Spin is one thing, but devil is in detail
Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s announcement of an extension to the government’s ‘furlough’ scheme to protect workers’ income is being broadcast uncritically by the ‘mainstream’ media – but in reality it is a plan to force people to return to work, or out of work completely.
https://skwawkbox.org/2020/03/20/exclusive-tories-announce-worker-bail-out-package-after-huge-pressure-from-unions-and-labour/Sunak has claimed that the scheme – agreed in the first place only after huge pressure from unions – will be ‘extended’ until the end of October, but clarified on social media that the ‘small print’ of the extension involves companies paying an unspecified part of the cost:
The SKWAWKBOX understands that the company share will be up to 60%.
The end result of this change is that workers will be faced with a stark choice: return to work on a full- or part-time basis, or if employers are unable or unwilling to pay their share then jobs will be lost and people now out of work will be forced to try to survive on the woefully inadequate Universal Credit.
Sunak’s plan has no flexibility to allow for the state of the pandemic at the time of the changes, so workers are likely to face a choice between paying their bills or risking illness and death. More Tory spin to hide a foul reality.
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The devil is one thing and the devil is in the Tory.
A recent LabourList Poll indicates where Labour’s supporters think the solution lies
Do you think Labour should support the idea of a universal basic income as part of the UK’s coronavirus recovery?
Yes – 75.6% (4,591)
Don’t know – 13.8% (838)
No – 10.6% (642
This has been put to the government many times as France, Germany and Italy did it, it was approx £1000 a month to every citizen, no means testing nothing! In fact they are thinking of keeping it up as a cheaper way of distributing benefits.
Early O’Clock, Dire Stoma dripped negativity re universal basic income. Yet i think that about 6 weeks ago, two or three Tories said twas worth considering, on the MSM‼️ Having a shocking daymare that it may have been Norma Major’s husband John’s coarse … rough dry wipe… ‼️
Gosh the sunshine has suddenly vanished.
The world has gone berserk as a few days b4 then, Stoma dripped effluent over it‼️ One or two tentacles of the devil, were positive while someone pretending to be Labour shat on it SH. SH it is up to u. Explain that incongruence. Pretty please 🌹🌹🌹
windchimes – To be honest I can’t recall what Starmer’s exact stance is on UI but it is not that unusual for a party leader to be out of step with the wishes of the membership and/or supporters on some issues. The Covid-19 crisis is moving and changing at a pace and as circumstances change politicians will be continually reassessing their policies.Politics isn’t set in aspic. I may be wrong but I can’t recall KS ever deceiving anyone over his views about UI.
I distinctly remember that Jeremy Corbyn was for far too long at odds with the vast majority of the party’s membership with his policy of ‘constructive ambiguity’.
Stoma definitely did not deceive re UI. He was quite open on that. It surprised me as Open Tories appeared quite warm to the idea… another surprise.
Re “constructive ambiguity”, i always felt there was something Barry Gardener “polish” about it. Could be wrong. But it was a losing policy GIANT nail forged by Dire Stoma, polished by Gardner to help Jeremy nail himself more roughly with it. Jeremy was badly advised and let down dreadfully and so was the country and well over 50,000 Covid-19 dead.
signpostnotwindchimes – That’s a bit like claiming that the Covid-19 fuck-up isn’t Johnson’s fault because he was following advice.
Not the same Sh. Jeremy has firm beliefs, many of rare excellence … desperately needing implementation. We can all see that. Yet, someone told me, having known Jeremy over 40 years, that he has always tried to avoid confrontation … a peace maker. That was his downfall.
johnson loves to be loved. Complicated now thinking of it. Counterintuitively – my sense is: though Jeremy neither craves attention, nor to be adored as the ultra repellant vomitatious warmonger Phoney Blair does to pathological extreme,… Jeremy’s fright of what i would term nano confrontation ie with people close or apparently close to him eg Gardner, Starmer, Thornberry allowed himself to be dragged away from one key belief… to keep nano peace.
