The Hung Like a Donkey General Election December 2019 Thread

[HanoiVillan]

Further to the Lib Dems' post-Canterbury identity crisis:

 

[desensitized43]

When you look at the results in Canterbury at the last election it's easy to see why the Lib Dem candidates are doing this. They can't possibly win that seat but they can definitely split the vote enough to turn it Tory. The Liberals and Greens withdrawing from that seat should guarantee it doesn't

Time to find out whether Swinson can put country before party and her own vanity.

[blandy]

4 minutes ago, desensitized43 said:

When you look at the results in Canterbury at the last election it's easy to see why the Lib Dem candidates are doing this. They can't possibly win that seat but they can definitely split the vote enough to turn it Tory. The Liberals and Greens withdrawing from that seat should guarantee it doesn't

Time to find out whether Swinson can put country before party and her own vanity.

From the first candidate standing down it does look like local LDs think they can’t win and so need to boost labour. That’s good. However 2017 election results are not much of a guide in many seats. Remain seats with tories and leave seats with labour MPs may see huge swings.whoever came 1 and 2 last time could end up third...

Another general comment is that in various seats LDs, greens, plaid, independents have stood down for each other. Labour didn’t wish to do that or to get involved in boosting the anti Tory vote to the max. So Jo Swinson might ask why not ? Give me something in return and we have a deal.
Putting country before party is being done to a large extent by everyone except for the Tories and Labour, who go around demanding others stand down, but not them.

 

[Sam-AVFC]

15 minutes ago, blandy said:

Another general comment is that in various seats LDs, greens, plaid, independents have stood down for each other. Labour didn’t wish to do that or to get involved in boosting the anti Tory vote to the max. So Jo Swinson might ask why not ? Give me something in return and we have a deal.
Putting country before party is being done to a large extent by everyone except for the Tories and Labour, who go around demanding others stand down, but not them.

I think this viewpoint would be a lot easier to accept if Jo Swinson hadn't constantly saying Corbyn isn't fit for PM and she would never support him. Labour frustrate me massively when they come out and say they wouldn't go into a coalition with anyone, but I also think they'd be insane to enable more LD seats when they are still taking such a strong position against Labour.

I expect (but obviously could be wrong) if she came out and said she was willing to work with any opposition party to enable a 2nd referendum you might see a bit more coordination.

I also think it's a stretch to suggest the Brexit Party are putting country before party. Wipe the 2nd syllable and I agree.

[blandy]

18 minutes ago, Sam-AVFC said:

I think this viewpoint would be a lot easier to accept if Jo Swinson hadn't constantly saying Corbyn isn't fit for PM and she would never support him. Labour frustrate me massively when they come out and say they wouldn't go into a coalition with anyone, but I also think they'd be insane to enable more LD seats when they are still taking such a strong position against Labour.

I expect (but obviously could be wrong) if she came out and said she was willing to work with any opposition party to enable a 2nd referendum you might see a bit more coordination.

I also think it's a stretch to suggest the Brexit Party are putting country before party. Wipe the 2nd syllable and I agree.

She’s right about Corbyn. Also Corbyn and Labour should understand that in order for Lib Dem’s to take remainder Tory votes the LDs need appear “Tory acceptable” to those remainers. So it’s also a political signal.

All parties send that kind of signal message when they want to win converts from other parties.
LDs have said they would work with any opposition party to enable a 2nd referendum, assuming they’re not the next government (which they won’t be).

i left the Farage party off the list because it’s a company, not a party

 

[Vive_La_Villa]

Is it true Labour want to reduce the working week to 32 hours? 
 

They’ve got my vote. I’ve already filled in my application form for McDonalds.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Vive_La_Villa

[Sam-AVFC]

25 minutes ago, blandy said:

Also Corbyn and Labour should understand that in order for Lib Dem’s to take remainder Tory votes the LDs need appear “Tory acceptable” to those remainers. So it’s also a political signal.

Fair enough, makes some sense. Considering they are trying to replace the candidate that stood down for Labour I'm not sure I buy it though.

As for being right about Corbyn,  it's just that I find it odd that she is way more vocal about Labour than the Conservatives (or maybe it's just because there is way more reporting on it) which could end up being massively detrimental.

I don't like Gerry Adams, but if there was a 2 horse race between him and Hitler i'd be spending a lot more time talking about the 5 millions Jews Hitlers killed than Gerry Adams past.

If LDs end up in a coalition with the conservatives in exchange for a 2nd referendum vote I just wonder how many people will buy into the LDs virtue signalling at the next election when there is yet another Labour leader that they can't support.

Edit - I realise my silly example here probably opens a can of worms considering current accusations against Labour and their poor handling of anti-semitism

Edited November 13, 2019 by Sam-AVFC

[Sam-AVFC]

5 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Is it true Labour want to reduce the working week to 32 hours? 
 

They’ve got my vote. I’ve already filled in my application form for Macdonalds. 

They've talked about it as a long term plan over a decade.

