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

firemen, he's saying there will be cuts despite boris saying there won't, also a lot of whining about being defamed

this guy is beyond the fucking pale

completely fucking moronic and then twist the knife by exempting 'intra-company transfers'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/23/theresa-may-migration-cap-plans

http://physicsworld.com/blog/2010/11/are_you_a_highly-skilled_worke.html

entitled attitude running through that post, but the point is solid

It is. Wd be nice if one or two of the complainers spoke up for the lowly serfs who have nothing to offer this country but their cheap labour tho.

It's true that tier-1 visas are now impossible to get for postdocs, but they can still get tier-2 visas. The difference (I think) is that tier-2s are tied to a specific job, and your employer has to demonstrate that no EU candidate is qualified (this is actually easier to do in academia than in most other areas).

let us imagine a hypothetical world that is not too far from the truth. Imagine that I am spending milllions of dollars on building a factory in the US; our product is so big and bulky and the raw materials so ubiquitous that Prof Krugman (through he work he got his Nobel for not the newspaper columns) says I should have regionally located manufacturing plants. Deciding that i need one in Europe and that automation makes labour cost a small part of the equation. I then start shopping around, I want to bring my crack team of 10 people who've started up one plant and have the experience to do it again, knowing full well that over time these ten people will expand the workforce and replace themselves with local people.

I take a long hard look at the visa regime and might well decide that the risk of not getting just one of those people a visa is so high that I write the UK off the list out of hand.

i don't really know the numbers involved (i know they're not massive, but they're probably bigger than i think), and perhaps this is spectacularly naive, but it seems like it would be a good idea economically to say: "if you have a PhD in a science and, say, three years of postdoctoral or technical experience, you can move here, whether or not you have a job waiting for you or not."

ed, is this ^^^ idiotic?

do any other eu countries offer anything like that?

not sure that any do. Ireland had a pretty liberal regime (LOL Ireland). It's not so much the mechanism as the Cap, the old principle that if you couldn't find anyone to do the Job domestically then you could hire from abroad was pretty sound. Even the points based system isn't bad, it's more the issue that if the cap has been reached then you are SOL.

A good comparison is the US H1-B system, when the increased cap expired in the middle of the decade tech firms started to have recruitment problems which drove them to do more off-shoring. It also changes the profile of the people you seek to hire, rather than recruiting experience direct from overseas, you look more towards recent graduates who can start work straight away under the OPT and STEM programmes and get several runs at the H-1B. there's also been some degree of abuse with 'consultancy firms' specialising in getting H-1Bs for graduates and letting them work for whoever, often abusing the salary requirements piece by saying they work in one cheap location and farming them out to more expensive ones. This has been heavily cracked down on, though

This makes it hard to hire someone with 5-10 years experience from overseas, or at least less worth selecting them and taking the risk that they won't get a visa.

Essentially, what I'm saying is, although I'd prefer a more open system full stop, the cap is going to be very distorting and unhelpful to industry and academia.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11837538

A new Conservative peer has been quoted as saying changes to the welfare system will encourage "breeding" among people on benefits.

also lol

In 2005, Mr Flight, whose new title in the Lords is not yet known, was removed as a Conservative candidate, after he was recorded saying the party would make cuts if it won the general election.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/nov/24/flood-defence-cuts-facts-spin

^ this is a good piece on the cuts in flood protection spending if yr into that sort of thing. First time I've seen a member of the cabinet respond in the comments box too.

I know, but...

With that in mind, today we have published proposals on how to give local communities more say over what is done to protect them from flooding and how it is funded, so that local ambitions won’t be held back by the limitations of national budgets.

...is some bullshit.

This is a bag
This is some sand
Now go out and make a flood protection

More like

Buy your own bag
Buy your own sand
Now go fuck yourself

No you don't understand, they're empowering communities to choose whether to have flood defences!

..and enabling small businesses to prosper without being held back by a possible flood barrier.

Small inflatable dinghy businesses, I take it?

but someone's got to do it...

Wikileaks bringing the LOLz (hopefully)

"A journalist with Britain's Guardian newspaper, which has been working with Wikileaks on publishing the files, said they would include an unflattering US assessment of UK PM David Cameron."

... everybody thought Mandelson was behind the "Obama thinks Cameron is a lightweight" rumour but, it would seem, apparently not

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11874406

Cable considering abstaining from the vote on his own policy. Batshit.

can someone punch this guy in the balls please?

yeah... i don't know much about parliamentary rules n shit but in some other context words like "vote of no confidence" spring to mind. i don't know how you can execute a policy you didn't vote for (or campaign on but i guess we've passed that moment).

haven't you heard the line they're peddling 'the manifesto and other pledges don't count because we didn't win'

to that I respond 'No backsies'

i don't know how you can execute a policy you didn't vote for (or campaign on but i guess we've passed that moment).

this does happen though and is not necessarily a problem. e.g. current government is still managing the implementation of labour policies.

assuming his views on this are those in the LD manifesto, i'm not sure what his best move is, but abstaining on a new vote a single policy that it's partly his job to implement is pretty batshit though.

