Congratualtions Keir Starmer

[Iberian Red]

There's no answer to your wisdom and wit.😆😆

[scawsby steve]

SS

Those people who "take the moral high ground"?

What exactly do you mean by that?

I can't believe someone as intelligent as you is even asking that question. There are countless examples of it, far too many to mention them all on here, but I'll give you a couple of examples.

After her humiliating defeat in the Election, that clown Jo Swinson got on her soapbox and practically accused the nation of being full of racists and xenophobes. Who the f*cking hell does she think she is?

A similar thing was going on with this forum during the last 3 years, with people being accused of being racist and xenophobic because they voted for Brexit. I've never been racist and xenophobic in my entire life, so what right have people who don't even know me to accuse me of those things?

That's what's known as taking the moral high ground, but I think you already knew that.

You've hardly backed up your opinion in a credible way there.
1) You used the word 'practically'.
2) Your own opinion of what others may or may not think of you.
1/10. Must do better.

What a pathetic post. Are you seriously saying that someone who doesn't know me can accuse me of being a racist, and what I then think of that is nothing other than an opinion?

I hope your understanding of the semantics of Spanish is better than your understanding of the semantics of English.

[scawsby steve]

Steve, you have done well there, one out of ten from a no mark.  Miss Beal  and Mr Dixon would have been proud  of you.

You'll not believe this Brian, but I actually was never taught by Miss Beal (Aunty B) or Mr Dixon (Deadshot). For geography I had Bob Oliver, and for science Mr Groom.

As regards Iberian Red, well at least he got out of this sh*t country, I'll give him that. The trouble is, just like Sydney, he can't keep away from our politics.

It baffles me as to why.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Interesting Shadow Cabinet shaping up.

Dodds at Shadow Chancellor is a big move. She is one of the intellectual rising stars of the party and has a chance to make the case for the very different economics we will need post-virus.

This editorial today from the Financial Times (The FINANCIAL TIMES!) shows what a different world we are going to be in after the virus.

https://mobile.twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1246371782698905600


Starmer is sending a pretty uncompromising message to the Corbynistas too. No place for them in the very highest levels of the Shadow Cabinet. Interesting thing now will be to see if and at what level he makes room for Long-Bailey.

[SydneyRover]

SS-you have congratulated him and Selby? do you want KS to do well, the labour party to win? I'm with DW could never ever vote on the right I don't understand where you're coming from, one an ex minier and both of you spend you're time putting the boot into labour.

Well done Sydney, you've just confirmed how confused you are about certain things. First of all, there's only one thing I've ever accused Labour of, and that's their stance on Brexit, which I always maintained would lose them the Election, and was proved right.

As regards the other thing, have you heard of the word "magnanimous"? I always congratulate people on achieving things, whether or not I like them or agree with them, because to do otherwise is acting like a sore loser or a petulant child.

I think you know exactly what I mean.

Mmm sore loser or petulant ............... difficult choice ................... at least I didn't pick brexit 

[SydneyRover]

Steve, you have done well there, one out of ten from a no mark.  Miss Beal  and Mr Dixon would have been proud  of you.

You'll not believe this Brian, but I actually was never taught by Miss Beal (Aunty B) or Mr Dixon (Deadshot). For geography I had Bob Oliver, and for science Mr Groom.

As regards Iberian Red, well at least he got out of this sh*t country, I'll give him that. The trouble is, just like Sydney, he can't keep away from our politics.

It baffles me as to why.

Not sure I'd want to be taught by Mr Groom 

[tyke1962]

Interesting Shadow Cabinet shaping up.

Dodds at Shadow Chancellor is a big move. She is one of the intellectual rising stars of the party and has a chance to make the case for the very different economics we will need post-virus.

This editorial today from the Financial Times (The FINANCIAL TIMES!) shows what a different world we are going to be in after the virus.

https://mobile.twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1246371782698905600


Starmer is sending a pretty uncompromising message to the Corbynistas too. No place for them in the very highest levels of the Shadow Cabinet. Interesting thing now will be to see if and at what level he makes room for Long-Bailey.

The Tories will be hyperventilating on reading that , the final solution and the Singapore On Thames wet dream up in smoke , oh dear .

[wilts rover]

Interesting Shadow Cabinet shaping up.

Dodds at Shadow Chancellor is a big move. She is one of the intellectual rising stars of the party and has a chance to make the case for the very different economics we will need post-virus.

This editorial today from the Financial Times (The FINANCIAL TIMES!) shows what a different world we are going to be in after the virus.

https://mobile.twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1246371782698905600


Starmer is sending a pretty uncompromising message to the Corbynistas too. No place for them in the very highest levels of the Shadow Cabinet. Interesting thing now will be to see if and at what level he makes room for Long-Bailey.

