General Erection 2019

[The King Of Swing]

Looking back Tom Walker (Jonathan Pie) basically saw this coming. One of his videos from a while back actually highlighted that Labour were bleeding voters over Brexit.

Sadly unless Johnson monumentally screws up (always a possibility) I don't think it matters who leads Labour for the foreseeable future. They'll be in for a kicking regardless because the Tory press have the government they want.

I suspect that he'll play it safe for a while before going full Emperor Cunt.

I think the people saying that his majority will result in him being less of a cunt are clutching at straws to make the best of a shit situation.

[Keith Houchen]

There was a letter in Viz about 30 years ago that stuck with me and I hear it every time the good old days was mentioned.  "I remember the good old days when you could leave your front door unlocked and your kids could catch polio down the swimming baths"

 

EDIT - Speaking of old people knowing better than people younger than them..

 

 

Edited December 16, 2019 by Keith Houchen
If u read this u r gay

[MPDTT]

23 minutes ago, Joe Blog said:

@MPDTT you keep mentioning the Labour Manifesto. Can I ask what you disliked about it? 

It's tough to find anything I did like! I don't have long as I need to go out, but here is a sample:

1. Tax rises - no thanks! Even though Labour claimed the income tax rise would only hit people earning over £80, the IFS lampooned that

2. Hiking corporation tax to 26%, implementing a £10 living wage and aspiring for a 4 day week (albeit within a decade) would all hurt business and cost jobs. Just shocking for UK PLC! I support a low tax, low regulation economy that allows people the retain more of their hard earning income. 

3. Unions - they wanted to give unions more power - sectoral collective bargaining, a return to secondary picketing, remove restrictions on industrial action...just a return to the 70s! Basically undo all that Thatcher achieved following the winter of discontent, ensuring militant unions can't hold the country to ransom. No thank you. I favour further limiting or even banning industrial action. Unions were relevant when employment law wasn't robust enough. Now it is. I'd ban strike action in a whole raft of industries starting with rail and airlines. 

4. Public ownership - He wanted to nationalise everything. Again, no thank you. I have zero confidence that the public sector can run rail, water or utility companies better than the private sector and I much prefer the prospect of small government

5. Brexit......"I will lead the country, but won't take a position on the most important issue of a generation". Oh, and even if he did go back to negotiate a new deal in 6 months, it was a ridiculous policy as the EU would have no motivation to give them any deal that was any good whatsoever given they would have known it was going back to the people. 

6. Free tuition fees. No thanks - this is a gimmick. its morally right that the people who benefit from the higher education in the form of higher salaries and life chances should also then pay for the cost of it. Free fees for everyone is not something I would support (although I would support it for designated subjects that the economy badly needs eg doctors, nurses....areas where skills gaps are identified). In truth they are not fees either - they are a tax supplement on those who go into higher education and is perfectly justified. Alternative would be to reverse Blair's vision of sending 50% of young people to university,

7. Far too high public spending - spending far more than we can afford, borrowing ridiculously and changing the rules of how borrowing is measured to try and fiddle it. Labour would bankrupt us. 

I could go on and on...I haven't even got to social housing. But I think I've given enough reasons as to why I would never support such a manifesto.

[Devon Malcolm]

On 12/9/2019 at 8:45 AM, hallicks said:

Don't feed the troll, y'all. Nobody's that much of a sociopath. 

This didn't age well.

[Max Power]

Undo all that Thatcher achieved?

Fuck off.

[neil]

22 minutes ago, Max Power said:

Undo all that Thatcher achieved?

Fuck off.

Honestly posts like this can "Fuck off". Regardless of what you may think of his post, at least it was actually put together and contained his collected thoughts. If you want to disagree with him go ahead, but enough with the one line insult posts.

[stumobir]

1 hour ago, MPDTT said:

It's tough to find anything I did like! I don't have long as I need to go out, but here is a sample:

1. Tax rises - no thanks! Even though Labour claimed the income tax rise would only hit people earning over £80, the IFS lampooned that

2. Hiking corporation tax to 26%, implementing a £10 living wage and aspiring for a 4 day week (albeit within a decade) would all hurt business and cost jobs. Just shocking for UK PLC! I support a low tax, low regulation economy that allows people the retain more of their hard earning income. 

3. Unions - they wanted to give unions more power - sectoral collective bargaining, a return to secondary picketing, remove restrictions on industrial action...just a return to the 70s! Basically undo all that Thatcher achieved following the winter of discontent, ensuring militant unions can't hold the country to ransom. No thank you. I favour further limiting or even banning industrial action. Unions were relevant when employment law wasn't robust enough. Now it is. I'd ban strike action in a whole raft of industries starting with rail and airlines. 

4. Public ownership - He wanted to nationalise everything. Again, no thank you. I have zero confidence that the public sector can run rail, water or utility companies better than the private sector and I much prefer the prospect of small government

5. Brexit......"I will lead the country, but won't take a position on the most important issue of a generation". Oh, and even if he did go back to negotiate a new deal in 6 months, it was a ridiculous policy as the EU would have no motivation to give them any deal that was any good whatsoever given they would have known it was going back to the people. 

