The British Politics Thread - The Bear and Badger

SpaceGazelle

They really should've announced the extra £20 a week for UC was permanent, and they should put minimum wage well above £12.

LivDiv

Funkstain wrote:

If you're a one-person LTD making £250K PA in profits, then you can afford an extra 6% in tax

I totally agree.

SpaceGazelle

Wow, the superdeduction thing is quite a step. If you spend £1 as a company (infrastructure etc) you get £1.30 back, and that includes big business.

SpaceGazelle

I mean, that effectively makes the corporation tax increase bullshit if you can afford to invest.

MattyJ

So whats the feeling on the budget? I'm just looking around at various sources now but wondered if anyone has dived into it. Generally positive? Negative?

LivDiv

SpaceGazelle wrote:

I mean, that effectively makes the corporation tax increase bullshit if you can afford to invest.

It directs it into investment and not dividends though which should be better for the economy. Investment leads to jobs normally plus further profits, both are taxable.

SpaceGazelle

LivDiv wrote:

I mean, that effectively makes the corporation tax increase bullshit if you can afford to invest.

It directs it into investment and not dividends though which should be better for the economy. Investment leads to jobs normally plus further profits, both are taxable.

Well it helps big business that can afford to invest and would probably be doing so anyway. It's way too easy to abuse too. Say A bank/whatever decides to buy up some office space in central London. The taxpayer will be paying a quarter of the value whether the bank uses it or not, and the company could sell it at a later date whether they use it or not.

dynamiteReady

MattyJ wrote:

So whats the feeling on the budget? I'm just looking around at various sources now but wondered if anyone has dived into it. Generally positive? Negative?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/mar/03/budget-2021-rishi-sunak-fiscal-firepower-protect-jobs-covid-furlough?page=with:block-603f958f8f08be9d080d9d16#block-603f958f8f08be9d080d9d16

That's the most succinct summary I've read so far. It's probably skimming.

LivDiv

I think overall it is a good budget, keeping in mind it is still a Tory budget.

Covid relief.
He was right to extend to allow cash flow to return. Still nothing for the forgotten though. I guess by this point most of those are dead in a ditch or delivering pizza so not Richi's problem.

Corp Tax.
He found a way of raising it without throwing small businesses under the bus. Very good. Lets make sure it is collected now.

Investment.
Investment from the Gov directly looks decent although it is a blind point for me. Encouraging business to invest rather than pocket profits is also good, we have to move on from an economy built to buy fat cunts yachts. More could be done but I support investment and job creation over hand outs where possible.

Universal Credit.
£20 extension is a bare minimum. Should be permanent and the whole system needs a shake up really, would be difficult to do at the moment however. The damage UC has done was done prior but this budget fails to fix it.

Income Tax
Freezing of thresholds will equate to less money in pockets as the RPI has gone up. However it should be manageable for most, now wouldn't be the time for an increase and certainly not the time for a decrease. A happy medium.

Other
Moving the Treasury out of London is long overdue and welcome.

There will be things that come out as missing and likely some details hidden away, there always are. In general IM just happy its not more austerity on top of austerity. I daren't imagine how Osbourne's Covid Budget would look.

Escape

mistercrayon wrote:

So the SNP want to keep people under the thumb but with a friendly face?

Is why it's so gutting that barely-centre-left Corbyn was advertised as a radical. Fast & Furious: Overton Drift.

poprock wrote:

The only person I can realistically see having even close to equal value as a progressive figurehead up here is Mhairi Black - and she’s way too young and inexperienced. Her time will come, but it’s not now.

I'd put a few quid on her turbocharging indyref if she took over. And I deeply disagree with this too-soon chat when it comes to politicians being ready. Leadership's terrifying for anyone decent, but you're either capable of rising to it or not. Winning that position as an MP is the only practice mode; after that it's all down to what you stand for, plus or versus PR.

Public perception of someone being unready is certainly a thing, and I wish that view'd bin itself like Emu throwing Rod into the freezer. Not having a go at you. (Emu might.)

poprock

I’m fine with younger leaders, but the SNP is full of people who have literally only been in politics for a few years. Personally I’d prefer a wee bit more practical experience under a leader’s belt. Not too much more, but a bit.