Over half the new Shadow Cabinet were in Corbyn's final one - including the leader, deputy leader, shadow chancellor. and home secretary. They are all Corbynistas now - get over it.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Wilts.

I think we are on different definition lines here.

[SydneyRover]

Anneliese Jane Dodds is a British Labour and Co-operative Party politician currently serving as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer since 2020, and has served as Member of Parliament for Oxford East since 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_Party

[drfchound]

Interesting Shadow Cabinet shaping up.

Dodds at Shadow Chancellor is a big move. She is one of the intellectual rising stars of the party and has a chance to make the case for the very different economics we will need post-virus.

This editorial today from the Financial Times (The FINANCIAL TIMES!) shows what a different world we are going to be in after the virus.

https://mobile.twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1246371782698905600


Starmer is sending a pretty uncompromising message to the Corbynistas too. No place for them in the very highest levels of the Shadow Cabinet. Interesting thing now will be to see if and at what level he makes room for Long-Bailey.

BST, what do the think they mean by saying they will question the privileges of the elderly.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Hound.

The elderly have been the one and only demographic group that has been protected by Austerity. There has been a huge inter-generational shift in wealth from the youngest to the oldest over the past 30 years but in particular over the past decade.

The baby boomer generation (not all but many of them) have had generous occupational pensions and have profited from crazy increases in house prices. Millennials have had all that taken away from them. Millions of boomers had society subsidise their improvement by paying them to go to free Universities. They then voted for parties that ripped that away from the younger generation and told them if they wanted the same benefit, they would have to rack up £50k+ debt.

I've said for years that there was a reckoning coming. It's here now. This cannot continue and it won't continue after the virus. There will have to be policies that redistribute wealth between the generations. Higher taxes for high earners and policies that water down the value of houses, whether taxes on wealth or policies that grind down house prices through higher inflation over the decades.

It won't be popular among those who have benefitted, but it is coming because the alternative is not tenable.

By the way, I'm saying that as someone who isn't officially in the baby boomer generation, but has had many of the benefits they had. I am one of the ones who will need to be paying more.

[drfchound]

BST, the older people haven’t had it all good though have they.
There are lots of older people who are living on a pittance and a 3.9% increase on a weekly pension adds a couple of quid to their wealth.
Some people have been savvy and disciplined enough to save money for their futures, possibly by investing in private pensions, rather than blowing everything they had and expecting the state to look after them later on.
Is it fair to hit the savers now?
Some of the older people have also had to pay for their kids to go through the a University system too.
Those same kids will, or have already, benefited from inheriting those houses that soared in value.
Higher taxes for higher earners is the norm isn’t it but to penalise the older generation for building a pot to keep them comfortable in old age isn’t right.

[BillyStubbsTears]

And that's why I said "not all but many of them".

Question for you. When did you buy your first house?

[SydneyRover]

Hound if you don't tax those that earn more where are you going to get the revenue from?

[BillyStubbsTears]

BST, the older people haven’t had it all good though have they.
There are lots of older people who are living on a pittance and a 3.9% increase on a weekly pension adds a couple of quid to their wealth.
Some people have been savvy and disciplined enough to save money for their futures, possibly by investing in private pensions, rather than blowing everything they had and expecting the state to look after them later on.
Is it fair to hit the savers now?
Some of the older people have also had to pay for their kids to go through the a University system too.
Those same kids will, or have already, benefited from inheriting those houses that soared in value.
Higher taxes for higher earners is the norm isn’t it but to penalise the older generation for building a pot to keep them comfortable in old age isn’t right.

Hound.

1) State pensions are not fantastic of course. But they have been protected against Austerity cuts while working age benefits have been savaged over the past ten years. That is one generational inequality.

2) Your comments about people putting by for their families is precisely where the issue is. That has led to grossly unfair outcomes because of grossly unequal differences in the growth of assets in different parts of the country. House "values" (I use the word advisedly because they are not real values, just a result of a screwed up economic system) have risen far faster in Guildford than in Denaby. So someone who "invested" £1000 in property in those two places in 1970 has seen a very different outcome in wealth today.

That is manifestly unfair and it is a market failure. It needs to be addressed for the good of society as a whole. Why should a grandkid in Guildford inherit a share in a £1m house while the kid in Denaby gets a share in a £50k house? And that's assuming the parents were ever able to get on the housing ladder.

3) Why should a person's ability to get an education depend on their grandparent's success on the house price lottery?