6. Free tuition fees. No thanks - this is a gimmick. its morally right that the people who benefit from the higher education in the form of higher salaries and life chances should also then pay for the cost of it. Free fees for everyone is not something I would support (although I would support it for designated subjects that the economy badly needs eg doctors, nurses....areas where skills gaps are identified). In truth they are not fees either - they are a tax supplement on those who go into higher education and is perfectly justified. Alternative would be to reverse Blair's vision of sending 50% of young people to university,

7. Far too high public spending - spending far more than we can afford, borrowing ridiculously and changing the rules of how borrowing is measured to try and fiddle it. Labour would bankrupt us. 

I could go on and on...I haven't even got to social housing. But I think I've given enough reasons as to why I would never support such a manifesto.

1. So you reckon there's no investment needed then? Happy with our Victorian railways and ports? Our NHS in the worst condition it's ever been in? Head Teachers writing to parents asking for supplies and monetary donations? Mental Health and Social Care services that would make other Western European nations blush. Or let me guess, you would like to see improvements in these, you just don't want to pay an extra couple of hundred quid a year for it.

2. HIKING!! Corporation tax to a level lower than that of Germany, France, Japan, Belgium etc etc etc and lower than at any point under your apparent idol Thatcher. And an actual living wage that would mean people might just be able to feed themselves and heat their homes without charity handouts, what kind of nonsense Utopia is this that's being offered?

3. Yeah, let's continue to make comparisons to almost 50 years ago. In fact, let's just exhume Thatcher and join North Korea as a necrocracy and basque in a zero-hour contract, neoliberal paradise where employers can carry out arbitrary sackings and you'll pay for it through the nose if you decide to take it to tribunal. 

4. Public Ownership never works, it's why I'm glad Germany, Netherlands and France own our railway franchises and subsidise their own public transport with the profits made off ours. Also makes me feel really secure in the knowledge that China will own a large percentage of our nuclear energy output. God forbid they should get their hands on 5G but nuclear energy is safe as houses with them.

5. Fair enough.

6.  Why should someone saddle themselves with £30k debt just to get a reasonably well paid job? Why should companies make no contribution to the training and education of the staff they seek to employ and profit off of? If you go to Uni, get a well paid job then you pay higher rates of tax, you shouldn't be paying twice. My better half is a doctor, she had/has over £50k of student debt, she lives in London and earns less than a tube driver but has to pay back several hundreds of pounds a month because she had the audacity to go to Uni to get a degree which means she may end up saving you or a member of your family's life.  And this is without mention of the £600 exams she still has to sit regularly and pay for out of her own pocket. 

7. We've cut public spending to a record low and as a result we have the slowest growing economy in the G7, if you don't spend money in places then you pay for it in others. That seems to be accepted by everyone other than the Tories.

In summary, what a load of Ayn Rand, myopic, Daily Mail bullshit you've posted. You're Lib Dem mask has well and truly slipped and quelle surprise there's a grotty little Tory under there. I hope you never have to rely on the welfare state or any other public service for that matter because you're in for a bit of a fright. 

Edit: I still want to know why Rebecca Long-Bailey would be such an awful leader?

Edited December 16, 2019 by stumobir

[Keith Houchen]

With regard to Student Debt, isn’t it more of a bursary type deal? Don’t you only pay it back once you hit a wage threshold?  I know it’s something that get on the tits of Martin Lewis. 
 

 

[Ronnie]

24 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

With regard to Student Debt, isn’t it more of a bursary type deal? Don’t you only pay it back once you hit a wage threshold?  I know it’s something that get on the tits of Martin Lewis. 
 

 

Yes, it's an additional payroll tax which kicks in once you're earning around £26k.

[David]

10 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

I think this is the key point. Johnson has to get Brexit done in the next 5 years. How this is perceived will be key to the next election. If it looks like he has got us out of the EU and done various trade deals around the world that is half the battle won. There is a strong sentiment around here though that getting Brexit done includes sending home all eastern European immigrants, and possibly all immigrants.  If he doesn't manage that a lot of the racist locals will not be happy. 

I may be the only one thinking this, but five years in politics is a long fucking time. By the time the next election rolls around (if it takes that long, of course) much of what was promised in 2019 will have been forgotten, or will be easily explained away. 

Even if the "racist locals" aren't happy, they'll still be there, they'll still be pissed off at the intellectual snobs who look down their nose at them and call them racists, and they'll still vote accordingly. And by accordingly, I mean that they'll vote the exact opposite of whichever party is being championed by those they see as looking down on them and calling them racists.

It's been mentioned in this thread already post-election, but this type of tactic will never work. You'll never convince anyone to see your way of thinking by calling them racists. By all means, lay into the actual racists who are still a fringe section of society. The EDL/Tommy Robinson types. Let them have it.

