UKC

Interesting, (to me at any rate), article in the Guardian on Friday:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/29/labour-party-equality

OK, written by an old Etonian and chairman of the Demos advisory board, but I think he raises some interesting points. Odd phrases aside, (wtf are 'modern "easyJet" people"?), statements like this struck a chord with me:

On social mobility too, Labour’s graduate professionals seem to be saying: climb those ladders as we did. Of course, Labour should be on the side of ladder climbers, but it has been insufficiently sensitive to the shadow they cast over those who cannot or do not want to climb with them. Just as London can make the rest of the country feel inconsequential, so those who get to university and into the top part of the labour market can make those millions of decent, responsible people doing ordinary jobs feel like failures

A country with a large group of strivers, but also decent pay and status for those who stay put and do basic jobs, is something that is becoming harder to achieve – both financially and psychologically – as the labour market and the education system increasingly divide into insiders (mobile professionals/graduates) and outsiders (immobile people without A-levels doing often basic jobs).

Has the Labour Party, (in common with the other major parties), become fixated on the Middle class professionals, (or people who see themselves as such),? Are the non-graduate members of society seen as an underclass, whose skills can be imported more cheaply, regardless of the societal impact?

In reply to Ridge:

"those who get to university ...can make those millions of decent, responsible people doing ordinary jobs feel like failures"
Around 50% of the population gets to go to uni these days, and many of those self-same undergraduates and graduates currently in their teens and twenties who I know, think it's getting to be far too many. This particular statement is evidence that it's Guardian journalists who are out of touch, perhaps more so even than Labour politicians.

The real news story here is that Guardian writers and readers still find it noteworthy that the traditional right and left are out of touch, no-matter who with. But then, history is full of examples of people and institutions in the middle of huge changes, totally not getting it but still managing to carry on. After all, the Church of England is still with us despite having become totally detached from the realities of 20th century life, let alone the new millenium.

In reply to Andy Morley:

I completely agree. I left school with half a dozen O levels in the dark days when Thatcher stalked the land and unemployment was high. However, although proper apprenticeships were on the wane, there was still the option of a low paid job with day release to the local FE college or local poly and going the ONC/HNC route.

Fast forward 30 odd years, and that low paid entry level job that needed a couple of O levels is now a "graduate position". The job hasn't changed, and the employee isn't any higher calibre, it's the same low achieving slacker that I was (am..), but forced to effectively stay on at school for another 5 years and accrue a mountain of debt rather than have been working and gaining experience for the last 5 years.

As you say, none of that has registered with the Oxbridge elite who got an internship due to family connections, (this applies equally to the Guardian or political parties).

In reply to Ridge:

I suspect you may be out of date on that position. Alot of major employers now are taking on a level students and training them up. I know of one engineering company in Bolton area who takes on 90 students a year, 50% in electrical/electronics engineering and stirs them through the vocational route.( interestingly more than 50% are female).

PWC are now dropping their graduate scheme as they have realised that all they are doing is taking on the same type of person from the same background.

Noe of this appears to have registered with most people.

In reply to neilh:
I suspect I'm not. The company I work for does take on 'proper' apprentices, due to the complete lack of skills in the market. Although I applaud PWC and other companies also following that route, it is still national policy to shove as many people as possible through the sausage machine that is currently the education system with the single goal of increasing university attendance. We are still obsessed with the "professional" / "uneducated worker" split, with Non-graduates being viewed as second class in some way.

This links back to the original article, where decent, hardworking people doing low to semi-skilled roles are marginalised in our society and ignored by major parties.

In reply to Ridge:


There are still some who value education for educations sake, who believe that a well and equally educated society is a worthy goal in itself. Thankfully you have nothing to worry about though as that isn't a view held by the conservative party and as education becomes more expensive in England we will no doubt see a return to the old days of higher education for the wealthy and apprenticeships and manual Labour for the less well off.

Every society has a choice, to use education as a means to make a wealth creating Labour force or to use education to further the intellectual, scientific and philosophical development of its citizens. The UK is well and truly in the former category, if we build a society where money and jobs are the main goal of education then is it any wonder that our (world class) education system gets likened to a sausage factory? People live for 90 odd years in our country, is an education that spans longer than 4-16yo not something which we should be striving for instead of complaining that 50% of the population are getting to educate themselves for more than 13% of their lives? It's dark days when people complain that too many kids have access to higher education, bring back old Labour indeed.

