Thursday 10th August 2017
Posted: Thu 10 Aug, 2017 7:10 am
Morning all.
Yes quite excruciating.NonOxCol wrote:Morning.
Right-wing satire strikes again. Not enough tumbleweed in the world to convey how unspeakably shit and contemptibly unfunny this is.
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Meanwhile, as the country has grown weary of the sacrifices required by years of austerity, people have witnessed a return – if in some cases it ever went away – of largesse and irresponsibility among the powerful. They see bosses exploiting their staff, big businesses ripping off their customers and directors taking risks with the company pension. International corporations seem to see paying the smallest sums of tax as generous acts of charity.
While pay for the many has been frozen, for the few it has rocketed: in 1998 CEOs were paid on average 47 times what their employees earned; now that ratio has reached 128. Over the same period, the value of the firms they run has hardly increased at all.
Tories cannot be free-market fundamentalists
The Prime Minister likes to use her walking holidays as a time to think things through. When she returned from Wales, in April, she rang me to say she had decided to hold the general election. By the time she returns from Switzerland, next week, she will be ready to deal with its aftermath.
As she and most Tory MPs know, the party needs to unite around a purpose rather than squabble over the ambitions of individual ministers. That purpose ought to be obvious, for both the EU referendum and the election were mass votes of dissatisfaction, and votes for change.
The evidence justifies the dissatisfaction. In real terms average wages are lower than they were 10 years ago. Even before the financial crash, the chances of owning one’s own home had started to fall, and now young people find themselves not only heavily indebted after university but also trapped for years in rented accommodation. Incredibly, more people in England now own their home outright than pay a mortgage, demonstrating not just the difficulties faced by the hard-pressed and the young, but the consolidation of wealth by the affluent and the elderly.
Meanwhile, as the country has grown weary of the sacrifices required by years of austerity, people have witnessed a return – if in some cases it ever went away – of largesse and irresponsibility among the powerful. They see bosses exploiting their staff, big businesses ripping off their customers and directors taking risks with the company pension. International corporations seem to see paying the smallest sums of tax as generous acts of charity.
While pay for the many has been frozen, for the few it has rocketed: in 1998 CEOs were paid on average 47 times what their employees earned; now that ratio has reached 128. Over the same period, the value of the firms they run has hardly increased at all.
As Theresa May has observed, modern Britain is simply not a country that works for everyone. But to get that diagnosis right is not enough. We need solutions, and to find the right solutions we need a deep and coherent understanding of the problems.
For the Conservatives, that requires going back to the party’s philosophical roots. Economic liberals may find capitalism’s “creative winds of destruction” exhilarating, but conservatives worry about the effects on families and communities. Libertarians may say they have no responsibility to others, but conservatives know that society functions only if we respect our obligations to one another. Internationalist liberals may consider the nation state an anachronism, but conservatives understand how the cultures, traditions and institutions of a country help to bring about the trust, reciprocity and stability that make a society worth living in and an economy capable of growing.
As the great conservative philosopher Edmund Burke said, more than two centuries ago, society is indeed a contract. It is a contract between those who govern and those who are governed, between the classes, the generations and citizens across the whole country.
Today, many of the problems facing Britain arise because we have forgotten the terms of that contract. An older generation is more prosperous than any before it, while younger people face the prospect of a life less comfortable than that of their parents. Opportunities abound in London and the South East of England, but incomes are lower and jobs more scarce further north and west. According to the government’s own independent commission, social mobility is in reverse.
Few of the challenges we face will be overcome through yet more of the social and economic liberalism we have seen for the past 30 years. No market, for example, has emerged to provide the social care needs of an ageing society. Few competitors have entered the broken markets that allow companies to over-charge their customers. Little progress has been made in rebalancing Britain’s economy – neither geographically nor by finally overcoming our over-reliance on financial services – that has not been stimulated by the state.
The election result suggests that the public agree that it is time for a break from the liberal consensus. A full 82.4 per cent of the country voted for the two main political parties, the highest combined vote share since 1970. They were not voting for an ever-smaller state and free market fundamentalism, but for a return to pre-liberal socialism, with Jeremy Corbyn, or the beginnings of a post-liberal conservatism, offered by Mrs May.
The country is at least safe from Mr Corbyn’s back-to-the-future socialism for another five years. But if the Conservatives respond to the election result by seeking a return to their comfort zone of liberal orthodoxy, not only will they fail to address the big social and economic challenges Britain faces, they will risk the election of dangerous socialists in 2022. As we look ahead to a long, five-year parliament, the need for a reformed, post-liberal conservatism is more urgent than ever.
Making it quite clear that they've no idea what the solutions are.RogerOThornhill wrote:Nick Timothy
We need solutions, and to find the right solutions we need a deep and coherent understanding of the problems.
