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

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

5 hours ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

The very 'political' (rather than economic) decision, to deploy austerity in 2010, when the recovery was looking pretty good, is a big reason for the UK having a particularly 'slow' recovery, versus other highly developed nations.  

Some sectors of the economy were improving, others weren't. 
I won't disagree that the Conservative ideology rushed a judgement but the Labour one of wasting money and remaining unaccountable for failures both put the economy/public sector in real jeopardy and eased Conservative opposition. 

Edited July 23, 2017 by itdoesntmatterwhatthissay

[snowychap]

Employment tribunal fees unlawful, Supreme Court rules

Quote

Fees for those bringing employment tribunal claims have been ruled unlawful, and the government will now have to repay up to £32m to claimants.

The government introduced fees in 2013 to reduce the number of malicious and weak cases, but that led to a 79% reduction over three years.

Trade union Unison argued that the fees prevented workers getting access to justice.

The Supreme Court also found fees were indirectly discriminatory to women.

It ruled the government was acting unlawfully and unconstitutionally when it introduced the fees.

...more on link

 

 

[markavfc40]

Good to see the Government getting another slap down. Many people with legitimate claims won't have made one over the last 4 years due to these fees and they have been denied justice because they couldn't afford it. Another shameful act by the Tories.

Edited July 26, 2017 by markavfc40

[Dr_Pangloss]

On 7/23/2017 at 23:28, itdoesntmatterwhatthissay said:

Some sectors of the economy were improving, others weren't. 
I won't disagree that the Conservative ideology rushed a judgement but the Labour one of wasting money and remaining unaccountable for failures both put the economy/public sector in real jeopardy and eased Conservative opposition. 

Maybe, but then the reason that the Conservatives inherited such an enormous deficit wasn't exactly because of public spending, but rather because of the decision to bail out the banks in the wake of the financial crisis, this move alone saw the deficit explode. I don't think the Tories, were they have been in power at the time, would have done anything different. Of course, in additional to this, 'automatic stablisers' kick in when an economy goes into a deep recession, since unemployment rises more people have to claim JSA etc, this raises public spending, but there's very good economic reasons for things like this to exist.

[snowychap]

2 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

Good to see the Government getting another slap down. Many people with legitimate claims won't have made one over the last 4 years due to these fees and they have been denied justice because they couldn't afford it. Another shameful act by the Tories.

And Vince Cable - though I think he repented on his deathbed (i.e. not long before he lost his no regained seat in 2015).

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

3 hours ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

Maybe, but then the reason that the Conservatives inherited such an enormous deficit wasn't exactly because of public spending, but rather because of the decision to bail out the banks in the wake of the financial crisis, this move alone saw the deficit explode. I don't think the Tories, were they have been in power at the time, would have done anything different. Of course, in additional to this, 'automatic stablisers' kick in when an economy goes into a deep recession, since unemployment rises more people have to claim JSA etc, this raises public spending, but there's very good economic reasons for things like this to exist.

100% true. And their response would have been to cut and not bother to understand the cyclical nature of social support. They need a lot of convincing until they do something smart.

But I would make one point about waste and that is actual cost of delivery. While the economy tanked and many people were impacted, the direction of money actually spent on support was not only wasteful but wholly irresponsible.

While those sums don't appear huge, in a productivity and support context, they were.
Eg - if you give every person in long term unemployment (typically referred from JCP) £5k to spend on things that had a tenuous link to their potential 'job outcome' and if they don't spend it, that money goes to the private company who provide the service, is that a good use of tax payers money to offer sustainable support?
When that was coupled with the removal of JobCentre responsibilities which were handed to the private sector, years of failed employment techniques (like agency jobs on the JobCentre website) and advisors that are either young people in their first job, or old people in their only job, you'll find very many people ending up in long term employment accessing services that should be preserved for the hardest to help.
In fact many people stuck around in unemployment to get a better client spend because there was a voluntary referral system too.

