Open Thread – Politics and Business I

413 thoughts on “Open Thread – Politics and Business I”

1. Tubby December 31, 2011 at 5:23 pm

   Hi Ixion,

   It would be benefits where I would make the cuts, not that I would take Spain as a good example, but un-employment only lasts a year, we could means test the fuel winter payment, means test child benefit are just three things I can think of the top of my head.

   Yes I know its easy to say change this or that, and harder to think through the consequences, but IMO our social system should solely exist to maximise our human capital – i.e. good education (including free post 18 vocational and tertiary eduction) and health care are important as they produce productive highly skilled workers and keeps them working longer – some of the benefits people can receive suffer from the law of unintended consequences – its totally fair that a single mother, who is single from no fault of her own be supported until such time she can work, but its not fair if we then allow a teenager from a disadvantaged background to abuse child tax benefits and housing benefits to avoid working by getting pregnant straight from school, and frankly having worked in a very poor school in a poor area(for a year only) and talked to people who work for Sure Start, education to raise their aspirations has completely failed and will never work.
2. Tubby December 31, 2011 at 5:31 pm

   +1 on nuclear, I did my research for the PhD I never submitted on one of the materials used in AGR’s and met lots of people from the nuclear industry and as long as NIREX is sorted then I expect to see the Government cotton on to the fact that we need a large portion of our energy from nuclear (I can see tidal and hybrid off-shore wave/wind generation eventually by the middle of the century hitting around 30% of all generation, and us moving to a hydrogen economy for our surface transport fleet, but a mix of nuclear and coal with carbon capture is going to be needed for the rest of energy needs. I am not buying into fusion, it still produces high level waste in the form of the reactor chamber, and has consistently been just 50 years away since the early experiments in the later forty’s and early fifty’s).
3. x December 31, 2011 at 6:17 pm

   Remind me again which country had the world’s first reactor producing power for a civilian grid?

   Given a choice between going cold and hungry in the dark (no nuclear) and Coronation Street, hot food, and FaceBook (nuclear) I know which one the great British public will go for.

   I think fusion is a goer, “clean” or not.
4. DominicJ December 31, 2011 at 6:20 pm

   Tubby
   80% of the health budget is spent on people who will be dead within two years.

   If you replaced the Welfare (healthcare, pension, unemployment) budgets with a “citizens wage”, it would be about £5k for every man woman and child in the country.

   If you did away with education, you could give every child £5k a year, every year, from 0-21.
   I know a lot of people who’d have been better off learning the three r’s and then using the rest of their “education” budget to buy a share in a trade business.

   “and frankly having worked in a very poor school in a poor area(for a year only) and talked to people who work for Sure Start, education to raise their aspirations has completely failed and will never work.”

   One in Three girls at my secondary school was, or had already been, pregnant by the 31st August in our final year.
   Its hard to argue they didnt make a rational choice.

   Wind just doesnt work*.
   Huhnes “cheaper electricity bills through wind” are a 5% saving on bills only after a 30% energy useage reduction.

   *Special cases aside, like wind to power heating in the scottish islands which is cost effective compared to diesel heating.
5. IXION December 31, 2011 at 6:55 pm

   Tubby heres a few ideas

   1) Scrap pensions/NI system, NI is income tax by a different name. Replace pensions by upgraded to auto entitled post age69 entitlement to Income support, and concoment benefits. Totally means tested.
   2) Scrap child benefit we don’t need more children so stop subsidising them.
   3) Increase Corp tax to recover lost Employer NI, payments, tax profits not jobs.
   4) Scrap ALL local Govt it is all stupidly inefficient.
   5) Work for benefits (under 69) essential.

   Just some ideas.
6. John Hartley December 31, 2011 at 7:24 pm

   IXION.
   Perhaps a gentler version.
   Tell those 16-45 they can only spend 9 years max on unemployment benefit(no more than 5 years continuos). Teenagers might start taking qualifications more seriously.
   Encourage more state schools to teach for GCSE Engineering.
   Limit child benefit to the first two.
   Cut foreign aid from 0.7% GDP to 0.5% like most other countries. That would free £3.45 billion pa for Britain to spend on itself. Say £450 million off debt, £1.5 billion for defence, £500 m each for energy & transport infrastructure + grants to industry.
   I would not scrap local government. Keep frontline jobs (police,fire,refuse,carers) but scrap 75% back office non jobs(diversity,climate change,facilitators,deputy directors,trendy managers,etc.)
   It is easy to be cynical about fusion. We have not made the big breakthrough yet, but many baby steps forward have been made in the last couple of decades. These get overlooked.
   In the meantime, I want a HTGR & ALMR built(high temp gas reactor & adv liq metal reactor).
7. IXION December 31, 2011 at 8:14 pm

   JH

   I would be brutal, but only on the sharpest knife cuts quickest and hurts least.

   I forgot the Foreign aid, I would cut it 75% and scrap the dept and give the cash to foreign office to be spent to further British interests.

   Scraping local govt would mean keeping the frontline staff, as would nationalisiig the police and the fire service and the ‘National’ Health service.

   We have too many small hospitals, try and close one and all hell breaks loose.

   It would not be popular but it has been attested by experts, we could run national services nationaly for about half what we payand get pretty much the same front line quality.

   I would also reinvigorate the guilds and introduce engineering (of various types) in to schools. graded from technicians 1,2,3, to engineer, 1,2,3.

   And the right to use engineer as a title like doctor.

   Gospel according to Ixion chapter 1 verse 1.
8. Chris.B. December 31, 2011 at 8:23 pm

   Ah, so now we’re playing fantasy governments! Well in that case….

   Let’s start with Corporation Tax, which should be running at 35-40%. The notion that businesses would flock away from the country if this happened is utter rubbish.

   Businesses don’t come here for the tax breaks, they come here because of the market, the good standard of living, the ease of doing business and probaby most importantly, the legal protection afforded to them by our contract laws.

   In addition, I’d scythe away many of the tax deductible items such as depreciation, in order to stop the freakanomic accounting that takes place (just look at the MoD’s accounting, whereby the “running cost” of a Torndao is pegged at £45k per hour, when the actual cost is closer to £5-10k)

   As for unemployment, the main problem is that without any form of specialist skills, someone who is unemployed, especially for a long time, needs to reset and ends up back at the bottom of the employment ladder.

   This is where the focus of re-employment efforts should be. Everything that can be done to cut VAT should be done, as VAT is effectively a tax on consumption (spending), which is the one thing you need to boost the economy and create low level jobs.

   In addition, the health and safety laws relating to building sites need to be dumped. Currently there are about twenty individual health and safety licenses for different jobs (CSCS cards). These should be scrapped in favour of a foremans card with the foreman taking responsibility for those working under him. This would make it much easier for the unemployed to find casual labouring work for example.

   Education needs to be heavily rebalanced back towards English, Science and Maths, with a focus on the important basics. The “no child left behind” policy should be seriously reconsidered, as it ties teachers hands.

   University education should be subsidised only on those courses which have a major use to the economy. If you want to study the history of art, fine, but you’re going to pay whatever the university feels like charging (uncapped).

   Personally I’d can DIfD and find other ways to distribute that money.

   As for the old bill, I’d like to see them focus at the local level on nuisance problems and information gathering, leaving the major operations to more centralised departments (drug networks tend to span regionally and sometimes nationally).

   Energy wise, stop tarting about with pipeline dreams and just get on with using known reactors. I can understand investing in future programs and research, but not sitting on our hands hoping that the next big thing will be invented tomorrow.

   Wave power over wind power, and forced efficiency savings.

   Carbon capture coal is a goer. I don’t really care how green it actually is, as long as it looks and sounds green to the public. What can’t speak, can’t lie.
9. Chris.B. December 31, 2011 at 8:28 pm

   I should point out that by pipeline dreams I wasn’t talking about the pipeline from the article, I just meant they myriad of possible future reactors, all of which a lot of talking is done about while no real action is taken. In the meantime we could be cracking on with proven designs.
10. John Hartley December 31, 2011 at 9:05 pm

    ChrisB.
    The only production reactor is the APWR as being built in Finland. It is late & overbudget. Greens fail to mention the next 2 identical built in China are on time & budget, because they have all the knowledge from the 1st in Finland.
    If you built a HTGR or ALMR, the first would get the inevitable glitches, but those that followed would be fine.
    Britain had a small HTGR in the 70s. Japan built a prototype HTGR recently. The production version also could have made Hydrogen as a byproduct.
    Why HTGR? PWRs burn 5% fuel meaning 95% waste. HTGR burn 65% fuel, leaving 35% waste. HTGR can run on a Thorium/Uranium mix.
    An ALMR could burn 94% of PWR waste , while generating electricity. A working ALMR destroys the anti nuclear arguement.
    As for carbon capture, I like that sugar beet processing plant, that uses its waste CO2 & warm water to grow tomatos to near organic standards in giant greenhouses. A clean coal plant could pipe its waste warm water & CO2 to giant greenhouses growing salad & fruit crops.
    Scrapping small local hospitals only works if you have good transport links. Nobody wants an ambulance to take more than 20 minutes to get you to hospital.
11. Mark December 31, 2011 at 9:29 pm

    Ixion

    “I would also reinvigorate the guilds and introduce engineering (of various types) in to schools. graded from technicians 1,2,3, to engineer, 1,2,3.”