But, if someone voted for Brexit, and then decided to vote Conservative rather than follow in their fathers footsteps and vote Labour, they have to be won back. It's a simple numbers game. And the "you're old, you don't know anything, you're a racist twat" approach most likely isn't going to get that done.

As much as I hate to say it, Boris and his chums are already reinforcing the correct approach with his "one nation" bollocks. Of course it's nonsense, but at least he (or those around him more likely) know exactly what they need to be seen to be saying in order to maintain support.

Like it or not, Johnson and his party know exactly what has to be done in order to win these fucking things. They are master at this game. If those on the left can't see how things have played out over the past five years or so and recognise that the approach they've taken isn't working then there's not much hope.

 

[Devon Malcolm]

17 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Yes, it's an additional payroll tax which kicks in once you're earning around £26k.

I think mine is down at £30k and I've never paid a penny of it. But it always sits there, whenever I do my tax return (as I just did), reminding me that if I earn 'too much' that I'll be paying the fucking thing off.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

I haven't called anyone racist @David but I have observed plenty of racism, and had people say racist stuff to me because they think by the look of me that I agree with them. It's not my fault that I have the appearance of a man who looks like he should be making and selling pork pies and scotch eggs whilst shouting BREXIT MEANS BREXIT is it. I do look like gammon so it does seem to encourage other gammon, mostly strangers to look to me for support when they say something that is clearly racist. I am always polite but I always make it clear I dont agree with them. 

As for getting the job done, people choose the facts they want to believe now, even if those facts are not true. The way for the Left to win is to stop being so outraged when the Tories lie, because people want to believe the lie, so telling people its lie gets you nowhere. The only way to win is to come up with a better, more credible lie. That is something the Left needs to do better. 

People have always lied to win elections, social media just gives you a broader scope to spread your lies over a greater area. 

[Loki]

2 hours ago, MPDTT said:

Alternative would be to reverse Blair's vision of sending 50% of young people to university,

This would be my preferred solution.  In the old days, your local education authority would pay for your tuition fees.  They could do so because less people went to university.

The ideal of 50% of people going to university was that you'd suddenly have this huge generation of super-educated types ready to leap into banking, the law, engineering, and so on, transforming the UK into an intellectual utopia.

What we got was hundreds of thousands of kids saddling themselves with tens of thousands of pounds of debt to achieve a degree in media studies, or fashion, or photography, or hairdressing, or music production - degrees which essentially prepared them for nothing at the end of it as there are either very few jobs in that area, or an academic qualification is not needed.  What we need are more kids doing technical courses and learning trades, which was what used to happen before this explosion in higher education.

I teach at a couple of universities, and it's basically a massive scam.  So many students are completely unsuited to the sort of academic work that is required for a course to qualify as a "degree", and so are frankly wasting their time and money when their talents lie in other areas, and a non-academic higher education qualification could give them practical skills that are in constant demand in the job market.

In a class of say 10 undergrads, 5 will drop out in the first year, and of the other 5 maybe one will actually go on to get a job that relates to their specific course.  It can be quite dispiriting.

[Keith Houchen]

Just prefixing this with me being a pinko commie prick. It sounds a little like Labours pay a little bit more for the money you get over 80k, albeit with the threshold being a third of that. 

[Carbomb]

11 hours ago, Loki said:

This would be my preferred solution.  In the old days, your local education authority would pay for your tuition fees.  They could do so because less people went to university.

The ideal of 50% of people going to university was that you'd suddenly have this huge generation of super-educated types ready to leap into banking, the law, engineering, and so on, transforming the UK into an intellectual utopia.

What we got was hundreds of thousands of kids saddling themselves with tens of thousands of pounds of debt to achieve a degree in media studies, or fashion, or photography, or hairdressing, or music production - degrees which essentially prepared them for nothing at the end of it as there are either very few jobs in that area, or an academic qualification is not needed.  What we need are more kids doing technical courses and learning trades, which was what used to happen before this explosion in higher education.

I teach at a couple of universities, and it's basically a massive scam.  So many students are completely unsuited to the sort of academic work that is required for a course to qualify as a "degree", and so are frankly wasting their time and money when their talents lie in other areas, and a non-academic higher education qualification could give them practical skills that are in constant demand in the job market.

In a class of say 10 undergrads, 5 will drop out in the first year, and of the other 5 maybe one will actually go on to get a job that relates to their specific course.  It can be quite dispiriting.

My approach also.

Blair's intention was to basically enable the education system to churn out loads of graduates who could then staff his vision of London as the world's financial services centre. But, starting with Thatcher abolishing the Industrial Training Boards, and Major and Blair continuing the "good work", we now have a skilled blue-collar shortfall. 

If not directly bring back the ITBs, something needs to be set up to ensure more widespread blue-collar training. There also needs to be a massive campaign to reverse the decades of denigration that the blue-collar sector has sustained through successive Tory and New Labour governments.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Carbomb