There have been studies that show it can potentially boost productivity, but I think it's a bit disingenuous for a couple of reasons. In an office job like mine I could definitely see productivity being boosted by giving people an extra day off (it would for me anyway).

The problem is I just don't see how it could be done for factory workers etc and that would just increase inequality. I can also see it massively backfiring suggesting people who work their arses off could do more in 4 days - all they need to do is work harder!

[tonyh29]

19 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Is it true Labour want to reduce the working week to 32 hours? 
 

They’ve got my vote. I’ve already filled in my application form for Macdonalds. 

You've misspelt McDonalds so you passed the interview 

[Sam-AVFC]

3 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

You've misspelt McDonalds so you passed the interview 

I knew a guy who used to work at McDonalds and he told me one of the tests when they interviewed was to run upstairs with no explanation and if the person followed they passed they test.

I guess they probably don't want them to, but it's not a great way to train employees to think for themselves

Edited November 13, 2019 by Sam-AVFC

[snowychap]

[Vive_La_Villa]

2 minutes ago, Sam-AVFC said:

I knew a guy who used to work at McDonalds and he told me one of the tests when they interviewed was to run upstairs with no explanation and if the person followed they passed they test.

I guess they probably don't want them to, but it's not a great way to train employees to think for themselves

I completed an online test for a Sainsbury’s night shift job once. It was scenario based .Took me 20 minutes to complete and I failed it!  I’m convinced it was because I was showing way to much initiative in my answers.

[StefanAVFC]

4 day work week is proven to work.

I have a busy job and I could fit in everything into 4 days quite easily and be more productive whilst doing so

[Dr_Pangloss]

5 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

4 day work week is proven to work.

I have a busy job and I could fit in everything into 4 days quite easily and be more productive whilst doing so

It's not 'proven' because there's a lack of evidence for its efficacy, it's a theory, it can't be 'proven' because of your experience of it. Whilst it would work in my own particular case and whilst I'd be completely open to that policy it's difficult for me to see how it would be effective in many jobs across the manufacturing, retail and service sectors.

However I would certainly be up for a 'test and learn'.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Dr_Pangloss

[StefanAVFC]

1 minute ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

across the manufacturing, retail and service sectors.

These don't follow the 5 day working model (manufacturing can be 9-5 Mon-Fri I guess) so I'm not sure how changing it generally to 4 days changes these industries.

[StefanAVFC]

Maybe I'm an idealistic moron but for me, I've always thought that a 

Mon-Tue

Wednesday off

Thurs-Fri

Weekend off

Model could work. Less days to do your work leading to higher productivity and a break in the middle to recover.

[Vive_La_Villa]

Places I’ve worked allow one day a week wfh where you may not as get much done in some cases. But you tend to make up for it in the other 4 days. 
 

Of course this is only applicable for jobs where you only need a laptop to work.

[Sam-AVFC]

7 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

4 day work week is proven to work.

I have a busy job and I could fit in everything into 4 days quite easily and be more productive whilst doing so

So could I, but I'm not convinced all jobs could.

Whenever I've watched programs showing the inner workings of factories (obsessed with that shite) the people seem to be moving rapidly at a speed dictated by the conveyor belt and I can't see how they could do more in fewer days.

[LondonLax]

Why not a 3 day working week then? Would that not be even more productive still? Or is a 4 day week the magic number and we’ve been so close all this time without realising?

Personally I think productivity probably has a lot to do with mindset rather than the number of days per say. I think most people could fit their current 5 day output into 4 days (depending on the nature of the work obviously) if they were more focused for those 4 days, knowing they were getting an extra day off in return. However, I suspect that after a while the 4 day week would become the ‘new normal’ and people’s productivity on each day may well return to what it was during the 5 day week. 

[Dr_Pangloss]

10 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Places I’ve worked allow one day a week wfh where you may not as get much done in some cases. But you tend to make up for it in the other 4 days. 
 

Of course this is only applicable for jobs where you only need a laptop to work.

I work from home multiple times a week and get more done from home and actually work more hours - far less distractions and it's better for my welfare all round, there's no dead time in having to commute for instance. 

Incidentally, I remember many years ago as an economics student creating a scatter plot of GDP per hour (which is a measure of productivity) vs hours worked across a host developed and developing countries and found a negative correlation. So the more hours worked the less productive economies are on average, some noteworthy outliers in that relationship were the US (lots of hours and 'lots' of productivity). Interestingly Germany are far more productive than the UK (or were at the time of that analysis) and work a lot less hours. 

We absolutely should be working smarter and not harder, a 4 day week could well be an answer (Keynes was a big fan of it) I'm just not 100% sure about it's suitability across all industries. Be that as it may we're entering times of record job insecurity and heavy automation. I'm currently involved in a project at a major bank which will see thousands of jobs go through automation over the next few years and many other banks are doing the same. Something has to be done and it will require a combination of a basic income guarantee, shorter working weeks and even more job sharing in order to ensure enough people actually have jobs and 'prospects' over the years to come.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Dr_Pangloss