardless of your political persuasion. I get that it wasn't easy if you were one who lost your job and identity - absolutely it wasn't! And some of her Social Conservatism was vile - her treatment of gay men during the AIDS crisis especially and Section 28 has rightly been seen by history as evil - and I'm not belittling the people who suffered under her, but she literally saved this country from bankruptcy! She saved the country from run away inflation, huge national debt and a government which would bend to the will of the trade unions and just kept spending and spending and giving into workers' slightest demands and refused free trade for goods which were cheaper in other countries even when it was bankrupting the country - who knows what kind of state the country would've ended up in if Callaghan's government would've got another 5 years, it would likely have been far worse for all of us - she absolutely was what the country needed at that time.

No she wasnt...

And just saying the Unions, shows again wrong perspective. Not all Unions, followed the idea of pulling down the govt.

Not all unions agreed on the strike ulti m atum at the time, like she you have decided to tarnish too many, wrongly with

the same Brush...only a small point, but when unions lost their grounds, so did NHS, because the rehabs, converlescence homes,

Re-education for career centers, closed because Financial union support platforms  were destroyed, Nhs took the un-organised strain.

Many families, WC and MC, lost their all, because Maggies idea towards Of  the "me", the "I" mentality, on high financial backgrounds, plus

Imo she forgot to compete as a woman, and became a male poiltician in a Skirt. She blamed English thugs, but took them into the Rhein

Army.Never once considered the Varieties in the Hysel stadium disaster, Then sacrificed English cannon fodder, in the Falklands, by

Pulling out major ships, auxillary and military  and Military Personnelle, well from the region, that opened up the gates for

Argentinas aggressive move.....If our Presence in the  region  had not been "Played with"...military action wouldnt of took place..

 

Oh well....

Edited 14 October 2017 by fuchsntf

[Sampson]

19 minutes ago, fuchsntf said:

No she wasnt...

And just saying the Unions, shows again wrong perspective. Not all Unions, followed the idea of pulling down the govt.

Not all unions agreed on the strike ulti m atum at the time, like she you have decided to tarnish too many, wrongly with

the same Brush...only a small point, but when unions lost their grounds, so did NHS, because the rehabs, converlescence homes,

Re-education for career centers, closed because Financial union support platforms  were destroyed, Nhs took the un-organised strain.

Many families, WC and MC, lost their all, because Maggies idea towards Of  the "me", the "I" mentality, on high financial backgrounds, plus

Imo she forgot to compete as a woman, and became a male poiltician in a Skirt. She blamed English thugs, but took them into the Rhein

Army.Never once considered the Varieties in the Hysel stadium disaster, Then sacrificed English cannon fodder, in the Falklands, by

Pulling out major ships, auxillary and military  and Military Personnelle, well from the region, that opened up the gates for

Argentinas aggressive move.....If our Presence in the  region  had not been "Played with"...military action wouldnt of took place..

 

Oh well....

I absolutely do sympathise with those who lost their jobs and lives in the mining closes and in the Falklands, fuchsntf! Don't get me wrong.

And I'm absolutely not overlooking the harm she did to many people, but politics is about making hard decisions and I think the decisions she made in her early years were absolutely what a country on its knees needed at the time! And we absolutely needed to embrace free trade, globalisation and free markets and change the shift of our industries at the time.

Edited 14 October 2017 by Sampson