bickster

Winter fuel payments should always have been means tested. It makes no sense for them not to be, unless of course you're bribing the only proportion of the electorate that actually votes for you.

That’s not the objectionable bit.

It’s hilarious that you think RW talking points are common sense

Make your mind up was I on the back foot or not answering? I mean it’s one or the other. I could have responded but there didn’t seem like much point in doing so as the post with the figures didn’t really contradict anything I said. (Suggest you compare and contrast what I and the other poster said). They challenged the word minuscule. I stand by my use of the word. Three hundredths of one percent, is minuscule. But for clarity without going back I said that 60% of people arriving by “small boat” were awarded asylum at the first attempt, the other poster said that 30% of asylum seekers arrived that way. Oranges and apples.

I don’t know who the people who live upstairs from me are. I don’t lose sleep over it. I don’t know 99.99% of the population I'm certainly not worried about 0.03% because they risked their lives numerous times to get here and they get demonised by the likes of Farage and the Tories. I wasn’t being rude, I called your opinion crap because it is. It’s the sort of bollocks that RW talking heads come out with all the time, it’s the shite that that fuels riots, it’s pretty much thinly veiled racism and panders to the irrational fear of others. It’s crap because it stands up to no scrutiny., it’s not based on anything that has happened, just based on fear.It’s an accurate description of that opinion.

All that is emotive crap as well

You want some real perspective not som bullshit emotive crap about army reserves which just isn't relevant? 17,000 people is 0.03% of the population, yes three hundredths of one percent. Next ask yourself why the figure is even that high? The answer to that is because the Tories DELIBERATELY under funded immigration services to create the “crisis” Then ask yourself why the did that? And the answer to that is to create a problem they could use as a campaign tool to get re-elected, an issue that would mask all their other incompetencies. The party of fiscal responsibility managed to spunk over £100 million pounds in forcibly deporting literally zero failed asylum seekers to Rwanda. so if you really want to have a moan about this particular issue, I suggest, quite respectfully you go and moan at a Tory.

What unforeseen circumstance has arisen that would necessitate an emergency legislative timetable? It generally requires approval of the House of Lords where the Government has no natural majority. it requires the commons too but they control that. Democracy generally works slowly and rushing through bills weakens democracy, concentrates power in the hands of the government and puts too much pressure on civil servants to produce information far too quickly.

Yes, that’s not exactly the point is it

How many days do you think Parliament has actually been sitting since the election at the start of July? Do you know how long it takes for a law to be passed in parliament even if it was in the manifesto? These are just two of the questions you should ask yourself before you start typing that statement. I'll help you out though, the state opening of parliament was on 17th July and it rose for the summer recess on 30th July. It only resumed this week but will rise again at the end of next week for conference season until 7th October. So that’s about 4 weeks in total. That is nowhere near enough time to get bills through parliament with the correct scrutiny.

Oh yes massively.

Absolutely untrue. The law changed in 2006 and fee paying schools were only allowed to continue with charitable status if they were non-profit making AND could demonstrate they they served some sort of public good outside of educating the fee paying pupils. This was rather open ended and left to the schools themselves to decide how to do that. By and large that just mean they offered a couple of scholarships and got the pupils to do some sort of engagement with a local charity. It was nonsense then as it is now. The massive tax breaks they get do not outweigh the public good that they do.

Where was she when the Tories were doing it for 14 years

Good job he wasn’t in Majorca tbh, flash floods and missing Brit tourists

Needs a new thread tbh… the Dead Boring Thread

Ron Yeats, legendary Liverpool player gone at 86

How can fewer people be paying VAT when none of them up to this point have been paying it? It’s also not the politics of envy, it’s the politics of making society fairer. The move is far more motivated by ideology than envy. And as someone who did send their child to a fee paying school, I can see the point. I’d be quite happy to abolish all fee paying schools as long as they removed religion from all schools and funded state education to appropriate levels. My criticism of the policy is that they are putting the cart before the horse. Fix state education first then go after the fee paying schools. Also the idea that fee paying schools are a charity, which is where their VATless state comes from was always a nonsense

What on earth is this argument? If Starmer had been born later and went to a different school would he still be PM? What? There’s plenty of things to criticise Starmer for (and I do) but c'mon…..

Dick Cheney coming out and saying he’s voting for Harris is more of a shock than James Murdoch. I should add that Cheney isn’t much of a shock either, the announcement maybe but the Trump hatred has been there a while

No not at all. I’m talking about the very new bought this week ones

Yeah but it’s…

And the sheer amount of whoppers who are suddenly wearing brand new Oasis t-shirts At least the Ramones changed music forever

Not true though really is it. You don’t really expect that Liam and Noel gave each other a hug on the morning of 27/8/24 and organise an entire World Tour by teatime, including the publicity shots, getting 6Music to run an entire series of shows in the lead up to the announcement to remind the world who they were etc

I think that must be a Yorkshire thing, I've never heard anyone pronounce filet with an Ah sound at the end. Not even Mark E Smith

Well the Venetians were good at spin but the French not so much.