    I agree

    “And the right to use engineer as a title like doctor.”

    there was a petition on the number 10 website (the last one) to have engineer recognised as a professional accreditation signed by over 40000 people government say it current supports and and invests in engineering to an appropriate level.

    A friend who runs a shop told me the other day he recently employed a long term unemployed guy who told him he had 5 people employed by the government to get him into work include one who helps him with techniques for searching thru the paper for to find jobs and one who is a motivation person to give him self believe he’ll find a job. Its eye opening

    Chris totally agree with the mod accounting thing some real startling numbers would appear in relation to several a/c if the real life operating cost per hour was revealed.

    Id turn DFID into a charity that the UK public can fund it if it so wishes. With a small fixed amount of government funding going to the FO for disaster relief.
12. Hugh January 1, 2012 at 9:50 am

    @ DominicJ
    “One in Three girls at my secondary school was, or had already been, pregnant by the 31st August in our final year.”
    Blimey, you must have been knackered.
13. IXION January 1, 2012 at 11:15 am

    I know what it is to be unemployed.

    I know how soul destroying it its.

    I remember how my fists use to itch when faced with smug bastards who made statements of the

    ‘There are jobs out there for everyone that wants one and is prepared to work for a realistic wage’

    Type.

    I know what clinical depression is, and a close relative of mine who hasn’t missed a days work in his life struggles with the ‘Black dog’. My fists itch when people say all he needs too do is to ‘Pull himself together.

    But my fists itch even more when I come across the

    The lazy work-shy scum I deal with daily,(both male and female), who are either on the Jobseekers; or ‘the sick’ because they have’depression’. who clearly can work but have no intention of ever doing so…

    The trouble is sorting the wheat from the chaff.

    If we could do that we could afford Nellie, Dumbo and Babba (the fictional third carrier, together with all the bells and whistles…

    Answers on how to do that, on a postcard to:-

    Blue Peter.
    BBC Save the nation appeal
    No 10 and 11 Downing street……
14. IXION January 1, 2012 at 11:19 am

    Hugh

    LOL

    If we had an Olympic shagging contest, UK Under 21s team would win hands down.
15. Phil January 1, 2012 at 11:43 am

    Fantasy fleets may not be my thing but a bit of fantasy government draws me like a moth to a flame. Especially since I’ve just been enjoying Series 1 of Yes Minister.

    There are two main problems in this country. All of which have been spotted by various Governments, but, funnily enough, especially by New Labour.

    1. Education. Now I’m not a 3Rs man especially, I think that old fashioned type of education doesn’t achieve anything startling in itself. The problem is, and it is inextricably linked to the second problem I discuss in a bit, is parents and school attitudes to teaching. Teaching it must be realised is about a lot more than teaching subjects to kids. Its about paternalism, it’s about being caring and looking after the kids in your care, it’s about giving a damn beyond their results. A LOT of teachers are like this but the institution stifles it. My friend is a primary school teacher and she is forbidden to give her kids a cuddle, even when crying. A lot of these kids come to school, filthy, full of junkfood by parents that don’t give a flying shit. And yet they are not allowed to challenge the parents on why they are letting their kids come to school stinking. Kids need to have a solid 3Rs, they also need to be taught critical thinking. But above all, teaching needs to be seen as a social service. Combine education and social services departments, how can you possibly teach a kid whose parents don’t care about their child education or even their child’s welfare? You simply cannot do it, sometimes you’re lucky and some kids do well despite it all but most don’t make it. The best schools do well because their parents care about their education (which is why they spend the dosh) and because the teachers there see their role as being paternalistic, not just teachers of subjects. Teachers need to become social workers. Like it or not.

    2. The Welfare State. The destroyer of this country. The elephant in the room. The most destructive thing ever unleashed on this country. And this is not a rant against welfare, we are a rich and compassionate country – I whole heartedly support having welfare. But our welfare system is utterly broken. It breeds dependency and concentrates misery and deprivation and normalises deviant behaviour and breeds people who simply cannot co-exist with other people who are bound by the economic reality of every day life. The welfare state divorces people from striving for their daily bread, there are people there to “support” you all the way. And Council House housing policies based on need concentrates misery so kids grow up in an environment that is utterly destructive to human nature. They cannot conceive of anything other than their next pleasure. It is all they have to worry about, the state won’t let them starve or die, they literally do not have to lift a finger. So they breed, their kids have no aspirations and are as dependent as their parents and then we expect teachers to be able to work magic on kids fed on junk food, allowed to do what they want because their parents do, and who have no interest in or need to learn because society will allow them to exist without it.

    Unless you tackle these two fundamental issues, everything else is just tinkering. Sort out education and welfare and lots of other things will follow.
16. jed January 1, 2012 at 3:30 pm

    Phil

    Broadly agree – see the fall of Rome! All the money spent on “bread and games” so its not like we haven’t had a couple of
    f thousand years to study this problem!!

    Perhaps we should study some of the yanks workfare progrmmes? They are weird because the republicans accuse the democrats of being communists, but even Obama’s reforms would hardly make them a welfare state – but with the size of their population and even bigger gap between richest and poorest than we have, we could possibly learn a few things from them ???
17. STV January 1, 2012 at 3:35 pm

    @ mark.
    The DFID as a charity idea has been my favoured option for years. to me it seems to be the best option for all parties, those who want to contribute can contribute. I won’t be one of them.

    They can then see how many £450,000 ferris wheels they can build in Lashkar gar with the money they receive (it won’t be many).
18. jed January 1, 2012 at 3:47 pm

    By to think notthe way Canadian education system is very different with a much greater focus on turning out reasonably behaved young citizens; yes its suffered a little from “trendy lefty” issues, but certainly not to the level of the UK. Schooling starts with Kindergarten, so the education starts later the kids being a wee bit more mature – are the top flight as good at 18 as the brightest and best in the UK? Possibly not, my wife seems to think not, but then that is why a lot of degrees over here have a fourth year. Back to the schools though, we have ‘spirit days’ each term for example when the kids go in sports shirts, with their hair died funny colours, and lessons are binned in favour of outside agencies doing presentations on recycling or something. Also
    even in a VERY ethnically diverse school full of immigrants, they sing Oh Canada every morning, and even if they may learn about each others cultures, there is red and white and make leafs everywhere – solid national identity anyone???
19. Phil January 1, 2012 at 5:46 pm

    “Perhaps we should study some of the yanks workfare progrmmes”

    Perhaps. But very often, we have the same types of time limits and stringent requirements, the problem is they are not enforced. If you went by the letter of all the Benefit regulations the different schemes are actually very strict. It fascinates me to see the Government declare that Jobseekers for example will have to look for work full time. The regulations already stipulate that! But there’s no backbone in the system to enforce things as they should be. And it is because there are numerous agencies out there who “support” claimants and who think the best way to do so is to milk every penny they can from the system for them. So instead of teaching them a few hard lessons and letting them lose money, they get led by the hand, letters are written, and decisions overturned on a daily basis. And so the claimant who did not fulfil their obligations and knows it, goes to their support worker or an agency like CAB or Shelter and get what they want in the end. Times that by hundreds of thousand times a year and people are allowed to live like farm animals, everything done for them. I am sick to death of people for example, getting someone to fill in their forms because “they can’t read”. Why are people being paid benefit that is not conditional on literacy or going to reading and writing lessons, why are we rewarding this ignorance and this destructive idleness?

    So a start, enforce the rules that are already in place and ALL benefits are conditional on literacy if the person is of normal learning ability.
20. Paul R January 2, 2012 at 7:15 pm

    You’ve also got to look at the money Government spends on “schemes” and other third parties like ATOS.
    ATOS are a joke and simply they create reports full of lies, I know this from my own experience. I’ve even heard they are now involved in the tribunal process.

    The government aren’t currently enforcing the rules, they are quite simply shafting people for idealogical reasons and profit for their friends at the private companies, the same can be said for all the other departments.

    Its amazing, doctors to run the health service but they’re professional medical opinions ignored when it comes to disability benefits. What’s next? The Navy to run the Army whose will then run the RAF who will be fighting ground wars. Just following the logic set already….

    There is a problem with the welfare state, always has and will be, it will remain dysfunctional while the politicians remain dysfunctional as well, again same for each department.

    Iain Duncan Smith reforms won’t really archive anything, anything to cut costs then fixing the problem. They cut housing benefit, yet at the same time say they have the right to buy further reducing the amount of affordable housing on the market!

    I’m 24 and I’m really worried about the future. We’ve got a government which is no better than the last, while Labour have got sod all to say, whose latest wheeze is to blame the BBC.

    Who the f’ am I meant to vote for in the future?
    Tory and Labour don’t really look that much different when you look at them closely and the Limp Dims are just a party with no back bone.
21. Aussie Johnno January 4, 2012 at 2:01 am

    Two interesting press pieces today 4/1/2012);

    1. the USAF has reached a decision on its ‘Light Air support Aircraft, AKA armed trainer. In somewhat of a surprise it has picked the Super Tucano for an initial order of 20 aircraft. What is no surprise is the the ‘other party’, Beechcraft with the AT-6, has headed for the courts seeking a review of the process.

    2. The New York Times, repeated in our local rag, has claimed that the US intends to move from a Defence policy of being able to conduct 2 major combat operations at the same time to an ability to conduct one major combat operation while retaining the ability to deter a second major player.

