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


blandy

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If you vote Tory you're either ignorant or immoral.

Never unfairly assume malice so I think most people are just ignorant. And they're ignorant because they're continually fighting against the effects of austerity and public spending cuts.

The UK population is suffering mass Stockholm syndrome.

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I thought I should be Tory too as I'm comfortable. I think it was @OutByEaster? who said unless you're super rich you'll always be better off with Labour or other non-Tory. I do think I should be a lot more comfortable than I actually am with my household total income. I certainly don't have loads of disposable income.

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On 10/6/2015 at 13:38, Dr_Pangloss said:

China and America are very special cases for their own reasons.

If you were to create a scatter plot of hours worked vs productivity (e.g. GDP per hour), you will find a negative correlation. Yes, the countries who work the 'hardest' (in terms of hours) are the least productive. For example, Germany have a far more productive economy than ours, but they work less hours on average than countries like the UK, and, believe it or not, Greece.

It's about working 'smart', not 'hard'. The Tories just want to accelerate the race to the bottom that has been going on for decades now. Since most of them are rent seekers anyway, all they want to do is design policy and ultimately a society that will benefit that class of people and that class alone. 

I agree with working smart and not hard but I honestly think it's not as simple as that if you're talking political parties.(not modern day ones anyway)
I work across the political spectrum on housebuilding and am fortunate enough to speak to Ministers, local government, trade associations, housing associations etc on a regular basis. 

Imo Labour don't have a clue, sorry any Labour guys but you don't. They spend so much time fighting about the unimportant that the hard work is never actually done or even identified. Though I'm willing to concede that in terms of supply Labour may deliver more because they now have an agenda; social housing. Though, they still got it v wrong from 2003-2010 with the type of homes they built (flats) and they continue to focus on social housing and not the means to build social housing..

The Tories are doing the hard work but not the hardest work. They concentrated on delivering a product they thought will work and not the momentum to make it work. They are also treading very lightly to reduce the chance of negative equity. Which, if they were working smarter they could do AND increase supply.

For housebuilding, both parties are failing to work smart but one is actually working hard in a field they think is smart. The other, well, I don't think they know.

In my opinion there have been some very positive policy changes since the awful DC left and while it would be hard to defend his policies accelerating the race to the bottom (in a lot more than housebuilding), May has been different and accepted some truths. 

With devolution central govt doesn't always need to do more on social issues and planning (though they should), it's local government that is fing things up quite spectacularly.

The money wasted is extreme, in fact I spoke to someone yesterday who said procurement on a 100k job is costing a particular public body 400k, before the main contractor adds their cut. It's not because of the Tories, it's a majority Labour council who are part funding and setting procurement procedure....inherited from central Labour strategy.

Probably gone off topic now but I get annoyed when I see things like 'tories' and  'race to the bottom' because in my experience very few people have been allowed to start the race under Labour. (modern Labour anyway, I'm too young to really know how things were before Maggie).

Edited by itdoesntmatterwhatthissay
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1 hour ago, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

The money wasted is extreme, in fact I spoke to someone yesterday who said procurement on a 100k job is costing a particular public body 400k

That's quite efficient. I worked on massive private jobs like Canary Wharf, Paddington Point and a couple of billionaire's towers.

The quantity of money diffused away from actually doing the job in hand needed to be witnessed to be believed.

That was just the culture on big sites, there's more money to be had, and it's easier to lose it.

Edited by Xann
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8 minutes ago, Xann said:

That's quite efficient. I worked on massive private jobs like Canary Wharf, Paddington Point and a couple of billionaire's towers.

The quantity of money diffused away from actually doing the job in hand needed to be witnessed to be believed.

That was just the culture on big sites, there's more money to be had, and it's easier to lose it.

Bang on.
Everyone wants their cut but how they get it has changed. Construction is more expensive than ever, especially in London,

If we did HS2 properly and cut all the false costs we could probably save enough to finance the Irish Sea Tunnel :D

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Government advisers accused of 'full-frontal attack' on whistleblowers

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The government’s legal advisers have been accused of launching a “full-frontal attack” on whistleblowers over proposals to radically increase prison sentences for revealing state secrets and prosecute journalists.

