Current Affairs The General Election

[dholliday]

Ah yes, the same argument given by Republicans in America as to why Europe can have universal health care but they can´t. Good company you´re keeping.

I have no idea what you're referring to. EU has more people in it than USA. Luxemburg has 600k people while UK has over 60m...that's one hundred times more people. Whole different kettle of fish organising that.

also, EU members don't have universal health care.

 

[roydo]

I´ve just spent the weekend in Communist Luxembourg and they´re about to roll free public transport for all in a month´s time. They also had excellent free Wifi all around the city which worked whenever I needed it to. No idea if it´s that good all the time, can only speak for how much it benefited me.

Wonder if their citizens were as up in arms about these investments as some of ours are.

Were they not blacklisted or sommet for well dodgy private banking arrangements?

 

[dannyboy]

I would back Starmer if the manifesto stayed mostly the same, with some tweaks (the four day week is likely an idea whose time has not yet come, for instance).

But do you not worry he would project as even more aloof delicate smarter-than-thou Londoner than Corbyn does to Labour Leave constituencies?

This election played out with an establishment figure like David Miliband as leader y wanting to revoke Brexit would have been a very difficult battle for the Labour Party. It sure as hell wouldn´t have made fighting Brexit seats like Grimsby any easier.

 

[tsubaki]

I´ve just spent the weekend in Communist Luxembourg and they´re about to roll free public transport for all in a month´s time. They also had excellent free Wifi all around the city which worked whenever I needed it to. No idea if it´s that good all the time, can only speak for how much it benefited me.

Wonder if their citizens were as up in arms about these investments as some of ours are.

Indeed. One of the things I'd like to see money spent on is inviting anyone who thinks privatized railways are best to take a trip between the Gare de Lyon and Avignon and back on the TGV. The state could subsidize the ticket but the individual would have to bring their own pen and paper to write "I will not talk absolute rubbish about railways" 100 times.

 

[Eggs]

Neither of them passed the character test, l think. My thoughts on Miliband has already been stated, but Burnham seemed to have concluded that because he made a mess of the leadership election that it would be the only chance he'd ever get and so went off to Manchester when the opportunity presented itself. If he had carried on with what he had been doing (Shadow HS), he'd probably have been Shadow HS instead of Abbott in 2017 and the result might have been better than it was (and if it didn't, he'd have been in a much better position to be the next leader).

If I had to pick someone from the centre or right now as the next leader, I would pick Starmer who actually has engaged with the membership, engaged with the leadership, worked at developing policy and changing it where necessary and basically done what decent politicians should do. He turned up to a recent fundraiser at our CLP (though I didn't go) and was by all accounts a really nice bloke.

He still would be absolutely monstered by the media, though. That is what we should all remember.

...I don’t think Burnham made a mess of the leadership contest, the Party governance made a mess of the contest. Party members voting for the leader sounds so good, so democratic but a system that selects Ed over David Milliband and Corbyn over Burnham is flawed.

Much better MPs identify two candidates they want to lead them and let the members decide which of those wins.

 

[abelard]

This election played out with an establishment figure like David Miliband as leader of the Labour Party wanting to revoke Brexit would have been a very difficult battle for the Labour Party. It sure as hell wouldn´t have made fighting Brexit seats like Grimsby any easier.

Definitely, they'd be down to about 6 million votes by now. London + university towns and nothing else. They'd be losing under-40s to the Greens, like in Germany.

 

[Eggs]

I actually think Corbyn's stance on Brexit is smart. It's one of the reasons why my vote would go Labour. He's effectively allowing the people's vote everyone was apparently clamouring for.

...but its clearly not appealing to the voters Labour need to attract. Therefore, it’s not smart.

I’d like nothing better than to see Labour win this election, but I don’t see Corbyn being electable. I think Corbyn is a liability but I think Johnson is dangerous. Its why I find Labour’s campaign so frustrating.

We haven’t got long to wait.

 

[dannyboy]

I have no idea what you're referring to. EU has more people in it than USA. Luxemburg has 600k people while UK has over 60m...that's one hundred times more people. Whole different kettle of fish organising that.

also, EU members don't have universal health care.

