Labour Conference....total maddness or even possable ?

[KTF]

The lefties on Facebook think that nationalising everything is the best thing ever.

God help us if enough of them actually lift their knuckles off the floor and head for the ballot box.

[Wiccan of Darkness]

I was absolutely speechless at the latest glob of ste to drip from the labour derriere earlier today; the fact that they have, or had a contingency plan to counter the economic crash following any labour win.

I don't know what's worse. The fact there will be a financial apocalypse, the fact they are aware of their financial incompetence or the fact they have a strategy to implement in the immediate aftermath of an electoral win, suggesting they themselves are aware that they are not fit for governance.

Some of the other stuff coming out of that conference is equally astounding. Angela Rayner just boils my piss, how someone so dumb can become shadow education secretary is beyond me. Diane Abbot equally odious.

I need to de-flea my cat.

[Derek Smith]

KTF said:

The lefties on Facebook think that nationalising everything is the best thing ever.

God help us if enough of them actually lift their knuckles off the floor and head for the ballot box.

It is not those you call lefties who will put labour into power.

The floating voter holds all the power in UK general elections. This has been true in my lifetime, from the age of 7 or so. I see no reason to doubt that it will happen at the next GE.

What normally puts off the floating voter is:

1/ discord in a particular party - here both labour and tories are more or less equal, although the latter are getting much more coverage in the right leaning media. Corbyn is likely to become more secure but as for May, she is a dead woman walking,

2/ the effects of the individual, mainly financial but also socially. Here the party in power always has problems because they are the ones hitting the pockets,

3/ the personality of the leader. The tory party have suffered over recent times, as has labour. But now we have May v Corbyn. My son meets the latter every now and again and finds him personable, friendly, chatty and approachable. He has met May and finds her not so.

You bring up nationalisation. I used to commute 20 miles to a job that paid peanuts. I could not afford a car so went for the cheap option of train. Imagine what someone who has paid £thousands for their season ticket to get into a cramped train, when it bothers to turn up, to arrive late. You would want change. Wait for the run up to the next election for labour to tell us how much is 'squandered' on 'rich people's dividends' for a dreadful service.

We are unlikely to get anything positive out of brexit. It will cost us. Interest rates will be higher at the next GE, the value of the £ will continue to fall, petrol will be pricier, houses will be repossessed, nasty foreigners will continue to come in, and those with credit cards on the limit will suddenly find they can't afford the repayments. There will, most likely, be some form of credit crunch.

And students with loans will look back on the 6.9% with envy. And by the time of the next GE Corbyn will have the majority of the party behind him. That he will be deposed right after the elections is a given of course, but who looks ahead?

May has got no way out. Nothing she can, and certainly will, do will gain a lot of voters, and much that she must do will alienate a number. I think she can't win in two ways. So she will be deposed between the debacle that will be brexit and the next GE, but not without an unholy battle that will leave tory MPs bleeding and labour ones smiling.

So, taking the above on board (which may or may not be right I accept) what's your bet for the floating voter and the knuckle draggers?

We are right royally . . . .

[loafer123]

In my view, the last thing your average floating voter wants is the risk that such radical proposed change will bring, particularly when the media turns their spotlight on the costs and risks.

[anonymous-user]

You have to give Corbyn credit for surrounding himself with so many people considerably thicker than himself. That can't have been easy.

[KTF]

I agree that May is a dead person walking and she won’t be standing at the next election. Also that Brexit is an enormous clusterfk with no defined outcome.

With regard to the railways, most of the issues that have caused me to be delayed are due to network rail. I wonder who owns them?

I remember when I used to commute to London on slam door trains which were crammed to the rafters with no heating. And that wasn’t that long ago. Whilst what we have now may not be perfect, I have no desire to go back to the ‘good old days’.

[B'stard Child]

fblm said:

You have to give Corbyn credit for surrounding himself with so many people considerably thicker than himself. That can't have been easy.