But it continues. Each of these private companies, which amounted a handful acting as a middle man to third sector/contractor providers, then received a first/second engagement, sustainable and continued support payment. And the rest! Whereas JobCentePlus continued having their wings clipped with salaries up to 30% lower than the private sector.
You don't have to be a genius to understand that from the very outset it was a wasteful and costly approach to tackling unemployment both before and after the crash. That's lives, not the world economy.

But on lives, if you're a Londoner experiencing unaffordable rents (everyone in London) you can thank planning policy that turned houses into small flats (which ended up an investment paradise and created a false price for flatted accommodation), huge developments of tiny or shared living flats, massive increases in the costs of building due to the disconnect between local and central  government and greenspace policy stopping development, and that's me only naming a few failures. This began exclusively under Labour and despite the Conservatives doing nothing to equalise prices, family homes are finally returning to the capital even if it's probably too late.

These are some stats I use in my presentations to local authorities. The first is delivery of houses and flats in Greater London.


And the second is London's population increase per annum vs annual completions. 30,000+ homes were delivered last year so an improvement but heck, we all know it's not been an improvement because it's the same sort of property being delivered! Small, shared, non-family, unaffordable.

The final one is house price rises in London for each type of property.

Obviously, housing lobbyist, etc. etc. but my god, the evidence for all round political failure, both locally and nationally, really needs to be understood so we can truly tackle the problems those we have voted for have caused. Financial crash or not!

Edited July 26, 2017 by itdoesntmatterwhatthissay

[Xann]

 

Quote

 

American infrastructure and engineering group CH2M has officially been awarded a contract to manage the massive refurbishment of the Houses of Parliament, beating domestic rivals to the multi-billion pound deal.

A second contract for architectural and design services was handed to international consultancy BDP for the programme, which is running late.

The Grade I-listed Palace of  Westminster is falling into disrepair with many of its major systems not having been updated or overhauled since construction in the mid-1800s.

Estimates on how much the work will cost vary, but one of the most definitive projections comes from Deloitte. The consultancy said shutting Parliament and relocating MPs while the work was carried out would result in a total bill of £3.5bn and take six years.A rolling programme in which MPs remained in the building with sections of Westminster being shut down to allow work would cost £5.7bn and take 32 years.

CH2M is understood to have been awarded the contract at the last moment, edging out UK-based rival Mace with the lowest price.

The huge outlay required to refurbish Westminster has proved controversial, with the Government looking to make huge public spending savings. It has been pushed back by a combination of the snap election and MPs reluctant to tackle a potentially contentious issue.

However, CH2M winning the contract will also raise eyebrows with the privately held business already facing criticism over the HS2 contract. Allegations of a “revolving door” for staff between HS2 and CH2M meant the company voluntarily withdrew from the rail link contract as rival Mace threatened a legal challenge.Awarding such a prestigious and high profile job as overseeing the rebuilding of Westminster - the “Mother of all Parliaments” according to 19th century politician John Bright - to the US business is certain to raise questions.

Parliament has yet to make a decision on how exactly to carry out the work - whether in a single hit or rolling programme - but the Parliament Restoration and Renewal Programme, which is overseeing the project, said the average annual fee for the architectural work was between £10.4m and £21.3m. For the project management this fee was between £4m and £8.6m a year.

Industry sources suggest this could go much higher, with the lack of clarity on exactly what work will be entailed meaning that costs are certain to rise.

Insiders who have seen how the bids were evaluated said the low cost of CH2M’s submission means the company will “struggle to make a margin”, with another adding it was “inevitable” that costs will rise.

 

Telegraph

Golly gee, ripe for exploit.

[Chindie]

That's one of those major infrastructure bills that totals £3.5bn when the contract is signed and costs about £8bn when it's done, and to can see it coming a mile away.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

3 hours ago, Chindie said:

That's one of those major infrastructure bills that totals £3.5bn when the contract is signed and costs about £8bn when it's done, and to can see it coming a mile away.

I think they are going to use some sort of cheap cladding on it,  possibly flammable.  Oh no I seem to have got that wrong....The Tory check list.

