Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)

Smores said:
There's no basis for assuming every applicable person would use the service currently so it's redundant.

The only lost revenue is to the current user base and the cost of supporting increased usage if it rises, which would be limited as buses are always empty anyway.

Besides its putting money back into the pockets of the public so they can spend, isn't that what you Tories love?
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They are 'spending'. Up to £1000 on bus passes. Or doesn't that count as goods or services?
 
I saw a documentary yesterday where some kid with cancer went to hospital, and get this, they treated him for free. What the actual feck, they probably used my hard earned money to keep that lazy good for nothing drain alive. It's like these communists think there's a magic chemo tree.
 
Cheesy said:
Which (they'd argue) is offset by the fact it increases social mobility by making transport to and from work easier, giving people more money to invest in the economy.

It's undoubtedly a slightly cynical giveaway to help a segment of the population that votes Labour...but why should they be criticised for that anymore than the Tories are for consistently pandering to their elderly voters?
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Edit: actually I don't have an issue with the policy itself, but it's just another poorly thought through giveaway than generates little benefit, to a core voter base that haven't seemed to grasp yet that someone always has to pay, no matter what some might tell them.
 
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11101 said:
All of which is true but what real benefit does it provide either to the people or to the country? Anyone working is unlikely to make any changes to their lives based on the price of a bus fare. For anyone not working, its not going to spur them into getting a job. It will just be a sunk cost the country gains nothing from. It's a giveaway to a core voter base that haven't seemed to grasp yet that someone always has to pay, no matter what some might tell them.
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A sunk cost would be something that never gets used, will never get used and should never be used. Say, for example, nuclear capabilities. A free bus service will get used by people who want to get from point A to point B. And check this, as it seems to foreign to you, point B will sometimes be things like their place of work, school or even a charity where they volunteer.
 
Honest John said:
Tell you what lets give them a grand a year to spend on beer. They will spend the savings elsewhere. Maybe on bus services.
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Beer isn't an essential service that by making free would benefit the local economy and young struggling individuals.

Your issue is clearly that someone who isn't you (and its not me either btw not that id get the bus ever) could be getting something for free, not the cost. Not sure why you feel it necessary to bring up ridiculous costings and arguments.
 
Smores said:
Beer isn't an essential service that by making free would benefit the local economy and young struggling individuals.

Your issue is clearly that someone who isn't you (and its not me either btw not that id get the bus ever) could be getting something for free, not the cost. Not sure why you feel it necessary to bring up ridiculous costings and arguments.
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Nothing is free.
 
11101 said:
Edit: actually I don't have an issue with the policy itself, but it's just another poorly thought through giveaway than generates little benefit, to a core voter base that haven't seemed to grasp yet that someone always has to pay, no matter what some might tell them.
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Again - why's this logic not being applied to the elderly who constantly get help from the Tories because they vote for them?
 
Honest John said:
because the basic moral standpoint is that the elderly have already made their contribution to society.
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Of course, so like any age group they're entitled to plenty of help from the state, as they often receive. The point is why they disproportionately receive extra help that won't be able to be given to future generations who currently find it considerably more difficult to get on the housing market and find stable work to start building a pension etc.
 
they planted their magic money trees, damnit, those trees might be made of poison, killing the habitable world and making life near impossible for anyone born after 1980 but they damn well planted them so shut up and die young people
 
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Cheesy said:
Again - why's this logic not being applied to the elderly who constantly get help from the Tories because they vote for them?
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Well from my point of view because this is the Jeremy Corbyn thread, not the Theresa May thread.
 
