Tory Party Watch 2017 (Hearts Of Darkness)

[Danger Man]

Fuck the ballot box, this country can't wait until 2020, enough is enough. Who's with me, lads?

I bet your parents are architects, doctors or lawyers. Or some mix of these.

[Johnny Yesno]

I bet your parents are architects, doctors or lawyers. Or some mix of these.

'Bet he's not salt-of-the-earth like my tenants', sneers rentier class man.

[Danger Man]

I'm a working class man made good, not some posho wanting class war.

[All Surrogate]

From a socialist point of view, poshness doesn't really enter into the delineation of class; it's pretty much solely based on objective relations to means of production.  Architect, doctor and lawyer are all examples of jobs; owner of property isn't.

[Danger Man]

I had to do lots of jobs to get the property, mate.

But I know this forum well. Some rich kid box ticking socialism will always beat a working class guy who worked hard to get where he is today.

[All Surrogate]

It's a shame that you're feel beaten because you don't get the respect you feel you deserve on here, mate.

[MoonDust]

I had to do lots of jobs to get the property, mate.

But I know this forum well. Some rich kid box ticking socialism will always beat a working class guy who worked hard to get where he is today.

Not me DM.

I think All Surrogate makes a valid point though about doctors being an example of a "job" (I.e. being paid a wage/salary for their time/work. I'd disagree with All Surrogate about lawyers or architects falling into this category as a lot of them are self-employed and own their own law firm or architect practice), whereas owners of industry (not necessarily property as that's a broad term) isn't an example of a job.

You can be as educated or uneducated as anything yet still be working class depending where your social role stands in society.

I've used this example before but London tube drivers make over 50k a year, which can easily afford a middle class life style and send their kids to university to become doctors or lawyers or architects. But a tube driver is still working class based on the fact they earn a wage driving trains. They don't own or run the tube lines.

[MoonDust]

I bet your parents are architects, doctors or lawyers. Or some mix of these.

No. Mum's working class. My dad's "working class man made good" as you put it. I'm aware I'm luckier than most, but I'm by no means posh.

[HappyTree]

I knew a lady from Amsterdam.

[olliebean]

I think All Surrogate makes a valid point though about doctors being an example of a "job" (I.e. being paid a wage/salary for their time/work. I'd disagree with All Surrogate about lawyers or architects falling into this category as a lot of them are self-employed and own their own law firm or architect practice), whereas owners of industry (not necessarily property as that's a broad term) isn't an example of a job.

If they just sit back and take the profits, it's not a job. But if they work for a living, then that's a job, regardless of whether they own the company or not. I reckon there's a lot of small business owners working bloody hard to put food on the table that would object to your categorisation of self-employment as "not a job."

[pancreas]

I knew a lady from Amsterdam.

Did she like sex?

[Johnny Yesno]

I had to do lots of jobs to get the property, mate.

But I know this forum well. Some rich kid box ticking socialism will always beat a working class guy who worked hard to get where he is today.

Yeah, but you're rentier class now. I'm sorry having to work to become rentier class has left you with a massive chip on your shoulder.

[brat-sampson]

So you're free to have whatever opinions you want about politics, so long as you can provide a signed affidavit that neither of your parents went to University. Seriously, who gives a fuck? Absolute straw man lowest common denominator bollocks.

I'll be attaching some credit history reports to this post later on to prove it.

[MoonDust]

If they just sit back and take the profits, it's not a job. But if they work for a living, then that's a job, regardless of whether they own the company or not. I reckon there's a lot of small business owners working bloody hard to put food on the table that would object to your categorisation of self-employment as "not a job."

Yeah fair point. In archaic terms I guess the small business owner and self employed would be "petit bourgeois", since they're neither bourgeois nor proletariat. Modern equivalent would be lower middle class, I guess.

[olliebean]

Yeah fair point. In archaic terms I guess the small business owner and self employed would be "petit bourgeois", since they're neither bourgeois nor proletariat. Modern equivalent would be lower middle class, I guess.

Or working class who've been bullied into registering as self employed doing something that makes them sod all so they don't show up in the unemployment statistics.

[MoonDust]

Or working class who've been bullied into registering as self employed doing something that makes them sod all so they don't show up in the unemployment statistics.

Yes, that too. Of course by "self-employed" I'm not talking about the exploited "gig economy" workers and other such exploited workers forced to register as "self-employed".

[Black_Bart]

https://www.ft.com/content/6fa69b80-12f5-11e7-b0c1-37e417ee6c76

A piece about the man behind the woman... Phil.

When Theresa May begins the process of extracting Britain from the EU this week, one longstanding pro-European may feel a pang of regret: her husband, Philip.
   
Mr May, an experienced Tory activist who in recent months has become the prime minister's eyes and ears in the City of London, played a small but significant role in securing the Conservatives' backing for Britain's involvement in Europe during Margaret Thatcher's tenure as prime minister.

Shortly after the Westland affair — an internal government power struggle over whether a US or a European consortium should take over the UK's last remaining helicopter manufacturer — a motion was presented to the 1986 Conservative party conference calling on the party to "build up" the "political and economic strength of the European Community", the EU's predecessor.

[Quincey]

A very critical report into England's schools has been released:

The report by the Public Accounts Committee warns:

The Department for Education "does not seem to understand the pressures that schools are already under."
Funding per pupil is reducing in real terms and schools have to find make cuts worth £1.1 billion in 2016–17 and £3 billion by 2019–20.
The Department for Education has no means of knowing whether cost-cutting measures taken by schools "threaten the quality of education and educational outcomes."
The Department has not learned from "how over-ambitious efficiency targets in the NHS proved counter-productive".
Committee chair Meg Hillier said there is a "collective delusion" among ministers about how much can be cut from public services without effecting their quality.

https://politicalscrapbook.net/2017/03/mays-brexit-diversion-from-schools-disaster/

Minister forced to apologise three times in 15 mins over the treatment of disabled people under the government:

https://politicalscrapbook.net/2017/03/tory-minister-forced-to-apologise-3-times-in-15-minutes-over-treatment-of-disabled-people/

[Johnny Yesno]

"collective delusion"

I didn't realise we had a new term for not giving a flying fuck.