I think the bbc will be receiving many complaints judging by what I'm seeing on twitter, hopefully they'll finally take it on board.Temulkar wrote: In other news Nigel Lawson is a climate change denying arsehole
Oddly enough I see it as a positive - that their side has to have a spokesman with no recognised and peer-reviewed scientific background. More worrying to me if they had such a person.gilsey wrote:I think the bbc will be receiving many complaints judging by what I'm seeing on twitter, hopefully they'll finally take it on board.Temulkar wrote: In other news Nigel Lawson is a climate change denying arsehole
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-40878110Rogue Charles Dickens apostrophe costs council (BBC News website)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... oar-to-7bnAmazon UK halves corporation tax to £7.4m as sales soar to £7bn
Company says low profits led to tax cut, but is yet to reveal complex corporate structure that publishes revenue from retail sales via Luxembourg
Amazon UK’s corporation tax bill halved to £7.4m last year despite its retail sales soaring past £7bn.
Amazon UK Services – the company’s warehouse and logistics operation that employs almost two-thirds of its 24,000 UK staff – saw its UK corporation tax bill plunge from £15.8m to £7.4m year-on-year in 2016. (Guardian)
I do wish the media wouldn't do this - the two aren't related in any way.Amazon UK’s corporation tax bill halved to £7.4m last year despite its retail sales soaring past £7bn.
True enough - the story is the halving of their corporation tax bill. The rest is just padding and a distraction.RogerOThornhill wrote:I do wish the media wouldn't do this - the two aren't related in any way.Amazon UK’s corporation tax bill halved to £7.4m last year despite its retail sales soaring past £7bn.
From what I've read Amazon do some fairly tricksy things with their accounts by using offshore companies but quoting turnover numbers is an irrelevance.
This is true, but it is surely not "news"??Temulkar wrote:I'm free on kindle for the next few days... " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
In other news Nigel Lawson is a climate change denying arsehole
Probably intended to protect children but it's peed me off (and it's ineffectual). I spotted something else on the BBC site the other day which claimed to be designed to point me in the direction of things that they think would interest me. Sod off. I'll make up my own mind. I neither want nor need to be herded in one direction or another.This is so we can see how people of different ages are using the BBC and check that we're making something for everyone. It also means that you can use the parts of the BBC that are suitable for your age. Find out more about how we use your data.
Exactly.RogerOThornhill wrote:For example, the group I used to work for had UK companies working in manufacturing, trading, storage, and technology - each one had different levels of profitability compared to turnover and none could be related to any other.
This, by the way, is also the reason why a turnover tax instead of a tax on profits wouldn't work.
Thank you.Temulkar wrote:INteresting from the skwakbox (I know) on Venezuela https://skwawkbox.org/2017/08/10/whats- ... who-knows/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Seriously, is there any respect in which Dave "I want to be PM because I would be quite good at it" Cameron's legacy ISN'T rank bad??HindleA wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... dApp_Tweet
David Cameron’s legacy is soaring child poverty – with worse to come
Frances Ryan
Absolutely.HindleA wrote:https://www.unison.org.uk/news/2017/08/ ... ign=buffer
Renationalise failing privatised probation services, say unions
They got a fair bit of money into rail, which would have been a very easy thing to cut more from. They spoiled it by stupid over-promising and deception when there were problems.AnatolyKasparov wrote:Seriously, is there any respect in which Dave "I want to be PM because I would be quite good at it" Cameron's legacy ISN'T rank bad??HindleA wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... dApp_Tweet
David Cameron’s legacy is soaring child poverty – with worse to come
Frances Ryan
Same sex marriage.AnatolyKasparov wrote:Seriously, is there any respect in which Dave "I want to be PM because I would be quite good at it" Cameron's legacy ISN'T rank bad??HindleA wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... dApp_Tweet
David Cameron’s legacy is soaring child poverty – with worse to come
Frances Ryan
He went on to echo this statement in The Sun recently, writing: “Over time, if we left the EU, it seems likely that we would mostly eliminate manufacturing, leaving mainly industries such as design, marketing and hi-tech. But this shouldn’t scare us.
“Around half of young adults now go to university, ending up in professions such as finance or law, while the making of things such as car parts or carpentry has hugely shrunk — but there will always be jobs for people without sophisticated skills.
“Of course leaving the EU will be difficult, and something that needs careful negotiation, but we must completely withdraw to gain these benefits.”
And indeed anybody with remotely internationalist values.James Chapman
@jameschappers
James Chapman Retweeted Mick McKinderGentler
No - her appalling "citizens of world" rhetoric made EU citizens in UK like my wife feel profoundly distressed and unwelcome #notinmyname
RogerOThornhill wrote:Saw this yesterday but then Twitter did its irritating "In case you missed it" and I couldn't find it again.
MPs react after Vote Leave economist admits Brexit would 'mostly eliminate manufacturing'
http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/nor ... e-11269819
He went on to echo this statement in The Sun recently, writing: “Over time, if we left the EU, it seems likely that we would mostly eliminate manufacturing, leaving mainly industries such as design, marketing and hi-tech. But this shouldn’t scare us.
“Around half of young adults now go to university, ending up in professions such as finance or law, while the making of things such as car parts or carpentry has hugely shrunk — but there will always be jobs for people without sophisticated skills.
“Of course leaving the EU will be difficult, and something that needs careful negotiation, but we must completely withdraw to gain these benefits.”