Cheesy said:
Of course, so like any age group they're entitled to plenty of help from the state, as they often receive. The point is why they disproportionately receive extra help that won't be able to be given to future generations who currently find it considerably more difficult to get on the housing market and find stable work to start building a pension etc.
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I have a lot sympathy with younger people regarding the housing market but it is not the elderly's fault. Many of the older generation benefitted from the right to buy. This was a decent scheme and very popular. My own parents (who had sod all) were able to buy their council house. It cost £2,400 in 1974 and my mum had no idea where we would find the £4 a week it would cost. I sold same house on behalf of my family after mum died in 2014. It went for £187k. Why? Three reasons in my opinion. Failure to build enough council houses in the intervening years. Population growth due to excess immigration. And the uncontrolled London housing market driving up prices elsewhere. Buy-to-let is a by product of all that because most people got into it to capitalise on fast rising prices. People could make £50k in 6 months without even having a tenant. Loads of people started doing it - even hard line Labour voters. We have one additional property that we let out which was an inheritance from my mother-in-law. I truly believe that young people should be helped to get on the ladder. So even though I may vote Tory I do believe that the government should build lots more council housing as well as encouraging social and affordable housing.
 
“It would have been in a Quad meeting, so either Cameron or Osborne. One of them – I honestly can’t remember whom – looked genuinely nonplussed and said, ‘I don’t understand why you keep going on about the need for more social housing – it just creates Labour voters.’ They genuinely saw housing as a petri dish for voters. It was unbelievable,” he said.
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Honest John said:
I have a lot sympathy with younger people regarding the housing market but it is not the elderly's fault. Many of the older generation benefitted from the right to buy. This was a decent scheme and very popular. My own parents (who had sod all) were able to buy their council house. It cost £2,400 in 1974 and my mum had no idea where we would find the £4 a week it would cost. I sold same house on behalf of my family after mum died in 2014. It went for £187k. Why? Three reasons in my opinion. Failure to build enough council houses in the intervening years. Population growth due to excess immigration. And the uncontrolled London housing market driving up prices elsewhere. Buy-to-let is a by product of all that because most people got into it to capitalise on fast rising prices. People could make £50k in 6 months without even having a tenant. Loads of people started doing it - even hard line Labour voters. We have one additional property that we let out which was an inheritance from my mother-in-law. I truly believe that young people should be helped to get on the ladder. So even though I may vote Tory I do believe that the government should build lots more council housing as well as encouraging social and affordable housing.
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I'm not saying older people are evil or even bad or anything - I'm just saying that many of them financially got a much better deal than this generation are getting when it comes to housing, jobs etc, and whereas we don't batter an eyelid at the many financial perks they receive even when they don't need any of them, attempts to give anything to younger voters are automatically cast off as 'bribes' and unnecessary handouts as opposed to Corbyn just trying to incentivise his core voter base in the same way the Tories try to keep their core base on their side with preferable policies, the primary one of course being Brexit which is driven by the older sectors of the population in spite of the fact many youngsters fear the lasting economic impact it'll have. One is seen as wise electoral policy; the other gets cast off as economic mismanagement.
 
Cheesy said:
I'm not saying older people are evil or even bad or anything - I'm just saying that many of them financially got a much better deal than this generation are getting when it comes to housing, jobs etc, and whereas we don't batter an eyelid at the many financial perks they receive even when they don't need any of them, attempts to give anything to younger voters are automatically cast off as 'bribes' and unnecessary handouts as opposed to Corbyn just trying to incentivise his core voter base in the same way the Tories try to keep their core base on their side with preferable policies, the primary one of course being Brexit which is driven by the older sectors of the population in spite of the fact many youngsters fear the lasting economic impact it'll have. One is seen as wise electoral policy; the other gets cast off as economic mismanagement.
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I get that. But hey TM tried to address the social care problem at the last election and DID target the older wealthier generation, and she was royally slammed for it.
 
When the Conservatives introduce a new millennial railcard to give subsidised travel to people aged 26-30... I don't think I heard a single question about 'how much it would cost the Government' or it being a waste of money... a bribe to young people etc.

Labour make a policy offering free bus travel to young people and Conservatives are up in arms about it. Just shows that it isn't about policy really.
 
ZupZup said:
When the Conservatives introduce a new millennial railcard to give subsidised travel to people aged 26-30... I don't think I heard a single question about 'how much it would cost the Government' or it being a waste of money... a bribe to young people etc.

