UK Politics Thread (Part 4)

[Magnus]

Since the military build up started at Ukraine’s border in late 2021, yes (there was also a mock run at build up and invasion in 2020, that heralded the invasion in 2022). I would have thought everyone would (should) have been rather very alarmed since then, but maybe that is just me.

Consistently since 2022, Russia has threatened to sink the UK beneath the waves with nukes on tv and it’s propaganda. And the UK has consistently been the chief villain in Russian propaganda since forever.
According to international law, there is no difference if western weapons are used in strikes behind the front (inside Russia), or just in the Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia and the UK is in no way a participant in the war. None of us outside Ukraine is, all we have helped them with is munitions and some money. Not that any Great Power cares very much about International Law.

This changes absolutely nothing directly for the security of the UK, although if Russia’s invasion succeeds or fails; that of course has a massive consequence for the UK’s and all of Europe’s security of course. It’s just precise missiles with limited range, none can reach Moscow or threaten Russian nuclear deterrence. It does grant Ukraine some desperately needed respite in it’s valiant defence though, since it means that they can more accurately hit command HQs, logistics, airfields and munition depots in areas previously thought “safe” by Russian war command. All strictly necessary targets to hit if one is to have a snowflake’s chance in hell to stave off an invasion by a Great Power.

I mean, I am Norwegian, my government, Sweden’s government, Finland’s governemnts, all of them very much support this very loudly. And none of us have nukes like the UK does. The UK in fact has a nuclear arsenal that alone can destroy Russia. If we who actually border Russia all think this is a very wise, extremely necessary, prudent (but too late) decision and say so publically loudly so Russia can hear it; i find it a bit odd that the UK, which has nukes and many of them; should be afraid; when our governments and generals are not more fearful than “yesterday”. That having been said, we are “alarmed”, but then again, we have been so since the invasion started. Perhaps others are just a bit late in realising what started next door in February 2020.

[Lynch04]

@redalways

No, I asked you what the specific question that was asked in the referendum was. You say over and over again “that Remain lied by saying they would honour the result of the referendum” so I want to know what exactly you think they haven’t honoured with the UK actually having left the EU.

The people who have hindered Brexit though, are ironically the Brexiteers.

To the best of my knowledge I have not said over and over again that Remain lied by saying they would honour the result of the referendum, from memory just recently. Nb. To the best of my knowledge.
I have suggested that the remain campaign may also have told lies, which is what we are still debating.
So, we have left the EU. Because of the result of a democratic referendum vote. However, we had to have a follow up additional vote in 2019 as to whether we should have a second referendum, why because Remain voters kept calling on it.
Even now, 8 years on from the referendum and after the 2019 vote, you still can’t accept it can you? The people who voted leave in 2016 are still as stupid in 2019.

@redalways

I think you’re conflating 3 separate groups of people here. I call out the many people who vote Leave as not being aware of what they were voting for. I don’t think I have explicitly called out a link to being right-wing in this section of the thread.

I haven’t the time to back track through posts. But you have used the RW narrative a lot. But as I am unwilling to prove otherwise I accept your point.

[Lynch04]

@redalways

@Lynch04

Why was this? Why vote for someone who is not going to challenge?

Are you expecting a simple answer or do you want a detailed post-hoc election analysis?

Because if it’s the former, because the Labour Party platform was influenced by his socialist outlook and therefore offered attractive alternatives to the austerity that was ongoing at the time? And Labour didn’t set out an explicit position on a second referendum that stuck in voters’ minds, so to voters, as can be seen by the results in the recent elections, they remained as the biggest alternative to the Conservative Party?

@Lynch04

I never called Corbyn a Brexiteer just a Eurosceptic.

No, you just framed it in the context of describing the other people in your post as “pro remain”, and using the word “yet” as a contrast to describe Corbyn, which leads one naturally to the conclusion that you’re describing him as a Brexiteer.

Regardless though, he was a Eurosceptic who campaigned for Remain during the referendum as someone who, despite his scepticism, believed that the country was better of in the EU.

FactCheck: Corbyn’s changing Brexit stance

Fact check from Channel 4.

Reading into it, his socialist look, as you refer to it was against the EU. Describing it as a danger to socialism.

From the BBC

The treaty, Mr Corbyn said, “takes away from national parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation and high unemployment throughout the European Community”.

He voted against the Lisbon Treaty in 2008, and in one article on his website, said the EU had “always suffered a serious democratic deficit”.

[Lynch04]

@redalways

@Lynch04

So 8 years after the referendum, 3 years after Brexit, the EU is relying on London to help them out? Even changing their own guidelines to do so…. So the report suggests they are still trying to move clearing to the EU. So, does that suggest the scaremongering from Junker and the EU regarding companies moving from London may have been just that?
I mean, people are being critical of the UK and how slow it has been to implement Trade agreements, etc. Yet, the EU are still relying on the UK Banks?

