DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

Won't somebody please think of the badgers?

unprincipled fucks. all for state intervention when it suits them -- ie killing hundreds of badgers. psychos.

badger radge repository

Brock-en Britain

The cullolition (ok, needs work...)

"The government has set out plans.." OH HO MY SIDES

Apparently, "to gain a license farmers must cull over at least 150 square km to prevent badgers simply fleeing the cull area". That's a huge area and is likely to represent tens of badgers in each instance. This government was always likely to be in cahoots with the NFU though, considering Caroline Spelman's close ties with them.

it's not thatcherbaby to point out that a huge amount of the people affected by the pension issue are not good at their jobs and sustaining them is a waste of public money, you should all work a few weeks in the english regions. it's just how it is.

i support the bbc hugely in terms of what it does editorially but i'm sorry, if these people leave due to this pension issue then all the better, the beeb has way too much deadwood on staff contracts, they have endless unused downtimers who are replacing younger people who actually want to be in programme x, y, z. it's a total mess.

i'm not supporting license fee cuts and god knows the top level of the beeb could save endless money to support the rank and file too but there are v few people in the younger gen in the bbc who can even relate to the strikers. and it's not a matter of just supporting them because it's a strike for working conditions, the sense of entitlement is alien to anyone who is used to modern bbc already...it'd be nice to go back to a system where they doled out permanent contracts endlessly but it wouldn't be right.

Big hearted Nick

Gotta love that phrase "compensate the poor for their predicament"

That's because they're not embracing social mobility tho. As Nick Clegg said in a previous speech everyone agrees social mobility is a good thing. (spits).

Social mobility itself is a great thing. Using "encouraging social mobility" as a smokescreen for dismantling the structures that are there to help the poor, not such a great thing. The idea that every poor person will be able to climb up the economic ladder at once is patently bollocks.

As is the idea that the way to encourage them to do so is to make them even poorer and to make their lives ever more wretched. I feel like Charles Dickens.

And of course you're far more likely to ensure social mobility by making sure that the services and infrastructure available to the poorer are as good as possible.

Yeah, I was taking issue with the social mobility as a social duty, a requirement, (and also the tacit suggestion that working class pride was somehow a dirty concept, Clegg even used the phrase 'not repeating the sins of our fathers', the sin of getting laid off presumably.

"A fair society is not one in which money is simply transferred by the central state from one group to another," he wrote in an article for the Times (paywall).

Good luck reading that, poor people!

A fair society is not one in which money is simply transferred by the central state from one group to another,

RBS... Lloyds...

As is the idea that the way to encourage them to do so is to make them even poorer and to make their lives ever more wretched. I feel like Charles Dickens.

― Tom A. (Tom B.) (Tom C.) (Tom D.), Thursday, 16 September 2010 10:35 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

nick cohen, back when he was good in the 90s, used to sum up this attitude as "the poor are poor because they're stealing all our money".

"Instead of turning the system from a 'safety net' into a 'trampoline', as Labour promised, people have been stuck on benefits, year in, year out."

safety nets haven't worked, trampolines haven't worked, so let's fire the poor out of a cannon.

... as far away as possible to we don't have to look at them and our children don't have to go to school with them

I am still unsure of the details of this proposed Big Society where there'll be full employment, no low-paid jobs and no working class. Is there a Lib Dem document that can flesh the plans out for me?

"Instead of turning the system from a 'safety net' into a 'trampoline', as Labour promised, people have been stuck on benefits, year in, year out."

But they haven't! Long-term unemployment fell to 1% of the labour force!
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tsisc070

Doesn't fit into the narrative

There was this brilliant speech that Ken Clarke made when he was chancellor a million years ago, where he derided his colleagues and backbenchers for somehow suggesting that the unemployed were unemployed because they didn't want to work, rather than because of the level of demand in the economy. Stuck with me for some reason.

Short Description: Long-term unemployed (12 months and more) persons are those aged at least 15 years not living in collective households who are without work within the next two weeks, are available to start work within the next two weeks and who are seeking work (have actively sought employment at some time during the previous four weeks or are not seeking a job because they have already found a job to start later).

Basically excludes everyone not on job-seeker's allowance in the UK and therefore is nothing like the actual long-term unemployment level.

"Out-of-work" is the new "unemployed"

This benefits drive isn't to get job-seekers into non-existent jobs, but to get people on other allowances (e.g. incapacity, disability) onto job-seekers, because it's cheaper.

In the same way that 'local authority' replaced 'council'?

