ml1dch

2 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

That was the first thing I thought, he’s a dangerous clown, not an actual idiot.

I'm quite at peace considering him all of those things.

1 hour ago, meregreen said:

The people want them out, in large numbers.

I think the only thing funnier than a complete Tory annihilation would be a complete Tory annihilation that they don't think is about to happen. 

10 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

Now for prospective candidates reputable employers, this isn't an issue, but reputable employers aren't why Labour initially claimed this was required. They've identified it as an issue, hailed it as bold action, then watered it down into meaninglessness.

This is how policymaking works. You identify a problem, then come up with a solution. You then talk to all the people that your solution might impact to see if your solution creates a new problem elsewhere. And eventually once the potential issues have been identified and fixed you are probably going to be left with something a bit different to what you originally proposed. But hopefully better, because you considered impacts that you hadn't thought about originally. 

In this particular case, the fairly obvious issue of "if we ban all zero-hours contracts then the people who like, and benefit from zero-hours contracts are going to be upset about it" was one of the issues identified with their original proposal. So they fixed it. 

Is your position that the people for whom ZHCs are a preferred way of working should be forced onto permanent contracts just so the purity of the original proposal wasn't contaminated? 

Makes your average Brexit fan look well-read and all over the detail.

This thread is probably the most sensible home for Galloway's bunch of throbbers as well.

30 minutes ago, bickster said:

Yep, was in the middle of typing similar, its a much broader church than Labour even

The SNPs problem is also its raison d'etre, it's a single issue party and right now, that single issue isn't quite as popular as it used to be regardless of the infighting and the sleaze

Just like any broad church its harder to keep the coalitions together when things are not going your way much like in both Labour and Tory but amplified

Also, everyone has a hierachy of political needs, and allegiances can potentially switch depending on what you think is most important at any given time. 

There will always be a small rump of "independence at any cost" SNP backers, but I reckon a huge amount of the SNP support over the last decade has been "anything is better than having the Tories in charge of Scotland, if that's independence or another party in Westminster then let's do that". And this will see that pendulum swing towards the latter.

54 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

didn't he win via the Starmer process .. I.e he was slightly less bat shit than the other candidates ? 

presumably , those other bat shit candidates will now be the only options going forward , so Scotland will see if they can break the Tory party monopoly on changing leaders as often as a northerner has a bath 

No, he won by being the preferred / continuity candidate of the SNP establishment. And even then only just scraped the victory by a couple of percentage points.

The SNP's biggest problem is that they have about three different varieties of batshit, all of which are incompatible with each other, so I reckon we'll see a couple more changes of leader before this time next year. Devout Presbyterianism and performative we're-more-progressive-than-Labour identity politics is not an easy electoral coalition to keep together. 

Aaaand....now he's going. 

28 days to find a new First Minister or new elections.

34 minutes ago, Genie said:

Does look a little bit like he wants people at “work” to stop calling him a word removed as he knows the MP grift is ending either way.

He's in one of the few seats that can still be called a safe Tory seat and is choosing to step down from it. If he wanted the "MP grift" to continue he could just do that.

25 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

He's stood on the frontline and saw the effects of his parties policy for 14 years, and now decides to take a stand in the final months. He can get in the **** bin with the rest of them. Shame on Labour for welcoming him in.

I'd assumed that it was a massively cynical "stand as a winning Labour candidate at the next election rather than a losing Tory candidate" move (hello Christian Wakeford), but looks like he's standing down anyway. So I'd be happy to give his motives at least, the benefit of the doubt.

So while I'm sympathetic to your point above, there are presumably going to be quite a lot of people who were previously Team Blue who are now going to be Team Red.

3 minutes ago, Rds1983 said:

Always Sunny

13 hours ago, bickster said:

Promising to nationalise the railways within 5 years apparently

How very centrist of them

This seems to be broadly the correct take to me, albeit the language is a bit more inflammatory than it needs to be. 

2 hours ago, bickster said:

So the EU made an offer of a reciprocal four year visa for young people aged 18-30 to live and work in the EU. Sunak and the Tories rejected it… so did Labour 

LibDems thought it was a good idea.

Gives me absolutely no confidence in Labour fixing our Brexit problem.

Just makes me more and more likely to vote LibDem tbh

There's a bit more nuance than that though.

Whenever the subject of deepening relations comes up I always mention the big problem of "what's in it for them?" Johnson signed over pretty much every bit of leverage we had. They're pretty happy with the current, completely one-sided arrangement, so if we want something that makes our side better, why would they just change it without getting something they want too?

To that end, Labour right now should absolutely be saying that anything that the EU wants is out of the question. Then it goes in the ring-binder with the title "stuff they want that we can use to get stuff we want". 

This proposal will definitely happen at some point for all the reasons you say*, but saying now "that all sounds great, let's do it" is not the right thing to do. Even putting the electoral stuff aside.

