Politics Thread (encompassing Brexit) - 21 June 2017 onwards

[Guest MattP]

Daily Politics today was quite an eye opener.

 

They had Momentum's Richard Barbrook on who is war gaming for the run on the pound, Isabel Oakshott told him most people in the City thought the Labour economic plan was totally outdated, his response was literally to sit there and call her a "Tory Troll".

 

That's the level of debate we are now at.

 

 

Edited 3 December 2017 by MattP

[Strokes]

4 minutes ago, MattP said:

Daily Politics today was quite an eye opener.

 

They had Momentum's Richard Barbrook on who is the guy war gaming for the run on the pound, Isabel Oakshott told him most people in the City thought the Labour economic plan was totally outdated, his response was literally to sit there and call her a "Tory Troll".

 

That's the level of debate we are now at.

 

 

It’s the standard get out now.

[Rogstanley]

23 minutes ago, Strokes said:

I was just winding you up, you know how you hilariously do sometimes?

So, the economy isn’t doing as bad you have been telling us then? And they are tackling tax avoidance according to that. 

 

From which part of that article have you concluded that the economy isn’t doing badly?

[Strokes]

17 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

 

From which part of that article have you concluded that the economy isn’t doing badly?

UK economy has grown, and profits with it

[Rogstanley]

3 minutes ago, Strokes said:

UK economy has grown, and profits with it

Of course it has grown, the population has grown.

 

Big business profits are at record levels in actual fact. Unless you own a lot of shares and stand to benefit in some way then I can’t see how business making record profits on the back of paying their employees less is a good thing? 

[Webbo]

8 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

Of course it has grown, the population has grown.

 

Big business profits are at record levels in actual fact. Unless you own a lot of shares and stand to benefit in some way then I can’t see how business making record profits on the back of paying their employees less is a good thing? 

Has there ever been growth when profits haven't been up?

[Strokes]

4 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

Of course it has grown, the population has grown.

 

Big business profits are at record levels in actual fact. Unless you own a lot of shares and stand to benefit in some way then I can’t see how business making record profits on the back of paying their employees less is a good thing? 

They aren’t paying them less though are they? Just not as much as they are raising their prices.

We can help increase wages by decreasing the supply of workers, that will encourage businesses to train staff to keep hold of them and wages will increase thus. We have a problem with productivity in this country and lack of training and investment in staffing education is key to this but companies have no reason to do this when cheap low risk unskilled labour is so freely available. 

You blame the government, I blame freedom of movement.

[Izzy]

1 minute ago, Strokes said:

They aren’t paying them less though are they? Just not as much as they are raising their prices.

We can help increase wages by decreasing the supply of workers, that will encourage businesses to train staff to keep hold of them and wages will increase thus. We have a problem with productivity in this country and lack of training and investment in staffing education is key to this but companies have no reason to do this when cheap low risk unskilled labour is so freely available. 

You blame the government, I blame freedom of movement.

[Rogstanley]

26 minutes ago, Strokes said:

They aren’t paying them less though are they? Just not as much as they are raising their prices.

We can help increase wages by decreasing the supply of workers, that will encourage businesses to train staff to keep hold of them and wages will increase thus. We have a problem with productivity in this country and lack of training and investment in staffing education is key to this but companies have no reason to do this when cheap low risk unskilled labour is so freely available. 

You blame the government, I blame freedom of movement.

I think we’ve been through this a number of times but once more, wage growth is always measured after inflation. To do otherwise would render it utterly meaningless. 

 

I asked you to explain what in that article gave you the impression the economy was doing well. You said business profits being up, I’m saying that’s on the back of falling wages so it isn’t actually a good thing for almost everyone.

 

On your points about wages, it’s true that studies have shown a small negative effect on the wage growth of unskilled occupations due to high immigration. That doesn’t explain why wages have fallen for all but the highest earners ie incorporating high skilled and professional workers for whom immigration has had no impact. It also doesn’t explain why wages have also fallen in areas with few immigrants.