Expendable people live there, nope.  

 

 

 

 

[Xann]

Quote

 

The Conservatives are criminally incompetent

Even in the bad times I felt proud of my party but this scarcely believable Brexit shambles has left me deeply ashamed...

... There is a main culprit here, and it isn’t any of these candidates. Labour didn’t cause this mess. Whitehall didn’t frame the task, even if it is ill-equipped for its execution. Theresa May may not be up to the job but it’s a job into which she has been forced. And “the government”? The government is a collection of individuals. Where do these individuals come from? Who nominated them? Who keeps them in their jobs?

We live in a parliamentary democracy in which voters elect representatives attached to parties. The party as an institution has form, and voice, and policies. The party chooses a leader. The winning party’s leader asks the monarch for authority to govern and if she is satisfied that the party can support its leader in commanding the Commons, she gives it. The leader then chooses every minister from the party’s ranks, and leads a cabinet drawn, too, from the party. And if the party loses confidence in its leader or government, it can, by withdrawing support, dismiss both.

The word that keeps appearing in this passage is hard to miss: an entity, a real thing, the thing that’s now in charge of Britain’s direction. It’s called a party. It’s the Conservative Party. Do the voters even begin to understand how this mess is entirely of the Conservative Party’s creation?

The Tories are turning Brexit into a humiliating shambles. They called a referendum when they didn’t have to, they accepted the result, they willed Brexit, they promised Brexit, and now they’re comprehensively failing to organise it. You can’t blame the voters, who quite reasonably assumed that the Tories would never have offered a referendum if they hadn’t thought leaving Europe could be arranged. The fingerprints for this crime of mismanagement are Tory fingerprints.

 

Times

[HanoiVillan]

Who wrote that?

I agree with the main thrust, but really have to push back on 'Theresa May may not be up to the job but it’s a job into which she has been forced' - it's her job and she wanted it. 

[darrenm]

I agree with a lot of it. Decent article for The Times. Although this bit grinds

Even in bad times, even when we Tories messed up, I used to feel a pride in the party to which I owe so much. Often too slow, sometimes too rash, sometimes wrong, sometimes mildly corrupt, often missing the public mood, occasionally cowardly, it was still possible to trace through the party’s long history a line of worldly common sense, a distrust of extremism, and a deep sense of duty to the nation. There was a certain steadiness there. Has this deserted us? Do we yet understand, has it yet been born in on us, that it is we and we alone who have led the whole country into the predicament it now finds itself in?

If anyone thinks the Tory party of the last 7 years has been anything but extremist they're seriously deluded. And I haven't seen any evidence of common sense or duty to the nation in the all the time I've been paying attention. There was a steadiness only if you believe reckless neoliberalism is the way forward.

[snowychap]

44 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Who wrote that?

Matthew Parris.

[Rodders]

20 minutes ago, darrenm said:

I agree with a lot of it. Decent article for The Times. Although this bit grinds

 

 

If anyone thinks the Tory party of the last 7 years has been anything but extremist they're seriously deluded. And I haven't seen any evidence of common sense or duty to the nation in the all the time I've been paying attention. There was a steadiness only if you believe reckless neoliberalism is the way forward.

"One has to trust one's senses after all. Commonsense eh what.  I can only go on what I can see, and what I see is an invisible hand working flawlessly"

[blandy]

2 hours ago, darrenm said:

I agree with a lot of it. Decent article for The Times. Although this bit grinds:

If anyone thinks the Tory party of the last 7 years has been anything but extremist they're seriously deluded. And I haven't seen any evidence of common sense or duty to the nation in the all the time I've been paying attention. There was a steadiness only if you believe reckless neoliberalism is the way forward.

I think (like the article says) that they are monumentally incompetent. I think they're wrong about nearly everything. They're willfully selfish, they're ignorant, they're arrogant they're complacent, deluded, undemocratic, uncaring and a bunch of words removed. I absolutely detest them. But it's not mostly for (what I'd call) extremism.

