Westminster Politics

esmufc07 said:
Pretty much just fast food joints and pubs.
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That isn't what is killing people early in Blackpool. It is an area of massive social deprivation. Lots of drug abuse and a seasonal economy that is in tatters, people come here for work and kind of get trapped in bedsit land with slum landlords and poor housing. Austerity hit Blackpool hard and a lot of the community support projects like sure start have closed.

We do have a guy who runs a £1 burger stall though....
 
esmufc07 said:
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This is one part of the political climate which may work in Labour's favour. Lib Dems will split the Conservative vote amongst those who are centre right.

If only Labour weren't so split themselves...
 
DavidDeSchmikes said:
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Who would know the law better, eh? An expert in law who has had to qualify as a lawyer, then demonstrate capability enough to be appointed as a judge, then prove themselves enough to hear senior court cases, or somebody who might have got 30% of a vote in a single constituency and then licked the Prime Minister's arsehole clean enough to get appointed as a minister.
 
Compton22 said:
This is one part of the political climate which may work in Labour's favour. Lib Dems will split the Conservative vote amongst those who are centre right.

If only Labour weren't so split themselves...
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Labour just need a few more votes and they can get their coalition with the SNP. I mean, it will result in the last Labour government that ever existed after Scotland leaves but on the plus side Sturgeon has promised us free heroin and unicorns.
 
Today there is an article in the Guardian about British involvement in the mass killings in Indonesia.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
Labour just need a few more votes and they can get their coalition with the SNP. I mean, it will result in the last Labour government that ever existed after Scotland leaves but on the plus side Sturgeon has promised us free heroin and unicorns.
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Imagine how much easier it would all have been, had the brexiteers thought of that one. Who'd give a crap about food shortages.
 
Facial recognition computers have found an unlikely new niche: scanning the faces of thousands of British pupils in school canteens.
On Monday, nine schools in North Ayrshire will start taking payments for school lunches by scanning the faces of pupils, claiming that the new system speeds up queues and is more Covid-secure than the card payments and fingerprint scanners they used previously.
“It’s the fastest way of recognising someone at the till — it’s faster than card, it’s faster than fingerprint,” said David Swanston, the managing director of CRB Cunninghams, the company that installed the systems.
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https://www.ft.com/content/af08fe55-39f3-4894-9b2f-4115732395b9?shareType=nongift
 
Flying high said:
How is this not headline news?
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What it the difference between a dictatorship and the UK now if the courts have to follow Ministers instructions? Why have a court at all? Save that money and let the government decide who is guilty or not?
 
DavidDeSchmikes said:
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Raab's quote in the Telegraph is extremely vague on this, but it does sound worrying. The examples given of interventions that scuppered or criticised government projects/laws were the bedroom tax and the proposed tunnel next to Stonehenge, which were both highly contentious and hardly the sort of pesky meddling Raab was inferring.

Outlining plans to use legislation to "correct" judgments, Mr Raab said: "We're identifying the problems and we're making sure we fix them ... We will get into the habit of legislating on a more periodic basis and thinking about the mechanism for that. Where there have been judgments that, albeit properly and duly delivered by the courts, we think are wrong, the right thing is for Parliament to legislate to correct them."
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‘What kidnappers do’ – DWP forcing universal credit claimants to pose for photo with daily paper

People are being forced to submit photos of themselves holding a local daily paper outside their home in order to claim universal credit.
The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) verification process contains a detailed list of bizarre requests potential claimants must follow. It also includes requiring people to send in a photo taken by someone else of them holding their street sign in their right hand.

The instructions were posted in at least one person’s universal credit journal – the online platform used to manage benefit claims – by a DWP employee, according to the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC).
This is part of a package of measures to clamp down on benefit fraud, the DWP told The Big Issue. Separately, the director general for universal credit confirmed the requirements were legitimate and said they were part of the government’s effort to verify people who signed up for benefits during the pandemic, when face-to-face meetings were not possible.
The instructions, issued to a person making their first claim, read: “Further to today’s phone call, I now require you to provide the following information. If you don’t provide all of the information that we’ve requested your claim will be closed.” The directions asked the claimant, who remains anonymous, to upload a photo of their ID plus a separate picture of the ID held next to their face.

