Bolitics The New Condem Government

[drat01]

 

The tube workers are on strike again over job cuts. Why cant these bastard strikers accept that they're gonna lose their jobs? Then we might all be able to move on ...and call them lazy scrounging jobless work shy benefit bastards instead. 

 

The strikes achieve so much don't they...not

 

See Dem you are falling for the Tory led lies again.

 

So Boris - who in both of his election run ups was against closures to ticket offices - now says that they are OK. The workers have very little in the way of ammunition that they can use to fight for their rights and this Gvmt especially would love it if even more were taken away. Look at what the reasons are for the strike.

[snowychap]

The strikes achieve so much don't they...not

Sometimes strikes achieve things, sometimes they don't.

One wonders, for instance, where equal pay legislation and so on might have been in the 70s (if not today) without the Ford sewing machinists going on strike - dramatized in 'Made in Dagenham' (which was on the telly again recently).

[Dr_Pangloss]

There's a reason why tube drivers and staff get paid a pretty good salary, and that's precisely because of how well unionised they are. So to say that things like strike action do not achieve much is completely wrong. Personally I'm glad to see them strike, I completely agree with their actions, and I say this as someone who has the misfortune to live in London.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Unions are great. Pity they are continuously being **** with, from both governments and useless leadership.

[chrisp65]

 

The tube workers are on strike again over job cuts. Why cant these bastard strikers accept that they're gonna lose their jobs? Then we might all be able to move on ...and call them lazy scrounging jobless work shy benefit bastards instead. 

 

The strikes achieve so much don't they...not

 

 

yeah they should just cross their fingers and hope they aren't in the 700 jobs that are going and then cross their fingers there aren't some more in a later phase, striking for their jobs just shows they are selfish bastards

 

personally, I'd like to see a bit more resistance a few more people kick back and agitate, remind the power that we are here and we aren't just a commodity

[MakemineVanilla]

 

 

The tube workers are on strike again over job cuts. Why cant these bastard strikers accept that they're gonna lose their jobs? Then we might all be able to move on ...and call them lazy scrounging jobless work shy benefit bastards instead. 

 

The strikes achieve so much don't they...not

 

 

yeah they should just cross their fingers and hope they aren't in the 700 jobs that are going and then cross their fingers there aren't some more in a later phase, striking for their jobs just shows they are selfish bastards

 

personally, I'd like to see a bit more resistance a few more people kick back and agitate, remind the power that we are here and we aren't just a commodity

 

 

Channel 4 really struggled to find a passenger who was against the strike and the one they did find had had her opinion formed by the Daily Mail.

 

It was a moment to treasure when a woman turned on the interviewer who tried to elicit the response he wanted concerning Bob Crow's holiday.

 

One woman was worried that without the ticket offices being open the underground will be a dangerous place to be.

 

It seems likely.

 

Cue the Jam:

 

Edited February 4, 2014 by MakemineVanilla

[peterms]

I think if you are talking about 'massive' house building programmes, building on green field sites would be inevitable.

 

Land in areas of high demand would be too expensive to be a viable.

It depends how you manage it. Left to the market, you'd be right. With direction of investment where we need it to go rather than where developers can make the quickest, easiest money, underpinned by compulsory purchase (which seems to be a valued tool when building HS2 or Olympic stadia), that would be different.

 

You can only build houses where people want to live and if the houses are built where the land is cheap they have to be a long way from where the work and so people will have to commute and the gains in carbon emissions will be lost.

We need to take work to where people are, not watch everyone migrate to London. That means a more directive and interventionist regional policy.

 

Do families really want to live in high-rise inner city housing?

 

It is okay for yuppies and the middle-classes but whether it is Tower Hamlets or Castle Vale, such projects have not been a success in the past.

I think you're confusing high-rise with high density. Places like Castle Vale aren't high density. High rise can be good. Very often, it's bad. When it's bad, it's because of poor design, shoddy build, poor maintenance, poor management, a concentration of poor and deprived households, and lack of amenities. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more high quality, high density, low rise housing like in the centres of London, Paris and Edinburgh, and a lot less low quality, high rise, low/medium density housing like in badly planned estates.