He was at a disadvantage i suspect as the others he may regard as intellectually superior to him, by virtue of their reading and professional status. I disagree with him on that. Some of the most impressive demonstration of observations and logic i have heard, were from people who were neither professionals, nor in a few memorable cases, not even had secondary school education. Their analyses of society to me, in those cases were marvellously impressive.
When Jeremy became visible and spoke, half a million like me joined. THAT is exceptional. No other leader of any country in Europe has achieved that in many decades. That exceptional contribution deserved EXCEPTIONAL support, help, constructive CHALLENGING advice… compensating for deficiencies. We all have deficiencies. We all need support. Jeremy deserved MEANINGFUL, nimble, urgent support as this was a miraculous opportunity to save us from what’s happening now.
We cannot see ourselves, so we need a team, a collective effort. Jeremy needed that.
Bliar and johnson have that team. They have had it for decades. While in opposition ie the True Left, needed to learn the basics of sustaining a victory. From my little experience there was none of that. And it is still scarce.
But SH with Tories like johnson WMD Blair and Stoma, they have an established machine and recognition of certain basics re achieving their aims…. winning elections. They are rarely detached from decision made except č Gordon Brown preventing Bliar dragging us into the Euro. Other than that we got the invasions because Bliar loved the feeling of International phallus status. Cummings & johnson are as one with their herd immunity, bigotry, racism, eugenics etc. They are not being dragged in that direction. They agree with the direction. johnson agreed with it so much that he has endless stays at Chequers and Chevening. Its all a series of lazy country house larking one after the other.
So v different to Jeremy’s predicament. After all he did not seek to be leader. That to me is one of his greatest qualifications. Sadly it brings weaknesses of not understanding the VITAL URGENCY of assembling a sharp team around him. … Not a nice team an EFFECTIVE team.
Out of lingering disappointment and sense of urgency I am frank. But Jeremy and the team can be excused. They did not do what they did or fail to do, with bad intentions. They meant well but that is not enough. It is almost worthless. We must build on those intentions. Develop whats missing. IMPLEMENTATION and SUSTAINING WINS. Prioritising and sequencing. Not burning with religious anger at the mere suggestion of a policy or idea as if a terminal marker on a person etc…
One of the reasons airline and medical fatalities are so low, is that in both areas, reporting
analysing scrutiny CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, frank feed back is the norm. In medicine & surgery we see horrors when that openness breaks down. Consensus around an error… closing ranks around repeated errors … deaths.
I detect that on the “Left”. Perhaps it is because the objectives are not felt in a concrete way. The aims are never clean, clear crash or land, life or death. The result is an amateur sterile drift but dressed up in defeated passion, theories protected like an intense religion with a seething passive aggressive frustration.
Shocking really. Basics HERE and NOW neglected … even repelled … avoidance. As if in a state of anticipated failure so best busy ourselves now with more interesting reading then zooming. Pre Covid-19, HOURS brainstorming a banner for the now cancelled climate conference‼️
Also avoided is recognising that committed bastards like Bliar & Stoma don’t change except by a miracle. And, that the dispenser of miracles is busy knitting yoghurt and inspecting the aspidistras before designing the next earthquake.
In the mean time we must NEVER appease obvious bastards. That is unrealistic and amateur. I’m nervous when i know some are oblivious to what occurred and the result.
Jeremy brought the members. But the team, out of the headlights, should have moved heaven and earth to preserve him, eg don’t let allies one by one be kicked under a bus like Chris Williamson. So yes i do feel sharply disappointed but the team bears the greater responsibility but not condemnation. They knew not what they were doing.
Different story, Cummings, johnson, May, David Cameron the pig’s head molester, Thatcher, Bliar and Dire Stoma. They KNOW what they do. They have been doing it for most of the last Sixty Eight Years – Screwing the many for the benefit of the few.
The widespread love of the entirely neoliberal idea (popularised in the 1930’s by the peculiar, very dodgy, anti-Semitic, Social Credit Movement, as an alternative to socialism, and a ‘bleed-over’ from current Far Right, ‘shrink the state’ neoliberal Libertarianism in the USA ) ) of a universal minimum money ration entitlement, regardless of need or personal wealth, ie ‘citizens income’, or Universal Basic Income (UBI), on the Liberal ‘Left’, just shows how what passes for the ‘Left’ in the UK today is politically and ideologically bankrupt.