There is a very well established field of economic theory, backed up by lots of real-world evidence which clearly shows that societies in which wealth is allowed to pass through families see higher and hiher concentrations of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and a long term decline in the economic health of the society. We've lived through two generations of saying that the ideal is to be selfish (that's not a perjorative term, I mean it in the most basic sense) but that is now coming to an end. If we are sensible. Like that FT editorial says, we will need far more Govt intervention in how society is run and how wealth is spread in future.

[tyke1962]

Hound.

The elderly have been the one and only demographic group that has been protected by Austerity. There has been a huge inter-generational shift in wealth from the youngest to the oldest over the past 30 years but in particular over the past decade.

The baby boomer generation (not all but many of them) have had generous occupational pensions and have profited from crazy increases in house prices. Millennials have had all that taken away from them. Millions of boomers had society subsidise their improvement by paying them to go to free Universities. They then voted for parties that ripped that away from the younger generation and told them if they wanted the same benefit, they would have to rack up £50k+ debt.

I've said for years that there was a reckoning coming. It's here now. This cannot continue and it won't continue after the virus. There will have to be policies that redistribute wealth between the generations. Higher taxes for high earners and policies that water down the value of houses, whether taxes on wealth or policies that grind down house prices through higher inflation over the decades.

It won't be popular among those who have benefitted, but it is coming because the alternative is not tenable.

By the way, I'm saying that as someone who isn't officially in the baby boomer generation, but has had many of the benefits they had. I am one of the ones who will need to be paying more.

Whilst I wouldn't argue with your reasoning Billy with the points you have made you also have to factor in how that plays out politically .

The Mail , Express and The Telegraph who have a huge readership amongst the boomers are going to have a field day and pull in the public sympathy .

Political suicide in my opinion .

[BillyStubbsTears]

Tyke

It doesn't really make any difference. The FT has it nailed. The issue is that the economics don't add up any other way. There's effectively nothing more to wring out of Austerity. The debt we will have at the end of this can only be dealt with in the way we did after WWII. There's a term for it which I can't remember off the top of my head, but effectively it means inflating away the debt.

Here's an example of how that works.

My parents bought their house in 1965. It cost £2200. Their mortgage payments were £15/month fixed over 30 years. That was a crippling debt to a young couple. We had very little spare cash when I was young. But that was an age of high inflation and high wage rises. So, by the time they made their last payment in 1995, it was barely loose change. That is effectively what the entire global economy will have to do over the next generation.


That will mean keeping interest rates low while encouraging inflation to take off up to 4-5-6%. That will erode the value of savings and property, but so be it. There's no other way out. We cannot afford to let people sit on hoarded wealth (non-productive savings, property etc), however unfair that might seem to those it hits. That is precisely what we did after the War, whilst also investing in things like mass higher education to build the next generation of wealth creators.

If you run inflation at 6%, a debt of £200bn today is effectively worth only £100bn in 12 years time, £50bn in 25 years time and £10bn in 50 years time, without paying a penny of it off. Unfortunately the same thing applies to savings; their value goes down even if you don't spend any of it. But as I say, we are going to be moving into an era where the key thing is driving down the effect of debt, not looking after savers.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I knew the term would come back to me.

Financial Repression. That's going to be the term of the 2020s. I'll guarantee that this becomes a key plank of Labour's economic response to the virus. And the Tories will have to do it too, although it goes against every one of their principles. Just like the Churchill and Macmillan Govts had to do it in the 1950s and 60s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_repression

[drfchound]

Hound if you don't tax those that earn more where are you going to get the revenue from?

Where did I say that higher earners shouldn’t pay more tax.

[SydneyRover]

You didn't but it's obvious to most that when the flannel has been wrung as it has for 10 years and more there is nothing left so you have to spread your net wider and ask those with more money to pay more, no?

[drfchound]

And that's why I said "not all but many of them".

Question for you. When did you buy your first house?

I bought my first house in 1974 for £4215.
My take home pay at that time was £72 per month.
The mortgage repayment was £44 per month.
My wife worked too as a teacher so her income helped of course.

[drfchound]

You didn't but it's obvious to most that when the flannel has been wrung as it has for 10 years and more there is nothing left so you have to spread your net wider and ask those with more money to pay more, no?

So if I didn’t say anything about it, why did you address the question to me.

[drfchound]

BST, the older people haven’t had it all good though have they.
There are lots of older people who are living on a pittance and a 3.9% increase on a weekly pension adds a couple of quid to their wealth.
Some people have been savvy and disciplined enough to save money for their futures, possibly by investing in private pensions, rather than blowing everything they had and expecting the state to look after them later on.
Is it fair to hit the savers now?
Some of the older people have also had to pay for their kids to go through the a University system too.
Those same kids will, or have already, benefited from inheriting those houses that soared in value.
Higher taxes for higher earners is the norm isn’t it but to penalise the older generation for building a pot to keep them comfortable in old age isn’t right.

