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

[OutByEaster?]

It's worked perfectly well with the prisons and the railways; why wouldn't it work perfectly for the schools?

Once they're fixed, I'm sure Mrs May can fix the health service in quick order.

[StefanAVFC]

Quote

HM Government believes the President of the United States should be extended the full courtesy of a State Visit. We look forward to welcoming President Trump once dates and arrangements are finalised.

HM Government recognises the strong views expressed by the many signatories of this petition, but does not support this petition.

During her visit to the United States on 27 January 2017, the Prime Minister, on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen, invited President Trump for a State Visit to the UK later this year. The invitation was accepted. This invitation reflects the importance of the relationship between the United States of America and the United Kingdom. At this stage, final dates have not yet been agreed for the State Visit.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928?reveal_response=yes

Not that I expected anything different but urgh. Prepare for some of the biggest protests seen on British soil.

I get bringing him over for trade talks, or just a visit. But a full state visit, red carpet treatment; basically licking his arsehole. It's gross.

Edited February 14, 2017 by StefanAVFC

[dAVe80]

48 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928?reveal_response=yes

Not that I expected anything different but urgh. Prepare for some of the biggest protests seen on British soil.

I get bringing him over for trade talks, or just a visit. But a full state visit, red carpet treatment; basically licking his arsehole. It's gross.

"If Adolf Hitler flew in today. They'd send a limousine anyway."

Joe Strummer 1977.

[VILLAMARV]

55 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928?reveal_response=yes

Not that I expected anything different but urgh. Prepare for some of the biggest protests seen on British soil.

I get bringing him over for trade talks, or just a visit. But a full state visit, red carpet treatment; basically licking his arsehole. It's gross.

Quote

'Stop Trump state visit' petition rejected

The UK government has rejected a petition calling for Donald Trump's state visit invitation to be withdrawn.

It said it recognised the "strong views" expressed but looked forward to welcoming the US president once details have been arranged.

More than 1.8 million people signed the petition, which said a state visit would cause the Queen "embarrassment".

A counter petition calling for the visit to go ahead attracted more than 309,000 signatures.

Both petitions will be debated by the House of Commons on 20 February.

BBC

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

27 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

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.

The first point you're probably right. It's an exceedingly complicated conversation.
However Twigg has always been in favour of academies/free schools (under Labour), I doubt he'd have much motivation to see the policy change.

But the second, I hope not. Primary schools have mostly resisted the change, unlike secondary schools so that's positive.
I personally haven't heard it's being put back on the table. I'm assuming you have? 

[TrentVilla]

2 hours ago, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

The first point you're probably right. It's an exceedingly complicated conversation.
However Twigg has always been in favour of academies/free schools (under Labour), I doubt he'd have much motivation to see the policy change.

But the second, I hope not. Primary schools have mostly resisted the change, unlike secondary schools so that's positive.
I personally haven't heard it's being put back on the table. I'm assuming you have? 

I don't believe it's ever been off the table.

The Gov are just using Ofsted to drive the agenda for them.

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

46 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

I don't believe it's ever been off the table.

The Gov are just using Ofsted to drive the agenda for them.

I think Nicky Morgan  said they would encourage the voluntary route, but of course you'e right to say OFSTED is driving that agenda through failing local authorities.
Faith schools will be targeted next, or those who run them anyway.

There's still opportunity to change the conversation especially with May's stance on Grammar schools.

Edited February 14, 2017 by itdoesntmatterwhatthissay

[Chindie]

I'm quite happy for them to target faith schools. Preferably with flame throwers.

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

48 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I'm quite happy for them to target faith schools. Preferably with flame throwers.

 I think C of E and Catholic schools do a great job in both educational attainment and administration. Not sure why you'd set any alight.

Edited February 14, 2017 by itdoesntmatterwhatthissay

[choffer]

4 minutes ago, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

 I think C of E and Catholic schools do a great job in both educational attainment and administration. Not sure why you'd set any alight.

I'll check back on this thread in a couple of days. Wait for it all to blow over.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

I'm quite happy for them to target faith schools. Preferably with flame throwers.

Probably not your best worded post, there.

[Chindie]

4 minutes ago, blandy said:

Probably not your best worded post, there.

For the absolute avoidance of doubt I mean the 'institution' of 'faith schools'

[TrentVilla]

For the love of Paul McGrath won't someone post a long full article that nobody will read but spend two days falling out over.

If I have open this thread once more and see Dianne Abbots face and sausage fingers once more I'm going to smash my own phone.

[snowychap]

22 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

For the love of Paul McGrath won't someone post a long full article that nobody will read but spend two days falling out over.

If I have open this thread once more and see Dianne Abbots face and sausage fingers once more I'm going to smash my own phone.

You mean this picture that was on the previous page?

 

Edited February 14, 2017 by snowychap

[peterms]

Austerity was self-defeating and disastrous.

Who knew?  Apart from, ooh, just about everyone.

Quote

We now take a break from your regularly scheduled scandals to bring you some not-so-breaking news: austerity was as big a disaster as its biggest critics said it was.

That, at least, is what economists Christopher House and Linda Tesar of the University of Michigan and Christïan Proebsting of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne found when they looked at Europe's budget-cutting experience the last eight years. It turns out that cutting spending right after the worst crisis in 80 years only led to a lower gross domestic product and, in the most extreme cases, higher debt-to-GDP ratios. That's right: trying to reduce debt levels sometimes increased debt burdens.

Other than that, how was the policy, Mrs. Lincoln?