Did you read the damn thing? Of course they could have done exactly as you said, but there’s a reason they try to avoid things like that in the financial world, it’s called managing expectations and avoiding shocks.

@Lynch04

My understanding was that as a result of Brexit London’s financial sector was going to see a mass exodus, everyone relocating to Amsterdam…however, it appears we are competing with NY for number one spot.

I think you don’t understand the financial sector at all…

Yes I did read it thank you. Did you read my post? Where did I suggest anything that they could have done? I just posted my observations from the link you used to support your point. Well, I am glad that they are taking their time managing ‘expectations’, I mean their expectations at the time of Brexit were very focused on managing shocks….

You think I don’t understand the Financial sector…maybe you are right, or maybe, just maybe, you are displaying that intellectual humility you proclaim….(for clarification I am being sarcastic).

Go on, please educate me on the Financial sector. Or Further more just provide evidence to support the EU’s claims.

[redalways]

@Lynch04

We all know that people voting leave can’t read…so lets leave the specifics in the long format.

I mean, if you want to go down the path of that jibe, then surely the answer is that you’re proving the point by ignoring that the title quite clearly states:

Do I need to highlight for you where it states “George Osborne’s speech”?

@Lynch04

You part you highlight from the LW Guardian also states…critics of the Treasury’s new analysis.

Yes, they criticised the new analysis based on… The speech. The report itself, which if you read it, makes it amply clear

@Lynch04

Disinflation, I thought it referred to inflation going down, yet the Treasury stated inflation would be rising. Maybe, I am wrong so please enlighten me. You suggested Disinflation, I just referred to it, tongue in cheek. Hence the question mark.

I brought up disinflation to give an example about how people think that reduced inflation means prices must be going down. Deflation is when prices go down, disinflation is when the increase in prices slows down, i.e. what happened in the UK housing market until 2021, no matter whatever you may ascribe the reasons to.

There was literal house price disinflation post-referendum.

@Lynch04

And why would I ignore the Franklin Knight ‘editorialistion’. You can’t post a graph in support of your argument and then tell me not to read the supporting analysis from the same source.
As far as I can make out from the graph is that it only shows a month on month, year by year change in house prices. It does not compare it to expected prices if we voted to remain and further more the graph states!!! Little impact!!!

Little impact? There is a clear upward trend from 2015 until the referendum where prices were rising at least 2.5% y-o-y, and the price rices were increasing to peak around 5% y-o-y before a sharp reversal in that growth trend post-referendum.

I say editorialising because they’re not going to come out and blame Brexit for it. “Political uncertainty” was sure as hell not just to do with whether the government was stable or not, given that the same trends continued until COVID.

“Little initial impact” is also rather poor commentary given how many deals would have been in the pipeline by then, which aren’t easy to pull out from without realising a material cost. Naturally prices for those deals would be similar to pre-referendum trends, which would last for a couple of months as shown by the graph.

[redalways]

@Lynch04

However, we had to have a follow up additional vote in 2019 as to whether we should have a second referendum, why because Remain voters kept calling on it.

When? When was this follow-up additional vote? I must have missed that.

If you’re referring to the 2019 elections, you would know very well it had nothing to do with a second referendum or not. You can’t even get the facts right.

@Lynch04

Even now, 8 years on from the referendum and after the 2019 vote, you still can’t accept it can you? The people who voted leave in 2016 are still as stupid in 2019.

Accept what? That the referendum was a shitshow filled with electoral manipulation?

And yes, many, not all, of the people who voted leave in 2016 were still as dumb in 2019, and are still as dumb in 2024. Welcome to humanity in the 21st century, where ignorance is actively celebrated.

You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about “remainers”. You won, get over it. Except you won… Nothing. Nothing but a shit future for most people in the country.

[redalways]

Yes, and? I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here, because your link explicitly supports what I said:

[redalways]

Call for east of England coast trail to address access-to-nature gap

[Rambler]

