The Politics Thread

[Athers]

I can't see the harm in helping to clear out some old dear's garden and having a write up from someone saying the person was punctual and did a good job.

yeah - and that's great and sounds ace - but *practically* how do you go about making that happen? I don't think it is as easy as it sounds... that's the question i am asking... how do you set up a national scheme to match an old lady's garden with a long-term unemployed person without masses of bureaucracy and cost? (not to mention putting loads of local self-employed gardeners and odd-job men out of work...old lady gardens are the bread and butter of self-employed gardeners - they struggle enough as it is without you sending in free gardeners as competiton - and free gardeners who don't know what the feck they are doing and are lazy and workshy....)

Oh yeah it's not easy... but in said example perhaps it may be worth having these guys tag along with already local gardeners to see what it's all about. If it means a 20yo with no qualifications, work history and parents with same, but is mostly getting the lunch, putting stuff in a skip and brushing up (i.e. stuff which wouldn't 'take away' a job), that'd be OK? Cost of setting up the scheme I don't know - but forcing thousands more people to mill about a job centre every day might create jobs as job centre advisors!

It's hard to say it without sounding like looking down on other folk (and the Tories struggle too) but I think there probably is something about showing what a job entails and a decent reference / contact could be what works.

that's asking local self employed gardeners to take on an apprentice... i can see that working piecemeal - but not as an enforced national scheme... does the local self-employed gardener basically get a free labourer for all time? how does it work? there's be no incentive to give him a job if there was always another free labourer on offer... and if the idea is for he apprentice to then set up on his own as a gardener - then that's hardly in the interests of the original gardener! i would also imagine the paperwork involved will be a nightmare and easily enough to put off the local self-employed gardener who has enough on his plate with official paperwork anyway...

Not my intention for the workfare chap to get a job with that gardener (unless he wants to), but to have him see how a man in a job makes a living and for that man to tell a prospective employer that the lad is a good bloke really and to give him a chance. As we have seen you can question the detail all day and it's not my job to provide every single answer but I do think there's some value in a 'showing what work is about and get reference' type scheme when it isn't Poundland taking the piss.

[Hoboh]

We should put these spongers in orange jump suits, with chains round their ankles, give them heavy picks and shovels and set them to reducing the coal slags of Wales bit by bit.

Or they could become sedan chair carriers in the City.

Or they could be cooked and eaten on a TV programme - My Favourite Cannibal perhaps?

Problem solved.

Fatboy Oliver would like that

[Harry Genshaw]

personally - rather than a very clumsy big hammer to hit ALL long-term unemployed which I can't see working anyway (see my original post with questions) - i am happy to accept some swinging of the lead in preference to punishing those who are not evil dole-scrounging layabouts...

+1

[Prufrock]

I have absolutely no idea what you are supposed to do. There was a cutsie-sounding idea mooted a while back about picking a minimum needed to live on, and then paying everyone with a national insurance number that, and then anyone who wanted more than they needed to live on would get a job to pay for it. That sounds nice, but falls down with even the slightest bit of thought. How many people are genuinely work-shy can't be arsed folk? I don't think it's that many. I know a few people on benefits of different kinds, and all would work if they could find it. I'm sure there are some, and you want to stop that, but it's a fine balance between kicking genuinely needy people (see bollocks idea 1 - Let's have assessments for everyone on Disability Allowance and 2- The Bedroom Tax) and stopping wastage and that cycle of non-working families we always hear about. As well as factoring in the cost of any 'enforcement'.

On a vaguely related tangent I mentioned on another thread my ex-housemate who used to work at a private primary school. That was (IIRC) £13k per year, to teach your kids nursery rhymes! The Girlf has just started a part-time job at Fortnum & Mason; they sell a candle that is £400. For one candle. NMP sold a pair of incense sticks for £145. The guy she was working with sold two candlesticks and 5 teapots for over a GRAND. A guy-I-know's partner got a t-shirt worth £900 for a leaving present from work. A girl I work with spent £500 on a pair of shoes.

I get that our system requires a gap between rich and poor, but does it have to be as big as it is? I'm still far from convinced by the argument that someone might emigrate elsewhere on account of the tax rate if they could only spend £300 on a candle.

[thebish]

The Girlf has just started a part-time job at Fortnum & Mason; they sell a candle that is £400. For one candle. NMP sold a pair of incense sticks for £145. The guy she was working with sold two candlesticks and 5 teapots for over a GRAND.

i used to work with a night shelter in Vauxhall - and we'd do regular city-centre soup runs in a van - soup and bread, basically.. we persuaded fortnum and masons to give us their leftover unsold bread at the end of the day... it didn't go well though - cos it was all usually poncey bread - including quite a lot of leftover loaves of peppermint-flavoured bread...

desperately hungry homeless men sleeping in shop doorways - or by air-conditioning units on flat roofs - or in the pavilion in the middle of lincolns inn fields - or in the cardboard city underneath the south bank would throw it back at us shout "what the feck is this shoite!!" and - they were right!!