The other big fans of ‘Citizens Income’ are the superrich tax avoiders of Silicon Valley , who just love its entirely individualistic approach to each citizen , as private consumer, fending for themselves, ignoring social class, the reality of capitalism, and the alternative potential for mass class action to secure collective benefits . It is of course a concept that ignores the huge underlying discrepancies in wealth ownership that lies behind income inequality, and by giving each citizen a small annual money ration, for them to spend ‘wisely’ , provides the excuse to do away with all other state social support benefits, including a universal free national health service in the UK. It is a viciously individualistic con trick of a concept, divorced from the traditional socialist principles of ‘from each according to their abilities – to each according to their needs’. And it simply doesn’t add up as a proposal in taxation and viability terms – the poorest would actually lose out more than the entrepreneurial small business trendy middle classes who are so keen on it (keen to get a free government subsidy for their existing income in their online businesses) . The Greens were slaughtered in TV interviews about this key plank of their 2015 Election Manifesto – and rightly so.
I’m not surprised the Right Wing Liberal, Steve H, is in favour of Citizen’s Income . Such a pity so many on the supposed ‘Left’ are too. But that is just a measure of the privileged middle class composition of today’s identity politics obsessed ‘Left’ and its ideological poverty, and total abandonment of socialism. The demand for the adoption of UBI is a complete diversionary red herring in today’s coronavirus epidemic. Typical opportunism to promote this bee in their bonnet idea by the middle lass trendies – and as economically ignorant as this very same social group’s current widespread elief in the ‘magical Keynsianism’ of that magical money tree nonsense of ‘Modern Monetary Theory !
jpenney, thanks for your informative post. This is not my “area”. From my state of comparative ignorance, and amidst much immediate life and death urgencies, i saw it till your post as an interesting idea worth consideration, rather than dismissal without consideration.
In my area, we keep an open mind always assessing. Constant self assessment, self scrutiny of ideas we hold rather than crossing out ideas new to us. I hasten to add, not new to you.
Your post though serves an opportunity to serve an observation for all willing to consider. That someone floating an idea… even SH… does not necessarily mean he supports it. It does not necessarily define him nor me. We are all supposed to be much more than any one belief. Even Tories. Yes, i put my hands up. I fulminate often because of what still stings as incomprehensible to… ie last four years then now. … these last four unimaginable months.
Out of my metier, Universal Basic Income seems like a safety net, without the £££££ multimillion admin. Think of it, we already have the perverse system of paying multimillionaires welfare indirectly to employ slaves and surfs ie all the workers being screwed this very day. Some of the £££ goes to foreign companies like ATOS to terrorise the poor and vulnerable.
Establishment bandits scrounge vast billions of subsidy benefits. Celebrated unsuited and some bearded “entrepreneurs” have scrounged BILLIONS of state benefits and paid almost no tax on some of their operations and none on others, it is alleged. The laws are deliberately loose to allow such exploitation.
Treating something new as UBI as some catastrophic curse is as someone earlier suggesting that extending lock down would “risk austerity”. So the reply is the same. Workers already suffer from Tory austerity as the systemic issues you mention.
To me, without your knowledge, UBS seems like a move towards freeing people from being forced to be exploited. Another way could be sensible taxation on the bandits. Compulsion to pay at least three times the “living wage” OR pay the MPs what ever they consider the “living wage is”. Their jobs should be treated as vocations. That would root out the verminous ones MPs and Lords.
All revolving door appoints must be declared at once. All income so made, taxed at 90%. NB that rate existed during pustulant decades of Thatcher. Cease all further revolving door and all extra “work” in which the MPs & Upper scroungers engage. QUESTION: From where do they find the free time❓ Clearly they are not Lording and MPing enough‼️
There are many other areas for reform but my post was only to suggest we not treat suggestions with a full stop. A religious full stop … burning at the stake… It closes down easy debate and can inadvertently lead to inhibiting the less forthright to contribute. Or the over researching of ideas, which leads to paralysis, then forced … policed consensus … punctuated now and then by a rich idea sprouting, only to be stomped back into the earth by good well meaning people agreeing.
