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The Politics Thread 2020


G STAR RAM

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10 minutes ago, Norman said:

A lot of opinions stated as facts as well as lots of exaggerations that have gone unchecked in the self help therapy group too. 

No, there are a lot of opinions stated as opinions, which causes some posters to look for an excuse to get their knickers in a twist so that they can deflect attention away from the argument and move it onto the personal level.

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4 minutes ago, A Ram for All Seasons said:

No, there are a lot of opinions stated as opinions, which causes some posters to look for an excuse to get their knickers in a twist so that they can deflect attention away from the argument and move it onto the personal level.

In your opinion. 

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But apart from taking petty pot-shots at each other, Here's are some FT excerpts from an interview given by the supremely intelligent and absolutely ravishing Priti Patel this morning on 5-live...

Speaking on Radio 5 Live on Wednesday, Ms Patel dismissed concerns about social care and insisted that many providers would be able to recruit staff through the planned new skilled migration route. 

“It’s important to reflect there are over 8m people who are economically inactive, so it’s important that businesses in [the affected] sectors engage with them,” she said.

When her interviewer pointed out that 2.2m of the inactive were students, another 1.9m were looking after families and 2.1m were long-term sick, Ms Patel said: “If we invest in people and also if we put [in] the right investment in terms of new technology and skills, more people would be able to work in many sectors.” 

I find this troubling on a couple of levels.....

1. It seems to be introducing a whole new method into the way UK thinks about its labour market. We had no end of trumpeting of "the number of people in work" as a justification of the ruling party's economic prowess. Now we have a number dropped out of the ether without context or explanation.

2. The term itself is pejorative and extremely harsh, implying some underclass of feckless wasters just awaiting that call from the local cabbage grower/old folks home.

3. It's Priti Patel who to my mind is as risible as Diane Abbott, but for different reasons.

What a 3rd rate cabinet we have - but then it doesn't matter as presumably the Home Office will itself be in Boris' sights for a future land grab?

?

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3 hours ago, Uptherams said:

Bizarre that you are posting about another countries system when the details of the UK's have been released...  

Yes the new British immigration points system that as just been announced. A scheme that Priti Patel is claiming will attract the best and the brightest, to come and work here. While leaders in the business community are claiming that it will cause a shortage of workers in certain low paid sectors. 

Shouldn't the government have consulted with these business leaders before they implemented their immigration system. 

More worryingly for the future, if the high skilled well paid jobs are being filled by foreigners. Could this encourage companies to stop investing in the training of our next generation of workers. Meaning that the only jobs available to them is low paid unskilled jobs, when they leave school.

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16 minutes ago, 1of4 said:

Yes the new British immigration points system that as just been announced. A scheme that Priti Patel is claiming will attract the best and the brightest, to come and work here. While leaders in the business community are claiming that it will cause a shortage of workers in certain low paid sectors. 

Shouldn't the government have consulted with these business leaders before they implemented their immigration system. 

More worryingly for the future, if the high skilled well paid jobs are being filled by foreigners. Could this encourage companies to stop investing in the training of our next generation of workers. Meaning that the only jobs available to them is low paid unskilled jobs, when they leave school.

Beware unintended consequences. it really is not clear to me yet what type of country we are trying to be.

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19 minutes ago, 1of4 said:

While leaders in the business community are claiming that it will cause a shortage of workers in certain low paid sectors. 

Perhaps these worried well paid business leaders would be willing to take a pay cut so that the low paid workers can get a decent wage.

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3 minutes ago, ossieram said:

Perhaps these worried well paid business leaders would be willing to take a pay cut so that the low paid workers can get a decent wage.

Nah - if you force  them to do that, they will just move overseas. That's how I think the logic went when it came to equally distributing wealth a bit more evenly?

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14 hours ago, uttoxram75 said:

Public services will be decimated by a Johnson/Cummings government. Anything and everything is open to profit motivated ideologies. 

Why do the right find it difficult to defend that instead of pretending its not the case?

"Decimated" would infer massive cuts. As things stand, we're set for yet another increase in spend (even if in real terms that equates to a reduction).

We currently have a National Debt of £1.8 trillion, but we had a modest £20 billion budget surplus in 2019, with similar projected for 2020. Even at that rate, we'd still be in debt at the start of the 22nd century. Reducing our debt is good, right? So, there isn't really any extra money for the Government to spend. Maybe redistribute instead?

Pensions, health, education, welfare, etc (the things you want to increase spend on) costs roughly £610b. We can't really do anything to change the interest of £51.7b, and there's £50b of 'account adjustments' too.
So after your 'ring fenced' areas and things we can't alter, we're left with about £150b. The remaining amount is spent on: Defence (£50.3b), 'General Goverment' (£16.9b), 'general economic, commercial and labour' (£13.3b), housing (£8.6b), R&D (£7.3b), agriculture (£5.8b), sports (£4.6b), broadcasting (£4.6b), 'other' (£23.7b).

How much extra did you have in mind when suggesting we need to spend more on public services? Which government functions do you suggest we 'decimate' in order to not 'decimate' public services?

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15 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

"Decimated" would infer massive cuts. As things stand, we're set for yet another increase in spend (even if in real terms that equates to a reduction).

We currently have a National Debt of £1.8 trillion, but we had a modest £20 billion budget surplus in 2019, with similar projected for 2020. Even at that rate, we'd still be in debt at the start of the 22nd century. Reducing our debt is good, right? So, there isn't really any extra money for the Government to spend. Maybe redistribute instead?

Pensions, health, education, welfare, etc (the things you want to increase spend on) costs roughly £610b. We can't really do anything to change the interest of £51.7b, and there's £50b of 'account adjustments' too.
So after your 'ring fenced' areas and things we can't alter, we're left with about £150b. The remaining amount is spent on: Defence (£50.3b), 'General Goverment' (£16.9b), 'general economic, commercial and labour' (£13.3b), housing (£8.6b), R&D (£7.3b), agriculture (£5.8b), sports (£4.6b), broadcasting (£4.6b), 'other' (£23.7b).

How much extra did you have in mind when suggesting we need to spend more on public services? Which government functions do you suggest we 'decimate' in order to not 'decimate' public services?

The economic benefits we will see once we are finally free of the EU will surely help?

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