But they haven't! Long-term unemployment fell to 1% of the labour force!

sounds extremely unlikely -- depends how you calculate 'labour force' really

Basically excludes everyone not on job-seeker's allowance in the UK and therefore is nothing like the actual long-term unemployment level.

Yeah come on, they've been fiddling the "unemployment" figures for years, before 1997 even.

Thatcher invented the "fiddle". Not much point in doing it before then.

The labour force is a standard definition comparable across countries set by the International Labour Organisation, with the data collected on a comparable basis, I think, since 1973. It's the non-fiddleable bit.

And Onimo, it doesn't exclude people not on jobseekers' allowance. That definition includes students looking for part-time work, people whose savings are too high etc

And Onimo, it doesn't exclude people not on jobseekers' allowance. That definition includes students looking for part-time work, people whose savings are too high etc

OK let's just say it excludes every single person I know who's been unemployed for more than a year, and that's a lot of people.

There is a separate issue of incapacity benefit, which the cuntalition are trying to somehow blur with unemployment with their talk of "out of work benefits".

what this country really needs is more mentally unstable people working at fried chicken shops

There is a separate issue of incapacity benefit, which the cuntalition are trying to somehow blur with unemployment with their talk of "out of work benefits".

― Citizen Smith (Jamie T Smith), Thursday, September 16, 2010 11:10 AM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark

ok, but this is an issue, really -- i'm guessing they aren't counted as part of the potential labour force? im imagining a proportion of them probably are capable of working but the stats look better if they are classified incapable. or is that cuntilition talk?

I don't know why people have a problem with the idea that if you had a government whose stated policy goals were full employment and reducing structural unemployment, who were in power at a time of sustained economic growth, actually reduced unemployment quite a lot. I mean, what would you expect to happen? Don't get it. Doesn't fit the neo-liberal class traitors narrative?

But this lot greet the announcement that there are still about 2.5 million people looking for jobs that can't get them with a succession of attacks on the lazy undeserving poor, and an economically illiterate focus on micro work incentives when there are NO FUCKING JOBS. Cunts.

xpost No, that is a reasonable point, too, imo

lol Forgemasters:

Angela Smith, Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, said Andrew Cook had "boasted" of being the Conservative's largest donor in Yorkshire and yet is registered as a resident on the island of Guernsey.

real talk itt, enjoyin it

there are NO FUCKING JOBS. Cunts.

^^^two key points right there.

I don't know why people have a problem with the idea that if you had a government whose stated policy goals were full employment and reducing structural unemployment, who were in power at a time of sustained economic growth, actually reduced unemployment quite a lot. I mean, what would you expect to happen? Don't get it. Doesn't fit the neo-liberal class traitors narrative?

New Labour stopped talking about full employment after 1997 from what I can see. Did they reduce employment quite a lot? Yes. Did they reduce it to 1% of the total workforce? No.

Reduce UNemployment. Ahem.

Not true - http://www.conservatives.com/Get_involved/Jobs.aspx

Oh wait that was supposed to be a witty riposte to onimo - failed on all fronts...

New Labour stopped talking about full employment after 1997

No. I have to do some work, so I can't google it now, but you'll find it in every budget, IIRC.

Did they reduce it to 1% of the total workforce?

That was long-term unemployment, ie over 12 months. Unemployment was, what 4-5%? Those are the Eurostat figures, based on the ILO Labour Force Data. Looks legit to me. There is obviously the dumping people on incapacity argument, too, so it is more complicated, yeah. But my basic point stands that Clegg is talking shit, and it doesn't matter what he does to work incentives (and maybe yeah, leaving people in even worse utter poverty might make them try a bit harder, but that doesn't make it right) if he's going to lay off three-quarters of a million public-sector workers.

Including my wife.

To be fair, the window for pie-in-the-sky bullshit talk is closing rapidly so Cameron and Clegg might as well get it in while they still can.

New Labour stopped talking about full employment after 1997

No. I have to do some work, so I can't google it now, but you'll find it in every budget, IIRC.

I do remember Neil Kinnock discussing (rather than admitting) that it wasn't going to be possible in the future.

I remember reading in n+1 recently that in the US '"full employment" is defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as 4.9 percent unemployment.' Is the UK's def'n of 'full employment' similar?

(the idea, apparently, is that full employment is "just enough unemployment for wage demands not to drive up inflation", rather than everyone capable of working being in work)

ireland had 'full employment' at 4%, i tihnk it was to allow for the fact that there were always going to be people between jobs.

course, they had long term disability, training schemes etc etc to buff up those figures too

Actual full employment would never happen for the reason NV mentions upthread - full employment -> rising wage costs -> businesses make less money -> people get laid off.