Downing Street believes a major overhaul of existing secrecy legislation is necessary because it has become outdated in a digital age when government employees can easily disclose vast amounts of sensitive information.

Draft recommendations from the legal advisers say the maximum prison sentence for leakers should be raised, potentially from two to 14 years, and the definition of espionage should be expanded to include obtaining sensitive information, as well as passing it on.

The moves have prompted concern from whistleblowers that draconian punishments could further discourage officials from coming forward in the public interest. One critic said the changes were “squarely aimed at the Guardian and Edward Snowden”.

Meanwhile, media organisations and civil rights groups have expressed alarm at the Law Commission’s assertion that they were consulted over the plans, when they say no substantial discussions took place.

The Guardian, human rights group Liberty and campaign body Open Rights Group are among a series of organisations listed by the Law Commission as having been consulted on the draft proposals, but all three say they were not meaningfully involved in the process.

The Law Commission says on its website that in making the proposals, it “met extensively with and sought the views of government departments, lawyers, human rights NGOs and the media”. The law commissioner, Prof David Ormerod QC, said: “We’ve scrutinised the law and consulted widely with ... media and human rights organisations.”

But Liberty said that while a meeting was held, it was “not on the understanding that this was a consultation”. A source said: “Liberty do not consider themselves to have been properly consulted. And we will be responding in detail to the [public] consultation.”

Cathy James, the chief executive of Public Concern at Work, was also surprised to see the whistleblowing charity listed as being involved.

She said: “I didn’t actually know we were listed in the document as we have been working our way through it so it is a big surprise to me. I believe my colleague met with them initially but we were not consulted in the normal sense of the word consultation. That is not what happened.

“We are very worried about the extent of the provision in the recommendations both for whistleblowers and public officials. It’s a huge backward step and we are very worried.”

Jim Killock, the chief executive of Open Rights Group, confirmed it had not taken part in the consultation. “The real tragedy of this is that they’ve had nine months to actually talk to journalists and civil liberty organisations, and find out what the consequences of their suggestions might be, and in actual fact they’ve managed to talk to no one. But they’ve listed us all as having being consulted in the paper anyway,” he said.

The Guardian also held only one preliminary meeting with the government’s legal advisers and was not consulted before being listed in the report. A spokesperson said: “The proposals to threaten journalists and whistleblowers with draconian punishment, combined with powers just introduced in the [2016] Investigatory Powers Act to surveil journalists without their knowledge, represent a further attack on freedom of expression.

“We are surprised that a roundtable discussion with the Law Commission, which they billed as a ‘general chat’, has been described as formal consultation, and concerned that despite being told that we would be informed about the progress of these plans, the first we knew about them was when the law commissioner put pen to paper in the Daily Telegraph last week.”

Killock said: “This is a full-frontal attack, recommending criminalising even examining secret services’ material. The intention is to stop the public from ever knowing that any secret agency has ever broken the law.

“It’s squarely aimed at the Guardian and Edward Snowden. They want to make it a criminal offence for journalists to handle a large volume of documents in the way that journalists did with Snowden. They have even recommended that foreigners be criminalised for this, meaning Snowden would be prosecutable in the UK.”

Killock expressed his concern over a proposed “redrafted offence” of espionage that would “be capable of being committed by someone who not only communicates information, but also by someone who obtains or gathers it”.

“It’s the mere handling of documents that becomes a criminal offence on the basis of the risk handling those documents causes, not that you actually hand them to a foreign state,” he said. “So spying becomes possession of secret information. This is not what any of us would recognise as the definition of spying. It’s spying as China might define it.”

The former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said the proposed changes were “alarming” and had been set out “without any adequate consultation”.