They then asked for “a photo of you stood outside the front door (open behind you) of the property you live at. Ask someone to take this from the street so whole property can be seen. “A photo of you stood next to your street sign with you[r] right hand holding it. Ask someone to take this photo from a few metres away so that the background can be clearly seen. “A photo of you holding your local newspaper for the area you live (not a national tabloid newspaper). This should be dated the same day you upload the photo.” The final point is “what kidnappers do”, the PILC said.

The person could still be required to attend a job centre meeting even after providing the requested pictures “before any consideration is given to awarding [their] universal credit”, the post in the journal stated. “In the first lockdown we suspended face-to-face verification,” Neil Couling, director general for the universal credit programme, tweeted when PILC posted a screenshot of the journal entry.
“Prior to Covid in cases where there was a doubt we used to call people into Jobcentres. Initially we used a “Trust and Protect” approach [when verifying claimants’ identities]. “We knew some would abuse that, I’ve been very open about that, but it was for the greater good. But we always said we would go back and check. And this is part of that, given restrictions mean we can’t yet use our Jobcentres to the full.
“So this is a temporary process, tailed for the restrictions we are still under. Eventually we will be able to return to interviews in Jobcentres in cases of doubt about identity. So there’s nothing to worry about here for claimants, they can engage with confidence.” Couling referred to an annual DWP report published in July which warned identity theft led to around 4,000 people being asked to repay money they did not claim in the first place. The instructions posted in the universal credit journal did not state what the claimant should do if they did not have access to a smart phone, could not get another person’s help to take the photos in the time given, could not reach their local street sign, if a daily local newspaper was not published in their area or if they could not afford to buy one.

“This kind of communication only shows how utterly disconnected the DWP is from the lived experience of people surviving on a low income,” Benjamin Morgan, research and communications coordinator at the PILC, told The Big Issue after the organisation’s client received the instructions. “There are a range of reasons – ranging from disability to not having a permanent address – why claimants might reasonably find it impossible to fulfil such conditions. “Policing universal credit claimants in this way is both humiliating and dehumanising.” When a person does successfully sign up for universal credit, they face a five-week wait for a first payment which has been blamed for soaring poverty and food bank use. The 5.2 million people currently claiming the benefit will receive their first reduced payment in the coming weeks after the government cut universal credit by £20 per week, taking £1,040 from claimants’ annual incomes.

A DWP spokesperson told The Big Issue: “At the start of the pandemic we suspended face-to-face verification of new claims as part of our Trust and Protect scheme to ensure all legitimate claimants got paid. “We always said we would go back and verify claims, in order to protect the public purse, as some people sadly chose to abuse the temporary arrangements. “We are now checking cases and have implemented this approach temporarily in a small number of cases where a claimant has been unable to interact with us remotely, ahead of the return of in-person verification at jobcentres.”

https://bigissue.com/news/social-ju...claimants-to-pose-for-photo-with-daily-paper/
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if only they EVER decided to put this much fecking effort in to the tax evasion or corporations and billionaires!!!

Protect the public purse my arse!
 
Jericholyte2 said:
if only they EVER decided to put this much fecking effort in to the tax evasion or corporations and billionaires!!!

Protect the public purse my arse!
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It appeals to their base and it always will. The sort of person that actually thinks they're closer to being a billionaire than they are to being homeless and broke which is why any call to tax the rich is viewed as a tax on their dreams and aspirations.

It's been said many times in this thread and others but this country has the government it deserves right now. The scary thing is they (the government) know this game plan only has legs for so long, so they are trying to rig the system.
 