In reply to Sharp:


To take the point about a well and equally educated society. The current system, in it's obsession about creating university places, is producing an underclass of functionally innumerate and illiterate school leavers who would benefit from greater vocational learning. It may not fit your utopian ideal, but sitting through discussions about Brecht and Wittgenstein isn't going to produce an entire nation of intellectuals. Also manual labour and apprenticeships may be beneath you, but other people might actually enjoy that sort of work if it had more status.

As for better educated, for every well educated graduate, (and I've met some scarily clever ones), I meet far more who don't seem to have benefited at all. Poor social skills, limited vocabulary, unable to clearly articulate themselves. Some are actually thick as a whale omelette, so Christ knows how they graduated in anything.

In terms of a return to "the old days of higher education for the wealthy", I'm more interested in a return to the days of free university places for those with the aptitude to benefit, regardless of wealth. We actually used to have that via student grants. I could have probably got the grades to go but didn't like the idea and went off to do something less intellectual, but thousands of working class youths benefited from that. Unfortunately that drawbridge was removed, and social mobility has actually dropped under the current system.


I'm complaining that maybe 75% of that 50% are being sidelined into style of learning that doesn't really suit them or possibly interest them, and they're paying through the nose for the privilege. You also seem to think it's impossible to be educated outside of school, sixth form and University?

In reply to Ridge:
Everytime you make the worst assumptions about how you perceive someones view point and mischaracterise their arguments you make ukc a slightly shitter place for everyone else. I've happily worked in low paid largely manual labour all my life and will undoubtedly continue to do so, I'm sorry if that doesn't fit your fantasy realm of me sipping coffee and wanking over Descart. I was fortunate enough to go to university and as a 17yo orphan from a poor background the state paid my tution fees and I now only have a relatively small student loan to pay off. Those days are over in England, I was the first to go from my family and due to the changes to higher education in the last five years it is perfectly possible that I will be the last. Now isn't the time to be complaining that too many people are forced into university.

Both my nieces are smart enough to go to uni but how they will afford it I have no idea. I expect the eldest will manage to make it but the reality is if you come from a relatively poor working class family today and you want to go to university then you have a monumental struggle ahead of you and a looming mountain of debt.

How you can complain that people are forced into university when it's so bloody hard to get in and pay for I have no idea and along with your claim that 75% of undergraduates have been sidelined into it demonstrates your complete disconect with the reality of the higher education system in this country and how much access to university has been restricted in the last 5 years.

I would like to see university education availible to anyone who wants it, I'm not sure why that makes you feel I want to force everyone to go if another option may suit them better. The reaility today is the opposite, more and more are forced away from university that would have benefitted from it and that's a sad thing.

In reply to Ridge:

When I contemplate the two traditional factions of the ruling élite in this country, I can only see two apparent differences between them, one to do with their policies and one to do with how they behave. When I think about this some more, I realise that those differences are not differences at all but merely different flavours of the same underlying thing. On the whole though, it's probably a good thing that they appear to have something to disagree about as the resulting conflict leads them to keep each other in check, to some extent at least.

Taking a perspective on the overall difference between that ruling élite in both its left and its right-wing flavours, and the rest of us who pay for them, does not strike me as particularly interesting because once you've arrived at a basic grasp of what it's all about, the rest of the discussion is largely just noise. But the other topic to emerge from the article quoted, which is the difference between London and the rest of the country, does seem to be an interesting one and deserves some exploration.

Trouble is - I'm not quite sure quite where we set out from with that, at least as far as the above discussion is concerned. From a purely personal perspective, I guess that when I travel to London (usually by coach in recent years, before that by train) I get a mounting sense of excitement as I penetrate the metropolis. It's like the Tardis in that it seems much bigger on the inside than on the outside, but then its outside is already big enough. The downside is that it can be mentally and emotionally quite exhausting. Maybe it's time I went there again.

In reply to Sharp:


You seem to be missing the point being made.
There has been a continual drive (the famous 50% figure misses the fact it wasnt far off prior to that) to have kids go to university.
This has resulted in qualification inflation in many jobs with, as Ridge notes, many jobs which would have just had couple of a levels in the past now having a degree as a minimum requirement.
Likewise jobs which had a degree now may ask for a masters, ramping up the costs even more.
As such kids will feel forced into going to university to try and stand a chance in the job market. As you note this will be difficult for kids on low incomes, or even medium incomes, but that doesnt stop the pressure existing.
If the university graduate numbers collapse then we may see this being reversed.