 

The Tories have a reputation for being a party who work for the few, effectively transferring wealth from the many to those few, and in the last seven years that’s precisely what they’ve done. Wages for almost everyone have fallen continuously, living standards have recorded their biggest fall for centuries, while big business profits are at record levels and the closed-shop top CEO jobs are paying multi-millions. 

 

What wizardry is at play here, that makes people like you vote for a party who are so obviously acting in a way that is diametrically opposed to your interests I’m not sure I’ll ever know. I can understand a young, impressionable person thinking they want to defend the interests of the establishment on the naive assumption that with enough hard work they might one day be a part of it, but what any older, wiser person is still doing voting for them I can’t comprehend.

 

Time was the working and lower classes used to club together and fight for our rights, for our working conditions, for our wages. Now we just bend over, lube ourselves up and invite penetration. Then when we wake up in the morning and we’re aching from all that shafting we still don’t fight back. Instead we ask our masters if there’s someone else we can blame, and they say sure, here you go, here’s your scapegoat on a plate: immigrants; bloody foreigners. Easy. And we swallow it all up because we wouldn’t want to upset the masters, would we, heaven forbid they might leave us.

 

What a pitiful, weak and feeble society we’ve become. 

Edited 3 December 2017 by Rogstanley

[Strokes]

7 hours ago, Rogstanley said:

I think we’ve been through this a number of times but once more, wage growth is always measured after inflation. To do otherwise would render it utterly meaningless. 

 

I asked you to explain what in that article gave you the impression the economy was doing well. You said business profits being up, I’m saying that’s on the back of falling wages so it isn’t actually a good thing for almost everyone.

 

On your points about wages, it’s true that studies have shown a small negative effect on the wage growth of unskilled occupations due to high immigration. That doesn’t explain why wages have fallen for all but the highest earners ie incorporating high skilled and professional workers for whom immigration has had no impact. It also doesn’t explain why wages have also fallen in areas with few immigrants.

 

The Tories have a reputation for being a party who work for the few, effectively transferring wealth from the many to those few, and in the last seven years that’s precisely what they’ve done. Wages for almost everyone have fallen continuously, living standards have recorded their biggest fall for centuries, while big business profits are at record levels and the closed-shop top CEO jobs are paying multi-millions. 

 

What wizardry is at play here, that makes people like you vote for a party who are so obviously acting in a way that is diametrically opposed to your interests I’m not sure I’ll ever know. I can understand a young, impressionable person thinking they want to defend the interests of the establishment on the naive assumption that with enough hard work they might one day be a part of it, but what any older, wiser person is still doing voting for them I can’t comprehend.

 

Time was the working and lower classes used to club together and fight for our rights, for our working conditions, for our wages. Now we just bend over, lube ourselves up and invite penetration. Then when we wake up in the morning and we’re aching from all that shafting we still don’t fight back. Instead we ask our masters if there’s someone else we can blame, and they say sure, here you go, here’s your scapegoat on a plate: immigrants; bloody foreigners. Easy. And we swallow it all up because we wouldn’t want to upset the masters, would we, heaven forbid they might leave us.

 

What a pitiful, weak and feeble society we’ve become. 

I just wrote out a huge reply to this (which is unlike me) and the page reloaded as i was re reading it and it’s gone. I don’t have time to rewrite it this morning but I will revisit it later.

[Innovindil]

7 hours ago, Rogstanley said:

What a pitiful, weak and feeble society we’ve become. 

Indeed. There was a time when people worked to better themselves, now they just want it handed to them on a plate. 

 

They say here you go, here's your scapegoat on a plate: the rich; filthy rich folk. Easy. And we swallow it all up because we wouldn't want to have to earn our living, heaven forbid it would be tiring. 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

Indeed. There was a time when people worked to better themselves, now they just want it handed to them on a plate. 

 

They say here you go, here's your scapegoat on a plate: the rich; filthy rich folk. Easy. And we swallow it all up because we wouldn't want to have to earn our living, heaven forbid it would be tiring. 

