Re: Winston Churchill and crossing the house degenerating to crossing your legs

[srb7677]

The NHS was great when it started.

40 years of constant government meddling and creeping privatisation have clearly done it no good. So your solution is a massive dose of more of the same?

[srb7677]

Take you blinkers off for goodness sake.

, ,

That's right up there with Lenin telling me not to be such a communist,

[T00ts]

And yet, you want to abolish the NHS.

The NHS was great when it started. I remember when we paid the GP per visit. What it has become is of no real benefit to you or me. If the money it is given was better used then by all means it should stay but it is mismanaged and wasteful and simply too big now and just because it was started by Labour post war we should sanctify it. It will eventually implode as is already evident. No organisation that can demand annual funding and be pretty confident that by some means or other they will get it has any incentive to be run properly. We cannot and should not fund them as we do. 

[Borchester]

And yet, you want to abolish the NHS.

Save the NHS and have a land fit for hypochondriacs !!

[srb7677]

Neither do I.

And yet, you want to abolish the NHS.

[T00ts]

Perhaps you ought to be honest before asking me to be. For one thing you are dishonestly making out that I want the rich to give it all up. Rubbish. I simply want them to pay their dues and stop using property speculation as a means of leaching off everyone else. And why should I give up my social flat when the private sector only has extortionate rents and zero security of tenure to offer, and few protections for tenants? Fix this and then get back to me. And what if I was rich you ask. Well I buy lottery tickets sometimes with the slim hope of becoming rich so of course I am not avers to the idea, . But I would be happy enough to pay my dues in taxes. I would probably buy my social flat as a Plymouth base and buy a modest house somewhere nicer to live in. My flat would be donated back to my social landlord when I no longer wanted it, and willed back to that landlord in the event of my death. I would most definitely use some of my wealth to back those calling for people like me to pay a bit more in taxes, especially re property investments, and support rent control and suchlike. Because what I believe is right is not subject to personal self interest - a concept mostly alien to Tories I know. I will never forget where I came from.

Neither do I. 

[srb7677]

Be honest. If the boot was on the other foot and you were living 'rich' as you see it, would you be happy to give it all up when you have struggled up to those heights just to watch it wasted?

Perhaps you ought to be honest before asking me to be. For one thing you are dishonestly making out that I want the rich to give it all up. Rubbish. I simply want them to pay their dues and stop using property speculation as a means of leaching off everyone else. And why should I give up my social flat when the private sector only has extortionate rents and zero security of tenure to offer, and few protections for tenants? Fix this and then get back to me. And what if I was rich you ask. Well I buy lottery tickets sometimes with the slim hope of becoming rich so of course I am not averse to the idea, . But I would be happy enough to pay my dues in taxes. I would probably buy my social flat as a Plymouth base and buy a modest house somewhere nicer to live in. My flat would be donated back to my social landlord when I no longer wanted it, and willed back to that landlord in the event of my death. I would most definitely use some of my wealth to back those calling for people like me to pay a bit more in taxes, especially re property investments, and support rent control and suchlike. Because what I believe is right is not subject to personal self interest - a concept mostly alien to Tories I know. I will never forget where I came from.

[T00ts]

Are the foodbanks a figment of my imagination? And have you not added 2 and 2 to make 4? Those living in social housing have more because they have much lower rents, and many social housing tenants work. I myself am one who does. There are tenants in my block who don't. They don't have cars. I do, one less than three years old. I could afford neither to work in my current job nor run a car if I had to pay some greedy private landlord the usual rip off rent.

And you seem to expect the poverty you describe in former decades - all of which occurred at a time where often only one parent worked - should be what is expected of people today. Maybe it was like that in former years though it might have had a lot to do with postwar rationing. But when I grew up in the 70s there was no need for food banks, house prices were within range of a majority, social housing was widely available and private rents were capped. And we mostly coped well enough with just one wage earner. My mum was always at home when I came home from school.

If you cannot see how most of us have gotten poorer since then largely but not exclusively due to massive wealth redistribution from poor to rich via the processes resulting from a manufactured housing crisis, then you really do need to get out more. And of course nothing is done about this because those in charge are laughing all the way to the bank.