In reply to Ridge:




Which, of course, is why they lose voters to UKIP. Don't kid yourself that graduate professionals aren't also in job competition from Europe and further afield - its a pretty global job market across the board

In reply to Ridge:

The drive to increase university participation is one interesting discussion. I must admit that I would rather not see universities dominated by courses that are 'immediately employable', but a fixation/focus on a career and money is hard to disregard/condemn given or consumer culture.

The original and more interesting question relates to those who do NOT enter HE - have they been abandoned by Labour? Who looks after their interests best?

In reply to Sharp:


I work part-time with an organisation that has the aim of giving children from backgrounds that have low university participation the necessary skills and knowledge to get into a top British university. So this is a bit of a hobby horse.

While some of the recent changes to university finance have been distinctly unhelpful, one of the things it is worth pointing out about the current tuition fee / student loan system is that it is more akin to a "graduate tax" than debt. You probably know this already, but you can take out a government-backed student loan to cover the tuition fees. Although that loan has an interest rate, the repayment system is unlike any other loan: you pay 9% of your income over 21k. So if you have a job that pays 21k, you don't pay anything; if you have a job that pays 30k, you pay £810 per year. After 30 years, any outstanding loan gets written off. Also, mortgage companies etc. don't treat it as outstanding debt - they see it as affecting your ability to pay (so if you're paying £810 a year on your loan, they'll take that off your "effective income") but not as outstanding debt in the same way as a credit card debt would, for example.

Many universities (particularly the old rich ones) also have bursaries in place to help with maintenance.

While that's not meant to be a hard sell for a system I think is not ideal, it should make university access a lot better than if tuition fees had to be paid up-front, for example.

Feel free to message me if you want to talk any more

In reply to Sharp:

Why exactly, given that there is very little evidence that mass university attendance in the old 3 year, long holiday model will is of much benefit either to the majority of participants or to the country as a whole? It is also almost entirely unafordable, which is why fees are inexorably rising. The 50% target was simply a fatuous and ideological position plucked out of the air, certainly countries like Switzerland or Germany that have lower university attendance rates are perfectly economically successful, while there is no reason to believe that their societies are harmed by being spared the massive costs of general tertiary education.

All education has a cost-benefit trade-off, like everything else in life. For general primary education, the case both social and economic for it is virtually unanswerable, while it is pretty good for general (at least to 16), secondary education. The case for very high % tertiary education is actually pretty poor, almost certainly invalid - it should actually be a SMALLER proportion of the cohort than we have now (though selected as far as possible entirely on ability, not background, also supplemented by shorter, less conventional university style courses for much of the population throughout its twenties).


That is entirely the issue - would they have benefited from it? Highly unclear, or that they would have benefited enough to oblige everyone else to pay for them to be able to do so. The cost-benefit trade off is far from as one-sided as you seem to think, while there is a good case to be made that it is in fact negative, so that all general university attendance becomes is an adolescent rite of passage, while at the same time creating a doppler shift in required bits of paper for jobs.

In reply to Sharp:


Firstly, my apologies.

Secondly, I think we may be violently in ageement here. My position is:

University education free or heavily subsidised for those with the desire and aptitude to go.

I agree that it's financially difficult to get into university, but people are forced into doing so by the lack of alternative provision.

It's also worth pointing out these financial restrictions started a lot longer than 5 years ago, and IIRC it was under a labour government.

In reply to wbo:


What were Labour's keynote policies in the last election? Trying to minimise zero-hours contracts, freeze utility prices, reduce inequality. Regardless of whether you think it would work, much of that stuff is of marginal actual use to the liberal, educated metropolitan graduate, but would be pretty useful to those without a higher education or much in the way of marketable skills. So did Labour really abandon those people?

In reply to Sharp:


Nonsense

"I believe that education is a good in itself – one of the central hallmarks of
a civilized society – indeed the means by which societies ensure that
everything which is best in our society is passed on to succeeding
generations.
But the case I want to make today goes beyond that.