Mhairi is my local MP. She runs surgeries in the village hall. She’s very good, from what I’ve seen/heard so far.

Escape

But what is practical experience?

Corbyn was so clearly green when he became Labour leader, and he'd been in the game for decades. Most of us didn't even know who he was, so it's not like he'd been amassing exposure.

I struggle to apply the overconfident book-rookie cliche to being an MP, where knowledge and compassion lie at the heart of competence in the role, rather than a physical/artistic/whatever talent that cares to be refined.

Our media sells Mr Greysuit as a safety mechanism, is my broad view.

JonB

Lord_Griff wrote:

I suppose I am a capitalist leaning utilitarian, slightly protectionist advocate of state protection for individuals as part of a hobbesian contract. Education and equality of opportunity are paramount. I think in this increasingly complex day and age, where all answers are one Google away, the easy route is to align oneself to one group or ideology. Whatever the group thinks is correct, and anyone else be damned. In realty I think on an x axis scaling from fascism to comunism, at its extremes, commonly accepted precepts of political ideology a most problem akin to overlapping bell curves, but even then, I think to subscribe to one in particular to the exlcusion of all others is somewhat of an unexamined decision, and we all know what Socrates said about that.

Ah, a centrist.

Frosty

this is fine - loyalist paramilitary groups withdraw support for the gfa

Still committed to peace thought they just want the *checks notes* "unfettered access for goods, services, and citizens throughout the United Kingdom". Not the catchiest slogan but that's Brexit for you - everyone is super into trade deals these days

acemuzzy

JonB wrote:

Ah, a centrist.

Not really very related, but I enjoyed this:
https://twitter.com/RosieisaHolt/status/1367096185345998850?s=19

Lord_Griff

Spacially related politics needs to end.

Roujin

Help, all the left wingers are being mean because I want a bit/some/all of the elitism to remain in society and I don't like it!

Lord_Griff

Ok, it can stay for simpletons. X

JonB

I'm kind of joking. But it is funny how everyone who goes on about group think and other people's ideologies always seem to have such similar political ideas.

Lord_Griff

We need a political QR code generated for each person. Any way, a cursory glance at the Internet brought up this:

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/section-1-growing-ideological-consistency/

mistercrayon

I think I’d be happier with left/right/centrist labels if there was a central council that said “if you believe these things you are left/right/centrist”.

I think it’s more used as a signal rather than actually meaning any real or consistent stances on things.

For example I think most people would consider brexit a purely right wing stance but closed border worker protectionism is traditionally leftist.

I think also, for example, many TERF have history from both socially conservative and proper leftists but I think many people would reject any TERF is a left winger at all nowadays.

GurtTractor

Reductionism is often very useful, but when it comes to societal matters simple or overarching labels seem to be very much overused, to the point of being a crutch or a cop out from actually thinking and speaking carefully about the multidimensional mess of humanity. Using such labels in a lazy way is often self-reinforcing too, if you consistently define the boundaries around a group it colours your thoughts to see people as one or the other, and can cause others to identify themselves within that group for support.

Roujin

I mean, you can just google what Left, Right and Centrist political ideology includes, it takes like 5 minutes.

Things like worker protection = left wing, but adding closed borders to the end doesn't make any sense, that's not left wing, there's nothing egalitarian about saying people can't come into my country to look for work.

Brexit again, the reason it's considered a right wing political idea is that is based around stopping the freedom of movement of people and taking the UK out of a collective trading block and governance structure, so that we can do our own thing - doing our own thing, seems so far to indicate people making money off the upcoming trade deals, a weakening pound, and us becoming a future corporate tax haven, there hasn't been much improvement in conditions for any of the workforce, especially in the fisheries industry for instance.

TERFS again, you are going to struggle to rectify a generally left leaning disposition if part of your outlook is that a group of people in society don't have the right to be recognised.

I think part of what is happening, is that as society is moving left over time as we become more socially conscious. We've come a long way on homophobia and racism over the years, and I think what is happening with TERFS who otherwise consider themselves lefties, is the same thing happening to people who considered themselves lefties in the past. It's that the prejudices you hold against a certain group have no longer become acceptable by society, so they won't be overlooked, or viewed as being something that is considered acceptable, you are discriminating against a group of people without a valid reason, that's not very inclusive, it's not very egalitarian and it's certainly not indicative of someone showing concern for people in society who are disadvantaged.