    Sign of the times?
22. ArmChairCivvy January 4, 2012 at 7:16 am

    Hi Johnno,

    On your first one, I think the news piece stated that they are for training the Afghan airforce (presumably means that they are given to them when combat readiness is reached)

    On the second, we can now draw a linear trend line:
    - early 90s down from 2 and a half wars to two
    - early tens down from 2 to one and a half
    - by early thirties US relative power will have declined so much that they will only be willing to engage in an existential conflict

    Australia is building relevant capabilities for that scenario; Europe is not
23. DominicJ January 4, 2012 at 9:52 am

    Aussie
    A sign of the times?
    Yes, but not the times of “American Decline”, but Russian.
    The US planned throughout the cold war to fight simultanious wars against the USSR and China, in Europe and the pacific.

    That looks a little extreme now

    Paul R
    The government “cuts” are a £20bn increase in public spending.
    Thats right, far from being cut, government spending, on everything except the police and armed forces, has gone up.

    The housing benefit “cut” will crush Labour if they make a stand on it at the election.

    http://order-order.com/2012/01/02/social-justice-and-the-housing-benefit-cap/

    To put this into perspective, my mortgage interest in £360 a MONTH.
    I’d have paid my mortgage off by now if I received that sort of benefit, and I bought my house less than 5 years ago…..
24. Paul R January 5, 2012 at 12:13 am

    I think Labour don’t need to make a stand at all, Ed Millie is a useless leader so making stands to crush themselves is not required!

    I remember when I lived on a council estate, my parents mortgage repayments weren’t as high as they currently would be, housing benefit of 2 weeks would have probably matched the monthly mortgage payment. (It was an ex council house on an estate on the very edge)

    But because the council houses were sold, house prices have gone up, now with private land lords it will cost the tax payer more. I’m not talking small houses, 4 bedrooms(1 which is a box room) big enough to fit in a double bed and furniture, large separate lounge and dinning room. These houses should have not been sold off!

    For what the government pays out in housing benefit, they should have kept stock. Why pay stupid amount of housing benefit when the house its going to is over priced or something which was ex council!

    The Labour and Tories only have themselves to blame on the cost of housing benefit, the cause and cost of housing.

    I agree, housing benefit is a lot of money, to some extent too much, but again lets not look at who the tenant is but who the bloody owner is!

    But again it seems to fit in with government, utter useless at getting a good deal and good at wasting tax payer money.

    Housing in this country is just stupid. In a brand new local development, why pay £300k for a brand new SMALL three bedroom house when you could spend around £250k on a three bedroom bungalow with a bigger ground plot, likely a garage and off road parking built in the 60s around the corner? That is just stupid!
25. Paul R January 5, 2012 at 12:15 am

    Oh and I do not expect housing benefit should be paid to people living in the really posh top class locations in London, its simple, you’ve been priced out. I would suggest we’d give them a free bus and train pass, but we all know how cheap they are nowdays….
26. Dangerous Dave January 6, 2012 at 2:46 pm

    Ooh Ooh, fantasy Gubbimints! Can I join in?

    @Ixion:
    “2) Scrap Child Benefit . .” Oh, yes we do. From a macro level the population (and therefore tax base) is only growing due to immigration. The problem is that there is an increasing number of illegal immigrants that slip past the the tax system due to lax border controls. Only a “citizenship amnesty”, compulsory Census and tying benefits (including non-emergency NHS care) to citizenship will cure this. If the working population shrinks or only “benefit scrounger” families have children, then the tax base would collapse starting a vicious circle of cost-cutting and further tax base reduction.

    “4) Scrap local govt . . ” I agree that we have more than one layer of government that duplicates functions (something about our much vaunted “checks & balances”?). Actually I’d do it the otherway round. Sort of. Central Govt. spent £503b in 2011 while Local govt. spent £179b. so local govt. only spends 26% of the total. I’d devolve as many functions of government to local County authorities (but feel free to make Regional authorities to replace them) as possible (Policing, Education, Health), and have all tax gathering carried out at Local level, paving the way for local setting of Council, income and business taxes. That way local authorities would be able to attract inward investment and population movements directly by setting low taxes, or accurately reflect the cost of services by increasing taxes.

    “5) Work for benefits essential . .” Verymuch agreed. But I’d call it “national service” – basically any central or local govt job that can be trained for in 6-12 months (street cleaners, hospital porters, clerks etc.) should be given to the unemployed in return for their benefits. The unions would complain, but but slowly introducing it via replacments for natural wastage it shouldn’t cost anyone their job. Will also reduce the pensions and payment burden (these ppl are on benefits not “being employed”). I definitly foresee some unintended consequences tho’

    “We have too many small hospitals . .” Maybe get the Health Trusts to concentrate high end treatments and surgery at a few large “centres of excellence”, but Maternity, A&E, Recuperation and out-patient treatment are just the sort of thing that should be local. Either because you need to keep transit times low (A&E, Maternity), or visitors/out-patients don’t want to be inconvenienced by repeated long travel distances. Bring back “Cottage Hospitals” I say!

    @John Hartley:
    “Encourage more state schools to teach for GCSE Engineering.” Actually we need to rebalance the effort put into SEN – average – G&T pupils. Much of the effort is put into the SEN end of the spectrum (especially for badly behjaved kids, what a disincentive it is for most pupils in my Wife’s school when the Kids in the “unit” get to go to a restaraunt when they behave well, while the rest of the school struggles to put on any form of school trips), but not enough at the G&T end. Yet we rely on the G&T pupils to go to university and add value by being employed in British R&D and sutting edge Engineering companies.

    @Chris B:
    “Businesses don’t come here for the tax breaks . . ” Actually you’d be surprised. Youngs Foods have closed an factory in Cumbria because funding had dried up, Nestle are leaving Croydon for the same reasons. The sorts of companies that don’t come here for the tax breaks are the SME’s that have grown up in the UK. For those we need to make Taxation clearer and rmeove the “tax avoidance” grey area’s, mybe by setting business taxes high and allowing reductions for specific targets (less waste, WEEE recycling, Lower energy consumption etc.) that way the onus is on the companies to prove the reductions in tax that they need. Also, I’d put as much effort in stamping out corporate tax avoidance as we do Benefit Fraud – snd “name and shame” the big infringers!

    “As for unemployment, the main problem . .” Someone on this thread has said that pupils should be given money to spend in an education “market”. While I disagree with that for KS1-KS4, for further and continuing ed. having a bunch of Education “crediuts” that you use to gain access to CFEE’s colleges and Tech. Colleges is a good idea (and one that the Lib. Dems. have banged on about for the past decade – but inexplicatbly forgotten about now they are in power). That way when (and nowadays is is increasingly *when*) you are made unemployed, you have the oppurtunity and access to re-training to help get another job. Just trying to get more “unskilled” jobs out there (apart from govt. jobs – see above) won’t work, as the minimum required living standard in the UK is too high to make such companies uncompetitive internationally. Also, I know a few people who “bunked off” for most of their school careers and, now they’ve been confronted with the awful truth of benefits and low-skilled work, are desparate to train themselves up and are highly motivated to do so.

    “University Education . .” Agreed totally. We don’t want to stop people studying Medieval Literature at Oxbridge, but such “vanity courses” should be unfunded by the taxpayer. Taxpayer funding should be led by whatever professions we currently have an imminent “skills gap” in.

    Also and Further,

    I wouldn’t scrap DfID, but rather channel all non-emergancy funding into Commonwealth countries as part of a way to re0invigorate the Commonwealth. Also, I’d tie funding to specific goals (i.e. India gets £450mil – but only if they eradicate slums in 10 years). We could also have senior and junior members of the Commonwealth (Senior as in UK, Canada, SA, Australia) with the Senior members helping to direct policy, and bearing responsibility for the Junior members. Once a threshold is reached (democracy, living standards, low amounts of poverty etc.) then a junior member gets invited to the senior members club. Such a carrot method would work much better on states like Kenya and India who are aspirational, and who would see seing a senior member in anything as something to aim for. We could even open membership of the Commonwealth to new members!

    The benefits system is definitely broken, as IXION, Chris B. and Phil have said. On another thread someone mentioned a citizen’s wage to replace all individual benefits (i.e. except carers allowance and Child Benefit) If you set it at minimum wage -10% then that should encourage people to take most jobs (until Labour come into power and up it to minimum wage level!) and streamline the benefits system.

    As for renewable energy, I’ve always seen the utility for wind and solar as being “disruptive” technology. Rather than large scale projects undertaken by the energy companies, enabling solar and wind to tie into the grid on a personal scale would produce greater benefits, provide better resilience and the distributed nature of the power generation means that energy will be flowing into the Grid from soewhwere as it is rarely not sunny or windy *everwhere* in the UK. Having said that a backup of 25-30% nuclear/clean coal/stored energy is necessary to take into account usage spikes and dips in natural generation.