Education has an emancipatory, liberating, value. I regard education as the
means by which individuals can gain access to all the other goods we
value – cultural, social and economic – on their terms. I believe education
allows individuals to become authors of their own life story.
I know from my own experience that the opportunities I have enjoyed are
entirely the consequence of the education I have been given. Perhaps I
value education so much because it has given me so much – but what it
has given me most is the chance to shape my own destiny. For generations
of my family before me, life was a matter of dealing with the choices
others made, living by a pattern others set. I, and those members of my
generation who were given the gift of knowledge by wonderful teachers,
have been given the precious freedom to follow their own path.
And that relates directly to education’s second value – as a driver of real
social justice. The very best means of helping all realise their potential – of
making opportunity more equal – is guaranteeing the best possible
education for as many as possible.
Education, properly understood, also has another value which I believe is
much less appreciated, certainly by those guiding education policy today.
As Michael Oakeshott once argued, every human being is born heir to an
inheritance – “an inheritance of human achievements; an inheritance of
thoughts, beliefs, ideas, understandings, intellectual and practical
enterprises, languages, canons, works of arts, books musical compositions
and so on…”

M.Gove

In reply to Postmanpat:

inheritance –


Unless you need to go in a home, then your inheritance belongs to the government.

In reply to Postmanpat:


...


Well, he certainly talks the talk.

In reply to Ridge:



You could argue it is the other way around. Want a degree? That will be ~£50-80k with the possibility of earning around £30k age 25 with a mound of debt. Want to be a plumber? Sure, here is apprenticeship for which you get paid, with the opportunity to run a successful business by the age of 25 if you are any good.

In reply to MG:


The govt provide apprenticeships? There are a few very good employers providing real apprenticeships. Many modern apprenticeships are a route around minimum wages.

As for the plumbing route, depends on if you think the income fron a successful plumbing business, plus the risk, is preferable to the potential career progression from 30k at aged 25?

In reply to MG:


Are there really that many people tossing up the choice between being a plumber and studying at university?

Sounds like the thing to do is go to university and then become a plumber, so one can muse on Descartes whilst elbow deep in a u-bend.

In reply to Sharp:

You say:


Just after you'd said:


Which seems to be you doing just what you complained about.


The fact is that the last/current government -- the one you are complaining about -- entirely removed the "cap" on university numbers, so university *is* now available to all who want it and who minimally qualify. If is now much more accessible than it has ever been.


Well no, it is now a personalised graduate tax. In other words, those availing themselves of a university education now pay extra to maintain the university system. Would you prefer that this be charged also to those who don't go to university?


Yeah, but it's not really "kids", it's young adults of 18 to 22 or so. Whether university is the right place for many of the cohort, as oppose to taking a job with ongoing training and career development, is something everyone should think hard about.

I don't think it's obvious that university is clearly best for many middle-ability young adults, it may be, depending on what sort of career they want, but for many it won't be.

A lot of 18-yr-olds currently end up heading for university because it is the "default" or "expected". Often they spend three years achieving little and then get a mediocre degree that doesn't really help them, given the numbers of others who have degrees these days .

We, as a society, need to think about this, and a much greater range of non-graduate apprenticeships or similar career paths would be a good thing.

In reply to Ridge:


Probably depends on ability and ambition. But both routes actually require quite a lot of both, I suppose. It is the lower level manual and clerical jobs that are simply disappearing that will be the medium term problem, I imagine. There is nothing really replacing things like check-out assistants or bank clerks (or in the future drivers??), yet many people without the ability to be either a successful graduate professional or tradesman. This is more than a political failing, I think. More of (yet another) big societal problem.

In reply to Ridge:

I'm really not convinced that tinkering with the education system has the power to produce or do away with a whole segment of society like 'the underclass'. One benefit of having an education is that a familiarity with art, literature and history tells those of us whose minds are open to the information that underclasses of various sorts have existed ever since there have been cities.

I would say that the main drivers in the huge changes that have been accumulating over recent centuries are things like the application of technology in industry and communications, with all sorts of knock-on effects being produced by all that. It looks to me as if our education system is struggling to keep up with those changes. Keeping people off the dole for three years by sending them to university probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but I don't think it's things like that that are fuelling the process of change.

In reply to seankenny:


Those scarcely qualify as policies, more as unattainable statements of wish-fullfilment, the left-wing equivalent of motherhood and apple pie. Some of them were outright harmful, despite the pious gloss, such as Miliband stating that he would issue decrees on high as to what the prices of energy (or for that matter Mars Bars), would be, i.e. endless, expensive, ineffectual, nannying state intervention. This was despite him being when climate change secretary (by all accounts in equal measure arrogant, ignorant and incompetent in that role), an enthusiast for substantially INCREASING energy prices, as well as incidentally reducing the number of competing energy suppliers. "Zero hours contracts" being demonised ignores the situation in for example France, where they have the most unpopular president of the 5th republic ever, a socialist in love with the sort of labour-market rigidities that make those with jobs un-sackable and those without unemployable. Easy to fire is easy to hire, marginal work is better than no work at all as it keeps people motivated and active, and gives them the chance to move on to better jobs.