Most MP's are thick as mince............

Eddie will counter that view by naming 10% of the MP's that are standout and well qualified for the role.....

Or he won't........

[Pothole]

Zod said:

he should take responsibility for the uber situation and for resolving it. Uber is a big vote loser for him. Siding with the vested interests of the unions and the LTDA to kill a service used by younger Londoners (and me) and put 40,000 people out of work is not a good look.

It's a little bit more complicated than that. WTF have the end users' agers got to do with anything in any case?

Edited by Pothole on Wednesday 27th September 17:04

EDITED FOR FORMATTING (apols, Breadvan, old bean!)

Edited by Pothole on Wednesday 27th September 21:36

[anonymous-user]

Derek Smith said:

...Interest rates will be higher at the next GE, the value of the £ will continue to fall, petrol will be pricier, houses will be repossessed, nasty foreigners will continue to come in, and those with credit cards on the limit will suddenly find they can't afford the repayments. There will, most likely, be some form of credit crunch...

If the last decade has taught you only one thing about monetary policy it should be that Central banks will ignore their inflation mandate in favour of growth. Ie higher interest rates are inconsistent with your other predictions.

[James_B]

jsf said:

How old are you?

He doesn’t seem too sharp, whatever age.

Conflating going to Oxford with being posh, and assuming that his firm is representative of the wider jobs market is not the sort of thing you expect from someone so keen to tell everyone how very clever he is.

I’m in the fortunate position of employing a higher quality of graduate than his firm does, and they really aren’t posh on the whole, they are just bright, driven, and keen.

[Tuna]

Breadvan72 said:

Entry to all professions has once again become the preserve of the posh. When I became a lawyer from a non posh background in the 80s, the law was white and male and posh. Then it became less white, less male, and less posh. Nowadays it is male and female, white and a bit brown (but not black) but is getting posh again. This is because of training costs and Bank of Mum and Dad. You have to go to a good university and then be able to do some postgrad training. Things are even worse in the media, where you have to do long internships. Medicine too is reverting to posh.

Most of the young people that apply to my chambers are super bright and very fabulous and also, in general, middle to upper middle class. ...

Out of interest, what is the average age of people applying to your chambers?

[citizensm1th]

James_B said:

jsf said:

How old are you?

He doesn’t seem too sharp, whatever age.

Conflating going to Oxford with being posh, and assuming that his firm is representative of the wider jobs market is not the sort of thing you expect from someone so keen to tell everyone how very clever he is.

I’m in the fortunate position of employing a higher quality of graduate than his firm does, and they really aren’t posh on the whole, they are just bright, driven, and keen.

bugger i am running out of pop corn this is going to be good

[TheChampers]

Tuna said:

Breadvan72 said:

Entry to all professions has once again become the preserve of the posh. When I became a lawyer from a non posh background in the 80s, the law was white and male and posh. Then it became less white, less male, and less posh. Nowadays it is male and female, white and a bit brown (but not black) but is getting posh again. This is because of training costs and Bank of Mum and Dad. You have to go to a good university and then be able to do some postgrad training. Things are even worse in the media, where you have to do long internships. Medicine too is reverting to posh.

Most of the young people that apply to my chambers are super bright and very fabulous and also, in general, middle to upper middle class. ...

Out of interest, what is the average age of people applying to your chambers?

BV makes an excellent point here. I was a grammar school lad from a working class family, Dad was a PC. A full grant from Birmingham City Council, a 2:1 from Nottingham University in 1987 and now most firms can employ
youngsters (some with first class degrees) as paralegals, with student loan debts, on less than 20k pa. One of my busiest clients got a first in law from a Russell Group university and a masters from Cambridge. He couldn't get a trainee contract with a firm of solicitors (masters was 2010) or pupillage. Blair takes a lot of responsibility here imo for too many going to University leading to over supply.

Edited by TheChampers on Tuesday 26th September 23:04

[anonymous-user]

Derek Smith said:

It is not those you call lefties who will put labour into power.