*and one more reason, the Commission is fretting a bit about this issue as it's a grey area on whether it's an EU competence or in the hands of individual states. So they're pretty keen to park their tanks on it to stop Spain and France doing the own deals instead. 

Tory MP allegedly demanded campaign cash to pay ‘bad people’

Quote

 

A Tory MP is under investigation over allegations that he misused campaign funds and abused his position after making a late-night phone call saying he’d been locked up by “bad people” who were demanding thousands of pounds, The Times can reveal.

Mark Menzies, the Conservative MP for Fylde and a government trade envoy, rang an elderly local party volunteer at 3.15am in December saying he was locked in a flat and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”. The sum, which rose to £6,500, was paid by his office manager from her personal bank account and subsequently reimbursed from campaign funds raised from donors.

£14,000 given by donors for use on Tory campaign activities had previously been transferred to Menzies’s personal bank account and used for his private medical expenses.

The Conservative Party has been aware of the allegations of potential fraud for more than three months and has taken no action

 

I mean, it's just solid 10/10 Tory sleaze stuff. Great work from the lad.

I imagine that if it were a former Labour leader instead of a former Tory leader who had been using made-up quotes from massive anti-semites all about how the Rothschilds control what Governments are able to do, it might have got a bit more of an excitable reaction from the media. 

While they're clearly all a load of bell-ends, I'm not sure the police shutting down their conference is the best way to win the argument.

15 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Nah, it’ll be fine, pay private agencies for medical staff and medical facilities, that’ll be the best possible use of our money. Probably cheaper than employing actual NHS staff I’m sure.

The problem is that this isn't ideological, caused by rapacious capitalists at the top trying to bleed the system dry. I've mentioned this before, but I think it's a good example of the sort of challenge the NHS faces in its current form. 

An employed registrar (for example) will earn around £50,000. However, a locum brought in temporarily will earn more than twice that on a daily rate. 

So over the last few years there seems to be a steady production line of newly qualified doctors not going into permanent roles, creating thousands of positions that need to be temporarily filled. And coincidentally enough, there are thousands of newly qualified doctors who will happily be paid £500 per day, to do the same job as the guy (not) doing it for £50k per year. Whack the whole lot through your "Dr. Smith Medical Services" limited company and pay 20% tax on the whole lot as well instead of higher rate of income tax. 

No blame on the doctors - it's their labour and expertise, and if you don't need the stability why wouldn't you do it the way that pays you twice as much and gives you complete flexibility about how much you work? It's not like they are taking much of a risk on whether the demand for their service is there. No blame on the trusts for paying it either - their choice is pay through the nose for staff or have (more) people dying.  

That's the reality of "paying private agencies for medical staff". But I don't really see what the fix is - just insisting that they "employ actual NHS staff" doesn't really deal with the root of the issue.

2 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

Such a massive success that prominent European Eurosceptics are abandoning leaving the EU. 

I'm not saying Wilders definitely didn't say that, and he has recently dropped a commitment to a referendum from his policy platform, but RS Archer is a spoof account that people shouldn't really quote in good faith. 

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

And it's just shocking how many of them are perverts. Does it go hand in hand for a desire for power? 

An openly gay, unmarried 36 year old using an app like Grindr makes him a pervert?

Alright Mary Whitehouse. 

26 minutes ago, bickster said:

But that is exactly how the honeytrap works, it relies on a victim not going to the police because they have something on them that will embarrass them

Yes he should have acted differently but so should everyone that is a victim of a similar crime but they don't. You can't judge Wragg differently to other victims because he's a Tory MP

Broadly agree, but Wragg also has a fair bit of recent history about kicking off about propriety and ethics. It's only a few weeks since he was the one proposing a motion to kick Hoyle out because he felt Hoyle's standards weren't up to scratch. He was also extremely vocal on the Johnson stuff about the parties. 

So in much the same way that Rayner's council house stuff is more politically difficult because she's spent the last three years writing letters calling for everyone under the sun to resign due to some breach of conduct or protocol, she's now going to be judged by the standards that she is expecting of others.

So I would judge him differently, but only as a result of the standards that he has shown he supposedly expects from others. 

Happy four year Starmerversary, to all who celebrate. 

7 minutes ago, picicata said:

Historically it tends to close in a little when the election actually happens so I suspect they're taking that into account.

It's definitely a possibility. However I think I'd be wary of making too many predictions based on historical precedent. As an example, previous times where there is evidence of polls narrowing in the run up to an election, I think I'm right in saying that it was already clearly happening by this stage in the election cycle. 

So maybe it'll happen this time, just quicker and later. Or maybe it won't. 

Reassuring to know that Labour 41 Tory 24 gives a result that strong. As that's towards to low end for Labour and the high end for Tories compared to a lot of polls.