Labour make a policy offering free bus travel to young people and Conservatives are up in arms about it. Just shows that it isn't about policy really.
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Yeah like 'people with wealth should contribute to their home care' rather than relying on the tax payer - many of whom are cash-strapped - gets slammed as a dementia tax by Labour
 
Honest John said:
Yeah like 'people with wealth should contribute to their home care' rather than relying on the tax payer - many of whom are cash-strapped - gets slammed as a dementia tax by Labour
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Except that is actually a bad policy that runs contrary to the notion of socialised care
 
Honest John said:
I get that. But hey TM tried to address the social care problem at the last election and DID target the older wealthier generation, and she was royally slammed for it.
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She was slammed because she was unclear on the policy and continually made u-turns, arguing nothing was changing even though she was quite literally promoting a policy that involved changing things. And ultimately the Tories have reaped what they've sown in that regard by appealing to the elderly for so long. They coax their base into voting for them; Labour do the same.
 
Silva said:
People wth wealth already use private health companies for their home care. The policy will have mostly impacted families where the grandparent is the only homeowner.
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But their houses are usually sold off to pay for the private care. That is the point. And what was being proposed was not a total sale of the property. There was a limit. It's either something like that or it falls on the tax payer as a whole. In that case you'd have the situation where wealthy people were being funded by cash-strapped tax-payers. Please don't say it can be funded by raising the taxes of higher earners - that pot has been more than run dry by free university education and now bus passes.
 
Honest John said:
Yeah like 'people with wealth should contribute to their home care' rather than relying on the tax payer - many of whom are cash-strapped - gets slammed as a dementia tax by Labour
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I was comparing the political reaction of two policies which are both subsidised travel for young people...

Social care for the elderly... if you'd like to show me a similar policies from Conservatives/Labour on that specific topic so we can look at the reactions to both? I'm all ears.
 
Lentwood said:
Maybe Corbyn found a few quid down the back of his sofa? Or has had ' a word' for a horse in the National tomorrow?

On a serious note, the metaphorical 'magic money tree's' do sort of exist in public finance, Government's can raise or re-allocate funds using all sorts of methods in addition to taxes (which is seemingly the only income-source ever discussed - as if every pound we spend has to come out of Joe Public's wallet)

I'm sure you know all of this anyway but probably just don't like Jezza very much!
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No, I don't like Corbyn. He's a fecking politician, not Jesus.

Re the money tree thing. You can't look at these promises in isolation. Corbyn's very free with promising extra money to politically convenient cases (as are the Tories but his promises seem to be bigger)... it all adds up... and it's money that we don't really have - we still run a deficit, we have an enormous public debt that has to be financed, NHS, schools etc are all under pressure and there's Brexit to pay for.
 
Honest John said:
because the basic moral standpoint is that the elderly have already made their contribution to society.
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Have they really though? People say this but arguably they haven't paid enough, especially given (in general) unearned housing wealth and expensive medical bills that need to be paid.

The Tories actually got hammered for this in the election when they pointed this out.
 
nickm said:
No, I don't like Corbyn. He's a fecking politician, not Jesus.

Re the money tree thing. You can't look at these promises in isolation. Corbyn's very free with promising extra money to politically convenient cases (as are the Tories but his promises seem to be bigger)... it all adds up... and it's money that we don't really have - we still run a deficit, we have an enormous public debt that has to be financed, NHS, schools etc are all under pressure and there's Brexit to pay for.
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That's fair enough, I don't care who/what people choose to support. I come on hear to chat about this stuff as opposed to Facebook/Twitter etc...because that just totally degenerates after a couple of comments

Corbyn does appear to be making lots of additional spending commitments, however, I would argue that they are in areas that we are likely to see a return on that investment, i.e. young people and tackling social issues

It goes back to my original point, if we are spending in the right areas then it actually saves or makes us money in the long-term. It also irks me that every headline I read is 'taxpayers this, taxpayers that...as if tax is the only source of income for Governments and Jeremy Corbyn will personally be nicking a fiver from all our wallets to piss up the wall on 'lazy Millenials'. (I'm too old to qualify for a bus or rail pass btw so nowt in it for me!)
 
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