The British Politics Thread - The Bear and Badger

Yossarian

I don't have anything to compare them to, but these guys do and they ranked the NHS as the best healthcare system in the world, and that includes France's.

Outlaw

I can compare it a little and ours is generally good. Like I say Gonz, I was in and out of the hospital with broken bones when I was younger and I never experienced what you did. Long waits back in the day, but it has gotten a lot, lot better. Last time I went I was seen within 10 minutes (as opposed to six hours - my longest wait. That's a long time for a child with two broken bones and no pain management).

The free at the point of use is something we should fight for imo, I feel so thankful I can get care almost whatever is wrong with me. America was good but my friends there are so less likely to seek healthcare if they have issues, and when they do they're often financially fucked from it. Never used France's though so can't comment on them.

mistercrayon

Free at use is a line that once crossed opens all sorts of monetising japes. Much like the token 1000 pound tuition fees within 15 years becomes 9000

monkey

Yossarian wrote:

I can see Monkey's argument, but at the same time, I don't see income tax as being enough. Perhaps some kind of wealth tax during people's lives could be an answer?

Yeah income tax isn't a great replacement. It's just as avoidable by the wealthy. I get the objections to what I'm saying and huge wealth being kept by generations of people isn't an easy thing to defend.

I think better solutions to the problems associated with entrenched wealth are through going way harder on equality of opportunity, specifically in education. I don't know if I'd ban private schools, but they'd be way more open. At a basic level there'd be no way you could grow up to be a future prime minister without having grown up and been educated alongside every section of society you'd be expected to lead. Cameron has been incubated in a test tube surrounded only by uber rich meta cunts, he hasn't left this circle ever in his life.

At the other end of the spectrum, I went to a terrible school where lessons would descend into farce with barely a thing getting taught. It was in a tiny town where most people's prospects were getting a job at the local industrial estate. There was just no need for anyone to take their education seriously. And most didn't. That needs changing up, resources need to be plugged into the bottom, but it needs a massive cultural shift too.

beano

Fucking car crash on finances from a magician!

https://youtu.be/hkFy4Qp0j0c

The Greens release their manifesto with costs tomorrow.

PS - mucho thanks to public sector workers here for their insights.

Yossarian

That Javid clip was delicious. Why aren't more people taking the Tories to task like that?

beano

Did you see Marr on Osborne?

https://youtu.be/94hdq5iX9m8

equinox_code

Tories promising to privatise more housing stock and further inflate prices.

"[the Conservatives] are the party of working people, offering you security at every stage of your life"

GooberTheHat

Just watched that on the news. They showed some footage from the Thatcher years and there was a placard saying "don't sell our future".

Why doesn't anyone pull them up on the consequences of the last sell off of social housing stock?

equinox_code

How does he plan on making the deepest cuts to welfare in living memory while simultaneously selling off our ability to house people cheaply?

Yossarian

Because he's a cunt.

n0face

So the government force the housing associations to sell at a discount and then make up the difference which the housing associations don't then have to reinvest in housing. If they don't reinvest then the government will figure out something else? Why not just build some more houses?

equinox_code

It's all so depressing. After all this politicking- lying, manipulating, ducking debates, kicking the poor, and offering more perks to the rich- that the Tories are extending their lead in the polls, and their bullshittery looks set to be rewarded.

GooberTheHat

It amazes me how people buy into their bullshit that it's important to look after the rich. As if slightly restricting their ability to increase their riches will cause them all to fuck off somewhere else.

Yossarian

equinox_code wrote:

It's all so depressing. After all this politicking- lying, manipulating, ducking debates, kicking the poor, and offering more perks to the rich- that the Tories are extending their lead in the polls, and their bullshittery looks set to be rewarded.

Are they? I don't think there's been anything lying outside of the margin of error. The Guardian published one recently which gave the Tories a larger lead, but in the article they states that the results may well be skewed by the people they interviewed (their random sample included a higher than proportional number of people who voted Tory in 2010 and a higher than proportional number of professionals).

monkey

GooberTheHat wrote:

It amazes me how people buy into their bullshit that it's important to look after the rich. As if slightly restricting their ability to increase their riches will cause them all to fuck off somewhere else.

They dominate the terms of the discourse. If a major Labour politician were to oppose the 'wealth-creator' rhetoric, he instantly gets branded as an out-of-touch, tax and spend, economic illiterate who would send Britain into a new era of hyper-inflation and 3 day weeks. This has been repeated so many times through the media that even if people don't buy into it all, so much work has been done for the Tories already in laying out the groundwork of the argument. Milliband has impressed me to the extent that he has had some success at trying to chip away at certain areas of the accepted wisdom while containing a lot of the blowback.

equinox_code

I cant even remember all the shit they've tried to do over the last 5 years. It's not just tax cuts for the rich, it's also subsidies for landowners and game reserves, privatisation of search and rescue, privatisation of the lifeboats, privatisation of Royal Mail, privatisation of the probation services, privatisation of roads, privatisation of railways, privatisation of the NHS, attempts to privatise the forests, opposition to a bonus cap for the financial services, supports for a cap on housing benefit, attempts to gerrymander electoral boundaries, restrictions on porn, triple tuition fees, devalue the teaching profession, cuts for the sick and disabled, dismantling workers' rights, cuts to legal aid, inflate the housing market, perks and subsidies for landlords, environmental targets scrapped, fracking prioritised, cull the badgers, unconditional support for US and ISrael, fucking workfare schemes, and the criminalisation of squatting.

