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

330,000 people signed a petition urging Mr Duncan Smith to try living on £53 a week.

He dismissed this as a "complete stunt"

Funnily enough I would use almost the same phrase to describe IDS

VG

http://blogs.channel4.com/snowblog/abnormal-behaviour-affect-welfare-policy-debate/20212

Jon Snow otm. This child killing madman being held up as an example of all that is broken about Britain is clearly an outlier by any measure and his actions and circumstances should form no part of any debate on welfare reform.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/67826_10151527200569162_284759461_n.jpg

Sometimes the optics speak for themselves...

As if the Daily Mirror could ever be trusted on anything. Why was Piers Morgan sacked, again?

A GOOD STORY

it's been confirmed on the BBC, Osborn playing the "unaware" card:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22035985

Really who fucking cares.

Clearly not you.

Agree btw (xp). Him jumping on the Daily Mail bandwagon over the Philpotts is seriously despicable but the Mirror don't have the balls to say so.

Quite. Also the general tendency to blow up minor mistakes and lambast people for not leading an entirely pure and noble life. You know, like Robert Maxwell did.

omg what even is the header on the daily mail online right now i can't

"This week the Mail was slated for making the perfectly reasonable point that arson killer Mick Philpott was a product of the benefits system. Today it is George Osborne's turn. Now tell us what YOU think. But, beware, the Left WILL try to hijack the result"

beware

Pretty sure the systematic dismantling of the welfare state will end up killing more children than Mick Philpott managed.

^ hijacking imo

Did the systematic dismantling of the welfare state have any bearing on the 5,000 extra deaths in an unseasonably cold March?

I'm sure the government would feel terrible if it did, despite it freeing up a few disabled parking spaces and single occupancy houses.

Quantitative freezing

I think crap weather might have had more to do with it. The weather at the moment is definitely anti-competitive and anti-aspirational.

You don't think one's ability to cope with crap weather when in fuel poverty maybe a slight factor?

It'll be interesting to see verifiable evidence of that.

It's impossible to prove but there's no doubt money is a factor in keeping yourself alive in difficult conditions.

Significant increase in suicide rate since Condems got in, amirite innit?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fuel-poverty-deaths-three-times-higher-than-government-estimates-7462426.html

The suicide rate is at its highest since the middle of the Thatcher years.

tbh the issue there is whether a lab/ld gov would have kept all welfare payments at pre-2010 levels despite yknow world economic collapse

No it isn't

There's no doubt anyone in power would have had to make huge cuts - the question imo is where the pain is targeted. This government seems more willing than any I can remember to take from those who already have least.

They seem to have let Osborne off the leash on the issue too, to deafening silence from the Lib Dems

There's also a difference between cutting to balance the books (although some would argue this doesn't ever work) and cutting out of ideology/naked spite. Plus ratio of tax rises to spending cuts, timing of cuts, where they're targeted etc. "Labour would have cut anyway" is true but doesn't equate to "they would be doing exactly the same things".

Also the vast majority of welfare spending (ie state pension) ISN'T BEING CUT at all, so the rest has a negligible impact on public finances. Most benefits money is immediately spent back into the wider economy anyway, it goes by and large to people who are not in a position to save, that's an incredible amount that is suddenly being withdrawn from economies at a local level in some already deprived places.

(xp) No, they just "abstain" and let "exactly the same things" become law.

Yeah I mean ultimately they aren't providing any intellectual or moral opposition or leadership but I don't think "cowardice characterises centre-left parties" is exactly news to anyone round here.

on the suicide stuff - isn't it usually true that richer countries have higher suicide rates?

Sort of true, sort of not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

I think that colder, darker countries tend to have higher suicide rates (Norway was really high for a time) but looking at this it doesn't appear to be that simple:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

Greenland though. Fuck, imagine living in Greenland.

The bottom of the list appears to be tropical islands and/or war zones, although there must be a major stigma with reporting suicides in some countries.

weird that uk and ireland are nearly identical

One in five people in Greenland attempts to kill themselves during their lifetime. Fucking hell.

The Baltic states and the Scandinavian countries barring Denmark are all above the UK

Why Guyana though?

Not good form to put Belgium in second with an eyebow raisingly high rate, with a [citation needed].

There's no difference in cutting for various reasons, that's just partisan support. All well and good that labour would do their cuts fairer, better, cleverer, to utopian effect- wouldnt all oppositions?

Guyana has a really small population so i guess it's prone to statistical spikes. Would have been interesting to see if after Jonestown!

But the ideology behind the cutting has an effect on where those cuts will be and where they will hit hardest.

There's no difference in cutting for various reasons, that's just partisan support. All well and good that labour would do their cuts fairer, better, cleverer, to utopian effect- wouldnt all oppositions?

Probly not ukip

Heh fair

You want patronising, condescending middle-class "pity"? Read this. What is this, 2013 or 1813? "That was enough: the boy was mine after that." Puke. I'd rather have honest rightwing fuckoff type blasts from Kelvin MacKenzie than this pathetic pile of piss. Listen, the working class existed before the middle class invented itself and it'll still be here after you're gone. We don't need or want your fucking nose-holding charity. Just all the chances you seem to think are your birthright.

weird that uk and ireland are nearly identical

Is it? Culture/peoples quite similar are they not?