    Finally, even though I regard myself as a Liberal (even a Radical), I see no use in the EU in its current incarnation. Free Trade Area? – yes, Common Border controls & harmonisation of Safety & Manufacturing standards? – yes, Centralised undemocratic super-state? – no! It’s one of the 3 reasons I stopped my party membership in 2006 (the others being Defence Policy and the scunner Campbell!).
27. Dangerous Dave January 6, 2012 at 2:52 pm

    Update: “5) Work for benefits essential . .” Verymuch agreed. But I’d call it “national service” – basically any central or local govt job that can be trained for in 6-12 months (street cleaners, hospital porters, clerks etc.) should be given to the unemployed in return for their benefits. The unions would complain, but but slowly introducing it via replacments for natural wastage it shouldn’t cost anyone their job. Will also reduce the pensions and payment burden (these ppl are on benefits not “being employed”). I definitly foresee some unintended consequences tho’

    Actually, if I were made Benevolent Dictator For Life, I’d make such a National Service scheme compulsory for all 18-22 year olds. That way the jobs would attract young adults with a range of skills and backgrounds. Some would be able to “stay on” or train further (SRN – Ward Sister, or care worker – supervisor) while everyone would get an experience of what it is like to do these, often thankless and menial jobs.
28. DominicJ January 6, 2012 at 3:40 pm

    ““4) Scrap local govt . . ” I agree that we have more than one layer of government that duplicates functions (something about our much vaunted “checks & balances”?). Actually I’d do it the otherway round. Sort of. Central Govt. spent £503b in 2011 while Local govt. spent £179b. so local govt. only spends 26% of the total.”

    Its actualy worse than that, because 80% of local government funds are grants from central government.
    So only 5% of government spending is really local.
    But even that isnt really local, because central government tells local government what to do, and councillors who object are sacked by “The Standards Board” and barred from standing for election again.

    ““Businesses don’t come here for the tax breaks . . ” Actually you’d be surprised. Youngs Foods have closed an factory in Cumbria because funding had dried up”
    But thats the problem, “high tax and grant back” attracts only wasters, interested in claiming grants, “rent seeking”.
    A serious business will go wheres theres a 10% tax burden, not where theres a raft of grants it can claim back in return for brown evelopes to the right mandarin.

    ““University Education . .” Agreed totally. We don’t want to stop people studying Medieval Literature at Oxbridge, but such “vanity courses” should be unfunded by the taxpayer. Taxpayer funding should be led by whatever professions we currently have an imminent “skills gap” in.”

    But who gets to decide where theres a skills gap?
    What Government Inspector with his clipboard and tick list would have green lighted iPad design in 1995?

    “harmonisation of Safety & Manufacturing standards? – yes”

    But the EU doesnt actualy decide those, for the most part, they are international standards that are simply passed into law by the EU, frequently in poor ways.
    The icelandic air disaster was entirely an EU cock up. Once, a plane flew over an active volcano, it was virtualy sandblasted and nearly crashed. So an international warning system was set up, to warn pilots about active volcanoes so they could avoid the ash cloud in future. The EU over reacted, and decided to impose no fly zones, until it could be proven that the ash cloud was safe, but created no system with which to prove safety. In the end, the airlines just launched their planes from outside EUrope and handed a fait accompli to brussels.
29. jedibeeftrix January 6, 2012 at 3:55 pm

    so when are you getting into power Dom?

    i’ll be cheering you on!
30. Phil January 6, 2012 at 6:20 pm

    “We don’t want to stop people studying Medieval Literature at Oxbridge, but such “vanity courses” should be unfunded by the taxpayer”

    I’ve bitten.

    There is nothing “vanity” about an education in history. It teaches critical thinking (the main thing that this population lacks), it teaches research skills, it teaches argument, it teaches eloquence, it teaches inter-disciplinary subject. In short, it can produce a perfectly well educated individual who is armed with valuable and transferable skills and a mindset that questions and researches and seeks answers. This inverted snobbish thinking that we should all be praising plumbing and engineering courses is tedious. The country will not be a better place as a whole if we shit out lots of engineers and vocational folk.

    Kids need to have a solid foundation in the 3Rs and critical thinking – critical thinking is, excuse the pun, critical. People must question, people must think, people must seek answers. It is not human nature so it must be taught and instilled and subjects like history and media studies that people take the piss out of teach that in spades.

    So, a solid foundation in the 3Rs, a solid foundation in a foreign language, taught from primary school, a solid foundation in critical thinking skills, a solid foundation in religious studies and media studies and a solid foundation in the natural sciences, and then they can choose as they get older and focus more and more on what suits them, from vocational to Medieval Philosophy if they want.

    What is also needed is a more coherant “Second Chance” where people who made the wrong choices when they were younger in A Level or Degree subject can get a subsidised second crack at a subject they have realised would be more useful to their circumstances.
31. Phil January 6, 2012 at 6:30 pm

    Now, I could stand on my soap box and rant about local government until I dropped dead. I could write a book on what I think is wrong with local government. Volumes even. Even the words make me angry.

    But, a local authority of some sort IS needed. They undertake the minutiae of daily existence that has the most fundamental impact on people’s lives. They fix street lights, highways properties and works, waste disposal, trading standards, building control, development plans and planning applications. These are all utterly fundamental services and it makes sense for local units to deliver them as the localities are very different in characters and needs.

    The trouble with local government is that is spends a huge amount of money (a lot of it funded by central and devolved government coffers) on pointless, stupid, inane services that the rest of the world does perfectly well without and which the evidence base for success is very low or non-existent.

    These initiatives need to stop. The whole system needs a massive overhaul. The Government does not even know what legal obligations it has placed on local authorities, it has had to go cap in hand and ask people to think of them and from that database it wants to cut them down. So we have no idea what local government is supposed to be doing in its entirety and money that should be going to core services is being spent on politicised and pointless little programmes that become self justifying and I’m going to stop right there before I REALLY get going!

    Local Government must exist. But its duties should be rolled back to core services with funding only allowed to be channelled to other schemes when the core duties are being discharged effectively and that will be decided on a qualitative basis, and not on poxy targets and PIs.

    It’s hard, local government should have autonomy, but it also does stupid shit with its autonomy. Like the Labour councils who refused to put into place civil defence measures in the Cold War because they were anti-nuclear so the Government had to make them by passing the 1983 law and some still ignored it.

    It’s not an easy question. But some Councils are just too big for their boots now and too self justifying. And smug.
32. Phil January 6, 2012 at 6:34 pm

    “Actually, if I were made Benevolent Dictator For Life, I’d make such a National Service scheme compulsory for all 18-22 year olds. ”

    National Service, the solution to all our woes! The populist conception of National Service doesn’t take into account its enormous, budget busting cost, its huge tranches of almost untrainable soldiers who spent most of their time in jail, the delays in education, the interruption in the lives of perfectly normal and decent people and the philosophical problems of when a central government can force you to fight when the country is not in a state of war and needs defending from a livid and obvious threat of destruction.
33. Chris.B. January 6, 2012 at 9:37 pm

    My experience of interacting with Local Government has been consistent with dealing with petty individuals, detached from reality, who are self serving and corrupt to the absolute core.

    If I were the Benevolent Dictator then I would scrap the lot of them, replaced by centrally appointed administrators. Chose your name for them, Governors or whatever. They and their staff would be responsible for handling things like waste disposal etc.

    No committees, no faffing about.

    I also distrust all this talk of compulsory schemes. That sounds a lot like enforced labour to me, a route you absolutely don’t want to be going down. It would also throw a spanner in the works when all those people refused to work such hours and such jobs for such little pay, leaving a gaping hole in services as they effectively went on strike.

    The government needs to do two simple things; actually help people find jobs and actually encourage employers to take on jobseekers.

    A CV database of jobseekers, minus the names and addresses (give each CV a code which the employer then gives to the Job Centre) would be a start.

    I also find it somewhat laughable that jobseekers are left to their own devices for 12 months before being offered the help of private companies to touch up their CV’s etc. Surely that aid should be provided right off the bat?

    On to the NHS and I mostly agree with what people are saying about centralising some health care specialities while keeping some services (A&E, Maternity) on a more localised basis. At some point the extreme cost of GP’s also needs to be clawed back.

    Again to Education, I just think certain courses have limited applicability in the real world. I’m not saying we should focus purely on engineering or things like that, but I do think there are a lot of courses that really ought to receive no government funding, while others are essentially made free. And yes, that includes Media Studies.
34. DominicJ January 6, 2012 at 10:36 pm

    Jedi
    Standing again in May.
    Last of my “nice” leaflets will be out this weekend (hopefully, rain dependant) then its 5 months of dirty tricks leaflets to utterly destroy labours vote.
    My favourite plan so far is “Vicious Tory Cuts Exposed” in big red writing, and then a break down of all the spending increases, with “rent a gob” quotes. And of course, a breakdown of the local MPs wages for being a councillor, MP and his expenses, that sent them mental last year

    Phil
    I’m afraid I’m with Phil on Medieval Literature from Oxford, its Modern Literature from Bolton you;ve got to worry about.

    The problem with local government is, it isnt local.
    The average size of a local government in France, Germany and the United States is 10,000, its 180,000 over here.
    We need local government, and it needs to be Democratic (frankly, it doesnt matter if the Libertarians or the Communists control your local council, they cant change anything)

    I think some sort of National Service would be good, if your 18, dont have a job, and arent studying, you should at least be offered it as an option, pays just beer money, and at the end, you get a ford fiesta (or such) as a bonus, along with hopefully some sort of skill.
    I know you all dont like my charecterisation of infantrymen as knuckle dragging idiots, but all the former infantrymen I know are(!) and all of them have pretty decent jobs because the army turned them from layabouts into people who could get up on time.

    “Super Hospitals” are a monster.
35. Phil January 6, 2012 at 10:54 pm

    “The average size of a local government in France, Germany and the United States is 10,000, its 180,000 over here.”