Anything else i've forgotten?

I've just remembered when Michael Gove suggested we buy the Queen a new superyacht for her birthday. Hilarious.

Honestly, how can anyone vote for these cunts?

regmcfly

You nailed it with "restrictions on porn".
18-25 male voters go in swarms to Labour.

Funkstain

There really is a simple answer for this:

- a lot of people are quite well off thank you very much;

- don't see why in fuck they should support anybody else except their family and close friends (if even them);

- are not that keen on people speaking other languages and shops saying Polski Sklep;

- and enjoy the feeling of security they get from owning their own home and over-paying their mortgage (due to super low interest rates and decreased taxes at their level of income).

It so happens that statistically, this type of person is far, far and away more likely to vote, for more obvious reasons:

- the mainstream media is generally skewed in their favour since they have influence (money), tend to actually buy papers, and the journalists come from their class all of which means their narrative is constantly re-inforced;

- due to the paucity of support for the disenfranchised and the poor, there is general lack of education about voting choices and societal politics, mixed with a sense of "they're all the same anyway" disempowerment all of which means the other lot hardly vote.

So your electorate is basically formed of Tory fucks who fit the profile above; older people who "still believe" in Labour and vote to secretly, slightly, salve their conscience (at least they're better than the other lot); and a tiny amount of activists who actually give a shit.

It ALL starts with education and messaging. If all you heard from mainstream media was a list like Noxy's then perhaps things would change. In the meantime, make enough people comfortably fat and happy, and you'll get voted for (or at least not voted out) time after time.

Funkstain

Honestly most of the conservative voters I know would genuinely not give a shit if they had to step over tramp corpses during their commute, pausing only to tut at the council services going down the drain as they simultaneously moan about council tax.

It's just a frame of mind. You either care about other people or you don't. It seems most voters care about themselves and their families and that's that.

Gremill

Perhaps, Noxy, you could somehow combine your search for a meaningful career with your passion for educating people about these cunts and get into activism?

It's not going to pay you fuck all, but if you can pour yourself into that whilst doing a worthless job you hate/tolerate then you can get your fulfilment outside of paid employment. You never know, if you graft enough for long enough at the latter you might end up being able to drop the former.

Funkstain

The funny thing is I can't even hold it against them, the selfish bastards. Firstly I'm mostly a hypocrite, conforming nicely to the "vote to partially salve conscience" thing rather than actively trying to change anything; secondly it's a valid perspective: fuck everyone else, I'm looking out for me and mine. Just because I don't agree with it doesn't necessarily enable me to condemn it.

Gremill

Could you argue, though, that in a developed communal society (which is what some might argue the UK more or less is) that it is in the long-term interests of the individual to ensure that the wider society in which they live is 'taken care of' so that should any one of us fall that there will be someone there to help us up?

Looking solely after you and yours at the expense of everyone else is a shortcut to long term misery for the human race.

LarryDavid

It's not that valid, that's just what they want everyone to accept: that 'there's no such thing as society'.

They're selfish, hateful cunts who want everyone else demoralised, passive, vulnerable and alone, thinking only of themselves and undefended by any type of union or protective laws.

EDIT: at Funk

Funkstain

Gremill wrote:

Could you argue, though, that in a developed communal society (which is what some might argue the UK more or less is) that it is in the long-term interests of the individual to ensure that the wider society in which they live is 'taken care of' so that should any one of us fall that there will be someone there to help us up? Looking solely after you and yours at the expense of everyone else is a shortcut to long term misery for the human race.

Absolutely - in fact I'd go further and argue that this is one of the only logical reasons for NOT being a Tory - that you genuinely believe that it is better for you and your family and your friends to live in a fairer society. There are non-logical reasons of course, too.

The short-term / minimal personal cost incurred is more than repaid in harder to measure but still very valuable benefits - better healthcare, better education leading to more opportunities for individuals who may go on to benefit society in tremendously valuable ways; more freedom to pursue "valuable but not valuable" stuff that enriches everyone (literature, entertainment, art) I mean this is all obvious stuff. But when you argue these points with a (typical) tory voter, you get simplistic stuff like "I don't go to the theatre anyway, there's never anything on TV anyway, they already have free healthcare and education, I got my a-levels they just didn't work hard enough" and so on.

It's the lack of imagination, curiosity, basic intellectualism that is at fault and I don't believe this is an easy thing (or even possible thing?) to remedy. Partly because just typing that makes me cringe; what, am I superior to all these people because I saw some art once? Because I like long boring films with people talking instead of exploding?

Larry, you're right, because it serves the general purpose I've described. Funny thing is I still have hope, I still believe that a decent amount of people are decent and want an opportunity to show that. Let's see how it goes eh.

Yossarian

I'm starting to believe that there is no way that the Tories can possibly be in a position to form a government after the next election. That's making me smile.

acemuzzy

I really hope you're right

acemuzzy

I can kinda get rich fuckers and even middle classers voting Tory, if they're selfish. What depresses me more is less well off people voting for them through misrepresentation / spin / immigration socks logic, and those abstaining as they don't reckon things could be even a little bit less shit.

Fucking media bollocks. At least the beeb is kinda left leaning, so there's an element of hope.

n0face

It's all ideological, some people just believe they are better then others whether they are at the top of the pile or not.

EvilRedEye

I think the Guardian did a poll-to-seats thing after that poll saying the Tories were leading and in that even the Tories, Lib Dems and UKIP combined couldn't get a majority. It's hard to see how any block is going to get a majority other than Labour + SNP.

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