UK Politics Thread IX: Try turning the UK off and on again.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Does the British military use Ospreys? One flew over Belfast today.

No. The Americans or Japanese are invading with one of the worst aircraft in their arsenal.

Shit.

Ill marshal the lads

[The Nihilistic view]

Welcome to a time before you were born.

https://www.economicshelp.org/wp-conten ... -70-19.png

It's kind of funny that right wing monetary policy has conditioned you to think 2.5% inflation is a lot.

Oh and then you can combine it with this.

https://www.economicshelp.org/wp-conten ... -79-17.png

No inflation isn't more of a problem than it has been in the past and yes intrest rates are as kind as they have pretty much ever been. Combine the two and there is zero scope to suggest it's a major period of high inflation likely to put historically high presures on inderviduals finances especially as we have just had a sustained period of inflation significantly under the 2% target over the last 18 months to two years.

And if you want to talk about the lowest paid due to recent increases to the minimum wage the poorest people have had inflation beating wage increases since 2015. Usually beating inflation by a large margin. Last year was the lowest for a while due to covid and it was still 2.2% for the national living wage whilst inflation for the 12 months prior was 1.5%. Next year it will probably increase to around £9.40 which would be a nearly 6% increase. So it's clear over the last half decade that wage growth has far outstripped inflation for this group and will continue to do so for the next few years. On top of this we have also had increases to the personal allowance futher increasing the take home pay.

Whatever issues there might be it certainly isn't wage growth V inflation for the low paid. Pay has gone up faster than inflation, whilst at the same time the mean income tax rate for them has come down.

Road tax has gone up slower than the minimum wage during this period, MOT prices are basically stagnant, 2012/13 was the peak in recent years for fuel prices and over this period the price hasn't reached the highs of 2012/13 numerically let alone in real terms. Insurance is a similar story it's significatly lower now than the two peaks in 2012 and 2016. As for cleaning, don't be a lazy bum anybody can clean their own car for peanuts.

https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-p ... -over-time

The ability of an indervidual on low pay to be able to afford to run a car can therefore in all likelihood only have improved over the last few years when looking at the financial metrics that could directly impact car ownership.

When the facts tell almost universally the opposite story to your assertion it isn't me not seeing problems, it's you unable to see past your own narrative. It's not even a case of balancing one side against the other, virtually every possible statistic around the subject adds to making car ownership probably more achievable now than at any point in the last 10 years for the low paid.

And yet, food banks are still used, despite this supposed wage increase. How curious.

There are also pay freezes for public sector workers, families in poverty, etc, etc.

Yeah, I'm not seeing this.

Hous Prices are the highest they have ever been, while wages are still unable to keep up.

So yeah, the ability to make a car, may be easy in your mind, but again, there are so many other expenses that many low middle class and below are unable to afford and keep up with such payments.

It's as if you do not understand these problems.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/re ... s/sn07096/

How many people are in poverty?
In 2019/20:

11.7 million people were in relative low income BHC (18% of the population), at a similar level to the year before.
14.5 million were in relative low income AHC (22%), also at a similar level to the year before.

"Buying a car is easy"

Is it? And what about other things people who do not have disposable income have to think of?

Yeah what we do is we gather all these common expenses together and record their current price, we then compare this price to the last time we recorded the price of all these expenses and measure the increase or decrease in the price. And after weighting the various expenses we turn the differences into an overall average increase or decrease for the basket of goods we have analysed. We call this measure inflation. I feel this is important to reiterate because you keep ignoring that inflation has been consistently lower than minimum wage growth in recent years and keep trying to suggest that expenses going up is making it harder whilst ignoring that for the lowest paid their pay is increasing faster than our measure for expenses. These other expenses you keep talking about are included in the inflation measure so already accounted for in this comparison.

So if the increase in this measure is less than the increase in a person's wages (Presuming they keep doing the same ammount of work) has the burden of an average person's expenses increased or decreased relative to their income from the year before?

It's more than possible for something to be hard to achive whilst at the same time still being easier to achive than it used to be. And that's what you whether intentionally or not don't seem to be admitting.

[Ifreann]

Ospreys in Britain mostly nest in Scotland, so I'd imagine there's at least a few who've taken up residence in Belfast.

-_-

[Salandriagado]

Does the British military use Ospreys? One flew over Belfast today.

No. The Americans or Japanese are invading with one of the worst aircraft in their arsenal.

Probably do more damage if they just gifted us them, honestly.

