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mattiloy

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Posts posted by mattiloy

  1. 25 minutes ago, MEGABOWL said:

    As someone who was born in 1977 and lived through Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron and the whole cavalcade of c**ts that followed him it’s very easy to be enthusiastic about Starmer. I was 11 when Thatcher left. I was 20 when Blair got in. I was 33 when Cameron got in. I know the f**king difference.


    Blair came to power at a time when the global economy was going gang busters and ramped up the public spending and everyone had a nice few years. Unfortunately it was all smoke and mirrors, funding profligate current account spending and ineffective reforms by flogging off assets and PFI and now you have little to show for it.

    Had they won in 2010, alastair darling was committed to austerity promised greater and deeper ’swingeing cuts’ than the tories.

    Philosophically there is a fag paper’s difference between Blair and Cameron.

    And now their heirs Starmer and Reeves reaffirm this time and again in both words and deeds but for some reason people have decided that they shall disbelieve what Starmer and Reeves say and do and instead hold on to some odd fiction that they are secret radicals. Presumably because they are at least nominally still ’Labour’ and the association of that brand with doing good things has still not completely died.. yet.

    I predict another decade of austerity, underfunded public services, paternalistic authoritarianism and overseas interventionism. But dont say I didnt warn you!

  2. I know folks are desperate for something other than tory rule but how do you manage to just ignore everything Starmer’s Labour say and do and make up your own version of who they are?

    In a decade or so, the only thing that will remain of another lacklustre New Labour govt will be another insufferable odd couple podcast with Starmer and David Cameron chuckling their way through wacky political anecdotes and into the hearts of centrist dads everywhere, their despicable records long since forgotten.

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  3. 5 hours ago, steviewevie said:

    ok, so...when? There aren't that many times when Labour have been in power for a start.

    Because at moment seems like Hunt wants to actually inflict pain on the country and labour.


    ???

    am i missing something?

    Hunt getting rid of non dom tax status but giving the cash away in tax cuts is not really inflicting pain on the country. Its still net positive from the status quo right?

    Its upto Reeves and Starmer if they decide to maintain those tax cuts rather than spend on the public sector. Stop making excuses for Labour spinelessness. A tremendously unpopular govt, a public sector in dire need of investment and still they are apparently happy to concede the intellectual argument before a shot has been fired - ’tax cuts good, nice stuff bad’ - all hail the iron chancellor!

  4. 44 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

    The country was in a much better state than it is now after the last Labour government and that’s even taking into account the Crash. It’s the Tories that ruin this country again and again.

     

    Shades of shite.

  5. 3 hours ago, steviewevie said:

    I think Sweden closed high schools and Unis...

    Covid lockdowns were most probably a factor, keeping young people isolated can't be good, but there is a lot of other stuff going on too.  I expect the future looks pretty bleak for many young people at moment - and they're just getting blasted with addictive and sometimes very damaging social media crap constantly.


    Schools were mostly open.

    But yeah kids here also get depressed.

    Social media execs dont let their kids on it for good reason. The correlation between this sh*t being embedded in kids lives and the collective mental breakdown of a generation of kids is near perfect. I think its just so easy to detach yourself from reality and just sit and ruminate. I guess the pandemic exacerbates that, but its a problem that predates it too.

  6. 57 minutes ago, Neil said:

    the govt admit that most pip claimants are for mh problems, I've never met someone who genuinely cant work cos its too stressful (pull yourself together lad, no income is more stressful) but I've met plenty too disabled to work.


    https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/benefits-assessments-making-people-with-mental-health-problems-more-unwell-mind-research-reveals/

     

    Quite difficult to find stats on it but found a source in the above article - seems like its quite a lot less than most.

    I just checked, for stress you get 600 quid a month… of course you’ll get the odd chancer, but it seems unlikely to me that a majority of claimants will be putting it on for the princely sum of 600 quid a month.

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  7. 14 minutes ago, Neil said:

    Greens in Govt hasn't lead to lots of good green policies. And the coalitions have made Scots feel badly govered.perhaps thats just Scots governing scots.


    Why do you hate scottish people so much? Seems personal. Have you been spurned by a lover who had it away with a big scotts porridge oats type fella?

  8. 51 minutes ago, kaosmark2 said:

    I find it crazy how people talk about how dangerous coalitions are, when in fact the Tory and Labour parties are in themselves coalitions of a huge range of views, so they can govern in FPTP.


    Exactly. Cameron had the backing of less than half of tory MPs for the gay marriage bill. 

    The current tory minister for women’s health is vocally anti abortion.

    Lee Anderson, until recently the tory vice chair, is an advocate for reinstituting the death penalty and called for migrants to ’f**k off back to France’.

  9. 12 minutes ago, Neil said:

    not diluted, you'd have ukip wagging the tory dog (more than it does now).


    This is the weirdest argument out there. Across Europe, right wing populist parties have governed in coalition with other right wing parties, and yet it is the UK, with its allegedly extremist proof system which has left the eu, puts refugees on planes to rwanda, turns a blind eye to Russian money funding one of the major parties, and from the ppe scandal to the teesside freeport deal- allows corruption and cronyism to run rife at every level of government.

    Its a bizarre argument and speaks of the self obsession of brits. Absolutely clueless as to what actually happens outside of that sh*tty little bubble.

  10. 4 minutes ago, Neil said:

    No one cares about politics but pr will make them care. Don't care enough to change the voting system. So how will they care enough to change the system.


    They would if they could.

    PR leads to higher voter turnout, higher engagement, more activism, larger party membership so a bigger pool of candidates to choose from (better representatives).

    Its a no brainer. As in you have to have no brain to think that FPTP is better.

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  11. 10 minutes ago, Neil said:

    Nobome agrees fully with another individual and won't agree bfully with a party either. So the most attractive for anyone's vote is the party thats the least disagreeablem your wanting a cult not a political programme


    Right… but this is true of pretty much every decision anybody ever makes. Shall we also only have two cereal brands to choose from? Two football teams to support?

  12. 52 minutes ago, Neil said:

    that's how people vote under any system.


    Nope. PR almost always leads to higher turnout and greater engagement with and trust in the system.

    Exceptions shown in attached graph are australia (non pr but compulsory voting) and switzerland (pr but very decentralised and lots of referenda so not as important to vote in the nationals).

     

    58 minutes ago, Neil said:

    so most important to you is to deny democracy, pr might have stopped the referendum happening, but the result of a ref would be the same.


    Above all else, the brexit vote was an opportunity for voters to express their dissatisfaction at a system that makes them feel as if they have no control. It was mainly a protest vote.

    PR and the referendum outcome would have been different.

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  13. 14 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

    I think we might get some of PR at the end of Labours 2nd term if they get a majority at the next election. It would bring some of the green voters on side and then protect against a Tory majority. 


    This wont happen. Starmer is a right wing authoritarian, he has no interest in advancing democracy or progressive politics.

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