 

As far as alternative energy generation is concerned I don't think the technology is viable at this stage, especially as energy demand is predicted to grow, as the population increases and we all buy more and more gizmos.

The technology is expensive in the early stages, like much technology, which is why unless it's subsidised it won't be produced. For some technologies that might not matter, but if we want to reduce carbon emissions, we need to subsidise the emergence and development of alternatives, not leave it up to the market to decide. We will buy more gizmos, but they will consume less energy, in the same way that our bigger fridges and brighter lights consume less energy than their equivalents did 40 years ago. But only if we make it happen, either by regulation or by taxation (and negative taxation, or subsidy), otherwise producers will take the short term profit and not worry about the bigger picture.

 

When it comes to handing public money to private businesses, I can't see why a firm producing Green energy is any more likely to be less profit-hungry, than the present power companies or the banks.

Firms like Shell don't become less profit-hungry in their work on renewables. Alternatives, like co-ops, social enterprises, and (whisper it softly) state-owned companies don't have the same motivation, as they don't aim to make profits to give to themselves. We should be encouraging these sorts of enterprises, and in particular small-scale, community-owned companies producing clean, renewable, safe energy.

[thetrees]

I have a family member who is a shop steward representative of a major union.

From a middle class background, he was a reactionary socialist in his youth, compounded by an apprenticeship with a major motor manufacturer. He then went on to become more moderate, something of a capitalist, and pretty much a conservative in every sense of the word.

Notwithstanding that, he has a so called 'working class' job, and saw that the union representative and management were 'as one', so to speak, so challenged the status quo and, citing company and union rules, requested an election, at which he stood and subsequently won.

As a highly intelligent individual and a skilled orator, management have found that things are not as easy as they used to be. He has also been approached for the 'fast track' move into politics that has caused some controversy within the Labour party.

However, he is not interested in the political side, has become apolitical, and genuinely believes that his task is to seek justice and fairness for his colleagues, something that he works tirelessly for.

And I am immensely proud of him.

[Xann]

Crow can inconvenience the organ grinders in the City.

 

Parliament answers to the City.

 

Crow usually gets his way iirc.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

UKIP MEP says British Muslims should sign a special charter

 

(I've paraphrased the article below)

 

Gerard Batten, who represents London and is member of the party's executive, told the Guardian on Tuesdaythat he stood by a "charter of Muslim understanding", which he commissioned in 2006.

 

The document asks Muslims to sign a declaration rejecting violence and says parts of the Qur'an that promote "violent physical Jihad" should be regarded as "inapplicable, invalid and non-Islamic".

 

Asked on Tuesday whether he still believed Muslims should sign the charter, Batten said: "I don't suppose the pope would disagree with it or the archbishop of Canterbury or anybody else. So why should they feel aggrieved that they might be asked to sign. They don't have to. If they don't believe in those five points, they don't have to sign it."

 

In the 2010 interview, Batten suggests a ban on new mosques in "our cities" and warns it was wrong to have allowed so many already.

 

"They don't allow Christian churches or Hindu temples to be built or any kind of non-Muslim place of worship in many of their countries and certainly not in the heartland of their religion," he said.

 

"Well, if they don't allow it, why can they expect to see their religion tolerated somewhere else?

 

Asked about his views on the building of mosques, Batten told the Guardian: "Why do we allow the wholesale building of mosques by a religion that refuses in its heartland to acknowledge other people's right to worship a different religion?"

 

Srsly anyone who votes UKIP is a dick.

[Kingfisher]

One might think IDS was the resurrection of Christ, after all he has cured more sick and disabled people than even Jesus managed.

I don't believe in miracles myself, I always look for the rational explanation. In this case it's non medical staff at ATOS declaring sick, disabled and dying people fit for work, leaving them without the benefits they need to live. Of course these people cannot work, even if there was work, which there isn't. Some are even dying before their case is reviewed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-claimants-lose-all-their-income-under-disability-benefits-reform-9107586.html

So is IDS the resurrection of Christ? no of course not, more like the spawn of satan.