Yes. For fatuous declarations of vague generalities, of which the most absurd was the bizarre one-liner "we will abolish the deficit", without a single tangible suggestion of how this remarkable and difficult feat was to be achieved. That these high sounding but meaningless declarations were literally inscribed on tablets of stone was the ultimate in ridiculousness and intelligence-insulting stunts, though rumours that the stone was actually inscribed with the words :

"My name is OzyMiliband,
Of most peculiar things
Look on my works ye British and despair"

Are probably hard to substantiate, as is the claim that the stone is now surrounded by lone and level sands that stretch far away. The Tories in response made plenty of silly and probably undeliverable promises, but were rank amateurs in comparison with the "wild promise a day, arbitrary number of 'good things' plucked out of the air, with 'bad people' being punished to provide them" coming out of Labour.

Which to get back to the original question, why did Labour lose so badly, especially in Scotland where they were utterly destroyed from a position of complacent dominance to virtual wipe-out in the space of a single election? Probably because most people want government to keep things mostly running pretty OK, and don't want to be told in minute detail how to live their lives, what they must think, what they are allowed to eat etc. The endless hectoring, preachy bossiness of the left seldom convinces people, even if their stopping arguing against the endless dictats convinces the dictators they are "winning" the argument. They aren't, everyone else has gone down the pub. Or climbing in the case of climbers, or both.

When it comes to deciding who of the not very good alternatives is best to run the country, the Tories don't have to be liked. They just have to be viewed as competent enough to keep the show on the road. Labour and the left are neither liked (despite their sustained illusion of their permanent possession of the moral and intellectual high-ground, shared by no-one else), nor viewed as competent.

In reply to Simon4:

I do hope you wiped your computer down after that.

In reply to Simon4:
Most would agree that the SNP positioned themselves to the left of Labour, so quite a lot of your rant kind of crumbles.

In reply to Ridge:

No apologies necessary, it seems we are violently in agreement then. I think education is probably the most important foundation of any society and as you say that should include many other options as well as university.

In reply to mac fae stirling:

I think you're missing the point of a rather perceptive (and entertaining) post. It wasn't that Labour were too far to the left, it was the absence of any substance to their leftist dreaming that put paid to their appeal. I'm a floating voter and I genuinely couldn't work out what Labour stood for, apart from left wing "motherhood and apple pie" as Simon4 coins it, and a nasty propensity to stoke the politics of envy.

In reply to BnB:

No, it was a general(and somewhat cliched)diatribe against Labour 'and the left'. And an example of how out of touch the 'left' are was the SNP wipe-out in Scotland. My point being that the SNP are more to the left than the current pathetic Labour party and some form of leftist politics [at least as compared to the loathsome tories, since the SNP are not that 'left' anyway] can still be popular with the electorate in some places. The rest of the post just struck me as pointless clever-dickery.

In reply to BnB:


I'd say the opposite. Any government that gets elected has to deal with some huge and seemingly intractable problems like what to do with the NHS, how to manage the national debt and how to keep the economy prospering. All of that has to be done in the face of other competing/ distracting issues such as international politics and the ensuing conflict both abroad and on the domestic front, be it bomb-threats or disquiet at immigration.

Ideology will not solve any of those and party policies aimed at addressing them need to be flexible and fit-for-purpose, not fixed and dogmatic. I think people in the UK will vote for the party that they thing has the most competent set of people to manage these difficult things. The only ideological issue that I see as bothering the 80% is whether the UK splits up or stays divided. Labour's problem has always been that it tends to be long on ideology and short on competence. The conservatives, whatever you think of their beliefs, do seem to be able to field a more competent-looking team.

In reply to Andy Morley:

Just checking; are you suggesting that the tories are not ideologically driven? I presume I must have misunderstood you.

In reply to mac fae stirling:

They are only 'ideologically driven' from the perspective of someone who wants to change 'the system' away from market capitalism. If you consider wanting to maintain and improve the status quo to be 'ideologically driven' then yes, they are, but that leads to the old, tired debate 'everything is political', which yes it surely is, but not in the way that people who harp on about it want it to be.