Hound.

1) State pensions are not fantastic of course. But they have been protected against Austerity cuts while working age benefits have been savaged over the past ten years. That is one generational inequality.

2) Your comments about people putting by for their families is precisely where the issue is. That has led to grossly unfair outcomes because of grossly unequal differences in the growth of assets in different parts of the country. House "values" (I use the word advisedly because they are not real values, just a result of a screwed up economic system) have risen far faster in Guildford than in Denaby. So someone who "invested" £1000 in property in those two places in 1970 has seen a very different outcome in wealth today.

That is manifestly unfair and it is a market failure. It needs to be addressed for the good of society as a whole. Why should a grandkid in Guildford inherit a share in a £1m house while the kid in Denaby gets a share in a £50k house? And that's assuming the parents were ever able to get on the housing ladder.

3) Why should a person's ability to get an education depend on their grandparent's success on the house price lottery?

There is a very well established field of economic theory, backed up by lots of real-world evidence which clearly shows that societies in which wealth is allowed to pass through families see higher and hiher concentrations of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and a long term decline in the economic health of the society. We've lived through two generations of saying that the ideal is to be selfish (that's not a perjorative term, I mean it in the most basic sense) but that is now coming to an end. If we are sensible. Like that FT editorial says, we will need far more Govt intervention in how society is run and how wealth is spread in future.

Of course state pensions aren’t good, that is why I mentioned£ that a 3.9% increase adds all of a couple of quid a week to the receivers wealth.
Also, I didn’t say anything about people putting money by for their kids.
The money they have saved is to get themselves by in their old age, to supplement the low state pensions that they get.
There are too many people living beyond their means, projecting an image of having money, when they have no savings for the future.
They are the ones who will expect the state to look after them in the future.
The savers have done without some of the luxuries earlier in life so that they can live comfortably later on.
As for the house price inequality, yes it does seem unfair in the example you give but we all know that prices in Guildford will naturally be higher than up here because of the ability of people to commute into London more easily from Guildford than from Denaby.
It is no surprise to me.
It is and always has been, that there will be differences in peoples worth and and opportunities open to their children, as the saying goes, not all animals are equal.

[SydneyRover]

Hound, because although you may think you're doing it tough or you did your share, you are in a better position than the majority of the younger generation that are following through that can't afford a house, can't get a full time job etc

[drfchound]

Sydney, how I am doing is irrelevant.
When I was a young man I always thought that there were people who were older than me who were better off than me.
Why should the younger people today think they are different.

[SydneyRover]

 

[tyke1962]

Tyke

It doesn't really make any difference. The FT has it nailed. The issue is that the economics don't add up any other way. There's effectively nothing more to wring out of Austerity. The debt we will have at the end of this can only be dealt with in the way we did after WWII. There's a term for it which I can't remember off the top of my head, but effectively it means inflating away the debt.

Here's an example of how that works.

My parents bought their house in 1965. It cost £2200. Their mortgage payments were £15/month fixed over 30 years. That was a crippling debt to a young couple. We had very little spare cash when I was young. But that was an age of high inflation and high wage rises. So, by the time they made their last payment in 1995, it was barely loose change. That is effectively what the entire global economy will have to do over the next generation.


That will mean keeping interest rates low while encouraging inflation to take off up to 4-5-6%. That will erode the value of savings and property, but so be it. There's no other way out. We cannot afford to let people sit on hoarded wealth (non-productive savings, property etc), however unfair that might seem to those it hits. That is precisely what we did after the War, whilst also investing in things like mass higher education to build the next generation of wealth creators.

If you run inflation at 6%, a debt of £200bn today is effectively worth only £100bn in 12 years time, £50bn in 25 years time and £10bn in 50 years time, without paying a penny of it off. Unfortunately the same thing applies to savings; their value goes down even if you don't spend any of it. But as I say, we are going to be moving into an era where the key thing is driving down the effect of debt, not looking after savers.

I don't disagree with any of that Billy but what's right and what's political acceptable whilst in opposition is very often two different things .

Making that politically acceptable is one hell of a challenge for the Labour Party .

The older people will simply point to mobile phone contracts , two weeks in Ibiza , £200 for a night out and two or three takeaways every week , something they never had or did with the Tory rags standing up for them .

Personally I'd leave it well alone and try and find easier politically acceptable low hanging fruit .

[drfchound]

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[SydneyRover]

Hound, how old were you in 1974 when you got a loan to buy your house? and are most people the same age now able to do the same? It is for most people the biggest purchase they will ever make and if they can't get on the ladder when they are younger chances are it won't happen. And I also agree with bst's point there is massive inequity between areas of the country.