So you grew up with my children. So hear it from the adult viewpoint. I grew up in a Council House. My parents both worked from the time I was born. By 7 I was latch key kid who had to light the fire and get dinner started for them to get home. The aim for both of them was to get us out of the council estate. They managed it by the time I was 15 but I had been raised to expect better with the style and manners to fit. That's the difference. They worked hard to give me a better life and I have taken up that role with my kids and given them a better life by sheer hard work and yes some deprivation. I am lucky enough that they have now worked on and my grandchildren will climb again. I watched as Labour Unions virtually took over the country and wrecked it. There have been many ups and downs over the years as Governments tried things and made mistakes but I only have patience with those who try to bring people up not settle for mediocrity. Even in education the Left are frightened of the bright child. They can't cope.
Forget about the bringing down the rich, get ambitious. Don't settle for a subsidised house if you can do better for yourself and your children, and leave that house for someone else to use who is not so well off as you. Take it from me I have yet to see any Labour Government improve anyone's lot. It is all smoke and mirrors through looking as though they are impoverishing the rich and giving to you. The difference is that the rich are usually the ones who have stuck up two fingers at those who want to bring them down., Why should they when they have usually worked jolly hard to achieve their lifestyle just to watch those 'working for the people' fritter it away? Many truly rich people give more than expected to others, they just don't sing about it.
Be honest. If the boot was on the other foot and you were living 'rich' as you see it, would you be happy to give it all up when you have struggled up to those heights just to watch it wasted? Probably not. Take you blinkers off for goodness sake.

[Thomas]

 
It suits Labour to see huge swathes of strugglers but their idea of equality is to drive everyone down to that level presumably to make them feel better, instead of bringing them up. They have done it for years

Thanks toots.

Honestly , as a glaswegian i have said the same thing for years and years , and my old man used to say it to me before. This^^^^^^^!

Totally spot on.

[Thomas]

It was explicitly stated that spending on infrastructure would be financed by public borrowing, which is no different to what Bozo promised in 2019. As for the other costings in the 2017 manifesto, it remains the case that the Tory one had no costings at all at the time. And yet, even if Labour's sums did not fully add up, the extra spending involved was a fraction of what Sunak has subsequently done, much of it wastefully, like the £25 billion thrown away on the utterly useless track and trace fiasco. Not to mention the billions thrown away into the pockets if various shysters with the right political connections - curruption on an epic scale. If the money was there for this it could easily have been there for Labour's plans.

An essential component of their plan would have recalibrated the economy by reducing housing costs, capping rents, gradually increasing the supply of social housing and cracking down on housing as an investment by the wealthy elites, as well as stimulating affordable housing to buy construction. At the moment vast sums of wealth are being unproductively locked up in bricks and mortar, the cost of which is sucking an ever greater percentage of earnings out of peoples' pockets and acting as a break on consumer spending for the benefit of a relative few. Labour's plan to change all this at the time would have reduced the welfare bill and boosted economic activity by reducing housing costs and thereby leaving more money in peoples' pockets. The current economic set up re housing is economic madness but nothing ever gets done to fix it because the minority who benefit from it includes most Tory and Labour MPs and their mates and relatives. We need to break the two party system to get any kind of meaningful change now, south of the border anyway. You guys up there have the option of changing things for yourselves by getting the hell out.

Dont have much time this morning to give an in depth reply , but i have to point out steve you consistently mention labours 2017 manifesto , and the two words you regularly use are "popular" and "costed".

The first is undobubtedly true , meaningless out of context , the latter dubious at best.

Of course the 2017 manifesto was popular.  It doesnt take any kind of political ingenuity to stand on a milkcrate and offer the great unwashed a bagfull of uncosted freebies steve. Anyone could do it and it would be popular.

The fact remains though it wasnt popular  enough to win the election.

Second point is every manifesto the labour party tell us is "costed". Thats a given. I remember as i said every party , the media , prominent business groups and figures calling labour out on their freebies.

When i get the chance i think i will order tha book and have a read at it , that was mentioned in my last post. For us now to find an internal e amil was circulating from the labour parties own staff to quote.... ""highlighted some of the problems with Labour's cost estimates, including the lack of detail on capital spending, as well as some individual costings that were implausible or entirely absent".


Privately, however, their staff had told them their figures didn't add up. The email identified problems with "almost every area of the manifesto, including welfare, health, education, the economy, transport, policing and prisons", according to Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh, authors of The British General Election of 2017, the latest in the respected series of academic election books. The email estimated, "even conservatively", that the manifesto implied "billions of unaccounted spending"

...is pretty damning.

Its pointeles in your post above telling me about all the bad things the tories do........which seems to be a default position of many labour supprters. I have pointed out numerous times how in scotland the snp and other parties that arent tories, have flagged up the corruption  , fiscal incompetence and tax and spend narrative that previous labour adminsitratios have had at every level.

Its not just the tories who point these things out , its every party outside labour.

Corbyn was an extremely poor politician. I rate him higher than starmer , not by much , but poorer than many previous labour leaders. I pointed out to you before my best mate in paisley was a long time labour member and activist , who was neither blairite or cobynite , and many of the things he told me which led him to leave the party was shocking , including the momentum boot boys comeing up from england and intimidation at all levels and ranks of the scottish branch.