The floating voter holds all the power in UK general elections. This has been true in my lifetime, from the age of 7 or so. I see no reason to doubt that it will happen at the next GE.

What normally puts off the floating voter is:

1/ discord in a particular party - here both labour and tories are more or less equal, although the latter are getting much more coverage in the right leaning media. Corbyn is likely to become more secure but as for May, she is a dead woman walking,

2/ the effects of the individual, mainly financial but also socially. Here the party in power always has problems because they are the ones hitting the pockets,

3/ the personality of the leader. The tory party have suffered over recent times, as has labour. But now we have May v Corbyn. My son meets the latter every now and again and finds him personable, friendly, chatty and approachable. He has met May and finds her not so.

You bring up nationalisation. I used to commute 20 miles to a job that paid peanuts. I could not afford a car so went for the cheap option of train. Imagine what someone who has paid £thousands for their season ticket to get into a cramped train, when it bothers to turn up, to arrive late. You would want change. Wait for the run up to the next election for labour to tell us how much is 'squandered' on 'rich people's dividends' for a dreadful service.

We are unlikely to get anything positive out of brexit. It will cost us. Interest rates will be higher at the next GE, the value of the £ will continue to fall, petrol will be pricier, houses will be repossessed, nasty foreigners will continue to come in, and those with credit cards on the limit will suddenly find they can't afford the repayments. There will, most likely, be some form of credit crunch.

And students with loans will look back on the 6.9% with envy. And by the time of the next GE Corbyn will have the majority of the party behind him. That he will be deposed right after the elections is a given of course, but who looks ahead?

May has got no way out. Nothing she can, and certainly will, do will gain a lot of voters, and much that she must do will alienate a number. I think she can't win in two ways. So she will be deposed between the debacle that will be brexit and the next GE, but not without an unholy battle that will leave tory MPs bleeding and labour ones smiling.

So, taking the above on board (which may or may not be right I accept) what's your bet for the floating voter and the knuckle draggers?

We are right royally . . . .

You started out with some sensible points Derek, but then really jumped the shark.

You are right that its the floating voter that could get Corbyn into number 10, you are also right that its not the hard lefty that we have to worry about, they are a lost cause. My sister who is a nurse of 30+ years of service thinks the sun shines out of his arse, and she isn't a stupid person. She has done incredibly well out of her fully funded career and simply doesn't see how well she is doing compared to most people in the private sector. It's these kind of people who don't realise what a group like Corbyn and McDonnell would do to the country.

The £ is far more likely to go up in value than fall from its current position, so long as the world doesn't end in the next 18 months come the next election we will know where we are heading, the signs are sensible arrangements will be in place by the next election. Interest rates world wide if they do go up, will be by very small amounts back towards normality, the high spikes we saw during the ERM crisis are not going to happen again in the new normal we have been living through these past ten years. Some people still think we are waiting for the next surge up, its not going to happen, we are living the new normal of low rates.

There are no signs whatsoever of a major surge in oil prices, even with OPEC and Russia severely restricting supplies, it continues to struggle to break $50/barrel, because the world has changed with regards to demand and supply availability from none OPEC sources.

I expect one change we will see is student loan rates are about to be lowered significantly by the conservatives, the current rate is mental and its a vote loser, so if anything expect that to be slashed to nearer 2%.

May has as much chance of taking the conservatives into the next election as I have platting fog, they wont make the same mistakes again with an election campaign so dire, so long as they get rid of her and have a decent strategy Corbyn wont stand a hope in hell in England, and with the Scottish labour party losing a decent front woman and the SNP continuing to screw up, the conservatives will gain support north of the border. Without Scotland Labour cant win.

[anonymous-user]

Pothole said:

Breadvan72 said:

he should take responsibility for the uber situation and for resolving it. Uber is a big vote loser for him. Siding with the vested interests of the unions and the LTDA to kill a service used by younger Londoners (and me) and put 40,000 people out of work is not a good look.