Edited February 5, 2014 by Kingfisher

[Kingfisher]

Boris wants the cops to have water cannons in London. Ironically this comes fresh on the heels of the 500 fire fighter job cuts. Perhaps boris is more interested in extinguishing protest than fires, ...maybe a few strike marches.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/04/britain-ready-for-water-cannon-london

[MakemineVanilla]

 

I think if you are talking about 'massive' house building programmes, building on green field sites would be inevitable.

 

Land in areas of high demand would be too expensive to be a viable.

It depends how you manage it. Left to the market, you'd be right. With direction of investment where we need it to go rather than where developers can make the quickest, easiest money, underpinned by compulsory purchase (which seems to be a valued tool when building HS2 or Olympic stadia), that would be different.

 

You can only build houses where people want to live and if the houses are built where the land is cheap they have to be a long way from where the work and so people will have to commute and the gains in carbon emissions will be lost.

We need to take work to where people are, not watch everyone migrate to London. That means a more directive and interventionist regional policy.

 

Do families really want to live in high-rise inner city housing?

 

It is okay for yuppies and the middle-classes but whether it is Tower Hamlets or Castle Vale, such projects have not been a success in the past.

I think you're confusing high-rise with high density. Places like Castle Vale aren't high density. High rise can be good. Very often, it's bad. When it's bad, it's because of poor design, shoddy build, poor maintenance, poor management, a concentration of poor and deprived households, and lack of amenities. Personally, I'd like to see a lot more high quality, high density, low rise housing like in the centres of London, Paris and Edinburgh, and a lot less low quality, high rise, low/medium density housing like in badly planned estates.

 

As far as alternative energy generation is concerned I don't think the technology is viable at this stage, especially as energy demand is predicted to grow, as the population increases and we all buy more and more gizmos.

The technology is expensive in the early stages, like much technology, which is why unless it's subsidised it won't be produced. For some technologies that might not matter, but if we want to reduce carbon emissions, we need to subsidise the emergence and development of alternatives, not leave it up to the market to decide. We will buy more gizmos, but they will consume less energy, in the same way that our bigger fridges and brighter lights consume less energy than their equivalents did 40 years ago. But only if we make it happen, either by regulation or by taxation (and negative taxation, or subsidy), otherwise producers will take the short term profit and not worry about the bigger picture.

 

When it comes to handing public money to private businesses, I can't see why a firm producing Green energy is any more likely to be less profit-hungry, than the present power companies or the banks.

Firms like Shell don't become less profit-hungry in their work on renewables. Alternatives, like co-ops, social enterprises, and (whisper it softly) state-owned companies don't have the same motivation, as they don't aim to make profits to give to themselves. We should be encouraging these sorts of enterprises, and in particular small-scale, community-owned companies producing clean, renewable, safe energy.

 

 

I am afraid I am far less sanguine when it comes to the ability of government to deliver the sort of housing people want.

 

Once compulsory purchase is considered a legitimate way to obtain land for less than market value, the vision of a strong-arm big government solution is unavoidable.

 

It sounds like the sort of vision which created the estates of the 1970s, which were demolished long before they were actually paid for.

 

Places like Castle Vale was inspired by the deluded dreams of Le Corbusier and put high density tower blocks in a landscaped lawn with added sculpture, which was the state's vision of how they thought people should live, which turned out to be not quite what they needed. It was a classic top-down view. The people were packed away in the blocks, not making the place look too untidy and the planners could look at the green open spaces, and kid themselves that they had built an idyll for the proles. 

 

As ever the problems arose from the pressure to build a high number of dwellings at the lowest cost per unit. This is a problem which never goes away. Quantity always comes at the cost of quality and vice versa. Only in political hyperbole is it assumed that it doesn't. The government have no expertise in building houses and therefore must leave it to those who do, who inevitably turn it into an exercise in peculation. 