Final thing i will point out is you keep talking about me as though im some sort of political peer of yours in scotland who wants the same politics as you , and has scot indy as a get out clause.

Steve can i point out again , im not a socialist or left winger. I dont know how many  times i need to say i dont want a one party socialist left wing state for an indy scotland. I merely want a normal country , independent , normal politics , and he freedom to offer my vote to the highest bidder in the interests of me and my family.

All i ask in return is they put an indy scotland first , and the scottish people.

[papasmurf]

If you cannot see how most of us have gotten poorer since then largely but not exclusively due to massive wealth redistribution from poor to rich via the processes resulting from a manufactured housing crisis, then you really do need to get out more. And of course nothing is done about this because those in charge are laughing all the way to the bank.

Quite, there are massive poverty problems which can only increase in April. where I live with many causes but not being helped by the damage Brexit is doing and the three wise monkeys attitude to the increases in poverty and the dramatic rise in the need for food banks being down to Tory austerity and latterly Brexit.

[srb7677]

Gosh I didn't mean to set you off on a diatribe. It suits the Labour psyche to dwell on poverty but I come from an age where children had toes cut out of their shoes when they outgrew them. Their clothes were far too small most of the time and new clothes were unheard of. I had friends who used wooden boxes as furniture.  I'm not sure that the real poverty exists in the same way today. What has happened I suspect, is that people are aware of what others have. They look at their parents and expect to have everything the same way at the beginning of their working life instead of doing what we had to do and work for it and build it over decades. I am not saying that there is no-one struggling but it does define what is really meant by struggling.

Eg near me on a housing estate which is a combination of social housing and private. The homes that appear to have everything from huge TVs to several newish cars and whose kids have every IT trend going are those in the social housing. They appear not to work yet seem very well off in comparison. Their houses are equipped with all mod cons including solar panels. The private houses are the ones struggling. My son in law, an estate agent, told me to look through a new build housing estate and see that all the houses with everything like outside lights, solar etc are the social builds.
It suits Labour to see huge swathes of strugglers but their idea of equality is to drive everyone down to that level presumably to make them feel better, instead of bringing them up. They have done it for years. None of us are ever any better under Labour ideology they level us all down except themselves. I am not an ilk by the way and was raised in a staunch Labour household, but I have lived long enough and experienced enough to understand that no political party has all the answers but am capable of seeing those with the most mistakes.

Are the foodbanks a figment of my imagination? And have you not added 2 and 2 to make 4? Those living in social housing have more because they have much lower rents, and many social housing tenants work. I myself am one who does. There are tenants in my block who don't. They don't have cars. I do, one less than three years old. I could afford neither to work in my current job nor run a car if I had to pay some greedy private landlord the usual rip off rent.

And you seem to expect the poverty you describe in former decades - all of which occurred at a time where often only one parent worked - should be what is expected of people today. Maybe it was like that in former years though it might have had a lot to do with postwar rationing. But when I grew up in the 70s there was no need for food banks, house prices were within range of a majority, social housing was widely available and private rents were capped. And we mostly coped well enough with just one wage earner. My mum was always at home when I came home from school.

If you cannot see how most of us have gotten poorer since then largely but not exclusively due to massive wealth redistribution from poor to rich via the processes resulting from a manufactured housing crisis, then you really do need to get out more. And of course nothing is done about this because those in charge are laughing all the way to the bank.

[Borchester]

Gosh I didn't mean to set you off on a diatribe. It suits the Labour psyche to dwell on poverty but I come from an age where children had toes cut out of their shoes when they outgrew them. Their clothes were far too small most of the time and new clothes were unheard of. I had friends who used wooden boxes as furniture.  I'm not sure that the real poverty exists in the same way today. What has happened I suspect, is that people are aware of what others have. They look at their parents and expect to have everything the same way at the beginning of their working life instead of doing what we had to do and work for it and build it over decades. I am not saying that there is no-one struggling but it does define what is really meant by struggling.

Eg near me on a housing estate which is a combination of social housing and private. The homes that appear to have everything from huge TVs to several newish cars and whose kids have every IT trend going are those in the social housing. They appear not to work yet seem very well off in comparison. Their houses are equipped with all mod cons including solar panels. The private houses are the ones struggling. My son in law, an estate agent, told me to look through a new build housing estate and see that all the houses with everything like outside lights, solar etc are the social builds.
It suits Labour to see huge swathes of strugglers but their idea of equality is to drive everyone down to that level presumably to make them feel better, instead of bringing them up. They have done it for years. None of us are ever any better under Labour ideology they level us all down except themselves. I am not an ilk by the way and was raised in a staunch Labour household, but I have lived long enough and experienced enough to understand that no political party has all the answers but am capable of seeing those with the most mistakes.