[Forsher]

And yet, food banks are still used, despite this supposed wage increase. How curious.

There are also pay freezes for public sector workers, families in poverty, etc, etc.

Yeah, I'm not seeing this.

Hous Prices are the highest they have ever been, while wages are still unable to keep up.

So yeah, the ability to make a car, may be easy in your mind, but again, there are so many other expenses that many low middle class and below are unable to afford and keep up with such payments.

It's as if you do not understand these problems.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/re ... s/sn07096/



"Buying a car is easy"

Is it? And what about other things people who do not have disposable income have to think of?

Yeah what we do is we gather all these common expenses together and record their current price, we then compare this price to the last time we recorded the price of all these expenses and measure the increase or decrease in the price. And after weighting the various expenses we turn the differences into an overall average increase or decrease for the basket of goods we have analysed. We call this measure inflation. I feel this is important to reiterate because you keep ignoring that inflation has been consistently lower than minimum wage growth in recent years and keep trying to suggest that expenses going up is making it harder whilst ignoring that for the lowest paid their pay is increasing faster than our measure for expenses. These other expenses you keep talking about are included in the inflation measure so already accounted for in this comparison.

So if the increase in this measure is less than the increase in a person's wages (Presuming they keep doing the same ammount of work) has the burden of an average person's expenses increased or decreased relative to their income from the year before?

It's more than possible for something to be hard to achive whilst at the same time still being easier to achive than it used to be. And that's what you whether intentionally or not don't seem to be admitting.

Are you talking CPI? Because you have to be careful with using CPI this way. Your CPI could be very different, of course, but just something to bear in mind.

[Philjia]

Survation has the polls at Con 39%, Lab 37%.[/url]

[The Nihilistic view]

Round 1 to the government over stonehenge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57968573

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

Mr Justice Holgate said its net zero carbon target had "plainly been taken into account" when it was approved.

Plant five bushes in Mozambique and they call it achieving net zero carbon.

[New Rogernomics]

Well if you want some spicy polls the two latest ive seen have the conservative lead reduced to four points

Which will probably last till the end of the week.

Yougov's poll had a Tory drop of -6%. But the recent Opinium one (which is not listed on there yet) had neither the Conservatives or Labour change in the polls but Lib Dems went up by 2%.

It would take disposing of Starmer for a LAB victory. the man is just a lump. takes up space, but that's about it. No charisma, no leadership, nothing.

That was Labour in New Zealand, till they picked a media-savy woman to run.

[Celritannia]

And yet, food banks are still used, despite this supposed wage increase. How curious.

There are also pay freezes for public sector workers, families in poverty, etc, etc.

Yeah, I'm not seeing this.

Hous Prices are the highest they have ever been, while wages are still unable to keep up.

So yeah, the ability to make a car, may be easy in your mind, but again, there are so many other expenses that many low middle class and below are unable to afford and keep up with such payments.

It's as if you do not understand these problems.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/re ... s/sn07096/



"Buying a car is easy"

Is it? And what about other things people who do not have disposable income have to think of?

Yeah what we do is we gather all these common expenses together and record their current price, we then compare this price to the last time we recorded the price of all these expenses and measure the increase or decrease in the price. And after weighting the various expenses we turn the differences into an overall average increase or decrease for the basket of goods we have analysed. We call this measure inflation. I feel this is important to reiterate because you keep ignoring that inflation has been consistently lower than minimum wage growth in recent years and keep trying to suggest that expenses going up is making it harder whilst ignoring that for the lowest paid their pay is increasing faster than our measure for expenses. These other expenses you keep talking about are included in the inflation measure so already accounted for in this comparison.

So if the increase in this measure is less than the increase in a person's wages (Presuming they keep doing the same ammount of work) has the burden of an average person's expenses increased or decreased relative to their income from the year before?

It's more than possible for something to be hard to achive whilst at the same time still being easier to achive than it used to be. And that's what you whether intentionally or not don't seem to be admitting.

I'm not ignoring that fact, but wage stagnation and wage inflation is still a major problem. There are still people seriously struggling. The minimum wage needs to be increased to £10 an hour.

While there are millions of people in poverty, statistics will never help the actual fucking problem.

[Celritannia]

Round 1 to the government over stonehenge.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57968573

So much for the Tories caring about our heritage. Nothing more than an elected dictatorship.

[Keira]

It would take disposing of Starmer for a LAB victory. the man is just a lump. takes up space, but that's about it. No charisma, no leadership, nothing.