I can´t think of a European country without universal healthcare. The point which is often made by Republicans is that European countries can have universal health care because they are much smaller, the exact same point you have just made about free public transport.

We might be 100 times larger but our economy is a lot bigger too. Poverty of ambition on your part I´m afraid.[/QUOTE]

 

[Deleted member 48881]

Let this be broadcast repeatedly during the next couple of days

psychopath. how can any sine person vote for this guy? speechless.

 

[dholliday]

I can´t think of a European country without universal healthcare. The point which is often made by Republicans is that European countries can have universal health care because they are much smaller, the exact same point you have just made about free public transport.

We might be 100 times larger but our economy is a lot bigger too. Poverty of ambition on your part I´m afraid.

Germany

 

[tsubaki]

What total nonsense. We already have excellent broadband coverage in this country provided at very reasonable prices. The problem with Corbyn's policy is that its solving a problem that nobody percieves is a problem.

As for student debt, at least that dies when the person dies. National debt is rolled down to future generations. A nice little nestegg for for our children, I'm sure you'll agree.

We don't, and lots of people perceived it as a problem.

Also I don't know if you realise this but when a person dies, or they get to 30 years and haven't paid the debt back, the government is left with one of its organizations (the Student Loan Company - which it owns and acts as guarantor for) being saddled with hundreds of billions of pounds of unrecoverable, unsecured debt when loads of people do that. Try to guess who that will end up with.

 

[davek]

It's my line of work mate.
We don't even call the bizzies anymore as they have no one available.
Takes over half an hour to get through on the phone too.

Regular there is only one police car overnight for the whole region. Proper bad.

This is VERY useful information!

 

[tsubaki]

...I don’t think Burnham made a mess of the leadership contest, the Party governance made a mess of the contest. Party members voting for the leader sounds so good, so democratic but a system that selects Ed over David Milliband and Corbyn over Burnham is flawed.

Much better MPs identify two candidates they want to lead them and let the members decide which of those wins.

I am not sure that it did - Ed was a better leader than David would have been, who until the 2015 election made better choices than David would have (over the first Syria vote but especially the media scandals). This mistake in 2015 was to not run on that record (which in terms of the press malpractice would have neutralised a lot of the press hostility to him) but to come out with an unspeakably bland and inoffensive guff.

As for Burnham could have won the leadership election, but he made mistakes (going along with the utterly meaningless abstension vote for a start, but also not recognizing what the support Corbyn was getting was about and not pressuring the other two candidates into standing down) during it that cost him. That shouldn't have been terminal though, but walking away was.

 

[abelard]

We don't, and lots of people perceived it as a problem.

Also I don't know if you realise this but when a person dies, or they get to 30 years and haven't paid the debt back, the government is left with one of its organizations (the Student Loan Company - which it owns and acts as guarantor for) being saddled with hundreds of billions of pounds of unrecoverable, unsecured debt. Try to guess who that will end up with.

It is probably the dumbest non-military policy that any Western government has managed in the last thirty years.

It will likely end up having cost the government less (as you note) just to have sent the kids to uni for free. They have, a stroke, dramatically increased not only the public debt but also the personal debt of millions of young people, who are the driving force of any consumer economy but who already struggle to pay for basics like houses or children - even as we grow ever more dependent on them to fund the next generation of pensions and NHS bills. And, as if the bare bones of the policy weren't bad enough, they also somehow contrived to gift their friends in the City a 6% interest rate on repayment, at a time when the BoE rate is %0.75 (in part because student loan debt has depressed consumer demand by people entering their prime spending years).

I can get why the 14 year old libertarian on here thinks it's wise, but it is truly baffling to see people who fancy themselves enlightened technocrats doing likewise.

 

[dholliday]

...but its clearly not appealing to the voters Labour need to attract. Therefore, it’s not smart.

I’d like nothing better than to see Labour win this election, but I don’t see Corbyn being electable. I think Corbyn is a liability but I think Johnson is dangerous. Its why I find Labour’s campaign so frustrating.

We haven’t got long to wait.

Why "clearly"? A lot of polls show Labour closing the gap since Corbyn made known his Brexit strategy.