[Prufrock]

She loves all that shit. 60 fecking quid for a champagne breakfast (one glass each). Will have to knock that out of her! Means I get staff discount on their jasmine tea though, so s'all good for now .

[Prufrock]

I see the Daily Mail have had their regular 'what mental shit can we do seeing as no-one has called us a set of wankers for a while' day today.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

I see the Daily Mail have had their regular 'what mental shit can we do seeing as no-one has called us a set of wankers for a while' day today.

The original article, ignoring the headline, would be considered a glowing obituary in Ralph Miliband's circles - William?!

[William the White]

I see the Daily Mail have had their regular 'what mental shit can we do seeing as no-one has called us a set of wankers for a while' day today.

The original article, ignoring the headline, would be considered a glowing obituary in Ralph Miliband's circles - William?!

My play And Did Those Feet got a rave review, complete with production photo, and five stars in the Daily Mail... Since when I feel I can't call its judgment into question on anything...

It's true that i admired Miliband senior, but haven't actually seen the obituary.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

I see the Daily Mail have had their regular 'what mental shit can we do seeing as no-one has called us a set of wankers for a while' day today.

The original article, ignoring the headline, would be considered a glowing obituary in Ralph Miliband's circles - William?!

My play And Did Those Feet got a rave review, complete with production photo, and five stars in the Daily Mail... Since when I feel I can't call its judgment into question on anything...

It's true that i admired Miliband senior, but haven't actually seen the obituary.

This is the Daily Mail article from the weekend just gone that has caused a furore: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -LEVY.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As I say, apart from the headline, I have visions of you reading down it and nodding in approval!

[thebish]

apparently - according to the Mail today - the British public has a right to know Ralph Millibands views... which I found surprising! do we??

so - as we have that right - they took it upon themselves to educate us - as dispassionate and knowledgeable educators...

the article itself, is, I think, fairly uncontroversial

the headline that "The Man who hated Britain" or some such - is utterly outrageous (he was in the Royal navy duing WW2 and was a refugee here - Britain saved his and his family's lives)

the follow up - that his legacy is "EVIL" - is just hysterical political mud-slinging of a most depressing order..

the idea to send a photographer off to photograph his grave so that they could then make some awful pun about Milliband being a "grave marxist" is just deliberately offensive - and probably very upsetting to the family...


the idea that by extension Ed Milliband is some kind of raving Marxist - is just ludicrous and pathetic.

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

apparently - according to the Mail today - the British public has a right to know Ralph Millibands views... which I found surprising! do we??

so - as we have that right - they took it upon themselves to educate us - as dispassionate and knowledgeable educators...

the article itself, is, I think, fairly uncontroversial

the headline that "The Man who hated Britain" or some such - is utterly outrageous (he was in the Royal navy duing WW2 and was a refugee here - Britain saved his and his family's lives)

the follow up - that his legacy is "EVIL" - is just hysterical political mud-slinging of a most depressing order..

the idea to send a photographer off to photograph his grave so that they could then make some awful pun about Milliband being a "grave marxist" is just deliberately offensive - and probably very upsetting to the family...


the idea that by extension Ed Milliband is some kind of raving Marxist - is just ludicrous and pathetic.

It is a weird episode - why didn't Ed Miliband just say: "Yes, my father was a well-respected Marxist academic and I am very proud of him. I, however, am my own man and will gladly discuss my own views on any issue you should care to ask me about."

[thebish]

It is a weird episode - why didn't Ed Miliband just say: "Yes, my father was a well-respected Marxist academic and I am very proud of him. I, however, am my own man and will gladly discuss my own views on any issue you should care to ask me about."

well - i think it is reasonable to counter the claim that his dad "hated Britain" and that his legacy is "evil" (which seems a bit extreme, no?)

and he didn't say what you said because it wasn't an interview - it was a newspaper article.

[Prufrock]

I see the Daily Mail have had their regular 'what mental shit can we do seeing as no-one has called us a set of wankers for a while' day today.

The original article, ignoring the headline, would be considered a glowing obituary in Ralph Miliband's circles - William?!

But not ignoring the headline...they printed the headline. And then followed it up by calling his legacy 'evil'.

The original article reads like someone has written a proper obituary and then an editor has gone through with a red pen writing "[insert snide Ed Miliband comparison here]". It's pathetic; this is what passes for political reporting. A despairingly thin attempt to paint an identikit left-of-centre politician as a raving Marxist with the only obvious reason that I can see being because his name rhymes with 'red'. It'd be like McCarthyism for idiots if McCarthyism wasn't already that. No wonder democracy is f*cked when all anyone ever gets presented with is a choice between the Red One Who Doesn't Look Like Wallace and the Posh Ones. I don't know who is more to blame.