🌹🌹🌹
Spare me your pompous naivety, signpostsnotwindchimes. UBI /Citizens Income, or in its original 1930’s form, ‘Social Credit’ , has been very well examined and researched, repeatedly – including during the 2015 General Election, when the Greens fell flat on their daft middle class faces on it. In fact the TUC looked in detail at it in the 1930’s in its ‘Social Credit’ original form, and concluded it was a complete diversion from the struggle for universally provided services like healthcare. The claim that UBI would be cheap to administer, because it supposedly can be operated almost costlessly via a single all citizen annual money handout – replacing all needs assessment-based state support programmes, is a complete canard . Such a single, fixed, payment, irrespective of specific individual need leaves the poorer severely disabled, and multi child household,s up shit creek – even compared to the needs assessment based welfare system in existence before the deliberate cruelty of Universal Credit was introduced. When pressed, the UBI enthusiasts have to retreat from this claim of ‘no admin costs’, and accept that discretionary, needs-assessed-based grants would be needed too. The entire point of the Left Liberal enthusiasm for UBI is that it will give THEM, the middle classes, a free cash handout, and fuck the huge number of poorer people with multiple extra needs, health particularly, that would be left MUCH WORSE OFF by a one-ration-fits-all UBI set up.
Spare me your smug, ‘it’s just an idea worth considering’ stance , signpostnotwindchimes. It’s been well researched, and endlessly debunked , as a non functional diversionary idea, of no use to the Left at all , but of plenty use as a diversion from building mass struggle COLLECTIVE ACTION to protect our free at the point of use, tax-funded, NHS, and recreating a humane, generous , needs assessment-based wider benefits system. That you are attracted to UBI/ Citizens Income simply marks you down as , either ignorant, and /or, a Left Liberal incapable of doing a bit of online research on the dodgy historical roots, and US Far Right neoliberal Libertarian more recent popularity, roots of this poisonous , anti-socialist, concept.
“That you are attracted to UBI/ Citizens Income simply marks you down as , either ignorant, and /or, a Left Liberal incapable of doing a bit of online research on the dodgy historical roots, and US Far Right neoliberal Libertarian more recent popularity, roots of this poisonous , anti-socialist, concept.”
Dear dear dear, all of your post jp shows the immensity of the problem. You sound like a fellow who phoned LBC an evening after the GE result. He announced that he had a PhD from Leeds University and lambasted the ignorance of the people voting for the Tories, because they did not know Marx’s theories on class consciousness. Great election winning attitude that.
I admitted my ignorance and your post above underlines that. Yet just like the fellow with his PhD in political theory I wonder who seems pompous? Do you really believe that every one should read your research of choice???
True COLLECTIVE ACTION would be different people bringing their different information and diverse interpretations. What is interesting too is the labels of Left Liberal and all that stuff. I have always put “Left” in quotes to avoid that pigeonholing ie reduction as if people can be reduced to one neat label. I misjudged you.
I clearly said this is not my area. You missed that in your astonishing rage. Weird.
You mentioned something about all the research. No wonder the “Left” is good at losing if someone as knowledgable as you feels every one of the electorate should all be “researching” socio political theory and agree with you. Do you lecture all the people keeping the country working to read all the research. In your rage you imagined some devotion of mine or study of UI. I have little idea. I’v heard people speak of it. But it is not my area and am quite prepared to listen to people who have knowledge about it.
You must be having a bad day. Next time you go to your GP, it may be a good learning experience for you if they gave you a fiery lecture on what you should know about medicine. Your earnest rage is funny though.
Plus i will not be making any special effort to read up on UI. I’m quite content to peruse your learned views and those of others on that.
ps you may have missed it, with or without UI, over 50,000 people have died tested positive up to 1st May. Thousands more have died untested. Many thousands in and out of the NHS, are fighting to SAVE LIVES. Multi disciplinary teams… a “mass struggle COLLECTIVE ACTION to protect” LIVES. Many of the teams may never have heard of UI. Many who have, would not bother to do the research you like.
