FlyTheNest

Stonking piece from Owen Jones on Tories and privilege.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ries-votes" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Oh and good morning

Morning all.

David Lammy
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Why is Nigel Farage given a prime slot on #R4Today? He does not even have the guts to run as a candidate, so don't treat him like one.

7:55 AM - 7 Nov 2019

It was quite amusing - especially when Farage tried to claim that he's only really lost a GE once - the others didn't really count for some unknown reason.

But the funniest bit right now is Fararge, who previously wheeled Martin Howe QC out as their expert on all things legal and Brexit, now saying Howe is wrong as we won't be leaving the EU under the new agreement.

If the 'Unite to Remain' target list is built off the Lib Dem's ideas of what a target seat for them is, then I think it would be a good idea to be writing to Plaid and the Green Party to tell them what we think about them working for a Conservative government. The Lib Dems are talking about Johnson's (current) seat as a target for them. They didn't even beat Labour into second there in 2010.

I'd like to be wrong about this, I'd like to see a more sensible list, but I can't really imagine it.

Johnson off to Scotland to warn Scots of a Corbyn government dancing to SNP's tune (yawn) and the possibility of Labour and the SNP holding divisive referendums.

Am no longer able to be outraged by his casual and utter disrespect for his electorate.
Though if he can get away with it, maybe they/we deserve it.

Statement from the IFS on G liveblog:

Do we really have tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of construction workers, lying idle at the moment, who would be able next week or next year or even in a couple of years to start doing this? I think the answer is almost certainly no.

It obviously takes a long time to go through the planning and sorting out things. If anyone’s ever had to sort out an extension to the house or something, they know that getting the building started isn’t something that happens next week. If you’re talking about hundreds of hospitals and wind farms or whatever else you’re doing, you need to do this gradually.

So how was it new housing estates appeared virtually overnight in the 70s? How was New Labour able to build new hospitals and schools in the noughties after a decade of neglect?

This statement is so churlish it's unreal. The Tories announce new spending all the time and no one ever says "oh but the actual spending won't happen by bedtime so it's not realistic" do they?

John McDonnell to announce £150bn 'social transformation fund'

On the Today programme this morning Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said this would be an “absolutely enormous increase” on what the government spends on investment. It would take the UK from near the bottom in international league tables on investment to near the top. He said the plan did raise questions about how much borrowing might have to rise, and about how it would be paid for. But he suggested that the main short-term problem might be whether or not it would be possible for government to spend so much so quickly.

I agree with Paul Johnson on this, and think the same applies to eg restoring funding to LAs. I don't see how you could get the capacity in place in the first couple of years of a Labour govt. I've been surprised that McDonnell hasn't built that in to the plans. If 'events' happened and we ended up with another election in less than 4-5 years it could be a big problem.

Showing how it's possible for 2 people who basically agree on political matters to have a completely different take on the same thing. x


I think it will take them a couple of years to get up to speed.

Willow904 wrote:How was New Labour able to build new hospitals and schools in the noughties after a decade of neglect?

Sadly the answer to that is PFI.

Targeted Seats - It's missing some of the headlines I thought might be there but it's still a pretty good example of how the Lib Dems in particular like to pretend they are the challenging party in seats where they are a distant third.


Green Party: Brighton, Pavilion, Isle of Wight, Bristol West, Bury St Edmunds, Stroud, Dulwich and West Norwood, Forest of Dean, Cannock Chase, Exeter. Stroud is a labour held marginal with tories clear in second, and this will help the tories win. Forest of Dean and Cannock Chase are tory held labour/tory marginals and this will help the tories win

Liberal Democrats: Bath, Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Buckingham, Cheadle, Chelmsford, Chelsea and Fulham, Cheltenham, Chippenham, Esher and Walton, Finchley and Golders Green, Guildford, Harrogate and Knaresborough, Hazel Grove, Hitchin and Harpenden, North Cornwall, North Norfolk, Oxford West and Abingdon, Penistone and Stocksbridge, Portsmouth South, Richmond Park, Romsey and Southampton North, Rushcliffe, South Cambridgeshire, South East Cambridgeshire, South West Surrey, Southport, Taunton Deane, Thornbury and Yate, Totnes, Tunbridge Wells, Twickenham, Wantage, Warrington South, Watford, Wells, Westmorland and Lonsdale, Wimbledon, Winchester, Witney ,York.

