The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[bickster 6,946]

[Xann 7,138]

That prick Chope just blocked legislation to stop female genital mutilation.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D 1,176]

9 minutes ago, Xann said:

That prick Chope just blocked legislation to stop female genital mutilation.

He's the upskirt law bloke ?

He likes to make 100% sure some things continue that really shouldn't,  what a strange man.

 

[bickster 6,946]

28 minutes ago, Xann said:

That prick Chope just blocked legislation to stop female genital mutilation.

It was outlawed in the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985

[Xann 7,138]

 

3 minutes ago, bickster said:

It was outlawed in the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985

Quote

The Conservative MP Christopher Chope, who gained notoriety after he blocked a bill to make upskirting a criminal offence, has used the same parliamentary tactic to halt a planned law making it easier to protect girls from female genital mutilation (FGM).

Grauniad

[bickster 6,946]

5 minutes ago, Xann said:

 

Grauniad

Not defending the bellend that is Chope, I was just pointing out that it's already illegal. Chope usually votes against things he sees as unnecessary because legislation already exists, or that's one of the reasons he's given in the past

[Xann 7,138]

 

[bickster 6,946]

I have tickets to see Mr Pie later in the year 

[Wainy316 7,125]

50 minutes ago, bickster said:

I have tickets to see Mr Pie later in the year 

Me too

[Xann 7,138]

At any other time HS2 teetering would be bigger news.

[HanoiVillan 12,195]

Quite a depressing theory, from two politics academics at Sheff Uni, that Britain is actually 'undeveloping':

Is Britain ‘undeveloping’ before our eyes? Part I

'A different way of thinking is perhaps that Britain is actually at the end of a long cycle – of four hundred years or more – of capitalist development, with its pronounced post-imperial decline, first visible to others, if not necessarily its own economic and political elite, around half a century ago, now playing out fully.  The pathologies that accompanied and have come to characterise its distinctive experience – which at one time facilitated industrial development and maintained it beyond formal colonialism in a context of lingering imperial power and a benign, Western-led, globalising international order – may now have accumulated to the point that they do not equip it adequately for the rigours of today’s ‘global race’.  Indeed, they may even actively undermine Britain’s prospect of continuing development.

If this is true, Britain could again be first, albeit in a league table not of its choice!  It could be the first of the ‘early developers’ to be forced to grapple with the implications of sustained ‘undevelopment’.  This is defined here straightforwardly as the dismantling, rather than the building, of a viable, functioning political economy that satisfactorily serves its people. Moreover, it would be doing so in a context where many other countries are growing faster, becoming richer and thereby decisively restructuring the distribution of power in the GPE.  In other words, Britain arguably needs new answers to all of the classical questions of development at the exact moment when they are most difficult both to envisage and implement.

There is, sadly, plenty of evidence to sustain such a claim.  On many measures, including low rates of investment, stagnant productivity, patterns of poverty and inequality, falling life expectancy, static social mobility, access to public services, pension provision, quality of housing and homelessness, public/private debt and a widening current account deficit, ability to levy tax from a wide base, atrophying transport and other infrastructure and, of course, bloody potholes everywhere (even on major motorways), Britain markedly ‘outperforms’ its ‘developed’ peers.  It does, at present, have very low unemployment, but this dubious success reflects only its ability to generate large numbers of badly-paid, precarious jobs in a poorly-regulated labour market in which millions of often-underemployed people are trapped by in-work poverty and dependence on foodbanks.'

This is just an extract of the first of two posts in the series, which make some interesting points, even if I don't completely agree with all of them. They do point the fingers at austerity and Brexit, but also highlight long-running trends in the UK economy away from competitiveness in many industries. 

http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/2019/01/29/is-britain-undeveloping-before-our-eyes-part-i/

[Wainy316 7,125]

I kind of want HS2 just to see a pimped up Curzon Street.  

[blandy 11,085]

How unusual is it for a MP from a party to do this kind of thing

Quote

Theresa May has been urged by one of her own Tory MPs to confront the “unpalatable truth” that Universal Credit is “dragging” benefit claimants down, rather than holding them up.

Heidi Allen told the prime minister to follow in the footsteps of work and pensions secretary Amber Rudd, who this week admitted the embattled welfare reform had driven more people to foodbanks. She used Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday to urge the PM to cancel the five-week wait for first payments and lift the freeze on benefits increases each year. 

Allen said: “It takes courage and leadership to admit difficult things, because that’s how we start to recognise the need for change. “So I’d like to thank the secretary of state for work and pensions for acknowledging there has been a link between accessing Universal Credit and foodbank usage. “But it isn’t the case that there has been a link – there is a link.”

Allen, a member of the work and pensions select committee, went on:  “Will the prime minister please urgently review the five week wait and the benefit freeze – both must go. “Because the unpalatable truth is that our welfare safety net is no longer holding up those most vulnerable in society, it’s tangling around their feet and dragging them under the water.”

It's incredibly rare isn't it? 

 

[Chindie 6,478]

It's hard to take Heidi Allen's comments seriously when her record is one of looking to reduce benefit spending.

Words are cheap and easy.

[blandy 11,085]

38 minutes ago, Chindie said:

It's hard to take Heidi Allen's comments seriously when her record is one of looking to reduce benefit spending.

Words are cheap and easy.

She seems to have had a genuine change of heart. To have gone from a typical tory to someone who's seen evidence which has changed her mind. Whichever, though. I just thought it really rare that an MP would essentially say in parliament, to their leader/PM - (I paraphrase) "we proper messed that up and we need to fix it"

[OutByEaster? 11,493]

She's saying it doesn't work, not that it should be improved - perhaps she wants to dismantle it altogether?

Perhaps she just wants to dismantle Amber Rudd?

 

 

[blandy 11,085]

8 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

She's saying it doesn't work, not that it should be improved - perhaps she wants to dismantle it altogether?

Perhaps she just wants to dismantle Amber Rudd?

 

To be fair she did say “cancel the five-week wait for first payments and lift the freeze on benefits increases each year”, which isn’t completely dismantling it. Anyway it’s T.May that needs dismantling the most. She’s broken.

[ml1dch 1,761]

Aw, remember those happy, inclusive, considerate days back when Theresa May was Home Secretary?

 

 

[HanoiVillan 12,195]

Roses are red,

But you are black.

We've lost your papers,

So we're sending you back.

[Xann 7,138]

Quote

LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua has cancelled trade talks with Britain’s finance minister Philip Hammond after defence secretary Gavin Williamson threatened to deploy a warship in the Pacific, The Sun newspaper reported on Thursday.

Hu was due to hold trade talks with Hammond this weekend, it said. The newspaper said Hu cancelled the talks in protest at Williamson’s speech on Monday.

Reuters