 

But whether it is the government or the private sector, I just don't believe that anyone can claim that building more houses to house more and more people, consuming more and more goods and services, can possibly be claimed to be good for the environment.  

 

And that is my problem with the Green party. They are too eager not to say anything which will upset anyone. They won't say anything negative about immigration because they don't want to upset people's liberal delusions. They don't want to tell people they should have fewer children, or that they should consume a lot less and not fly in aircraft. They don't want to tell people to give up their cars. 

 

I just think that any party which claims to be Green has to have the courage to tell the truth as they see it, not pretend that we can have everything we have now but with a few wind turbines to remind us how virtuous we are, as we dream of what we are going to buy this week.

 

It is the same thing which frustrates me about Socialists who insist that socialism is possible without any sacrifices.

[Kingfisher]

So you want a limit on the number of children per family made a law? What number would you set it at?

[MakemineVanilla]

So you want a limit on the number of children per family made a law? What number would you set it at?

 

I stated no such thing. 

 

But I know that many Greens think that population pressure creates the biggest problem for flora and fauna.

 

I think that a party which calls itself Green should be less shy about telling people this.

 

I don't believe that ordinary people want Green policies because they just want more stuff.

[Kingfisher]

I think you've misunderstood the green remit. We're humans, we consume that's a fact that cannot be denied and is not denied by any environmentalist. Green politics is about mitigating human damage, to within reasonable levels, so we can all live happy lives, have food, clean water and air as much as possible. It will not and can not eliminate human damage. Saying oh green policy is flawed because it won't face up to the hard facts that we will eventually outgrow this planets resources is like saying medicine is flawed because it doesn't face up to the fact that people ultimately have to die.

[MakemineVanilla]

I think you've misunderstood the green remit. We're humans, we consume that's a fact that cannot be denied and is not denied by any environmentalist. Green politics is about mitigating human damage, to within reasonable levels, so we can all live happy lives, have food, clean water and air as much as possible. It will not and can not eliminate human damage. Saying oh green policy is flawed because it won't face up to the hard facts that we will eventually outgrow this planets resources is like saying medicine is flawed because it doesn't face up to the fact that people ultimately have to die.

 

The Greens I listen to certainly don't see it your way.

 

They don't see Green politics as a slight mitigation of the current system which demands that we all consume more every single year, they see Green politics as the urgent need to stop a runaway disaster which will destroy life on earth.

 

They would agree that people consume but they would say that people consume far too much, and that increasing the population does not increase the quality of life, it just destroys habitat and creates the need for more of everything which adds to that destruction.

 

They would probably like your medicine simile but would probably compare present Green party policies as nothing more than a placebo.

 

 I don't agree with them but that is what they tell me.

[Kingfisher]

We can discuss the merits or otherwise of official Green party policy and statement. But I can't really comment on anecdotal evidence 'I've heard/he said/she said' from random people you've spoken to.

[drat01]

I see Cameron got completely and utterly slaughtered today at PMQ's and Bercow go to the top of the class re the comment to Gove

 

The Tory party do seem somewhat in disarray from the cock ups that Boris is making it certainly shows that the one that many look to as a replacement for Cameron is certainly not up for the job, nor is Gove. Who next a Tory woman?   

[bickster]

We can discuss the merits or otherwise of official Green party policy and statement. But I can't really comment on anecdotal evidence 'I've heard/he said/she said' from random people you've spoken to.

See thats the problem, they're a party, which by its very nature is anti-democratic. I have no doubts that there are some green party supporters as described and then there are others who agree with parts of the party line. So any party policy is nearly always a compromise before it even gets to be debated with the other parties (who also have similar policy compromises).

If elected representatives were allowed to vote more with their consciences and not bound by their parties compromised policies we might for example live in a much less surveilled country as there are elements in all three main parties that value individual freedoms very highly but the dominant part of Lab and or Tory parties don't. Combine the libertarian wing of the Tories, the Libdems and the "soft left" or intellectual left of Labour and you might just have a broad alliance on that particular subject that more accurately reflects public opinion as it is parties get in the way and democracy fails due to parties causing way too much compromise.