Cascarino said:
One of the few places that doesn't fit into the above summary is Swansea, which voted to leave but always votes Labour. Although pertinently to psuedo's point about a change in brexit stance amonst former brexiteers, at least in 2018 anyway, Focaldata had found using YouGov polling that 14 constituencies had swung to remain from leave, with the Swansea area experiencing the biggest impact of this. This might have changed once again since then, but at least in conjunction with that polling and Wales voting Labour, I can't imagine that if the vote was repeated today that Wales would vote Brexit again.
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This. It feels like it’s been a crazy swing. Not just a family member, but a whole family that’s honest enough to admit they were wrong. 16 people. 1 holdout that’s now out of step with his family.

Brexit was a fallacy.
 
There's something deeply unpleasant about a culture which will happily inconvenience, humiliate and occasionally kill thousands of innocent people in order to ensure a relative handful of chancers don't get a few extra quid a week. People on the right claim on the one hand to love Britain and British people whilst on the other they're utterly convinced that most of their neighbours are conniving layabouts desperate for an opportunity to play the system
 
jeff_goldblum said:
There's something deeply unpleasant about a culture which will happily inconvenience, humiliate and occasionally kill thousands of innocent people in order to ensure a relative handful of chancers don't get a few extra quid a week. People on the right claim on the one hand to love Britain and British people whilst on the other they're utterly convinced that most of their neighbours are conniving layabouts desperate for an opportunity to play the system
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I’ve said here before… Small C conservatives exploit the system more than any other demographic.

I know 3 families that own homes, bought second homes, moved their kids into the second home, and the state is paying the mortgage for that home as the Tories stopped building state housing.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. It’s bad for society, but good for Capitalism. We have a landlord culture that sees private capital thrive irrespective of whether society fails.

One example : I know a mortgaged property that costs £600. Housing benefit for a single parent is £400(?), that single parent works off the books. The parent gets £600 to house a person ‘in need’. The single parent collects a benefit, doesn’t need to pay the property owner as their parents have the mortgage covered by the public purse. It’s free money.

Those numbers won’t be 100% accurate and the margins will be far tighter, but it’s profitable for all.

Immigrants are not Fcuking us. British people are.
 
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DavidDeSchmikes said:
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I can't help but think this lack of opposition is part of some wider, long term strategy in destabilising the different factions of the Conservative party.

In truth, I'm just desperate for there to be some method to the madness to drag me from the utter despair of there being no proper opposition or righteous anger towards these heinous decisions and policies.
 
Compton22 said:
I can't help but think this lack of opposition is part of some wider, long term strategy in destabilising the different factions of the Conservative party.

In truth, I'm just desperate for there to be some method to the madness to drag me from the utter despair of there being no proper opposition or righteous anger towards these heinous decisions and policies.
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Yeah, it’s not that at all.

Think of it as you having an argument with a loved one. Instead of arguing you just say ‘ok’ in the face of their crazy. With nothing to push against, nothing to sharpen themselves with, the aggressor can’t escalate. No fight. No noise. No drama.

It’s that.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Yeah, it’s not that at all.

Think of it as you having an argument with a loved one. Instead of arguing you just say ‘ok’ in the face of their crazy. With nothing to push against, nothing to sharpen themselves with, the aggressor can’t escalate. No fight. No noise. No drama.

It’s that.
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Are you Keir Starmer loves tories ?

I'm just joking
 
Sweet Square said:
:lol:

It turns out I can't post and watch football at the same time.
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I was kidding man.

80 seat majority is only an advantage if people are singing from the same hymn sheet. I truly believe that there’s enough division in the Conservative party to see their infighting benefit all other parties far more than arguing and forcing that majority to coalesce around an issue.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
I was kidding man.
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Yeah I know. :)

UnrelatedPsuedo said:
80 seat majority is only an advantage if people are singing from the same hymn sheet. I truly believe that there’s enough division in the Conservative party to see their infighting benefit all other parties far more than arguing and forcing that majority to coalesce around an issue.
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I can't see it happening although stranger things have happened.
 
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