I have said no such thing. Do not misquote me.

[citizensm1th]

James_B said:

I’m in the fortunate position of employing a higher quality of graduate than his firm does, and they really aren’t posh on the whole, they are just bright, driven, and keen.

So are you saying as a farmer you attract a higher quality of graduate than a london barristers chambers

one way or another something smells fishy in Denmark

[Tuna]

Breadvan72 said:

Tuna, I am not sure that you know what the term name dropping means. I have not name dropped anything or anyone, but that is by the by.

In that case, I was suggesting that just dropping 'hedge funds' into a conversation as if it made a decisive point was utterly meaningless. It's like people dropping 'bankers' into conversations and rolling their eyes as if that explains everything.

Breadvan72 said:

I do not have to rely on my dad, although I learned a lot about stuff from him, as I was alive during the period of post war consensus, but I still recommend a bit of study, as relying on the anecdotes of parents, or on personal anecdotes, is not always a reliable guide to anything. Anyone who says "I do not need to read history" either "because I was there" or (worse) "because I know someone who was there" may sometimes have a problem. I was there, but I do not rely on that. Nationalisation was not just about rebuilding a shattered nation after war. It was also about changing the way in which society was structured, and recognising that there are some things that the market is not always good at. As noted above, some of the so called privatisation has been a bit of a con anyway, with the taxpayer still on the hook for downsides.

Thanks for the condescension. Please don't put words into my mouth ("I do not need to read history"?! What a fatuous implication) On the other hand if you show no respect for other people's experiences because you read better in a book, you are doomed to repeat the mistakes of your favourite authors.

As for current indicators for the value of nationalisation, working with the government's innovation strategy is eye opening - and not in a good way. I appreciate you don't appear to have any business experience, but surely you can understand that single supplier structures are being outperformed by several orders of magnitude by private, competitive businesses here and across the globe? Examine the success rates of Capita, Atos and the others (hint - it's appalling). Consider the failures of so many billion pound government IT projects. If you can justify what is happening with HS2, you really must be living in a parallel universe. These are all classic examples of government led projects that deliver spectacularly poor value.

And just repeating the mantra 'some things the market is not good at' doesn't actually tell me what you think nationalisation does? Or where you think the market has failed? I'll grant you that government procurement is a disaster when it comes to private contracts, but the failure lies squarely with the leadership of such projects.

Now I understand that you believe that privatisation provides some social good, but as you've still not explained what that good is (apart from 'grrr, hedge funds'), I'm unsure how you think the astronomical cost (and disruption) of nationalisation can be justified.

[anonymous-user]

James_B said:

He doesn’t seem too sharp, whatever age.

Conflating going to Oxford with being posh, and assuming that his firm is representative of the wider jobs market is not the sort of thing you expect from someone so keen to tell everyone how very clever he is.

I’m in the fortunate position of employing a higher quality of graduate than his firm does, and they really aren’t posh on the whole, they are just bright, driven, and keen.

Can I ask where you work?
Having seen where BV72 works out of your place must be stratospheric.

[alfie2244]

citizensm1th said:

James_B said:

I’m in the fortunate position of employing a higher quality of graduate than his firm does, and they really aren’t posh on the whole, they are just bright, driven, and keen.

So are you saying as a farmer you attract a higher quality of graduate than a london barristers chambers

one way or another something smells fishy in Denmark

Have you no idea how complicated modern tractors are now?

[citizensm1th]

alfie2244 said:

citizensm1th said:

James_B said:

I’m in the fortunate position of employing a higher quality of graduate than his firm does, and they really aren’t posh on the whole, they are just bright, driven, and keen.

So are you saying as a farmer you attract a higher quality of graduate than a london barristers chambers

one way or another something smells fishy in Denmark

Have you no idea how complicated modern tractors are now?

well the chimps that drive them on the roads near me clearly have no idea

bloody lethal