And yet…

• Jeremy Corbyn voted for Britain to leave the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1975 European referendum.
• Jeremy Corbyn opposed the creation of the European Union (EU) under the Maastricht Treaty – speaking and voting against it in Parliament in 1993. During the 2016 referendum campaign, Left Leave highlighted repeated speeches he made in Parliament opposing Europe during 1993.
• Jeremy Corbyn voted against the Lisbon Treaty on more than one occasion in Parliament in 2008.
• In 2010, Jeremy Corbyn voted against the creation of the European Union’s diplomatic service.
• Jeremy Corbyn voted for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2011 (breaking the Labour whip to do so).
• In 2011 Jeremy Corbyn also opposed the creation of the EU’s European Stability Mechanism, which helps members of the Euro in financial difficulties. (This vote is a good example of how Corbyn votes with hardcore Euro-sceptics. Only 26 other MPs joined him in voting against, and in their number are the likes of right-wing Euro-sceptics such as Peter Bone, Douglas Carswell, Bill Cash, Ian Paisley Junior and John Redwood.)
• Jeremy Corbyn opposed Britain’s participation in the EU’s Banking Authority in 2012.
• In 2016 his long-time left-wing ally Tariq Ali said that he was sure that if Corbyn was not Labour leader he would be campaigning for Britain to leave the EU, whilst his brother Piers Corbyn also said that Jeremy Corbyn was privately opposed to Britain’s membership of the European Union.
• Jeremy Corbyn went on holiday during the 2016 referendum campaign and his office staff consistently undermined the Remain campaign. He refused to attend a key Remain campaign launch and also attacked government ministers for publicising the Remain case, saying they should also have promoted arguments in favour of Leave vote. The Director of the Remain campaign, himself a Labour member and candidate, said, “Rather than making a clear and passionate Labour case for EU membership, Corbyn took a week’s holiday in the middle of the campaign and removed pro-EU lines from his speeches”. During the referendum campaign, Leave.EU highlighted Corbyn’s attacks on Europe made in 1996.
• The day after the European referendum in 2016, Jeremy Corbyn called for the immediate invocation of Article 50 – the two-year notice to leave the EU – much quicker than even Theresa May wanted.
• In December 2016, Jeremy Corbyn voted in Parliament in favour of the UK leaving the EU and for the process to start no later than 31 March 2017.
• Jeremy Corbyn three times voted in February 2017 in favour of the Prime Minister starting the process of leaving the European Union.
• During the 2017 general election, the independent Channel 4 Factcheck service found very little difference between Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May over Europe.
• In the summer of 2017, Jeremy Corbyn opposed Britain remaining in the Single Market. He even sacked from his team Labour MPs who voted in favour of membership of the Single Market.
• In 2018, Jeremy Corbyn said he would try to make Brexit go ahead even if Labour won a general election before it happened.

[redalways]

Yes, and? I never said he was an ardent Remain supporter. I never said he campaigned on the issue as much as he campaigned against the EU over the years.

I merely pointed out that when he did campaign during the run-up to the referendum, he campaigned on that specific platform, which I highlighted in the post you quoted.

And regardless, the original point was what did Labour offer to voters. I explained why they might have chosen the party in 2017 and 2019. I cannot offer any comment on the leadership election of 2015, because I wasn’t paying attention to that at the time.

[Mascot]

[Noo_Noo]

@Lynch04

@Noo_Noo

@Lynch04

Can we clarify what 1.8m fewer jobs means? My interpretation is that inline with Growth before Brexit, it was predicted that there would be 1.8m more ‘actual’ jobs created. So my understanding is that they never actually existed but were predicted.

The jobs just dont exist. Over half a million of them in construction. Your industry I believe. If that’s in line growth its still damaging. The fonancial figures back that up. You cant defend this. Its like watching your house burning but arguing you’ll be warm

I’m not arguing on this point or defending it. I asked how we were clarifying it, as it seemed we were looking at it from different angles.
The original point we were discussing was the Treasury’s threat of 500k people becoming unemployed which didn’t happen.

UK employment rate 2024 | Statista

@Noo_Noo

@Lynch04

It was a scare tactic,

Was it? We’re all poorer now, in real terms, not projected.
You basically had the Tory party that sold themselves to the far right loonies in the party (and elsewhere) and went balls deep on it. From that point they were screwed, and basically bent over backwards to defend it, hide it and then correct it by slowly raising the tax burden.

There were 2 ways to tackle this. Have an emergency budget to tackle the tanking pound and loss in revenue OR try to manage it by stealth. They did the latter trying their hardest to tell us how wonderful leaving is. We’re still waiting for a single benefit.

It was a scare tactic.

Yes, we probably are all poorer in real terms.

However, (hopefully the graph uploads) you will see the trend of GDP per capita is similar across Europe.

With regards unemployment, I see where you are and agree the overall unemployment figure hasn’t changed significantly since leaving. However, it doesn’t capture that people found other work.

Regarding being poorer its isnt probably, maybe or possibly. We are.

These pictures probably show the reality. We are not where we were predicted to be if we didnt leave.

Scare tactics. It actually happened though. Call it what you want, it was in reality a prediction that actually played out.

[sandsoftime]

Nine water companies, including stricken Thames Water, have been prevented from using customer money to fund “undeserved” bonuses for top bosses worth £6.8 million under new powers, the regulator has announced.