He's trying to do a Prescott, staying in touching distance of the rank and file while also being in the government. It's probably not going to work, but then again it didn't work for Prescott either.

He's trying to do a Prescott, staying in touching distance of the rank and file

raises eyebrow

you can kind of see the point, if that's his game, but it seems guaranteed to draw the kind of attention to the reality of coalition govt that the LDs should avoid, e.g.

to that I respond 'No backsies'

yes, their response to labour and the conservatives after the election should have been, 'we'll join your coalition, but only if we implement all our policies and none of yours.'

I understand the logic, it still doesn't make them look very good especially when they made such a big noise about fees. It's not like anyone is holding them to their pledge to join the Euro.

(the bastards have a point when they say labour introduced fees and commissioned browne. be very interested to know what labour's response to browne would have been.)

Thing is that the LibDems still have their heads in the sand thinking that this is some European style utopian new way of doing politics proper coalition rather than a hung-parliament marriage of convenience from which they will be unceremoniously dumped sooner or later.

It was idiotic of the LibDems to make all those pre-election pledges knowing full well that coalition with the Tories was more likely than a) winning the election outright and b) all other outcomes. Either they were very short sighted or they never intended to keep them in the first place.

I agree that Labour don't really have a leg to stand on in this debate.

they were very short sighted i think

Thing is that the LibDems still have their heads in the sand thinking that this is some European style utopian new way of doing politics proper coalition rather than a hung-parliament marriage of convenience from which they will be unceremoniously dumped sooner or later.

this is otm

Well, at the time of the pledges, they presumably thought the Tories would walk it.

Closer to the elec, they thought that *they* might actually win.

xposts to h.mayne: browne would have been very different without a 40 per cent reduction in the teaching grant, though. labour commissioned him to find a less onerous way of charging fees, which he did: the level of those fees is pretty much all osborne.

i can see that browne is not *all* bad. though raising the interest rate? f.u.c.k. o.f.f. -- all these "loans" are guaranteed by the government fuck off even charging interest. that ain't banking.

browne was in negotiations with the govt while finishing the report and would have known about the teaching grant being shredded.

for me the bottom line is that going into early adulthood with £20–£30k debt is unfair for those who do it and mighty offputting to people without helpful parents, ie a lot of people.

and the pay gap is so out of control in this country that charging the top lawyers and bankers and ______ a few grand more means absolutely nothing to them.

browne was in negotiations with the govt while finishing the report and would have known about the teaching grant being shredded.

yeah, it's no secret that he did, the spending review figures are in his report. but yr q was, what would labour have done? and the answer in part is that they would have been responding to a very different browne report. so i don't think they're *that* vulnerable to hypocrisy claims from the other side.

not sure if you could raise c.£6 billion in income tax that easily, but (i've said it before) the corporation tax cut is almost exactly the same as the reduction in university funding.

^^^Collect rather than forgive Vodaphone's taxes. I know people who are cancelling their Vodaphone contracts because of the tax evasion/writeoff.

Osborne is so pro-tax haven that that's obviously not going to happen any time soon. I can see the point that the corporation tax cut is intended to stimulate growth (although I think that's wrong-headed) but Labour should be hammering him on tax evasion. But oh shit they turned a blind eye to billions being squirrelled away themselves.

Labour's new attack plan: Shite Christmas

http://www2.labour.org.uk/a-coalition-christmas

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/02/cameron-pimping-world-cup-bid

"Assume we'll win the bid. Cameron wouldn't deign to do anything as unseemly as publicly plead for something otherwise."

Aide Miliband own goal

what the christ is an aide to a senior pol doing having a public twitter for his/her #opinions?

fuckin country

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11909607

Have the leaked US cables said anything at all about British politics that wasn't completely obvious?

yeah i whatevered this on the wikileaks thread

the ambassador not really getting the inside knowledge

VAT going up 2.5% in a bit huh

taste the progressiveness

Message from Morrissey.

I would like to, if I may, offer support to Johnny Marr who has spoken out to the media this week against David Cameron. To those who have expressed concern over Johnny's words in view of the fact that David Cameron has pledged immense allegiance to the music of the Smiths, I would like to try to explain why I think Johnny is right not to be flattered.

It is true that music is a universal language – the ONLY universal language, and belongs to all, one way or another. However, with fitting grimness I must report that David Cameron hunts and shoots and kills stags – apparently for pleasure. It was not for such people that either "Meat is Murder" or "The Queen is Dead" were recorded; in fact, they were made as a reaction against such violence.

"But I'm cool with him being a Tory cunt"

"Also thumbs up on his immigration policy tho I would question whether it goes far enough."