    As ever its a question of balance. Local Government in France was the other extreme, hyper local to use a modern phrase which I obviously despise. But that’s just too inefficient hence a lot of the units have amalgamated, officially or in union.

    One needs to strike the right balance between size and efficiency and local conditions. Some things are not particularly efficient when centralised and scaled up, for example waste disposal – it’s a pretty local job organising the routes and lorries etc.

    Trouble with local government is the fact that it is so specialised in its functions that a lot of people become managers simply by virtue of doing 10-15 years and get promoted to their level of incompetence. It’s chock full of self-important middle managers all doing some elaborate dance trying to seem useful. Wipe out 50% of the functions of my local authority and 90% wouldn’t notice, shut down waste disposal or highways and 99% would certainly notice and react forcefully in about 8 hours.

    Super Hospitals – difficult but some specialities are better off concentrated. Go to a hospital specialising in cardiac medicine and you know you will see a cardiac specialist, in general hospitals, its best not to need a specialist at the weekend or after hours.
36. Phil January 6, 2012 at 11:03 pm

    “My experience of interacting with Local Government has been consistent with dealing with petty individuals, detached from reality, who are self serving and corrupt to the absolute core.”

    I never realised we had spoken!

    “A CV database of jobseekers, minus the names and addresses (give each CV a code which the employer then gives to the Job Centre) would be a start.”

    Never will happen. Data protection is a HYPER sensitive concern, especially since that disk went missing with millions of details on it. No way will Government ever develop such a database, and if they did, it would be horrendous to use.

    “Again to Education, I just think certain courses have limited applicability in the real world.”

    Any rigorous education, no matter what in, is a wonder of the world and is what makes us civilised. It all comes together, there are very few courses out there that are probably useless. There are a lot more traditionally “useful” courses badly taught that accomplish nothing.

    Education and learning is so much more than the subject.

    Neglectful ignorance is humanity’s worst sin in my eyes.

    I watched Afghans with a careful eye and I realised that most of their problems stem from their illiteracy and lack of critical thinking. They exist in a “natural” human state in an unnatural human environment. And it’s not a good place to be.
37. James January 6, 2012 at 11:43 pm

    @ DomincJ, re knuckle-dragging idiots.

    The education starts with not invading Murmansk. Not in a billion scenarios is that ever an answer. Even I know that, and I failed the infantry suitability evaluation question (otherwise known as the recce / infantry selection test), namely “there’s enemy out there somewhere, now go and find them”.
38. IXION January 7, 2012 at 12:30 am

    It is of note that by many counters:

    Most cost efficient
    Beast health lifestyle support.
    Most effective at spotting early signs of major and minor disease.

    Is

    Cuba!

    Which is entirely state controlled! It it also uses the local clinic with big central hospital model.

    Chris B

    Your not only right about dealing with local govt, try dealing with central govt!

    Unfortunately that’s why the central database thingy is a non starter.

    Govts are to IT projects are (as my old Gipsy Grandad use to say…

    “About as much use as a thousand yards of chain to a drowning man”
39. Chris.B. January 7, 2012 at 12:42 am

    @ IXION

    I can’t even big to imagine what dealing with central government is like. It surely can’t be any worse.

    @ Phil

    The CV thing might be a job for the private sector. There are a lot of these job sites about now that allow employers to search prospective CVs. Surely the Job Centre couldn’t f**k that up….
40. DominicJ January 7, 2012 at 12:05 pm

    Ixion
    Yeah, and tractor production is up 70%….
41. IXION January 7, 2012 at 2:25 pm

    DJ

    Whilst ‘Facts’ are always up for questions, like who gathered them? Are they lying, are we comparing apples with apples? etc.

    It isinternationally accepted that despite having the budget of a half decent news year eve party Cuba has very low rates of; and very high rates of detection in the early stages of; Cancer, Heart disease,and other chronic illnesses. It has many local clinics, almost one per street, everyone gets regular medicals, etc etc. It has been studies as a way forward for Western health care, you can imagine what the American right thought of it!

    Sorry of it causes you Ideological pain.

    Chris B

    I recount this story of trying to book a professional visit to see a serving prisoner.

    Me:- Tel the prison, given the number for the office that deals with such things.

    I telephone that number – no reply after several attempts.

    I telephone main Prison Number, they confirm that is the correct number.

    I telephone again next day no reply after several attempts.

    I telephone main prison number and complain about non response.

    “Oh we know said the operator it’s their policy not to answer the telephone”!

    I point out that is stupid and the response is

    “That is the number for legal visits and the only one which we can give out”!

    Me:- I ask them to put me through internally.

    They refuse they are not allowed to do that.

    I ask to speak to deputy governor responsible. He refuses to talk too me.

    I write to deputy governor pointing out thsi stupidity.

    He writes back explaining that if I wish to speak to prisoners I should call XXXXXXXXXXXX the same number I have been ringing.

    I write back saying in effect ‘Balls’, and the Deputy governor confirms by return that ‘That department is experiencing IT difficulties and will not be able to answer calls for some time.
    I write back requesting they call/ write to me with an appointment and perhaps an alternative number. I receive no reply.

    In the meantime, time ticks on.

    Client is produced at Crown court Judge tries to bollock me for not preparing defence.

    I produce this pythonesque correspondance.

    Judge goes purple and order his clerk to contact the governor immediately. Somehow Crown court judges tend to get their calls answered.

    I am given an appointment to see the client the following week.

    In the meantime I get a letter from the governor accusing me of trouble making! And if I need to speak to a prisoner all I have to do is call XXXXXXX -

    You guessed it the number they are not answering!

    That is just some of the dumb shit I have to put up with.
42. Phil January 7, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    Try talking to the Child Benefit Office. They are paranoid on a Stalinist level, especially since they lost their disk. They flat out will not deal with other Government agencies or local government agencies.

    I’d love to see the actual physical office, I imagine it is behind a moat with searchlights and towers and more pat downs for CD ROMs as you leave work for the day than the Royal Mint.

    Data Protection legislation in this country has outpaced the ability of Government to securely communicate with itself and local government. Both culturally and technologically (ie where the technology does exist, the culture is suspicious of it and will not use it or uses it in a bizarre technophobic manner).

    And that makes for a nightmare.
43. El Sid January 7, 2012 at 3:15 pm

    There’s been some meeja coverage of Jim Murphy talking about the £5bn of defence cuts that he would do if Labour were in power. I think this is his original article :

    http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/01/06/responsibility-and-reform-in-defence/

    “National security is dependent on economic stability….we have identified £5bn worth of savings Labour would make within the MoD budget if in government. We prioritise non-frontline savings, but we are clear that some savings will need to come from the equipment programme and manpower…areas such as civil servant numbers, bonuses and allowances for senior officers and MoD restructuring where further savings can be found….The package includes cuts that now they have been taken cannot be reversed, for example a reduction in heavy artillery designed for another era and the cancellation of Nimrod”

    It begs the obvious question, if you can see all these obvious cuts now – why the hell didn’t you cut the fat when you were in government and put the money into strike length tubes and proper sonar on T45 (or insert pet project here)?

    And for all the headlines, the £5bn is obviously double counting some of the cuts already made in the SDSR. By implication it includes the loss of the carriers and Harriers. And he’s rather faint in his support of Nimrod – he implies that they would have cancelled it even if it hadn’t already been sent to the scrapyard, but he would have made more plans for a substitute. It all fits my theory that MRA4 was a complete clusterduck and everyone knew it, but noone had the balls to admit it and cancel it sooner.
44. El Sid January 7, 2012 at 5:11 pm

    There’s a bit more detail here :

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/05/labour-party-spending-cuts-credible

    ”

    But the party cannot put an amount on these savings because the government has not released any figures. Murphy will do more work in this area, indicating that the £5bn figure could rise.

    Murphy said of the £5bn of savings he would accept: “This is a through, forensic package which strengthens defence economic credibility and deals comprehensively with the idea that we oppose all cuts. The truth is the Labour party would have to make cuts if we were in power.

    “Some of them are natural. We no longer face a threat of an invasion across the German plain. We don’t need those tank regiments. Others are painful, such as targeted reductions in some welfare programmes.”

    But shadow defence secretary made clear that he would strongly oppose some cuts introduced in the government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) of October 2010.

    He said: “You have others [cuts] that we will strongly oppose. The idea that you cannot deploy an aircraft carrier with aeroplanes on it for a decade – whatever way you do the sums it doesn’t add up. It is not credible, it’s not popular, it is not sustainable, it doesn’t make sense. Across the world people are scratching their head at an island nation not being able to park an aircraft carrier off the coast of Libya.”

    Murphy is to bring together a group of academics and defence experts next month to carry out a review Britain’s defence needs. This is designed to reassess the SDSR which has, according to Murphy, been overtaken by events. “When the government was doing its defence review it asked the wrong question. The question they asked was how much can they save rather than what is Britain’s role in the world. This led them to the conclusion to have an 8% year on year cut. They came up with the wrong response to the wrong question. What we are approaching on defence is to come up with a different answer to the right question.

    “The government’s process has not survived the first contact with world events – the Arab spring, concerns about North Korea, heightened worries about Iran.

    “An awful lot has changed in a short year. The government’s review already looks out of date in contrast to George Robertson’s [1998 strategic defence] review. Apart from the epoch changing events of 9/11 it remained strong and relevant. The government’s one was out of date within a few months.”

    While Murphy accepts the scrapping of Nimrod, he was highly critical of the government for failing to replace the capability of the aircraft, which monitored the movements of Russian nuclear submarines.