Roujin

Also a bit like Jon, I find people start using the "this is just reductionist" or "I am actually very politically nuanced in my views" tend to be the people who sometimes just don't want to own the bits of their ideology that others oppose, be that a general opposition or a strong opposition.

For instance, if I were to just go off on how our current form of capitalism and our pretend free market is killing the planet and it needs to get in the bin so we can replace with a system that will prevent companies and individuals exploiting resources for their own personal gain at the cost of essentially killing the planet - crypto art bois I'm comin' for you, and the other person actually thinks that capitalism is the best way of organising our economies and they can't articulate any cogent reason why we should continue with it, beyond their own gut instinct and the fact that it was the system that got us as far as we have as humans, then I won't be surprised if that person just decides that instead of going and considering why they can't articulate a logical point for capitalism beyond "maintaining the status quo" they would instead assume they have been the victim of the reductionists, who will attack anyone who isn't the same as them just because they have different opinions on things.

For the sake of balance here, right, the left has plenty of issues of it's own ideologies that frankly require the same kind of scrutiny when raised, communism being the easiest most low hanging fruit on the example tree. Some people will be able to do it when pressed and hold their ground and articulate why a socioeconomic system that is supposed to be really good by those who are in favour of it, has never existed or been properly tested, inlcuding that person being able to navigate the talking points of "BUT RUSSIA HAD THE COMMUNIST PARTY" or "CHINA IS COMMUNIST SO EXPLAIN THAT, DUMMY" which are frequently raised by people who don't know what the fuck is going on, but they know that capitalism is the way baybee and they don't want everyone to be poor and standing in a queue outside a soup kitchen.

Okay apologies for spamming the thread.

GurtTractor

I just really think that trying to understand things as part of a left/right spectrum is a fools errand, it's a fiction of dubious usefulness that's been perpetuated for ages now. More often than not people and groups tend to have beliefs picked from all parts of the typically understood political continuum, trying to place someone as a dot within a 2D/3D/4D plot seems fairly pointless. An amorphous blob in a complex dimensional plot would probably be a more useful way of understanding the politics, our monkey brains and languages aren't cut out for that kind of nuance of course, so it all gets reduced to a pretty rough venn diagram.

Left, Right, Centrist; these terms don't actually mean much of anything when it comes to accurately describing a person or group, yet people keep on using and reinforcing the fiction. Perhaps some think that they are useful, to me it seems really quite harmful.

Yossarian

Pretty sure that recent studies have shown that, for most people, political identification comes first with most of the individual policies that people support being informed by that identity.

A good recent example is Trump spouting a whole load of policy positions during the primaries and on the campaign trail that flew in the face of most Republican political orthodoxy (protectionism, expanding healthcare etc), but this didn’t put Republicans off him, they just shifted their positions on these things to retain their identities as Republicans.

poprock

There are definitely two distinct main camps of voters nowadays - those who identify/vote by policy and those who identify/vote as fans of an individual or party identity.

SpaceGazelle

I basically dislike posh-right, despair at poor-right and am continually frustrated and let down by the left. Centrists are always centre right but never seem to realise it, thinking they must have left leanings sometimes because they once felt sorry for a tramp.

GurtTractor

Yossarian wrote:

Pretty sure that recent studies have shown that, for most people, political identification comes first with most of the individual policies that people support being informed by that identity. A good recent example is Trump spouting a whole load of policy positions during the primaries and on the campaign trail that flew in the face of most Republican political orthodoxy (protectionism, expanding healthcare etc), but this didn’t put Republicans off him, they just shifted their positions on these things to retain their identities as Republicans.

Aye, broad labels, political parties, they're like tribal banners that people stand behind. Which is why I really think it's important not to keep reinforcing them as meaningful distinctions within humanity.

Funkstain

Politics arguments are only interesting when you argue about particular policies or ideas / philosophies.

The problem with crying "reductionist" is that it (deliberately?) misconstrues how "left / centre / right" labels are generally used by people in this thread - which is shorthand labelling and useful as such.

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