That was Labour in New Zealand, till they picked a media-savy woman to run.

OMG, can you imagine a more moderate, media-savvy Rebecca Long-Bailey??? ♥.♥ *melts into a puddle*

[Souseiseki]

spent half of last night binging on climate statistics and now i'm just internally lolling / internally screaming extra hard at "good luck winning an election banning cars???"

liberal capitalist democracies manifestly cannot deal with the climate crisis they have caused and there is no plausible solution.

like that's it. there is no joke or "just vote for corbyn lol". there is nothing else. even if you try to snap back with "why are you chatting shit about liberal capitalist democracy? it's not like illiberal capitalist dictatorship is doing any better!" to try defend liberal capitalist democracy that that makes it 10x worse.

[Keira]

spent half of last night binging on climate statistics and now i'm just internally lolling / internally screaming extra hard at "good luck winning an election banning cars???"

liberal capitalist democracies manifestly cannot deal with the climate crisis they have caused and there is no plausible solution.

like that's it. there is no joke or "just vote for corbyn lol". there is nothing else. even if you try to snap back with "why are you chatting shit about liberal capitalist democracy? it's not like illiberal capitalist dictatorship is doing any better!" to try defend liberal capitalist democracy that that makes it 10x worse.

"I've injected myself with pessimism and now I don't know what to do with myself, so I'll just vent about how capitalism = bad". That's how I read it, at least.

I don't see how socialism would make anything better in any way.

[Souseiseki]

spent half of last night binging on climate statistics and now i'm just internally lolling / internally screaming extra hard at "good luck winning an election banning cars???"

liberal capitalist democracies manifestly cannot deal with the climate crisis they have caused and there is no plausible solution.

like that's it. there is no joke or "just vote for corbyn lol". there is nothing else. even if you try to snap back with "why are you chatting shit about liberal capitalist democracy? it's not like illiberal capitalist dictatorship is doing any better!" to try defend liberal capitalist democracy that that makes it 10x worse.

"I've injected myself with pessimism and now I don't know what to do with myself, so I'll just vent about how capitalism = bad". That's how I read it, at least.

I don't see how socialism would make anything better in any way.

the meme answer is that socialism would wreck the international economy, which would reduce emissions, which would help us reach climate targets. there you go.

the serious answer is that capitalisms trend towards the desire for infinite growth is a certainly a key problem. this is deeply ironic since "it leads to so much growth everywhere!" is one of the things that capitalists use to defend their system. so they'd be immediately caught out if they tried to argue it doesn't actually lead to infinite growth and they were telling porkies this whole time. it is very very hard to come up with an answer to "so how did we get here" that is not a combination of "too much growth too fast" and "capitalists placed money over everything else (e: and capital controlled the government so they were never reigned in)".

[The Nihilistic view]

spent half of last night binging on climate statistics and now i'm just internally lolling / internally screaming extra hard at "good luck winning an election banning cars???"

liberal capitalist democracies manifestly cannot deal with the climate crisis they have caused and there is no plausible solution.

like that's it. there is no joke or "just vote for corbyn lol". there is nothing else. even if you try to snap back with "why are you chatting shit about liberal capitalist democracy? it's not like illiberal capitalist dictatorship is doing any better!" to try defend liberal capitalist democracy that that makes it 10x worse.

We don't really matter here anyway. We could as a country go carbon neutral tomorrow and it wouldn't make any difference in the long run. It's events like the flooding in China the other day that will do far more to prompt China into acting, they actually don't give a shit whether we set an example or not at the end of the day it will be the consequences in China that will make China have a serious effort.

It's also another one of those occasions when our political system is the least worst option that people have yet come up with considering we have been one of the best in the world for reducing emmisions in recent years. So if European liberal capitalist democracies are generally doing the best at reducing emmisions then that doesn't suggest much in favour of other systems.

[Keira]

"I've injected myself with pessimism and now I don't know what to do with myself, so I'll just vent about how capitalism = bad". That's how I read it, at least.

I don't see how socialism would make anything better in any way.

the meme answer is that socialism would wreck the international economy, which would reduce emissions, which would help us reach climate targets. there you go.

the serious answer is that capitalisms trend towards the desire for infinite growth is a certainly a key problem. this is deeply ironic since "it leads to so much growth everywhere!" is one of the things that capitalists use to defend their system. so they'd be immediately caught out if they tried to argue it doesn't actually lead to infinite growth and they were telling porkies this whole time. it is very very hard to come up with an answer to "so how did we get here" that is not a combination of "too much growth too fast" and "capitalists placed money over everything else (e: and capital controlled the government so they were never reigned in)".