    “The government cut them up on live television. They treated probably the most expensive technically capable aircraft in our history like a second hand car. They just scrapped it and chopped it into pieces. What you can do is buy in a different kind of capability, possibly from the Americans, and refitting other airframes with some of the technology that would have been inside Nimrod.

    Nimrod was the Rolls-Royce and it was treated like a secondhand car sent to scrap. Nimrod was an important part of the nuclear deterrent because it gave you the ability to know which other submarines were in the water when you were deploying your nuclear submarines.

    “When they left the west coast of Scotland, you knew what was within a few hundred miles of them and what their unique signal would be. We would have filled the gap straight away,” he said.
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    Latest 1 2 3 … 10 11 12 Next All thesliurge
    5 January 2012 09:07PM
    Surely the whole point of being in Opposition is you have to ‘oppose’ the Government?

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    | Link nelson1980
    5 January 2012 09:08PM
    Only 13 years too late…

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    | Link Gelion
    5 January 2012 09:09PM
    “Labour told to accept spending cuts to be credible”

    Austerity is a hugely hypocritical POLITICAL settlement not an economic one. As I have just posted on the blog about infant class sizes and the lib dem council asking the government to relax the sizes.

    “4 weeks ago Osborne came to the Dispatch box to tell everyone – the whole nation – about how austerity would be with us for years.

    A week after he then gave out an average £210,000 bonus to 24,000 City workers in a bank owned 83% by the State.

    Just 1 x £210,000 bonus could have paid for 10 teachers at £21,000 a year.”

    You see? One rule for the rich and the bankers who give the Tories 50% of their party funds, and one rule for the majority who are paying for minority greed with austerity.

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    | Link Strummered
    5 January 2012 09:09PM
    That’s rich coming from them – Shallow and temporary populism is all Cameron does, and fails miserably at that too.

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    | Link eroica
    5 January 2012 09:10PM
    We need a fucking opposition.

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    | Link stillangry
    5 January 2012 09:10PM
    So now that the 3 main parties are all thatcherite is there anyone who believes that this country is not completely fukced?

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    | Link RickRick90
    5 January 2012 09:10PM
    It’s not credible to force the poor to pay for a crisis they didn’t cause.

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    | Link LabourStoleMyCash
    5 January 2012 09:12PM
    Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy tells the Guardian the party must reject ‘shallow and temporary’ populism

    Wow! Even Dim Jim knows this and the rest cant figure it out.

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    | Link dfr1980
    5 January 2012 09:12PM
    Maybe it’s my stupidity, but I thought there was a consensus in British, nay Western, politics, that cuts were neccessary. Labour’s line has been simply not to cut ‘too far and too fast’. I don’t think there’s anything new here.

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    | Link kjee
    5 January 2012 09:13PM
    Methinks a plot is afoot..

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    | Link dapperdanielle
    5 January 2012 09:14PM
    Credible to which group though?

    Leaders of the finance industry? Big business?

    Folk who live in the south-east – where there are still some jobs?

    Or those who are afraid of losing jobs and houses, workers in the NHS watching the creeping privatization of hospitals and care?

    The service personnel watching the award of private contracts and debasement of their service?

    Or the disabled, sick and poor?

    Exactly who will vote for Labour if they don’t make a stand against the selling off of this country and the scapegoating of the disadvantaged?

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    | Link artpunx
    5 January 2012 09:14PM
    Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy tells the Guardian the party must reject ‘shallow and temporary’ populism’

    …is he not better off telling his party?

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    | Link MrShigemitsu
    5 January 2012 09:15PM
    The Labour Party, in its present incarnation, is irrelevant.

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    | Link IpswichMan
    5 January 2012 09:15PM
    Response to thesliurge, 5 January 2012 09:07PM
    That doesn’t mean arguing that the sky isn’t blue.

    Labour have to accept that cuts have to be made. They are perfectly entitled to disagree with where the Tories are making the cuts, and suggest how they themselves would do it were they in power.

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    | Link RedMiner
    5 January 2012 09:15PM
    Do these spending cuts include scrapping Iain Duncan Smith’s colossal vanity project, The Work Programme, costing 7 billion and rising to give Tesco and the like free workers at the tax payer’s expense, and predicted to have worse results than if it didn’t exist at all in finding the unemployed real jobs?

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    | Link LabourStoleMyCash
    5 January 2012 09:15PM
    He said: “You have others [cuts] that we will strongly oppose. The idea that you cannot deploy an aircraft carrier with aeroplanes on it for a decade – whatever way you do the sums it doesn’t add up. It is not credible, it’s not popular, it is not sustainable, it doesn’t make sense.

    It makes economic sense Dim Jim. We use a French one…..stooooopid!

    They use ours when they’re built. Saves lots, Dim Jim.

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    | Link clarkebond
    5 January 2012 09:16PM
    Response to thesliurge, 5 January 2012 09:07PM
    You don’t have to oppose every single government proposal to oppose the government. This policy is sensible and shows that Labour won’t oppose everything for the sake of it.

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    | Link JeffoY
    5 January 2012 09:16PM
    This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
    IpswichMan
    5 January 2012 09:16PM
    Response to RickRick90, 5 January 2012 09:10PM
    Except the poor aren’t paying for it. The taxpayer in general is. And the vast majority of tax is paid by the wealthiest 10%.

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    | Link ChanceyGardener
    5 January 2012 09:16PM
    the party must reject ‘shallow and temporary’ populism

    Well that’s Ed’s strategy down the shitter then. Better come up with some real opposition policies.

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    | Link peterpuffin
    5 January 2012 09:16PM
    This follows on from Liam Byrne’s comments re benefits such as housing benefit and unemployment benefit; it is frankly unbelievable! Housing benefit for example benefits the LANDLORD.

    Why does the Shadow Defence Secretary not stick to his job and set about re-defining our sphere of influence; we do not want to go EAST of Suez ! We should be prepared to defend Europe; and that is all !

    Has he less guts than Macmillan ?

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    | Link clarkebond
    5 January 2012 09:17PM
    Response to LabourStoleMyCash, 5 January 2012 09:15PM
    This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
    realisscum
    5 January 2012 09:17PM
    Response to thesliurge, 5 January 2012 09:07PM
    True to a point, but not so far as to argue against the government when they suggest that the world is round.

    Can’t see it happening myself mind – it’s far too easy to rant on about cuts in the expectation that the public won’t start blaming those who piled up the debt in the first place.

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    | Link Tonytoday
    5 January 2012 09:18PM
    As others have pointed out, what Murphy is saying reflects labour policy anyway. The cost of bailing out the banks has to be paid for somehow. However, the two main parties (I think we can forget about the LibDems for the forseeable future, possibly forever) can’t go into the next election just saying, “Hey, we can manage austerity better than those guys”. They’ve got to offer something to the public, most of whom will be pretty pissed off by that time.

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    | Link NTEightySix
    5 January 2012 09:18PM
    Wankers like this should accept that the BANKERS ought to be held accountable and that the public sector is being used as a diversion to prevent the greedy sods from paying up.

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    | Link JeffoY
    5 January 2012 09:18PM
    Response to LabourStoleMyCash, 5 January 2012 09:15PM
    Your username has become hilariously ironic.

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    | Link IpswichMan
    5 January 2012 09:18PM
    Response to Gelion, 5 January 2012 09:09PM
    Erm, Osborne doesn’t own the banks, nor does he give out bonuses. Nor does he have the power to stop banks paying bonuses.

    When Labour bailed the banks out they had the power to set terms. So blame them.

    In any case, it’s an irrelevence.

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    | Link SkintAndDemoralised
    5 January 2012 09:19PM
    Nu Labour have nowhere to go. They are now a neo-liberal party who are so similar to the conservatives, and so discredited given their record in office that they can’t offer a viable opposition.

    If they are carrying neo-liberal tools like Murphy they will never provide any realistic sort of opposition to the coalition. A clear out is required, but I suspect that as Milibean and Balls and the rest of the leadership are cut from the same cloth as Blair and Brown they won’t have the guts to change anything.

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    | Link Fbayes
    5 January 2012 09:19PM
    Obviously there needs to be some cuts, Labour is playing a dangerous game by not announcing any cuts what so ever. How ever there is a very valid point, it is that the cuts are not working and they will cause another recession.

    For all the talk about how the Coalition saved Britain from turning into Greece, that remains to be seen. They keep cutting and cutting and their economy keeps shrinking and shrinking. The same will happen here, just not on such a drastic scale.

    Britain needs an effective opposition to stand up to this government, otherwise we will stagnate for years like the Japanese.

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    | Link SuperClive
    5 January 2012 09:22PM
    Ah, Jim Murphy, the NUS leader who went on to help impose tuition fees on students. Lovely to hear him talk about credibility there.

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    | Link clarkebond
    5 January 2012 09:23PM
    Response to SkintAndDemoralised, 5 January 2012 09:19PM
    What alternative would you propose?

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    | Link PeleMcAmble
    5 January 2012 09:23PM
    Opposition is a great place to be – meal ticket assured and you can rock the boat as much as you like. And of course, you can always take the moral high ground whenever and you never have to make difficult decisions..

    If Labour cared about the working class of this nation it would have got its act together by now. It needs proper policies not the likes of Murphy and Lord Glasman spouting off to newspapers for their own personal esteem. The best current example of those who love opposition is of course Diane Abbott. Claire Short was another and she even hankered for opposition when she was a government minister.