Ofwat said it had stepped in to halt water companies that cannot show that bonuses are sufficiently linked to performance from using customer money to fund the payouts, amounting to 73% of the total executive awards proposed across the industry.

Debt-laden Thames Water is among three firms – also including Yorkshire Water, and Dwr Cymru Welsh Water – which were directly blocked from allowing customers to pay £1.55 million of bonuses.

Ofwat said a further six companies had voluntarily decided not to push the cost of executive bonuses worth a combined £5.2 million onto customers, with shareholders instead paying.

It added it would otherwise have moved to block the payouts.

David Black, chief executive of Ofwat, said: “In stopping customers from paying for undeserved bonuses that do not properly reflect performance, we are looking to sharpen executive mindsets and push companies to improve their performance and culture of accountability.

“While we are starting to see companies take some positive steps, they need to do more to rebuild public trust.”

Ofwat said new rules on water company bonuses and dividend payouts to shareholders were “beginning to bite” in their first full year since being introduced.

In blocking the awards, Ofwat will instead adjust costs for the companies so that they cannot recover it from customers.

It revealed that Thames Water – more than £16 billion in debt and at the centre of growing public outrage over pollution and rising bills – was planning to use customer cash to pay £770,000 in bonuses for its chief executive Chris Weston and chief financial officer Alastair Cochran.

Action was also taken against £616,000 worth of payouts for top bosses at Yorkshire Water and £163,000 of bonuses at Dwr Cymru Welsh Water.

Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reed said: “It is disgraceful that half of water companies have given out unjustifiable and unmerited bonuses.

“That is why this Government is introducing urgent legislation to ban the payment of unfair bonuses to polluting water bosses so payouts of this kind can never happen again.

“But there are deeper issues that need long-term solutions, which is why we have launched the largest review of the sector since privatisation.”

Water firms paid out a total of £9.3 million in executive bonuses over the last financial year, Ofwat revealed.

It comes at a time of growing public and political pressure on the sector to address a dire recent performance on sewage pollution and leaks while customer bills are soaring.

Ofwat said it would be able to block bonus payouts entirely under the new water Bill being brought by the Government.

The regulator also published its latest report on water firm resilience showing that £1 billion was paid out in shareholder dividends in 2023-24, though this was £400 million less than the previous year thanks to a “clearer link” to performance.

In the report, it named Thames Water, South East Water and Southern Water as being in need of action to address big holes in their finances.

This means that the three firms are subject to high priority monitoring and cash lock-up measures, which prevents them from paying dividends without approval from the regulator.

A further seven companies have been declared as having an “elevated concern” over their financial resilience, while six firms are deemed to be “standard”, with no specific concerns over their financial health.

Mr Black said: “Our new rules on exec pay and dividends link both to company performance

“Through these new rules, our enforcement action and our incentive regime, which has imposed £430 million in performance penalties since 2020, we are challenging companies to deliver improvements for both customers and the environment.”

Water watchdog Ofwat is expected to confirm in December how much it will allow water companies to increase their bills by over the next five years.

[Noo_Noo]

Serious question is what are bonuses in this industry based on. Performance targets is a usual metric which makes me question what those targets actually were.

[JU97ICE]

@WeeJoe

The Prime Minister we could have had

[El-Cuchillero]

When did they bring this in??

[redalways]

Are you new? It’s been around for a long time!

You can’t say anything these days…

Stewart Lee - These days, if you say you're English ...

Obligatory @Mascot tag.

[El-Cuchillero]

Ratko Mladić has let himself go.

[Mascot]

What? You get thrown in jail, these days, just for saying you’re Morrissey?

[Mascot]

Seriously, where to fucking start with Morrissey? What an absolutely, colossal knobrash of a man.

I’m not even on about his nasty opinions, which of course are deplorable. Or his inability to distinguish between having an opinion and spreading racially motivated misinformation that leads to criminal damage.

For me, the thing that catapults this cockwomble into the stratosphere of grade A pricks is the sheer fucking arrogant entitlement of him. The lack of any self-awareness to understand the real reasons why he struggles to get his music released. Which are that he hasn’t produced anything of any worth for over twenty years, and having spent a similar timescale alienating most of his fanbase, he is now in the position where any record company with a grain of sense isn’t going to touch him with a bargepole. As with all these stories of cancellation, it isn’t a political decision. It’s a commercial one.

If Morrissey really wanted to release his music he could very easily finance it himself and release it independently. That is well within his means. But he would much prefer someone else front up the cash to fund him wringing the creative dregs of the talent he once had and pay to market it to a public who only really seem to recognise him now as ‘that bellend’.

And I say that as someone who absolutely loved The Smiths.