But we all do work.

And our wages are falling.

Yet profits are strong and CEOs are earning more.

It isn't envy or laziness that suggests the proceeds of work should be shared more equally.

 

[Guest]

Financial markets could be over-heating, warns central bank body

Bank for International Settlements’ quarterly health check warns global economy resembles era just before financial crash

 

Lehman Brothers’ collapse came to symbolise the last financial crisis. Now experts are warning again that low interest rates are fuelling unsustainable debt. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Phillip Inman

Published:17:15 GMT+00:00 Sun 3 December 2017

 Follow Phillip Inman

 

Investors are ignoring warning signs that financial markets could be overheating and consumer debts are rising to unsustainable levels, the global body for central banks has warned in its quarterly financial health check.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said the situation in the global economy was similar to the pre-2008 crash era when investors, seeking high returns, borrowed heavily to invest in risky assets, despite moves by central banks to tighten access to credit.

The BIS, known as the central bankers’ bank, said attempts by the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England to choke off risky behaviour by raising interest rates had failed so far and unstable financial bubbles were continuing to grow.

Claudio Borio, the head of the BIS, said central banks might need to reconsider changing the way they communicated base interest rate rises or the speed at which they were increasing rates to jolt investors into recognising the need to calm asset markets.

“The vulnerabilities that have built around the globe during the long period of unusually low interest rates have not gone away. High debt levels, in both domestic and foreign currency, are still there. And so are frothy valuations.

“What’s more, the longer the risk-taking continues, the higher the underlying balance sheet exposures may become. Short-run calm comes at the expense of possible long-run turbulence,” he said.

The warning came as Neil Woodford, one of the UK’s most high-profile fund managers, said stock markets were in danger of crashing, resulting in huge losses for millions of people. 

The founder of Woodford Investment Management, which manages £15bn worth of assets, told the Financial Times that investors were at risk of the market experiencing a repeat of the dotcom crash of the early 2000s. 

Neil Woodford said: ‘There are so many lights flashing red that I am losing count.’ Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Woodford said he was concerned that historically low levels of interest rates in most developed nations over the last decade were pushing asset prices to unsustainable levels.

“Ten years on from the global financial crisis, we are witnessing the product of the biggest monetary policy experiment in history,” he said.

“Investors have forgotten about risk and this is playing out in inflated asset prices and inflated valuations.

“There are so many lights flashing red that I am losing count.”

The BIS said the benign global economy, which is predicted by the International Monetary Fund to see growth accelerate next year to 3.7% from 3.6% this year, was encouraging investors to dismiss concerns about high debt levels and growing asset bubbles.

Economists have become concerned that high-risk investments such as European junk bonds yield similar returns to relatively safe investments such as US government bonds. There are also concerns that some of the most popular investment vehicles such as exchange-traded funds are backed with vast sums of borrowed money.

Woodford also noted that measures of volatility in financial markets had stayed low for an unprecedentedly long period, indicating that investors were betting that the current economic benign period would continue and asset prices would increase for several more years.

The BIS was one of the few organisations to warn during 2006 and 2007 about the unstable levels of bank lending on risky assets such as the US subprime mortgages that eventually led to the Lehman Brothers crash and the financial crisis.

The organisation’s chief economist at the time, William White, who now chairs the OECD’s review committee, warned last year that global debt levels had escalated to unstable levels largely in response to almost zero interest rates to create a situation that was “worse than 2007”.

Borio was more circumspect, but said the current attempts to tighten credit with gradual interest rate rises had failed to deter risky behaviour.

“Can a tightening be considered effective if financial conditions … ease?,” he said.

“Even as the Fed has proceeded with its tightening, overall financial conditions have eased. If financial conditions are the main transmission channel for tighter policy, has policy, in effect, been tightened at all?”