What's the point of this blather?

Workers aren't going to all magically vote to reduce pollution just like the "capitalists" aren't choosing to do so either. Everyone wants profit, most people are selfish to some extent, and humans generally suck at planning for the long term. As a SocDem, I'm not entirely opposed to trying out democratic/market socialism, but I don't see how it's gonna help with climate change. I mean, we can go green with either system.

Furthermore, I'm slightly concerned with folks like yourself who consume activist media, and then go around spreading needless pessimism. The point of most activism is to build an army of toxic, alarmist, pessimism-spreading zombies. Activists exaggerate everything in order to make the problem seem more serious so that it's dealt with ASAP. It often goes to an extreme unhealthy extent (e.g. "everyone in the world is transphobic and hates you, so you might as well not interact with the world and end your life". No-one says that directly, but I've interacted with trans activists who make you feel that way (I'm a trans woman FYI)).

You don't need to watch that crap. Every sane person knows climate change is real and is a problem. Don't pollute too much, and vote for green & nuclear shit. That's all you need to know or do. Chill. I don't see the point of making yourself more anxious and/or pessimistic. Let go, there's no need to care so much about anything in life. Besides, it's out of your personal control. Why worry about the plane crashing/falling when there's nothing you can do about it?

[CoraSpia]

Does the British military use Ospreys? One flew over Belfast today.

No, the UVF have just suffered a dramatic downturn in the quality of their equipment.

[The Huskar Social Union]

Thought this would be interesting to share:



https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/polling/2021/07/do-british-voters-really-live-political-bubbles

[The Huskar Social Union]

Party leader favourability according to Survation:

Johnson:

Favourable: 37%
Neutral: 15%
Unfavourable: 47%

Net: -10

Starmer:

Favourable: 33%
Netural: 21%
Unfavourable: 35%

Net: -2

[Ifreann]

spent half of last night binging on climate statistics and now i'm just internally lolling / internally screaming extra hard at "good luck winning an election banning cars???"

liberal capitalist democracies manifestly cannot deal with the climate crisis they have caused and there is no plausible solution.

like that's it. there is no joke or "just vote for corbyn lol". there is nothing else. even if you try to snap back with "why are you chatting shit about liberal capitalist democracy? it's not like illiberal capitalist dictatorship is doing any better!" to try defend liberal capitalist democracy that that makes it 10x worse.

"I've injected myself with pessimism and now I don't know what to do with myself, so I'll just vent about how capitalism = bad". That's how I read it, at least.

I don't see how socialism would make anything better in any way.

Under socialism, definitionally, the workers control the means of production. So we could just decide to shut down the most polluting industries, without having to deal with any billionaire owners who want to carry on polluting because it's still profitable. You say yourself in a later post that every sane person knows that climate change is real and a problem. So we would expect that the workers at the 100 companies responsible for 70% of all carbon emissions would quickly down tools upon taking control of those companies.

[CoraSpia]

"I've injected myself with pessimism and now I don't know what to do with myself, so I'll just vent about how capitalism = bad". That's how I read it, at least.

I don't see how socialism would make anything better in any way.

Under socialism, definitionally, the workers control the means of production. So we could just decide to shut down the most polluting industries, without having to deal with any billionaire owners who want to carry on polluting because it's still profitable. You say yourself in a later post that every sane person knows that climate change is real and a problem. So we would expect that the workers at the 100 companies responsible for 70% of all carbon emissions would quickly down tools upon taking control of those companies.

For the time being, let's think about what can be done in reality rather than in a made up future world.

[Ifreann]

Under socialism, definitionally, the workers control the means of production. So we could just decide to shut down the most polluting industries, without having to deal with any billionaire owners who want to carry on polluting because it's still profitable. You say yourself in a later post that every sane person knows that climate change is real and a problem. So we would expect that the workers at the 100 companies responsible for 70% of all carbon emissions would quickly down tools upon taking control of those companies.

For the time being, let's think about what can be done in reality rather than in a made up future world.

Thinking about a made up future world is fun.

[CoraSpia]

For the time being, let's think about what can be done in reality rather than in a made up future world.

Thinking about a made up future world is fun.

Not that made up future world it's kind of depressing.

[The Blaatschapen]

For the time being, let's think about what can be done in reality rather than in a made up future world.

Thinking about a made up future world is fun.

It's more fun than to think about the real world in the future