[Quincey]

Frances Ryan is probably the best columnist at the Guardian, she writes about disability and is always worth reading.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/30/disability-benefit-jobseekers-allowance-sick-workshy

From April, anyone newly classed by the Department for Work and Pensions as "Wrag", or Work-Related Activity Group – people judged as so ill they can only take steps to prepare for future work rather than actually apply for jobs – will see their benefit shrink by £30 a week. That translates as a cur of nearly 30% (down to £73 a week) to a disability benefit already so meagre it's leaving a third of recipients struggling to afford food.

If paraplegics and cancer patients having to skip meals isn't grotesque enough, consider that since the policy was announced in 2015 ministers have sold it on the premise that cutting benefits will give disabled people an "incentive" to get a job – as if the reason someone with Parkinson's has been out of work for a year isn't that they can't hold a pen because of their tremors, but because they're enjoying the "easy life" on benefits.

It's no coincidence that this move will see a disability benefit reduced to the same rate as Jobseeker's Allowance. By ending the distinction between healthy jobseekers and disabled people who – based on the government's own assessment – aren't "fit for work", the Conservatives are sending the message that having a debilitating disability doesn't mean a person needs specialist support or extra money, but simply a bit of motivation. This isn't only a cut to a benefit but an attempt to alter the purpose of the system itself: it shifts "welfare" from an entitlement to help, to a discretionary means to change "bad" behaviour.

Similar thinking sits behind the limiting of child tax credit to two children, also coming into effect next week. The "rape clause" of this policy – which will see rape survivors have to prove that their third child was conceived from rape to be eligible for benefits – has rightly been criticised as cruelly intrusive, but the wider policy itself is based on the same legitimisation of monitoring poor women's reproductive choices. It not only punishes low-income women who have "too many" children, but embodies the belief that the threat of punishment will somehow lead them to change their actions.

The same strategy has been the undercurrent to other cuts to benefits relied on by low-income parents in recent years. The work and pensions secretary, Damian Green, celebrated the "success" of the benefit cap in November with the boast that it makes sure people who are out of work "are faced with the same choices as those who are in work" – an unsubtle code for "have fewer children". The difference is that with child tax credits, this judgment is now being applied even to working families.

To misquote Neil Kinnock, in Tory Britain I warn you not to be disabled, I warn you not to be poor, I warn you not to be a third or fourth child of someone on benefits.

[Quincey]

Government watchdog contradicts May's PIP comments: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/theresa-mays-claim-no-one-10025943

[Pranet]

Housing Benefit is ending for 18-21 year olds.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/01/housing-benefits-cut-young-adults-homeless

I work in housing, and the aim of government policy since 2010 seems to have been to increase homelessness.

[non capisco]

I work in housing, and the aim of government policy since 2010 seems to have been to increase homelessness.

A cursory glance round most streets in London indicates that policy is definitely working.

[HappyTree]

I have been of the opinion that the general plan for humanity is to reduce its number on the earth. And obviously those in charge of such a plan wouldn't want themselves or their ilk to be the ones to be eradicated.

Maybe it is time now to look at the policies of our "developed" countries' governments and admit to ourselves that they are in fact quite deliberately trying to kill the poor, the sick and the disabled. Perhaps now this idea won't be shouted down quite so vociferously as a tin foil hat conspiracy when we look at the evidence around us.

Do you think this is all only down to incompetence? When the ill effects of these actions are so uniformly and consistently targeted against the "useless eaters"?

I don't.

[Johnny Yesno]

Do you think this is all only down to incompetence?

No, I think they just don't give a flying fuck. It's greed combined with fatalism.

[Quincey]

Benefit changes could push 200,000 children into poverty: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-39455078

[Cuellar]

A cursory glance round most streets in London indicates that policy is definitely working.

And Oxford - I certainly think it's got worse in the time I've lived here. Sheltered accommodation being sold off and converted into expensive housing/flats, homeless shelters due to close. Sometimes every other doorway on my ride home has someone sleeping rough in it (sometimes more than one person). Becoming very grim/depressing place to be. Looking more and more like a living-museum exhibition from the future about the terrible inequality in early 21st Century Britain.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

A cursory glance round most streets in London indicates that policy is definitely working.

Not just London, if you're ever around Westminster you can tell it's happening. Every MP must know about this. It's impossible not to.

[Quincey]

And Oxford - I certainly think it's got worse in the time I've lived here. Sheltered accommodation being sold off and converted into expensive housing/flats, homeless shelters due to close. Sometimes every other doorway on my ride home has someone sleeping rough in it (sometimes more than one person). Becoming very grim/depressing place to be. Looking more and more like a living-museum exhibition from the future about the terrible inequality in early 21st Century Britain.

I think Oxford is the worst place for housing in the UK, with rents as high as London but salaries not matching it - why is there no Oxford Living Wage like there is a London Living Wage? I agree that homelessness in Oxford has got worse. Do you walk through Cornmarket or George Street on your way home? Lots of people sleeping in doorways there?

Disabled students are struggling to finish their degrees due to benefit cuts: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/apr/04/disabled-students-future-independence-payments-cut-benefits

[Absorb the anus burn]

Two weeks ago I was in Liverpool catching up with family.... At 11.00 pm I counted twenty plus rough sleepers in the shop doorways on Bold Street, running between the 'Bombed Out Church" and Central Station.