Then, the cheeky f*ckers have the nerve to try to make it about Leveson (remember that? Someone must do!), despite Miliband explicitly saying it wasn't about regulation. They have the right to publish their opinion; they don't have the right to publish it uncriticised. And Ed has the right to call them a set of lying wankers.

I think he's entitled to be a bit f*cked off if a newspaper (that newspaper) is saying that his dead dad hated Britain and left an evil legacy.*



*Evil! From the Daily Mail. The worst thing about all this is the head-fcuk of irony that is the Daily Mail launching an ad hominem attack on somebody based on the politics of his forebears. Ralph Miliband served in the Navy against the Nazis. Only one of Ralph Miliband and the Daily Mail were on the wrong side of history, and Britain's interests in that fight.

[Prufrock]

apparently - according to the Mail today - the British public has a right to know Ralph Millibands views... which I found surprising! do we??

so - as we have that right - they took it upon themselves to educate us - as dispassionate and knowledgeable educators...

the article itself, is, I think, fairly uncontroversial

the headline that "The Man who hated Britain" or some such - is utterly outrageous (he was in the Royal navy duing WW2 and was a refugee here - Britain saved his and his family's lives)

the follow up - that his legacy is "EVIL" - is just hysterical political mud-slinging of a most depressing order..

the idea to send a photographer off to photograph his grave so that they could then make some awful pun about Milliband being a "grave marxist" is just deliberately offensive - and probably very upsetting to the family...


the idea that by extension Ed Milliband is some kind of raving Marxist - is just ludicrous and pathetic.

It is a weird episode - why didn't Ed Miliband just say: "Yes, my father was a well-respected Marxist academic and I am very proud of him. I, however, am my own man and will gladly discuss my own views on any issue you should care to ask me about."

And make him even more robotic ?

[Zulus Thousand of em]

This is one political issue in which I totally agree with Bish.



Bloody hell.

[Hoboh]

I read the Mail and thought that piece about Millipedes dad was bang out of order!
To suggest that someone 'hates the country' because they are Marxist in their views, dangerous maybe, but hate, ludicrous.
And just to balance things up I also think wet behind the ears, two tier nation, smug 'Billy Bunter' type chancellors are also 'dangerous'.

[bobo the clown]

Quick foray on this thread .... Ralph Miliband was one of my Politics tutors at Leeds. I took his Political Theory course for two years.

Obviously I knew nothing of his family or that he was more or less at Leeds under sufferance having been sort of booted out of the LSE. He was a nice enough guy & I'm sure I was simply a make-weight to him in his time there ... if he noticed me at all.

Basically an 'intellectual' his obsession was that Socialism was done a disservice by the Labour Party and ... having failed to convert it ... a proper, radical socialist party was required to offer the people a route to a socialist state. He had issues with how socialism had played out where it actually existed ... the Soviet bloc especially. He was, essentially a theorist who had few practical ideas on how to achieve what he wanted. I think he was tied up in his thinking being so obviously correct that if presented to 'the people' they would inevitably take it on board ... and then everybody would be happy.

I do recall that if you wanted to distract him all you needed to do was suggest that the British Empire had been a positive thing in its day. That would lead to him going off at tangents and this tactic got me around a couple of late assignments. I didn't get the impression that he was likely to lead the country into any great Soviet style system however.

He was no fan of lots of things which are quintessentially 'British' and loathed many things which ... like them or not ... make up this country and its history. Monarchy, Empire, military, interventionism, stand-alone from the continent, alliance with the USA, education systems, 'the City'.

This appears to be where the Mail is coming from. However, it's an extraordinary intervention by this newspaper and serves no positive purpose. If they wish to evidence that Ed Miliband is a tosser then it's not going to be difficult to attack him on his own basis & I don't see any value in this at all.

There .... I'll be off now.

[thebish]

^ and there's bobo again - who never posts in this thread!

[thebish]

Friends: this is great. This is great, friends: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politic ... ption.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

we've had cameron today... "finish the job" (x14) "land of opportunity" (x13) "hard working families" (x236)

was he any less repetitive?

interesting that labour seem to have totally set the agenda for his speech - labour mentioned 25 times - clegg not once - farage not once (!)

also interesting that he was strongly claiming taking people out of tax was their proud achievement and not the libdems - even though it was a libdem policy and NOT a tory one - and Cameron derided the idea during the election campaign!

and... red ed? please....

also - all under 25s will "earn or learn" - (withdrawal of all benefits for U25s)... does that include the huge number of those who are single mums? hmmmm.....