I am glad though, you saved me the trouble of explaining again some of what i have witnessed. A passive aggressive defeatist detached rage. So detached from reality as to expect everyone to agree with you without even knowing YOUR theory of choice. You are so remarkable in your detachment from reality. Expecting all if us should read the same things and agree. You are grown up and not grasped that the world works with infinitely diverse people with diverse interests and ideas.
Diverse people are busy researching other things to save lives. THAT jp is TRUE COLLECTIVE action. The whole real world works like that. People are not a label. And you have displayed in your post that it is best not to be one. Ps if i had more time i would love though to research the psychology of your bizarre rage, it definitely contributed to our GE loss. The obsession with pigeonholing people into ever tinier theoretical holes. RESULT you label individuals according to some restricted, constricted myopic haze, while frenetic with throwing your papers around. Weird
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For a detailed analysis of UBI, and its serious shortcomings, have a read of this measured piece of work by the Joseph Roundtree Foundation, which isn’t even written from a specifically socialist perspective. It rightly concludes that UBI really only helps the better off, and disadvantages the poorest – particularly the poor with health problems ! https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/universal-basic-income-not-answer-poverty
That’s Rowntree. Ms Penney. A name that anyone genuinely researching the areas in which you claim expertise would be very familiar with.
Your argument seems to rest on the premiss that since Social Credit promoted policies that you call Universal Basic Income, all policies promoting a basic income guarantee for all can be assumed to be aimed at undermining socialism. This is a very obvious fallacy.
The notion of affording all members of society with shelter, clothing and enough to live on long predates Social Credit or Socialism. It is of the very essence of human community.
Some may enjoy this
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/05/12/kathy-burkes-critique-of-boris-johnson-is-everything-you-didnt-dare-say-warning-strong-language/
“… workers will be faced with a stark choice: return to work on a full- or part-time basis, or if employers are unable or unwilling to pay their share then jobs will be lost and people now out of work will be forced to try to survive on the woefully …”
I was born to kvetch, I know, but can someone who understands this particular sunak ‘giveaway’ assure me that when an employer receives the money for an employee, said employer HAS to provide the money to the worker, or is this yet another way for a bourgeois to steal the fruits of labour??
I haven’t had chance to read the new rules in detail but as I understand it at the moment. Yes employers are required to pass on the money but they are not required to make up any shortfall (20% at the moment) and to be fair many would find it impossible to do so.
Yes, thanks Steve. But there are lots of Asda-like employers out there who hate their workers and their trade unions and who would – if they could – ‘pocket’ the furlough money. I wonder if there is any check to make sure the employer passes it on to the employee – and doesn’t pocket it..
qwertboi – That would be fraud, and the courts take a very dim view of anyone found to be stealing from the taxpayer even more so if they are taking advantage of a national crisis where thousands of people are dying. There may be the odd small company that chances their arm but I think the chance of them being caught are very high. I really can’t see any major employer even considering doing this.
Q for information the supermarkets already get £8b a year from the tax payer via tax credits to subsidise low pay whilst they run away with the profits!
At present the Govt furlough is costing £14b a month but this will be reduced to £7b in August hoping above hope that employers will take up the slack or hence part-time or redundancy.
A series of big sticks to get the w class back to work and risk whilst the rich and powerful are generally enconsed in their relatively safe country retreats or foreign bolt holes hoping their recent reduced wealth may be soon be rebuilt on the back of diverse working people, their gain, working class risk!
And if the Tories say they have no money very shortly they may have electronically printed £300b (quantitative easing) since the crisis started!
Oh and I think JP nails the UBI myth.
We need citizens who can work to contribute to make societies work, paying people to do nothing is an insult when millions are lonely, millions need care, and millions in need, so we need to work but socialist solutions point to shorter working weeks and earlier retirement so working people have more free time to enjoy life and pursue non-work related interests.
FROM EACH ACCORDING TO THEIR ABILITY, TO EACH ACCORDING TO THEIR NEED.