Mmh, tricky.

I have had people threaten to punch me in the head because of disputes over the green revolution of the 1690s. Their abiding characteristics are a passionate desire to known everything and a tendency to get behind with all bills except payments on the football sized TV, without which they would be unable to watch their team lose at the football.

On the other hand, I know folk who wallow in cash, but think an eigenvalue is a German pop star.

My opinion, expressed I am afraid ad nauseum, is that as long as the government keeps us out of the EU, taxes down and makes its lies interesting, I am not bothered what it gets up too.

[papasmurf]

It suits Labour to see huge swathes of strugglers 

Tory austerity has made and is making plenty of those it appears as a deliberate policy.

[T00ts]

Yet if you cannot see how ever more wealth is being accumulated by an elite few at the expense of most of the rest of us who, once soaring livings costs - especially housing - are taken into account, are getting steadily poorer, then you are deluding yourself as do many of your ilk. How much poorer do the masses have to get and how much wealthier do the elites have to get at their expense before you recognise there is a problem?

On the issue of tuition fees, Labour in 2017 promised to abolish them going forwards. This promise never included the writing off of all existing debt, though Corbyn promised to address this issue in some way. Eliminating this entirely was an aspiration but abolishing tuition fees for existing and future students was a manifesto pledge. Scotland managed to do it, so why couldn't we?

And I - and hardly anyone on the left today - advocate 70s levels of taxation on income. Instead we want a serious crackdown on evasion and avoidance re tax rates, perhaps a modest increase in the top rate, and instead to go for tax rises on immovable assets like property. Wealthy elites can sod off abroad but they cannot take their mansions, land, or property portfolios with them. I am in favour of a land value tax to raise revenue for such things as social housing construction. I also pointed out earlier - citing examples - how some of those 2017 policies would not have actually cost money but saved it.

And you must be living in some isolated ivory tower if you have not noticed what the rest of us have been noticing as the decades have gone by. Even though as a proportion of GDP tax take now is reputedly higher than at any time since the 50s, very few people now can afford to do what most people could decades ago, ie live reasonably well and raise a family with one wage earner. You have to be on a very good salary to be able to do that today. Many more people today are only just about managing, even with two household incomes and few if any kids. Even working people are having to rely on foodbanks depressingly often, which didn't exist because there was no need for them in earlier decades. When you marry outgoings with incomes, most of us are getting steadily poorer. We are not fools. We can see it and feel it happening. So where is all the money going?

The answer is that ever more of it is being locked up in bricks and mortar, greatly inflating housing costs, which is sucking ever more wealth out of the pockets of productive workers and into the accounts of unproductive property investors and speculators. The property rich are benefitting massively from this whilst the property poor are having to pay ever more, making them ever poorer in real terms. The housing crisis is the off balance sheet means by which massive wealth redistribution from the masses to the already wealthy elites is taking place. And Westminster is going to do feck all about it because 90 Tory MPs and 18 Labour ones are themselves landlords. And most of the rest tend to include social circles full of those who are beneficiaries of this, including other landlords. The MPs themselves therefore have skin in the game re the massive redistribution of wealth from the masses to the wealthy elites and no interest in doing much about it. Our entire politoco-economic system is thus systemically corrupt, effectively robbing the masses to enrich the wealthy.

Gosh I didn't mean to set you off on a diatribe. It suits the Labour psyche to dwell on poverty but I come from an age where children had toes cut out of their shoes when they outgrew them. Their clothes were far too small most of the time and new clothes were unheard of. I had friends who used wooden boxes as furniture.  I'm not sure that the real poverty exists in the same way today. What has happened I suspect, is that people are aware of what others have. They look at their parents and expect to have everything the same way at the beginning of their working life instead of doing what we had to do and work for it and build it over decades. I am not saying that there is no-one struggling but it does define what is really meant by struggling. 

Eg near me on a housing estate which is a combination of social housing and private. The homes that appear to have everything from huge TVs to several newish cars and whose kids have every IT trend going are those in the social housing. They appear not to work yet seem very well off in comparison. Their houses are equipped with all mod cons including solar panels. The private houses are the ones struggling. My son in law, an estate agent, told me to look through a new build housing estate and see that all the houses with everything like outside lights, solar etc are the social builds. 
It suits Labour to see huge swathes of strugglers but their idea of equality is to drive everyone down to that level presumably to make them feel better, instead of bringing them up. They have done it for years. None of us are ever any better under Labour ideology they level us all down except themselves. I am not an ilk by the way and was raised in a staunch Labour household, but I have lived long enough and experienced enough to understand that no political party has all the answers but am capable of seeing those with the most mistakes.