The Bank of England has repeatedly expressed concern about mounting consumer debt in the UK. The BIS has ranked the UK among the most vulnerable countries in terms of households’ debt service burdens, especially if interest rates were to be raised rapidly.

Last week the UK’s central bank reported that consumer debt in October had grown by 9.6%, more than four times the average for wage increases of 2.2%

Edited 4 December 2017 by Guest

[GaelicFox]

The UK and ireland have failed to reach an agreement on the Border solution 

 

Teresa May’s government is in serious trouble now the deadline of the 4th Of Dec cannot be met now ! 

 

The clever paddys who need the UK to remain in the Customs union and single market have certainly put May in a corner 

 

these are very interesting times the markets open soon will be interesting to see what happens 

[Guest MattP]

34 minutes ago, toddybad said:

But we all do work.

And our wages are falling.

Yet profits are strong and CEOs are earning more.

It isn't envy or laziness that suggests the proceeds of work should be shared more equally.

But it won't be shared more equally will it?

 

Wealth redistribution policies have been tried and they'll continue to fail, then you'll be blaming the rich bogeyman again as everyone gets poorer. 

[Innovindil]

43 minutes ago, toddybad said:

But we all do work.

And our wages are falling.

Yet profits are strong and CEOs are earning more.

It isn't envy or laziness that suggests the proceeds of work should be shared more equally.

 

We know that's not true don't we. 

 

Our wages are falling? Of course they are, you've got 24 people applying for every peasant level job, 19 applying for every mid level job and 8 applying for every high level job. Why would any business offer a higher wage if you've got bags of people willing to do your work for less. So your options are either get a skill that pays, or do what you can to lower the fish in the job market. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/08/shortage-of-factory-workers-starts-to-push-up-pay-rates

 

People have to offer a higher wage if they can't get cheap staff. It's nothing new, I've seen it with my own eyes and my own wage packet. 

 

(@strokes you don't have to click the guardian article, the headline literally spells the gist of it out ) 

[Rogstanley]

2 hours ago, Innovindil said:

Indeed. There was a time when people worked to better themselves, now they just want it handed to them on a plate. 

 

They say here you go, here's your scapegoat on a plate: the rich; filthy rich folk. Easy. And we swallow it all up because we wouldn't want to have to earn our living, heaven forbid it would be tiring. 

I believe we work among the longest hours in the deveoped world and have quite low unemployment so clearly it's just not true that people aren't willing to work.

 

It is however a fact that under this government we've seen wages fall and living standards recording their biggest fall since the mid-1800's while the rich have been given tax breaks and their wages and wealth has sky rocketed.

 

Come on guys, it doesn't take a genius to see what has been going on does it. There's no shame in admitting some of the things you believed about the Tories benefiting you have been proven incorrect.

[Rogstanley]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

But it won't be shared more equally will it?

 

Wealth redistribution policies have been tried and they'll continue to fail, then you'll be blaming the rich bogeyman again as everyone gets poorer. 

Some of the most successul countries in the modern world have what you would call wealth redistribution policies. We've discussed the nordics and Iceland. Trying to claim they don't work is just plain dishonesty because clearly they do. Meanwhile I'm still waiting for an example of a country that has lowered taxes and achieved a successul outcome.

 

How about the US under Reagan?

[Innovindil]

47 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

I believe we work among the longest hours in the deveoped world and have quite low unemployment so clearly it's just not true that people aren't willing to work.

 

It is however a fact that under this government we've seen wages fall and living standards recording their biggest fall since the mid-1800's while the rich have been given tax breaks and their wages and wealth has sky rocketed.

 

Come on guys, it doesn't take a genius to see what has been going on does it. There's no shame in admitting some of the things you believed about the Tories benefiting you have been proven incorrect.

The tories have benefitted me, because I put myself in a position where my labour is worth more than an unskilled Eastern European. 

 

Come on, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. 

[Buce]

1 hour ago, Innovindil said:

We know that's not true don't we. 

