Northern Powerhouse

[BillyStubbsTears]

Savvy

Some chance. East Coast Mainline was working perfectly well in public ownership, but that's not supposed to happen, so it had to be privatised. Grand eh?

[Savvy]

Bill, East Coast were a "TOC" who, if my memory serves me right relinquished their operating agreement on account of their in ability to balance the books! The engineering sector needs a total rethink as the amount of money wasted under,the current regime is a national disgrace! Work is being completed but if the costs for the projects were published there would be uproar! Next time you go past a travel lodge or Premier Inn on a weekend  check how many railway related vehicles are in the car park! Soeone is picking up the tab and guess who it us

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

So it was just a pause then....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34402592

Less of the doom and gloom I think chaps!

[BillyStubbsTears]

BFYP

Fair point.

Shame they couldn't have announced the 3-4 year delay 6 weeks BEFORE the election instead if 6 weeks after...

[glosterred]

Would any political party done so?

[BillyStubbsTears]

Corbyn claims he's going to not play those games. We'll see.

[BobG]

I saw some space filler little article somewhere today that claimed there's been a survey asking people what current 'things' they expect won't be around in 10 years time. Obvious things like cheque books of course, but the Labour Party figured quite highly too. Hmmm. No matter how much sense this guy talks, and he does talk some, he has a fair chance of ending up as the ghost at the funeral.

BobG

[BillyStubbsTears]

Bob

It's because he then has a car crash like today. At odds on defence policy with his Shadow Defence Secretary.

This isn't New Politics. It's slow motion suicide. He will make 20% of people adore Labour and make the other 80% abhor them. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that Labour will vanish as a serious political party.

The irony is that Labour is finally talking economic sense. But that means nothing when Corbyn goes into student politician mode like he did today.

[jonrover]

So it was just a pause then....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34402592

Less of the doom and gloom I think chaps!

Yes its fantastic...NOT

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/major-rail-electrification-projects-delayed-6546596#ICID=sharebar_twitter

[jonrover]

Billy, I find it quite intriguing your stance on Corbyn. And I am really disappointed you don't seem prepared to give him a chance. Out of interest which New Labour cardboard cut out did you vote for?

That insufferable t**t Toby Foster did a phone in on Radio Sheffield yesterday morning asking if Corbyn could ever be PM. Admittedly, I didn't catch the full phone in, but the few callers I did catch all came out with the same shite...Corbyn cannot win enough Tory seats to win an election. The rationale behind their argument was fairly sound IF Labour are simply chasing Tory voters in 2020. But the reality is if Corbyn can connect with the 34% of the registered electorate (not even counting the hundreds of thousands if not millions how are unregistered...including the 2 million to be cynically wiped off the electoral register by the Tories in the coming months) who did not vote, it is not difficult to imagine a big Labour surge. I knocked hundreds of doors in the six months prior to the election and these 34% simply were not targeted. I'd go as far to say Labour's doorstep strategy was a f**king joke. Basically preaching to the converted and not engaging if they had turned to another party. And I reckon a large percentage of them don't vote because the simple reality is there WAS no difference between Tory cuts and Labour cuts and there was no real difference in what was being served up in the manifestos, after all shite is shite, whether its watered down shite or 100% pure shite.

Now, there is a debate to be had to hopefully engage this lost 34%, the people forgotten, disengaged and disenfranchised. They now have an opportunity to debate and decide what kind of a society they actually want, instead of having the kind of society the New Labour hierarchy want imposed on them.

I think this change is massive and a game changer. Or it can be if people put their differences to one side, take off the gloves and fight. Either that or walk away and join the Lib Dems. I know which camp I'm in. 

[BillyStubbsTears]

Jon

I'm a cynical old t**t. I know what happens when optimism runs ahead of sense. And that is what is happening now.

Corbyn's entire career has been based on him being the principled rebel. Not toeing the party line. Putting his conscience and beliefs above the collective consensus. Now he has to accept that every single MP in his party will justifiably take the same line. And the result will be a farce. You notice how there have been no senior Tories rushing to the screens to have a go at Labour over the Trident debacle? Do you stop and think why? It's because Labour are doing the job of making themselves look stupid and the Tories don't need to ram home the point. They will be podding themselves laughing at this and rubbing their hands at the thought of a few more years of it.

You will NOT get into power by running the Labour Party as some sort of student collective where everyone can publicly say whatever they want on any subject. You CANNOT get into power if shadow cabinet ministers are going to openly contradict each other in public. You can try and spin that as democracy in action and new politics. You can try to spin it as everyone being allowed to air their views and therefore a great thing. But it is not. It is car-crash politics where you make yourselves look shambolic and disorganised.