But let's back up a minute. This isn't something that's always true. In fact, it almost never used to be. Cutting spending, you see, shouldn't be a problem as long as you can cut interest rates too. That's because lower borrowing costs can stimulate the economy just as much as lower government spending slows it down. What happens, though, if interest rates are already zero, or, even worse, you're part of a currency union that means you can't devalue your way out of trouble?

Well, nothing good. House, Tesar and Proebsting calculated how much each European economy grew — or, more to the point, shrank — between the time they started cutting their budgets in 2010 and the end of 2014, and then compared it with what actually realistic models say would have happened if they hadn't done austerity or adopted the euro. According to this, the hardest-hit countries of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain would have contracted by only 1 percent instead of the 18 percent they did if they hadn't slashed spending; by only 7 percent if they'd kept their drachmas, pounds, liras, escudos, pesetas and the ability to devalue that went along with them if they hadn't become a part of the common currency and outsourced those decisions to Frankfurt; and only would have seen their debt-to-GDP ratios rise by eight percentage points instead of the 16 they did if they hadn't tried to get their budgets closer to being balanced. In short, austerity hurt what it was supposed to help, and helped hurt the economy even more than a once-in-three-generations crisis already had.

That brings us to two final points. The first is that the euro really has been a doomsday device for turning recessions into depressions. It's not just that it caused the crisis by keeping money too loose for Greece and the rest of them during the boom and too tight for them during the bust. It's also that it forced a lot of this austerity on them.

Think about it like this. Countries that can print their own money never have to default on their debts — they can always inflate them away instead — but ones that can't, because, say, they share a common currency, might have to. Just the possibility of that, though, can be enough to make it a reality. If markets are worried that you might not be able to pay back your debts, they'll make you pay a higher interest rate on them — which might make it so that you really can't.

In other words, the euro can cause a self-fulfilling prophecy where countries can't afford to spend any more even though spending any less will only make everything worse. That's actually a pretty good description of what happened until the European Central Bank belatedly announced that it would do “whatever it takes” to put an end to this in 2012. Which was enough to get investors to stop pushing austerity, but, alas, not politicians.

It's a good reminder that you should never doubt that a small group of committed ideologues can destroy the economy. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

That's true whether you're talking about the European politicians who pushed for the creation of the euro itself — they ignored the economists who warned them that it might turn out just as badly as it has — or the ones who pushed for austerity a few decades later. After all, it shouldn't have been a surprise that trying to balance your budget when interest rates were zero would end badly.

Economists have known that since the 1930s. Politicians, though, still wanted to do it, either because they thought deficits were morally, politically, or economically bad, and there was no shortage of supposed experts who were willing to tell them that they were right.

These right-wing economists produced study after study showing that countries had been able to successfully cut spending when central banks could offset that by cutting interest rates, and said that this proved that the same was true when interest rates were zero like they were at the time.

You didn't need an economics PhD to know this didn't make sense, just a basic knowledge of economic history.

But no matter. Economists who had never bothered to learn this, or who had forgotten it, or who especially saw this as a good excuse to cut government spending they'd always wanted to kept saying it would work even as it kept failing.

That should be as big a scandal as anything else.

 

[TrentVilla]

But but George said it was a good idea...

[Xann]

Quote

 

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has denied there is any dishonesty among the healthcare professionals who carry out its benefits assessments, even though Disability News Service (DNS) has now collected 100 cases where such allegations have been made.

Disabled people have continued to come forward with their personal stories since DNS published the results of a two-month investigation into claims that nurses and other healthcare professionals had lied in reports they wrote after face-to-face assessments for personal independence payment (PIP).

This week, DNS was made aware of the 100th case in which a PIP claimant has alleged that a health professional working for government contractors Capita and Atos produced a dishonest assessment report.

One PIP claimant told DNS this week: “When I received the DWP decision, I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

“For example, ‘I was observed to drink from a cup and that I had shown good grip, gripping the assessor’s fingers.’

“I never touched the man, and he never touched me.

“When I finally received the full assessor’s report, I was flabbergasted at the inaccuracies, misinformation and at worst, blatant fabrication.

“Even general information, about my home, layout of my home, aids in my home and aids that weren’t even in my home, were reported as fact. It was completely made up, even the type of clothing I wear.”

 

Disability News Service

[Davkaus]

Let me guess, they're given targets, and punished if they don't shaft as many vulnerable people as possible? Works well at the job centre, doesn't it.

I wonder how many desperate people are screwed over for each legitimate benefit cheat. Enough to make tories feel warm and fuzzy inside, I'm sure.

[TrentVilla]

2 hours ago, Davkaus said:

Let me guess, they're given targets, and punished if they don't shaft as many vulnerable people as possible? Works well at the job centre, doesn't it.

I wonder how many desperate people are screwed over for each legitimate benefit cheat. Enough to make tories feel warm and fuzzy inside, I'm sure.

Poppycock.... we all know the Tories are dead inside, there is nothing warm or fuzzy to be found.

[Chindie]

Slightly unfair to lay this at the feet of the Tories but we don't really have a general UK Politics thread (probably for the best)... But interesting to read that the F35s we are due to receive will  have their engines maintained by Turkey, because the Yanks have done a deal with the Turks and, as a tier one partner on the project, we don't have a say in the situation. So every time there's repairs or upgrades needed, we'll need to pack the engines off to Turkey.

Which presumably gives Turkey quite a lot of leverage over what we can do militarily. Or has a hostage if we do anything Erdogan dislikes.

Still we aren't due to get then for another 6 years. Which is lucky because the last news in the testing of the aircraft could probably leave it be described as dangerous.