There are some extremists in their party, but mostly they're not. Mostly they're just wrong and they mess everything up. Always have, always will.

[darrenm]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think (like the article says) that they are monumentally incompetent. I think they're wrong about nearly everything. They're willfully selfish, they're ignorant, they're arrogant they're complacent, deluded, undemocratic, uncaring and a bunch of words removed. I absolutely detest them. But it's not mostly for (what I'd call) extremism.

There are some extremists in their party, but mostly they're not. Mostly they're just wrong and they mess everything up. Always have, always will.

I think they're at the extreme end of neoliberalism. They are currently shackled with a centrist country from the generations of shifting back and forth between the left and right but their policies are constantly trying to push everything to the free market.

[PompeyVillan]

I wouldn't quite put them at extremists as such since they're wise enough to play a long game. However, make no mistake about it, if they could slip it past the public tomorrow they would privitise every public service, errode workers rights completely, abolish trade unions, reduce tax for the rich, give banks carte blanche to gamble with taxpayers money, do away with consumer protection and product safety, willfully promote inequality and elitism.

As well as eating babies and usurping the Queen to be replaced by Rupert Murdoch.

Thatcherism has been aggressively instilled as 'the only way' and cleverly tied with the concept of democracy. 

The truth is, Thatcherism serves most people quite poorly and a few incredibly well. 

My feeling is that tolerance for the status quo is waning.

[blandy]

38 minutes ago, darrenm said:

I think they're at the extreme end of neoliberalism. They are currently shackled with a centrist country from the generations of shifting back and forth between the left and right but their policies are constantly trying to push everything to the free market.

 

28 minutes ago, PompeyVillan said:

However, make no mistake about it, if they could slip it past the public tomorrow they would privitise every public service, errode workers rights completely, abolish trade unions, reduce tax for the rich, give banks carte blanche to gamble with taxpayers money, do away with consumer protection and product safety, willfully promote inequality and elitism.

I think there's a difference between the Tory party and the Tory Government. The Tory Government and the cabinet in particular might want to try and do some or all of those things, but the tory party - which is obviously all the members, the normal MPs ( as well as the proper bells like Johnson, Fox and all them) wouldn't want to do half those things and isn't IMO remotely "extreme". They may be in quite large part anti EU, pro Royalist, pro the UK, and small c conservative. but they're not extreme. They don't like Library cuts, NHS cuts, they worry about Schools and all the rest of it.

There's a whole bunch of peoplke in the UK, most people IMO, who want neither Corbynism, nor the Liam Fox/Rees Mogg brexit idocy. They just want things to work, things to be fair, to be OK, no fuss, no bother, just nice and orderly, trains to run on time, people to pay their taxes and the roads to have the potholes repaired and the bins to be emptied. 

[blandy]

1 hour ago, PompeyVillan said:

My feeling is that tolerance for the status quo is waning.

There's a lot of that about. And I sort of agree and sort of disagree - I think it's kind of going the other way as well. I think maybe that if you look at the status quo not as the last couple of years, but the period stretching back long before that, then people want large parts of that back.

"austerity" has failed most people, who perhaps accepted that it was necessary for a while, and yeah, people hate it now. But like I wrote above, for all the anger on the twitter and all that, I just think a heck of a lot of people want things to be a bit better, like they were before all this austerity, before all this Brexit stuff, before the tories got in in 2010 maybe, or before the financial crash. Everyone's been rodgered apart from a small subsection of international businesses and rich folk.

So I accept people don't want chancer bankers and tax dodgers, and they don't want aloof uncaring MPs and councils, but I think people just want stuff to not be so effed up. Everyone's angry with everyone else, but don't want to be.

[HanoiVillan]

I don't understand how the Tories can be considered 'extremist' - obviously 'extremism' can only be defined from an agreed-upon centre, and since Conservative policy has been pretty well slap bang in the middle of the Overton window for nigh-on four decades now, it isn't 'extremist' at all. It's utterly mainstream; that's the issue.