    I really do despair about Labour these days. They seem to enjoy opposition more than power.

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    | Link VSLVSL
    5 January 2012 09:24PM
    The Conservative Coalition cuts are daily damaging Britain’s economy.

    Murphy needs to explain why his cuts are different, who they will affect, and how the wealthy really will shoulder their fair share of the bankers’ debts.

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    | Link Volvobollox
    5 January 2012 09:24PM
    Ed Balls’ argument “too hard, too fast” is perfectly credible. The speed and ferocity of these cuts are purely down to Tory ideology (the sort where John Redwood says it “makes people more Tory”).

    Black Labour? Jesus wept.

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    | Link LabourStoleMyCash
    5 January 2012 09:25PM
    Across the world people are scratching their head at an island nation not being able to park an aircraft carrier off the coast of Libya

    So Jim “Dim” Murphy (5 watts) dosent know that we have access to the only nuclear powered carrier outside the US Navy.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle_(R_91)

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    | Link CaptSensible
    5 January 2012 09:25PM
    But if the Labour party, so heroically led by adenoidal Ed rejects ‘shallow and temporary populism’, the cupboard will be pretty bare…

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    | Link realisscum
    5 January 2012 09:26PM
    Response to Gelion, 5 January 2012 09:09PM
    How much were bank bonuses in 2009 when Brown went through his charade of imposing a 50% ‘supertax’ along with a knowing wink that it’d be ok to go ahead and double them? Where were you then?

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    | Link peterpuffin
    5 January 2012 09:28PM
    Surely Labour should be redefining Blair’s interventionism; we can’t afford these adventures and they are deeply mistaken.

    Afghanistan will revert to Afghanistan in 2014. Iraq is traumatised by the waste of trillions of dollars.

    Redefine the scope of our foreign policy and then define the military. The British people are sick of “Our Boys” dying on far off fields.

    Promise to bring them home.

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    | Link DJT1Million
    5 January 2012 09:28PM
    More rubbish telling the Labour Party that it has to be even more like New Labour/the Conservatives to be relevant. Tempted to use the word ‘bollocks’ however will take a deep breath and respond politely……..none of the mainstream parties are addressing the real problems we are facing as all fail to see beyond the economic orthodoxy introduced in the 1980s by Mme Thatcher and her ilk. It’s failed, the problems created are getting worse and yet we are being told that even more of the same rubbish policies that caused the problems we are living with are the solution.

    ….and breathe……I’m so sick of this propaganda being pushed at us day by day. Doesn’t matter if we read the Daily Mail or The Guardian it’s the same rubbish.

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    | Link Fbayes
    5 January 2012 09:29PM
    Response to LabourStoleMyCash, 5 January 2012 09:25PM
    How many monkeys do you have to come up with these gags for you?

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    | Link Yorkmackem
    5 January 2012 09:29PM
    “Murphy limited his remarks to his defence brief.”

    So we have a shadow minister accepting cuts on defence policy only. But true to form, the Guardian spins this into a dig against Labour’s opposition to cuts across the board.

    On top of today’s earlier Clegg love-in, this is just laughable.

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    | Link bill4me
    5 January 2012 09:30PM
    Response to Volvobollox, 5 January 2012 09:24PM
    There is only one tiny wee snaglet in your argument.

    There has been no cut in Government expenditure. Indeed, it’s risen month by month, every month, since the election.

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    | Link realisscum
    5 January 2012 09:31PM
    Response to Volvobollox, 5 January 2012 09:24PM
    Black Labour? Jesus wept.

    1. Ed Balls will say ‘too far, too fast’ no matter what the pace of cuts. Maybe he’s remembering Gordon’s anguished cries with that soundbite.

    2. Black Labour – do they go in for ‘divide and conquer’, or was that just the white variety?

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    | Link TeaJunkie
    5 January 2012 09:32PM
    Is there really much point in voting any more?

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    | Link GreenAlzo
    5 January 2012 09:32PM
    This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.
    dfr1980
    5 January 2012 09:32PM
    Response to IpswichMan, 5 January 2012 09:18PM
    …so why the fuck do we bother to vote?!

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    | Link LabourStoleMyCash
    5 January 2012 09:33PM
    Response to Fbayes, 5 January 2012 09:29PM
    How many monkeys do you have to come up with these gags for you?

    Only one. Dim Jim supplies the raw material.

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    | Link tiredofwhiners
    5 January 2012 09:33PM
    Response to dapperdanielle, 5 January 2012 09:14PM
    Exactly who will vote for Labour if they don’t make a stand against the selling off of this country and the scapegoating of the disadvantaged?

    You win elections by getting more votes/seats areas as the legal system is set up. That means not doing the ‘right thing’ but doing the thing that gets you the most votes. I am pretty much sure what is ‘right’ in your mind in ‘wrong’ in mine. This is why Michael Foot was unelectable (extreme Left wing not job working for the Russians) and why the BNP will never get in (extreme right wing who may have some point to make but the British in general would never vote for them in numbers as they have too many looney divisive policies).

    So, as a lot of the people of this country are all for “scapegoating of the disadvantaged’ as you describe it but in our eyes , for right of for wrong do not see the disabled, but see the disabled welfare cheats in abundance, we do not see the genuinely unemployed but see the lifestyle choice spongers protected by the Guardian readership, we do not see the families trying to make end meets on welfare credits but see the payment of £40,000 in home rentals in Kensington to immigrant non-working families ……. and the story goes on, we will never vote for those who protect the sort of spongers, cheats and illegal immigrants whom Labour has protected and positively encouraged over the last 13 years.

    Until Labour stop defending the indefensible and start playing majority politics again, they will never get back in power.

    To do that, they will have to rein in the Unions so they stop looking like MIchael Foot all over again as the middle earners in the UK are only interested in a party which tries to support them, and don’t really care about Bankers getting away with getting paid too much as thats an aspiration for everyone, but do have a real objection to spongers, cheats and welfare claimants who do nothing for their money.

    Just my opinion of course.

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    | Link DJT1Million
    5 January 2012 09:33PM
    Response to IpswichMan, 5 January 2012 09:16PM
    Good grief. The poorest taxpayers are paying a much higher percentage of their income than the ‘richest’ taxpayers and are, in addition, being hit by cuts that mean little or nothing to those self same richest taxpayers (tax avoiders more like). Your comment is an insult to the working people of our nation that are having their living standards and opportunities hammered by this God Forsaken coalition. Get a grip please.

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    | Link bestie59
    5 January 2012 09:36PM
    Spud Murphy! Can anyone believe how low the Labour party has sunk when this specimen is part of the front bench.
    You and your party can buy into this austerity crap all you like.
    Not for me thanks.
    This country really is well and truly finished, all politicians are singing from the same hymn sheet and the penny has not yet dropped for the masses they are are heading towards destitution.
    Unbelievable there is no fightback in this country, Dave and Gideon have a spring in their step and the working man thinks its all the fault of Bob Crow.
    Its so sad its laughable.

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    Related information
    UK news
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    Public sector cuts · Public finance · Public services policy
    Politics
    Economic policy · Labour · Defence policy · Jim Murphy · Ed Miliband
    Ed Miliband orders review of Scottish Labour party

    11 May 2011

    Labour leader puts former Scottish secretary Jim Murphy in charge of review following party’s disastrous showing in the Holyrood elections last week

    14 Sep 2011

    Labour party maps out a purple path to power

    29 Mar 2011

    Libya rebels’ ambitions needs to be clear, Labour to warn

    1 Dec 2011

    Labour urged to stop dithering over deficit reduction

    23 Jul 2010

    If Labour can’t fight social injustice, what’s it all for?

    UK risks ‘state of ambivalence’ on defence, warns Labour’s Jim Murphy

    3 Mar 2011

    Shadow defence secretary says UK must retain proactive, strong defence policy to protect its interests and values

    ” £2bn over 10 years by accepting the scrapping of the Nimrod MR4 surveillance aircraft.

    • £900m over 10 years by making efficiencies in the Trident renewal programme through the submarine enterprise performance programme.

    • A one-off saving of £350m from rationalising the defence estate.

    • £205m by making cuts to civilian allowances. This will involve more means testing as the forces’ welfare budget is targeted more effectively at members of the armed forces earning less than £20,000.

    • An initial £35m by reducing tank regiments.”

    “Some of them are natural. We no longer face a threat of an invasion across the German plain. We don’t need those tank regiments.”

    Could someone tell me how the threat of an invasion “across the German plain” is any less likely now than in 2010? Or in 1997 for that matter.
45. Topman January 7, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    el sid i think you need to tidy up your post it’s a bit hard to read.
46. Dangerous Dave January 9, 2012 at 1:10 pm

    Umm, El Sid. Maybe you shouldn’t have clicked on “select all” when copying and pasting out of a round robin email!
    Still we’ve all done it. Repeat after me “Data Security is . . .”
47. Dangerous Dave January 9, 2012 at 2:08 pm

    Think Defence Rant 09-01-12:

    Wow, what a response, I post a comment on a Friday, and by Monday the threads all lit up!