 

Our wages are falling? Of course they are, you've got 24 people applying for every peasant level job, 19 applying for every mid level job and 8 applying for every high level job. Why would any business offer a higher wage if you've got bags of people willing to do your work for less. So your options are either get a skill that pays, or do what you can to lower the fish in the job market. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/08/shortage-of-factory-workers-starts-to-push-up-pay-rates

 

People have to offer a higher wage if they can't get cheap staff. It's nothing new, I've seen it with my own eyes and my own wage packet. 

 

(@strokes you don't have to click the guardian article, the headline literally spells the gist of it out ) 

 

Because if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

 

Any businessman worth his salt knows that,

Edited 4 December 2017 by Buce

[Innovindil]

7 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Because if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

 

Any businessman worth his salt knows that,

You put enough monkeys on typewriters they'll eventually give you Shakespeare. 

 

Which is pretty much the problem with productivity. Why would they pay to improve monkeys if enough of them can do the exact same thing, usually for a much cheaper outlay. 

[Buce]

2 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

You put enough monkeys on typewriters they'll eventually give you Shakespeare. 

 

Which is pretty much the problem with productivity. Why would they pay to improve monkeys if enough of them can do the exact same thing, usually for a much cheaper outlay. 

 

Because they don't do the same thing, and plenty of studies have shown that happy, motivated workers are more productive.

 

Do you run a business?

[Realist Guy In The Room]

Why is this argument even taking place?

 

Lets be honest here.  The policies of today are designed to keep momey away from the poorest in society so those in the middle upwards stay comfortable and continue to cash generate.

 

If you’re in that block of middle up (as I am), dont pretend that you dont know this is the case and certainly dont pretend that you give a shit.

 

I vote Tory because I know they look after me and people in similar position to me.

 

I dont want poor people all of a sudden earning £15 per hour and sitting at the table next to me at a restaurant.  I want them earning £7.50, serving me my latte making me feel superior.

 

Not sure why so many people have an issue admitting that and try and mask it with economic argument.

[Innovindil]

5 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Because they don't do the same thing, and plenty of studies have shown that happy, motivated workers are more productive.

 

Do you run a business?

Of course they do. You can pay millions to have a fleet of robots sort your orders out, then pay to train people to look after them, program them and what have you, or you can have 100 low skilled people running around on peanuts sorting orders. 

 

Much easier to replace low skilled workers than spend millions on investing in technology to improve productivity. 

 

4 minutes ago, Realist Guy In The Room said:

Why is this argument even taking place?

 

Lets be honest here.  The policies of today are designed to keep momey away from the poorest in society so those in the middle upwards stay comfortable and continue to cash generate.

 

If you’re in that block of middle up (as I am), dont pretend that you dont know this is the case and certainly dont pretend that you give a shit.

 

I vote Tory because I know they look after me and people in similar position to me.

 

I dont want poor people all of a sudden earning £15 per hour and sitting at the table next to me at a restaurant.  I want them earning £7.50, serving me my latte making me feel superior.

 

Not sure why so many people have an issue admitting that and try and mask it with economic argument.

Already admitted to this tbf. Just making the argument that I wasn't born into the middle up, and there are ways to get there for even bang average people. 

[Wymsey]

21 minutes ago, Realist Guy In The Room said:

Why is this argument even taking place?

 

Lets be honest here.  The policies of today are designed to keep momey away from the poorest in society so those in the middle upwards stay comfortable and continue to cash generate.

 

If you’re in that block of middle up (as I am), dont pretend that you dont know this is the case and certainly dont pretend that you give a shit.

 

I vote Tory because I know they look after me and people in similar position to me.

 

I dont want poor people all of a sudden earning £15 per hour and sitting at the table next to me at a restaurant.  I want them earning £7.50, serving me my latte making me feel superior.

 

Not sure why so many people have an issue admitting that and try and mask it with economic argument.

Not sure if serious?

I know some on the minimum wage but are decent people and quite honestly deserve better for how much they do.

What makes you think that you deserve more £, as you sound quite snobbish here?