...more on link

 

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On 10/02/2017 at 20:21, markavfc40 said:

I got to be honest I am starting to hate what this country is becoming. As a society we seem to have become far less compassionate, far more suspicious of those claiming benefits and seeing them as a burden, far more unwelcoming to those from a different country or culture and far more wrapped up in a as long as me and mine are okay then f**k anyone less fortunate mentality

Or in other words, the tories are in charge at the moment. It's always like that when they're the Gov't

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Not just politics, although that and pernicious media mates certainly assist the drive towards that, creating ravines where really there should be connected masses, I also think that technology has played a not insignificant role in loosening community ties too too. Ironically for all the extra connectivity there is, much of it is so ephemeral, and allows individuals so much extra control there is no reliance on needing to ensure some level of cordiality between others. You can by and large be a word removed entirely, if one was so inclined,  and it not really affect you much at all - order everything online, etc, if you do need social interaction, get the ersatz option on forums etc. Lose social skills and all that, learn how to be patient and accepting of others is tougher, echo chambers etc means, even less actual diversity of opinion, hardening of attitudes, more group think, less effort, less dependence. I guess I've probably chucked in a few cliched lines in there, this is mostly a gut sense of looking around - perhaps there are figures that would batter my contention out of the park - but broadly I still think we have a lot to learn about how to use tech more maturely to help communities rather than just ourselves too. We can find all the "evidence" we need to help justify inaction, inertia and passing the buck.

Not to mention the selfie culture, and obsessions with cultivating the most unique (sic) "you" , no delaying of gratification etc etc doesn't help either. Compassion is reduced to easy likes and shares ( not unworthy in and of itself of course, awareness is a good thing, but cannot be considered the end part of one's utility for the community ). 

Even the protests that emerge have that slight element of sustaining one's own ego, largely based on "easy" causes that are simple. EQUALITY FOR EVERYONE, NO EXCEPTIONS etc, which obviously don't invite any nuance, no-one's going to make a case for partial equality.  It's harder to reduce the complexity of economic and political forces that work against you to slogan's that are robust enough to survive targeting by the other side. SOCIAL JUSTICE - other side: COMMIES! etc. 

 

( btw, I sadly have to admit I am overly guilty of many of these traits myself, or have been, and I try to rectify it.) 

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SCHOOLS URGENTLY NEED MORE FUNDING

Unless the Government allocates more money, schools will lose £3 billion a year in real terms by 2020.

Search below for data on your local school

School Cuts

Those of you that have kids in the state system, enter their school into the database in the link.

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58 minutes ago, Xann said:

School Cuts

Those of you that have kids in the state system, enter their school into the database in the link.

Great link, thanks for posting.

School funding is a farce but it has been for ages. The Tory stance on EFA funding a year ago was a disgrace as they agreed to roll back (in conversation) on some terrible decisions and then pretended they never even had the conversation in the first place. It has cost schools millions.

However there is a problem with school funding that is down to the headteachers and local authorities and it's a biggie. Schools built through frameworks can cost millions (no exaggeration) more than off the framework and since we joined the EU and Labour got heavy with PFI it's been even worse.

Heads also DO NOT care much for who builds/maintains their schools which is taking millions away from education across the county. Some Heads do and they are amazing but too few recognise their responsibility in this respect and it's costing their kids millions in funding. Then we have the stupid iPad programme which has cost millions, added very little and delivers nothing in terms of supportive industry that could feed in to education. A Head I know had to spend 56k in 2 hours last year (on IT), just so they could get the same funding next year.....the system is broken and those working in it are not doing enough to deliver one that works for all. 

I'm happy that May announced schools will not be forced into academies (good policy shift) but she needs to establish a way for them to revert back because the academy model does not suit every educational establishment. The extra weight given to apprenticeships is positive and it will help many failing academies, and there are lots, but in general no party understands education.

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There is absolutely no way schools will be able to convert back from Academies to Local Authorities or even Grant Maintained status. 

I had a meeting with Stephen Twigg MP then the Shadow Sec for Education and he admitted as such, even admitting were they elected they couldn't reverse it.

Even if there were a mechanism, which there isn't and won't be, the Local Authorites Education departments are being dismantled and they aren't coming back.

As for May saying schools won't be forced into Academy status, it's a lie.

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