Westminster Politics

Ekkie Thump said:
Out of that giant morass of bullet points and ambiguities what would you say are the top 5 headline policies that will define a Starmer government?

I managed to divine nine or ten contenders that seem to contain at least some concrete proposals, some of which might even have their own subclauses:
  • £28bn Green Prosperity Plan (implementation towards the end of the next parliament and highly dependent upon state of economy).
  • Minimum wage to be remodelled as a "genuine living wage" and updated to reflect a yet to be defined standard under the remit of the Low Pay Commission
  • Repeal the 2016 Trade Union Act and other 2022 anti-strike legislation, although this seems to be up in the air
  • Introduce a points based immigration system.
  • Introduce the 'Take Back Control Act', similar to the Conservatives, allowing local authorities to take more control over areas like industrial strategy and transport (bit short on detail).
  • Reduce the voting age to 16 (not sure if this is set in stone)
  • Renationalise the railways as and when contracts expire.
  • Free breakfast clubs and the overseeing of toothbrushing.
  • 13k more community police officers (or PCSO's); halving knife crime in 10 years.
  • 8.5k more mental health staff
There's an enormous amount of guff in the link you provided. Lots of meaningless platitudes like "break down the barriers to opportunity" and "unlock the potential of" or amorphous and materially lacking indications of future endeavours: We learn that Labour will "develop plans which will see", "develop policies to ensure", "set out a clear roadmap for" "deliver a long term plan that" and "introduce standards that will." It all sounds very exciting and yet despite its verbosity is very slight on fundamental detail.

My main takeaway is that that page is going out of its way to sound like it's a lot more than it actually is.


Edit: I confess I did try to read it all but my eyes started to involuntarily glaze over on many more than one occasions.
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Yep. Also to take any of these policies seriously would mean ignoring all the pledges Starmer has dropped since becoming leader.

There’s just no evidence Labour will keep to any promises. The guy is running on not believing in this

 
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Mr Pigeon said:
The mum's comments today have set me off a bit though - saying it's the social worker's fault that her son is dead because they didn't force entry into the house on January 2nd. The mum hadn't been in contact with her ex to check in on her 2 year old son since before Christmas.
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It sounds like the social worker called the police on the 2nd anyway, so on face value it sounds like they did a decent job. It makes me wonder what the police did with it though if they knew there was a 2 year-old involved.
 
Balljy said:
It sounds like the social worker called the police on the 2nd anyway, so on face value it sounds like they did a decent job. It makes me wonder what the police did with it though if they knew there was a 2 year-old involved.
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Not only did they call the police but they canvassed neighbours, checked in two days later and called the police again, and then found the landlady to get access to the house and then discovered the two bodies. And now they're off work, presumably seeing professionals to work through the trauma. But according to mother of the fecking year it's all the social worker's fault.

I'll admit it riles me up more than it should simply because I don't want to think about the poor kiddo.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
Not only did they call the police but they canvassed neighbours, checked in two days later and called the police again, and then found the landlady to get access to the house and then discovered the two bodies. And now they're off work, presumably seeing professionals to work through the trauma. But according to mother of the fecking year it's all the social worker's fault.

I'll admit it riles me up more than it should simply because I don't want to think about the poor kiddo.
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Yeah, it's awful. I can't look at the picture of the kid on the BBC, it's one of those horrible stories that has so many what-ifs and the most distressing outcome.
 
711 said:
You want to worry about the younger ones as well as the old:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/01/younger-voters-far-right-europe
Poor Sweet, maybe you're going to be in some sort of Squeezed Middle? :)
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Tbf I was just talking about Britain(Although the same applies to Ireland and America). Also I might be wrong but I’m pretty sure most of the youth vote in France in the first round went to Melenchon(Left wing Corbyn).

But yes had Corbyn won in 2019 then we would of needed to expand the peoples army into Central Europe! Also the Dutch are just like this. They have cool drugs, sex and bicycles yet they are a bunch of reactionaries…..it’s such a typical Dutch move!
 
Sweet Square said:
I can’t imagine he would want to repeat the leadership years. I’m sure he recently did a joke Christmas with some lads in Irish balaclava. He’s living his best live now.

Yep your probably right about who’s planted the story. It’s genuinely going to be strange watching Starmer on the campaign trail in the next election.
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It'll be strange because he's the first leader since Boris Johnson to achieve the Boris level of lies. We will know he will U turn on anything.
 
TheGame said:
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I'm not sure why she puts investment in inverted commas, the new plant will save 5000 jobs according to the BBC. I know feck all about steel but if that is the case, is it not better to lose 3000 than 8000, and with those remaining state-of-the-art jobs?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-wales-68023528
Maybe it's just kneejerking, whatever the government/other side do it must be wrong.
 