Chelmsford - Chelsea and Fulham - Esher and Walton - Finchley and Golders Green -Hitchin and Harpenden - Rushcliffe - south cambridgeshire (heida allen) - south east cambridgeshire - Totnes (sarah wollaston) - Tunbridge Wells - Wantage - Watford - Wimbledon York Central - 14 out of 40 tory held seats with Labour clear in second
Penistone and Stocksbridge - labour seat, lib Dems miles behind, was Angela Smith's seat but she's gone elsewhere
Portsmouth South -Warrington South - Labour held, tory challenger


Wales
Green Party: Vale of Glamorgan. - tory seat, labour second, rest miles behind

Liberal Democrats: Brecon and Radnorshire, Cardiff Central, Montgomeryshire. - cardiff labour seat, tory second

Plaid Cymru: Arfon, Caerphilly, Carmarthen East and Dinefwr Dwyfor, Meirionnydd, Llanelli, Pontypridd, Ynys Mon. Caerphilly -Llanelli - Pontypridd - labour seat, tory second

Ian Austin - what a relief that we will in all likelihood never hear from him ever again after today.

gilsey wrote:

Willow904 wrote:How was New Labour able to build new hospitals and schools in the noughties after a decade of neglect?

Sadly the answer to that is PFI.

My point is that if the funding is made available - private investment to meet demand for housing in the 70's, government initiated PFI to make funds available for schools and hospitals in the noughties or, indeed, government borrowing to make the funds available for capital investment right now - actual physical building can happen pretty quickly.

I might be completely wrong, but while a 10 year plan to transform energy and infrastructure does sound quite ambitious, the short term plans for £150bn on schools, hospitals, care homes and council houses in the first 5 years is surely perfectly achievable. At the moment councils aren't allowed to build new schools, just taking away that restraint would lead to new schools being started, provide dedicated funding and the last Labour government's Schools for the Future program would quickly swing back into action. New housing builds currently being bought up by social housing associations could be bought directly by councils instead as council houses in order to control rents and influence construction of more accessible, disability-freindly homes. Hospital trusts would have no problems working out how to spend extra cash earmarked for buildings and maintenance and councils won't necessarily need to physically build care homes, they could just buy the current care homes off the private providers that keep going bust.

So I'm enthused! And that's what McDonnell wants, obviously, he's a politician. So it's right that the IFS should seek to counter that with facts. I'm just not convinced "it can take a long time to build an extension" is really a fact. Yes it can take a long time (our neighbours have been working on theirs for what seems like forever), but it can also happen in just a few months, if you don't need planning permission, you're not too ambitious and a builder is free to do it. If anything, the IFS' doubt, from this perspective, is more a damning condemnation of how badly our building industry has fallen into decline under the Tories than it is on Labour's perfectly sensible policy which is just even more reason to kick the Tories out and give Labour a go - they will have to be pretty hapless to make things worse.

IFS
‏Verified account @TheIFS
Labour’s #Election2019 plans would take UK government investment spending from near the bottom of the international league table to near the top.
The challenge for a government seeking to invest on this scale will be finding worthwhile and viable projects to invest in.
4:11 AM - 7 Nov 2019
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(cJA bold)
UK housing, public transportation, energy, NHS, social care, education and communications infrastructure (not a comprehensive list) require that investment.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Where is everybody?

Marvellous.

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(she should take the FBPE out of her name)

Tweetman high up in the replies, being predictably awful.

No QT report tonight I'm afraid. Visiting the folks.

Sky'sGoneOut wrote:No QT report tonight I'm afraid. Visiting the folks.

Oh no

So Michael Gove two years ago said that Boris Johnson was unfit to be PM...but Ian Austin and John Woodcock are so relaxed about that prospect that they're urging people to vote for him.

Says it all really.

A lot can happen when a party gets into government but to openly tell people to vote for the party you've - allegedly - spent your life opposing is disgraceful. Especially with that party now in the hands of the frothing right. WTF?

A decent Labour hold in Croydon tonight, Tory candidate was heavily hyped but fell some way short