Under a left wing democratic socialist society.
Bazza – I don’t think any of the proponents of UBI are advocating that it is a replacement for work. What they are advocating is that it gives people choices about their lifestyles, what sort of work they want to do and how many hours they want to work. All of which seem to address many of the concerns you express above. I’ve always considered the protestant work ethic as con, a tool of the rich to guilt trip the poor.
We can argue the toss all day about the wisdom of a Labour government introducing Tax Credits but no doubt at the time they genuinely thought it was the best option. It certainly wasn’t a perfect solution for many reasons including the ones you’ve pointed out above but despite its failings it did improve the lives of many families.
UC will soon replace it anyway and eventually increases in the minimum wage will effectively do away with the subsidising of wages. This would have come about much quicker with a Corbyn government.
Basic income.. Will be just that,not based on “average income” but based on the ability to keep an “underclass in reserve” in dire poverty..No lifestyle choices on UBI,not even enough to pay our mps bar 🍸bill just an attempt to starve the working class into submission.Trust Steve H and the one woman Labour right list to be pushing it..Decent commentators on here would assume that universal basic income would be meant to keep a person from poverty.. iT wont,just an excuse for introduction for scrapping the idea of a welfare state and pension provision.Be Aware that like the current payments to the workers on lockdown it will not be whats on the “Label” and like Steve H should carry a Health warning.
I just heard on Sky News that employers will not have to contribute until August. Considering that the Tories have been so vile over the past ten years, I would say that this is an improvement. Not as good as we on the left would like, but I saw no support from Starmer. Corbyn has been passionately defending the safety of workers, and would have given 100%. I am more worried about Starmer than Johnson! He has been pushing the exit strategy and does not give a damn about renters – more interested in protecting the income of wealthy landlords. Too many.
Sandra – You either have either a rather vivid imagination or you just don’t keep abrest of current affairs
Keir Starmer was the one who demanded a national standard for workplace safety, and also the one who raised the issue of a lack of childcare for those now expected to go back to work. His prime time BBC address was the product of some clever research by his team, who dug into the BBC Charter to find the precedent of Hugh Gaitskell delivering a response to the Suez crisis.
That BBC address played to Starmer’s strengths too, with neat lines again linking the WW2 generation and the care homes they now live (and die) in, and the way care workers are treated like heroes but paid less than the living wage.
On China, Starmer is already sounding more hawkish, on the need for a home-grown industrial strategy. He has already attacked Johnson for failing to get tougher on overseas arrivals at our ports and airports earlier in the Covid crisis.
On getting Britain back to work during Covid-19, the Keir is following the example of the best trade unions. For years, pragmatic unions reps have negotiated furloughs or shorter working hours as a better option than redundancies in factories. During this crisis, it was shopworkers union Usdaw which actually led the way in negotiating new safe working in supermarkets.
Starmer has shown he is a politician as much as a lawyer of late. He has shown, to coin a phrase, that he likes to have his cake and eat it – sounding ever-so-constructive while being quietly destructive of the PM’s competence.
So the knights team keep you fully informed….I hope Squawkbox realise that paid trolls are now reproducing themselves and a blitz of right wing establishment propaganda is now running and we are now at war with the vile “enemy within” ,and the Health warning is never more important than to expose the collaberators
Joseph – FFS don’t be so pathetic.
Unlike you I don’t exist in an echo chamber. I simply read from a wide range of sources and keep myself informed. Is anything I have said above untrue and if not why are you attempting to discredit what I say by falsely calling it propaganda. Why do you think the truth is the enemy within.
Surely you should be celebrating that Starmer is exposing Johnson’s shortcomings and doing what he can to protect workers instead of trying to do everything you can to undermine Labour’s future election prospects.
Life may be ok for you out in the far-east but instead of indulging your own ridiculous personal prejudices you ought to consider that many in the UK are desperate for a relief from Tory rule. As a Labour member you really need to re-examine your priorities
I would have liked a response on the furlough pay until August. If Starmer is so good why did he water down Labours policy on rent? Why did he trash the conference pledge ob Kashmir? Why has he appointed anti Corbyn agents to investigate the leaked report? Why has he not suspended the saboteurs? Why is he not opposing teachers and children going back to school when deaths are still high? Why was he pushing for an exit strategy rather that the safety of workers?