Vidyoyo said:
You have to admit, it was pretty clever of people to buy them for cheap and rent them out for mint
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Those “people” were housing developers that contacted qualifying council house residents who would never be able to purchase their home, offered them the deposit in order to buy the house on the basis the housing developer could then purchase the house off them at a discounted rate.

What it meant is that the person living there got a nice little cash lump sum and probably enough for a very healthy deposit on their own house. Meanwhile the housing developer bought a house for a fraction of the market cost.
 
711 said:
I'm not sure why she puts investment in inverted commas, the new plant will save 5000 jobs according to the BBC. I know feck all about steel but if that is the case, is it not better to lose 3000 than 8000, and with those remaining state-of-the-art jobs?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-wales-68023528
Maybe it's just kneejerking, whatever the government/other side do it must be wrong.
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3000 is still a lot of jobs and a massive blow to the local economy.
Let’s not forget this:

 
Pexbo said:
Those “people” were housing developers that contacted qualifying council house residents who would never be able to purchase their home, offered them the deposit in order to buy the house on the basis the housing developer could then purchase the house off them at a discounted rate.

What it meant is that the person living there got a nice little cash lump sum and probably enough for a very healthy deposit on their own house. Meanwhile the housing developer bought a house for a fraction of the market cost.
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Sounds pretty decent if you were one of the people offered money for a deposit. And a huge boon for the developers with the capital to finance the scheme
 
TheGame said:
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I spent 40 years working in the steel industry in the UK. It's a sad day for all the people who worked so hard to try to keep it going.

Blast furnaces like these use huge amounts of energy and produce loads of CO2. The decision to set a zero CO2 emission target was the death blow for them.

We will shortly buy the steel from China, Korea or India instead and ship it around the world and then claim we saved the planet by reducing our CO2 emissions.

The arc furnaces will remelt scrap and if the energy grid is greenish the steel will be too. But good luck trying to meet the tramp element specs or make rail steels or cheap rebar using arc furnaces. Get ready for huge rises in prices and knock on delays in construction projects.
 
Pexbo said:
:lol:

Edit - so turns out the Labour candidate turned out to be a horrible TERF and the winning Tory candidate was a popular local Lib Dem MP.
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Apparently the TERF was firstly suspended for liking a Facebook post comparing blackface to trans women. This suspension got lifted at the last minute and she got to run as the Labour candidate.

I didn’t know the Tory was a former Lib Dem. Although it makes sense.
 
Sweet Square said:
Apparently the TERF was firstly suspended for liking a Facebook post comparing blackface to trans women. This suspension got lifted at the last minute and she got to run as the Labour candidate.

I didn’t know the Tory was a former Lib Dem. Although it makes sense.
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Heh his name is Ian Sharer and he's certainly spread the love, according to the local rag.
A veteran local politician who has previously been both a Labour and a Liberal Democrat councillor in his home borough has won a clear victory for the Conservatives in Hackney’s Cazenove ward at Labour’s expense.
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https://www.onlondon.co.uk/hackney-...after-turbulent-cazenove-by-election-contest/

Also that article seems to put it more down to a Jewish community vote and opposition to a low traffic scheme, though it does reference the blackface controversy too.
 
Jippy said:
Heh his name is Ian Sharer and he's certainly spread the love, according to the local rag.
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:lol:

That’s amazing. I’m always surprised how local politics is almost completely detached from national level party stuff or even basic ideology. I remember going to a Labour meeting before the 2017 election and the party chair was a former Lib Dem candidate. It was very bizarre. The British version of Soviet bureaucrats.
Jippy said:
https://www.onlondon.co.uk/hackney-...after-turbulent-cazenove-by-election-contest/

Also that article seems to put it more down to a Jewish community vote and opposition to a low traffic scheme, though it does reference the blackface controversy too.
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Thanks. Also the demographics and the traffic scheme makes a lot more sense.
 
Sweet Square said:
:lol:

That’s amazing. I’m always surprised how local politics is almost completely detached from national level party stuff or even basic ideology. I remember going to a Labour meeting before the 2017 election and the party chair was a former Lib Dem candidate. It was very bizarre. The British version of Soviet bureaucrats.

Thanks. Also the demographics and the traffic scheme makes a lot more sense.
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I don't get how they change sides so often. No idea if they align on certain local issues and switch between parties on that basis maybe.
 
Jippy said:
I don't get how they change sides so often. No idea if they align on certain local issues and switch between parties on that basis maybe.
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Yep they are so free floating. I understand people can change their politics over time. But I would have thought standing to be a MP means there’s some ideological commitment or else whats the point ?

In my case the guy who was a former 2015 local Lib Dem candidate was pretty much acting as a guide/helper to the 2017 labour candidate. He taking her through the basics of running a political campaign. Tbh we didn’t stand a chance against the tories(I think we were the most unfunded branch in England) so maybe it was just friends helping each other out.

A strange experience.
 
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