You can take over a student union that way. You might even take over the odd Council. But you will NOT be elected to run the 7th most powerful country in the world.

I don't have a problem with many of Corbyn's policies. Especially on the economics. What I have a problem with is Corbyn the man. He is absolutely, categorically NOT what you want as a political leader. He will and does appeal to like minded people, those who have an optimistic belief on how the world ought to work. That is why he is do popular among the Labour membership. But the Labour membership is less than 1% of the electorate. And he will NOT get his message across to enough of the other 99%, because he will not be given a chance to. The story will not be about Corbyn's policies. It will be about how many of the Shadow Cabinet openly disagree with him about his policies and how the Labour Party looks an unelectable wreck as a result.

I'll give him 2 years, tops, IF the Tories really want to go for his throat. He'll get savaged in the May polls in 16 and 17 and he'll be gone by Conference 2017. Unless the Tories and the press play cat and mouse with him, go easy on him and save their powder for 2020.

[BobG]

I wandered by a screen in the work canteen today. The usual tickertape type scrolling Sky news at the bottom with a headline in bold type just above. "Labour split on defence" the headline said.

Now, think about exactly what that means: it means the press are already sticking the boot in - undermining his credibility, his appeal, his perceived competance. It means the spin of democracy in action simply ain't gonna work.

Although I do like some of his policies, and even his behaviours, this man will kill the Labour Party for generations - unless they come to their senses and knife him quick. He is entirely, completely, utterly unelectable. And I'll bet a fair wedge that them that say he has a chance are either Tory, or, were born after 1970. No one who saw what happened to Neil Kinnock, and even more, Michael Foot will be in any doubt at all about what will happen if Corbyn sticks around. I forgot who said it, but history really is repeating itself. And the silly fools haven't read their history books.

BobG

[Sammy Chung was King]

The press are following who is currently in power, you are getting minor celebrities piping up supporting the tories, because they are afraid that if labour do get in, they will have to pay a fairer amount on the house they live in, what they earn, all the little perks will dry up.
You could see them during the election, they were posting in the papers everything, they were frantic because they thought at the time Miliband was going to be prime minister.
Now all they are, are smug, because the gravy train is still pouring, all their little perks are safe, it's alright the poor and disabled can pay more, we don't care, we are going to the yacht at the weekend, the country is corrupt and getting worse.

[jonrover]

I'm still waiting with intrigue to find out which New Labour cardboard cut out Billy (and Bob) voted for, and which one would get elected, selling watered down Tory shit? You'll be telling me next Labour elected the wrong brother in 2010.

History is repeating is self is it Bob? Thing is, there is a generation who have been left on a Thatcherite scrap heap, continued by New Labour for decades. That is the difference between the Kinnock and Foot years to here and now. These people have no effective voice or political representation whatsoever. None of the other three would have changed that fact.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Jon

I was appalled at the quality of the candidates for Labour leader. All of them. They are all political
Pygmies compared to the people who were at the top of the Labour Party 30 years ago. But just because there were three on the Right if the party that you didn't approve of, that does not deal with the manifest failings of Corbyn as a serious political leader.

As I say, I don't disagree with many of Corbyn's policies, economics especially. But in politics, it's no good being totally correct if you are also totally unelectable. That's self-indulgence. I prefer to compromise and be electable. That is why, for all their mistakes and policies that I did not agree with, I preferred New Labour in power to any Labour out of power.

You want to paint it as a black and white choice. True Labour Values or Judas-like Betrayers. You want to paint a picture that the Right of the Labour Party are closet Tories. That is silly. As I've said before, if you can't see the difference between the party that brought in tax credits for the poorest workers and the party that is chopping them back, between the party that paid for a massive school-building project and the party that cancelled it, between the party that took away the worst of the last recession through counter-cyclical Govt spending and the one that called that being a Deficit Denier, then we can't have anything like a sensible discussion.

Because politics is not about black and white. It's about getting the best you can in reality.

You think Corbyn will deliver that? I truly hope you're right and I will campaign for Labour and put everything I have into getting Labour to win in 2020.

But he won't win. He'll make you feel good about yourself, and despise traitors like me (who voted for Cooper with gritted teeth as the best of a shite lot by the way). But he will do nothing for the people who he purports to be in the business of looking after. Because his whole approach to politics (NOT his policies, his style and his history) make him utterly unelectable.

[BobG]

Thank you Billy. Saved me.

I tend to deal in realities. Corbyn's unelectability is a reality. This current government is a reality. I would prefer even a far right Labour party in government than this current bunch. Such a government might not be my own personal politics, but that's irelevant. At least it would a party that remembers people outside the top 5% are actually human beings. I'll compromise a very great deal to get that while you, Jon, sit back to watch yet another decade of Tory misrule crawl by.

BobG