Sandra Crawford
13/05/2020 at 11:50 pm
I would have liked a response on the furlough pay until August.
To what end. the scheme is continuing until the end of July and as far as I know the Tories have yet to publish much in the way of detail about what comes next. Starmer only has 6 questions and he chose to focus those on 2 well researched and interlinked subjects. To my mind this was a wise strategy and had Johnson floundering. Most of the press seems to think so too. There will be a time to question on this subject in the coming weeks.
If Starmer is so good why did he water down Labours policy on rent?
What is Labour’s policy on rent, could we have a link to it please and could you then explain how Keir has watered it down.
Why did he trash the conference pledge on Kashmir?
I have no knowledge on this issue so I don’t feel I am qualified to give a response.
Why has he appointed anti Corbyn agents to investigate the leaked report?
It wasn’t Keir that appointed the panel it was the NEC. Have you looked at the makeup of the NEC.
Why has he not suspended the saboteurs?
Keir can sack those he appoints (eg shadow ministers) and I think he also has the authority to remove the whip but his authority doesn’t extend to suspending members, that’s the NEC’s job.
Those named in the leaked report appear to be either employees of the party (an HR issue) or trade union appointees which I presume the respective union could replace or suspend and I guess the NEC or the GenSec also has the power to suspend. If you have any evidence to the contrary I would be fascinated to see it.
Why is he not opposing teachers and children going back to school when deaths are still high?
That doesn’t appear to be the case
“Ministers fear that ‘The Blob’ will sabotage the reopening of schools…… And inside Downing Street there is mounting concern that a rejuvenated Labour under Sir Keir Starmer, working with the party’s union allies and the devolved administrations, are co-ordinating their response to lifting the lockdown. A source said: ‘It’s clear they are going to work together to make this as difficult as possible.’
Why was he pushing for an exit strategy rather that the safety of workers?
Keir has already called for enforceable national safety standards to be put in place to protect workers. He has also been working closely with the unions on their work with employers to ensure there are adequate safety provisions for returning workers.
Universal Credit is the quickest way to get money to people who need it,
State versus market debate has been settled by Austerity and Covid19
A debate that ignores the third sector, where government and the market fail
The safety net does not exist anymore, it needs to be a safety trampoline under a Labour government, catches you when fall and catapults you back when your ready
To many isms on here, stick to the day job and stop entertaining yourselves in public, not nice
UBI only makes sense in a socialist society – in a capitalist society landlords and other exploiters will always manipulate rents and prices to squeeze the maximum benefit to themselves from all markets – so tenants would be little better off than under UC+housing benefit today.
Lenders’ perception of the creditworthiness of buy-to-letters gives them the advantage over first time buyers. That, coupled with land-banking by builders, investment ownership by foreign oligarchs and all the other price-manipulating interventions keeps the rental market and the property price bubble inflating until the next crash.
If you want socialism you have to accept the end of ownership, banking/financial secrecy and inheritance.
The urge to bias the future to favour one’s own descendants is thought natural, but it’s not – it’s purely a consequence of capitalism.
What’s natural is for the living to choose their leaders on their personal qualities and abilities, not on those of their ancestors.
What’s natural is for the smartest known species in the universe to evolve its society until all its members thrive.
What’s natural is educating everyone to the highest standard they can achieve, because that produces maximum genius.
Dictating that today’s and tomorrow’s elite shall be chosen from the scions of yesterday’s elite – and then restricting the best education to them alone – is extraordinarily inefficient and produces demonstrably poor results.
Allowing the dead to dictate the present and the future is absurd, but it’s the essence of capitalism.
Sunak will pay people just enough for the recipients to pay what they owe the banks, the credit-card companies & the landlords. This’ll keep the slush fund liquid. They can give something back to the Tories as donors – well every favour deserves another favour.