    @DomJ, Phil Chris.B: Local government, not complaining with your arguments. Whith this situation there are always 2 ways to go. Centralise everything and impose order from the top down (like the EU), or decntralise as much as possible and allow “citizen power” to create the structure (like Keynes and other distributists). Dom, you are obviously True Blue – where as I am Liberal Yellow, we’ll just have to agree to keep the debate clean and friendly

    Re. tax breaks – the problem is that within the EU, there is very little difference in skills and employability. There are justifiable areas of excellence in all of the 27 EU member-states, so if UK didn’t offer tax-breaks (or Urban Develpment Zones, or Development Corporations, or what ever this next batch are going to be called), then international business will go with the cheapest EU labour market and simply import to the UK (and there is free-trade amongst EU partners). What the government should be doing (ANY government), is encouraging the startups and SME’s. If those can develop and flourish, then they’ll be the next generation of multi-nationals, and be big and nasty enough to do without govt. help.

    Re. Education: @Phil, actually I agree with you. Unfortunately yerars of Nat. Curriculum at KS 1-4 has resulted in “Teaching to Target”, and not encouraging Critical Thinking (your words), or an enthusaism for learning (my words). I learned about the ECW because school only taught about the Great Fire of London (with a passing mention of the Restoration), most of the truly interesing stuff I learned about has been a “filling in the gaps” of my knowledge around what I was taught in school. Not everone is like this, I deal with people on an IT helpdesk who are intelligent human beings, yet only know “as far as their job requires them” regarding computers because they have no interest in “filling in the gaps” even where it would have helped them self-diagnose an IT problem and give them a confidence boost into the bargain. The problem is, how to teach “critial thinking/enthusaism for learning” and then testing the teaching effectiveness.

    Re. University courses. @DomJ. some should be obvious (such as Applied Klingon Linguistics), but doesn’t the government publish lists of professions where posts erent being filled (or candidates having to be brought in from abroad)? It’ll be reactive, but it’d be a start?

    @Phil: Agree very much on your “second chance”, see my original post – some sort of coherent strategy for citizen’s continuing education and re-training will be a “very good thing”TM, in the “agile” jobs market we currently find ourselves in. Of course, I’m fully expecting DomJ to come back and say that each of us should be ferreting away funds to hedge against this inevitable occurance!

    @Phil: It gets my back up when people refer to local government in this way. There are 4 levels of government (Parish, Borough, County & National), I’m a Parish councillor, and as fun as it is sitting in on an episode of the Vicar of Dibley, it’s frustrating as the next levels up seem to have departments dedicated to telling us “no” in our requests for pot-hole filling/street lamp replacement/gully emptying. And then there’s our National Parks Authority sticking it’s nose in too, it all seems as though everyone is sniping at everyone else a lot of the time. Oh, and I work for the most cost efficient County Council in England, there’s been a marked reduction in “community projects”, “Local facilitators” etc. since Labour left power.

    @Phil: National Service – no, not national *military* service, though Martin would probably like to reintroduce something like it as part of his Grand Strategy series of posts, but national *government* service – to do the jobs our press seem to think are always going begging to recent immigrants, to give normal people a feeling of what it is *like* to have to clean streets, care for the inform and elderly, issue parking tickets etc. I hope it would instill a sense of sympathy for those who do the jobs and some restraint when as a member of public you deal with them. Also, if you are in a government service for “the duration” you become institutionalised into the way it works, and gradually all the initiatives andquality leaders and other s**t targets seem normal. Only the new inductees or the strong willed seem to notice anything is wierd, so more “fresh meat” passing though should enable changes to e highlighted more easily.
48. Phil January 9, 2012 at 9:20 pm

    “@DomJ, Phil Chris.B: Local government, not complaining with your arguments. Whith this situation there are always 2 ways to go. Centralise everything and impose order from the top down (like the EU), or decntralise as much as possible and allow “citizen power” to create the structure (like Keynes and other distributists).”

    The answer must be something in the middle. I am not keen on Local Authorities (and Parish Councils) being run from the centre to a great degree. They are, after all, Local Authorities. But neither can they be completely autonomous since they are responsible for upholding certain national standards (building control, food safety etc) and administering national policies (housing benefit etc). What is needed is a clean slate of legal obligations for LAs, pare them back to core requirements built around the more fundamental roles of the authorities like building control, waste disposal, trading standards, highways properties and works and then audit these functions in a qualitative manner, ie not by establishing numerical performance indicators. Then any further crackpot functions they wish to crack on with they can. Perhaps a Discretionary Central Grant awarded to every LA and they can do what they want with the money as long as they are accountable. These are all random ideas. But I think the key is strong core performance, audited by the centre and then autonomy in other matters as directed by the Council and scrutinised.

    “Not everone is like this, I deal with people on an IT helpdesk who are intelligent human beings, yet only know “as far as their job requires them””

    I hear ya brother! I come across people like this all the time, in fact I have them as my bosses. Done the job for 20 years and can robotically perform the role but they have a shocking lack of general education and a shocking level of ignorance. As you say, they have not filled in the gaps and when these people start to become managers this knowledge gap really starts to gape dramatically. The whole, I learned from the University of Hard Knocks, Earned my Spurs nonsense is just that and this attitude harms LA management and probably management in general. A good leader / manager needs a good level of general knowledge, critical thinking skills, research skills and a desire to continue learning. You need theory as well as experience, both can feed the other.

    The Second Chance thing – I am not sure how it would work but I think it is needed. I know I made a mistake in choosing my University subject, but then I was 18 years old, completely clueless and worse, obviously didn’t think for a moment I was clueless. I am lucky in that my Afghan tour has allowed me to fund a MSc in a more useful subject but plenty of others with great potential are stuck because they can’t afford to re-train. And I am not talking about all these NVQs etc, I mean a proper, rigorous, in-depth and challenging course at degree or masters level.

    “@Phil: It gets my back up when people refer to local government in this way.”

    Yes but you don’t have much money so you can’t cause much trouble! In all seriousness, at this level to my knowledge the problems and solutions are very practical – there is a minimum of money and thus a minimum of jargon and new initiatives, just plain, simple hard work.

    National Service – Is there any evidence these schemes are cost effective and achieve anything? Unless it is compulsory I can’t see it being. I am all up for making Jobseekers earn their crust but then you have the problem that they are supposed to be full time Jobseeking. Plus, it smacks very much of inter-war Germany such a scheme. I know that was a long time ago but the idea still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
49. Chris.B. January 10, 2012 at 6:12 am

    @ Dangerous Dave,

    Let me share with you my example of interacting with the local town council just to give you an idea of why I despise local government.

    A new parking initiative was introduced in my town. The initiative was to stop people from parking on pavements outside their home, a perfectly normal thing around these parts. The reason sited was “complaints” about women with push chairs having to sometimes walk out into the road because there wasn’t enough room, a fact that completely ignores the unwritten and strictly adhered to residents law (almost like a social concious) of “we’ll park on the pavement this side, you park in the road on that side, that way there’s always a free path”.

    Two warnings first, then an £80 fine for each additional offence.

    So was any new parking created to compensate? No. Was the council parking that did exist made free for residents? No, of course not.

    Did it affect any of the councillars? Take a guess. They all had off street parking, except in the case of the Council leader… who had a small shop opposite HER (important later, just wait) and thus no worries.

    It then transpires that the “complaints” could be counted on two fingers. One of the complaints was made by a woman complaining that she had difficulty getting round to her mothers house with her push chair.

    Now I’ll give you three fucking guesses as to who the mother was.

    That’s why I don’t like local councils, because time and again we see examples of what is essentially corruption.

    And if it’s not corruption then it’s simple incompetence. Take the businessesman in Colchester who was forced to remove a sign from outside his shop because it didn’t fit into the “look” of the town.

    It was a white sign, with plain blue writing on it. Nothing special or artistic. Just his business name, the address and the Telephone/fax numbers.

    This is what I most take umbrage with, petty minded twats who are supposed to be representing local people and being considerate to their needs, instead causing disruption to the everyday running of towns and cities by meddling with those things that do not appeal to their own sensibilities.

    I crave the day when we can strip away the extra layers of government found at the lowest levels and take the power out of the hands of small committees of meddling bastards like those that seem to infect Essex, and coincedentally all of the councils to which my relatives and friends come under.

    It could be different elsewhere and maybe we’re just unlucky, but I strongly doubt that.

    But anytime you want to sit down and chat about the ECW over a glass of Amaretto, now you’ve got my attention. Could yap for days about that.

    Again though it comes back to a question of central control over local, in this case education. The theory behind local is that you’re supposed to give people flexibility to teach what they like. But then important subjects get missed out, like the ECW and how it changed our country forever.

    At least a strict central curriculum, if done right, would provide a uniform level of education about important subjects. You need not have central lesson plans or anything that rigid, just a uniform national curriculum.

    Now a question; why are their multiple exam bodies? Surely there should just be one exam body that issues the same exams to all schools, so that a GCSE means the same nationwide?

    And finally, National Service.
    While I can see what many posters desire from a national service scheme and while the aims seem very admirable, I absolutely cannot support any scheme that imposes on peoples personal freedom in such a severe manner.

    Now I’m not an idealist and I accept that we need a raft of certain laws and measures in place in order to maintain the common good, but I absolutely think forced labour (national service) can’t be one of them, except in situations of absolutely dire national straits (WW3).
50. jedibeeftrix January 10, 2012 at 8:33 am

    I understand the disdain, but you cannot expect councils to act responsibly if they are given no responsibility.

    I very much understand DomJ’s argument that local councils have very little funding they themselves raise and spend, and even less leeway on spending what central government allocates to them.