In reply to mac fae stirling:

Do you think all those who voted SNP are of the "left" or do some of them just believe in more powers for Scotland or maybe less powers for the big State or resent the influence of bunch of the Islington metro elite ?

In reply to Postmanpat:

I think the SNP is currently a roost for a bunch of people who will have all/some of the above views.

In reply to Andy Morley:

The Labour party had/has no intention of moving away from market capitalism. Niether does the SNP, they are pro-business. On your reckoning, thus non-ideological. Neither of them are left wing parties. The tories don't want the status quo. They want to massively reduce the public sector, the trade unions, workers rights, clamp down on immigration, slash welfare, scrap the human rights act, possibly even leave the EU etc, whether this is an improvemnt is up to you, but it is certainly ideological in any known sense of the term.

In reply to Ridge:

I think its the opposite.. its lost touch with the center.

It's been 30+ years since it won anything outside of the Blair years..

The old working class is too small now, if it exists at all.

In reply to mac fae stirling:


Exactly, so many of them would empathise with the view that
"most people want government to keep things mostly running pretty OK, and don't want to be told in minute detail how to live their lives, what they must think, what they are allowed to eat etc. The endless hectoring, preachy bossiness of the left seldom convinces people, even if their stopping arguing against the endless dictats convinces the dictators they are "winning" the argument."

In reply to Andy Morley:


Quick apology to myself here for the above lazy reply, born of a lack of enthusiasm for the turn I thought the conversation might be taking. For 'market capitalism' read 'mixed economy' or on the political front 'pluralism'. However, I think that 'the system' that we have now is changing all the time and that by the time you've agreed on the meaning of one particular label (which probably takes about 50 years to achieve) it will have moved on several-fold.

It's more of a 'Pax Romana' which was always a bit of a euphemism as it's never really a true 'pax' then or now. But the point is, it's enough of a peace for those of us who are amongst what the Russians call the 'golden billion' not to want to upset the applecart, in the main.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Dunno, you would have to ask them. It is a characterisation [caricature] of the 'left' that I don't recognise.
'They' mostly don't want the tories.

In reply to mac fae stirling:


Christ, which planet have you been on?


Because they don't want their babies eaten…...

In reply to Postmanpat:


All too often, debates like this degenerate into ridiculous posturing, not only in places like this but even dare I say it, in the House of Commons. To my mind, that's because the underlying issues being discussed are empty and symbolic and nothing to do with what's going on in the real world. That's why Labour is out of touch - because it is way too attached to its traditional ideological shibboleths and can't get a grip on what's really going on out there.

In reply to Postmanpat:


Possibly one which recognises the irony of someone complaining about hectoring whilst doing exactly that?
Or indeed anyone who can spot that all sides of the political spectrum can have a tendancy to exhibit those behaviours, just generally on different topics, sometimes with good intentions, sometimes with bad.
For example if you really give a toss about managing future health costs then how people live is rather important. Far cheaper to fix something at source.

In reply to dissonance:


No doubt simon4 is immensely influential but possibly not actually a government.


Not the impression he gave at all.


There are, of course, other possibilities but mentioning them would make you "Tory scum".

In reply to Postmanpat:


not sure what you are wittering on about here.


In your mind anyway.


no it wouldnt. What is with the victimhood complex?
Really is f*cking bizarre.

In reply to dissonance:

Hectoring by some bloke on the inter web is hardly comparable (even to you surely) to that by governments.


It's just an observation. Here's an example that took at least twenty seconds to find.
Try opening both your eyes.

https://libegalfrat.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/the-nhs-and-tory-scum-hashtag-...

In reply to Postmanpat:


What are you on about?
Do you really think his ranting is about governments and not the "left" as he sees it. jesus, that would be like anyone vaguely left defending Bruces rants.
Oh as for hectoring by governments. I give you the behavioral inishgts team. All about trying to push people in a perceived better way.


Never mind I am sure someone will help your search skills. Its entertaining that you choose one which references that once, in the header, but hey ho.

Its the normal waahhhhhh response. I note you deployed it on another thread when someone pointed out the stupidity of saying get all the kids above average. Instead of responding sensibly you go straight for the victim approach.
Which, incidentally, is one of only three references in a year on this site referencing "scum" (admittedly pub is excluded). of which two are using it in a "waaahhh".


Why dont you?
The difference between us is I can note some people will use "tory scum" although i would note that it seems mostly aimed towards the goverment whereas you seem determined to defend anything which matches your ideology.

In reply to dissonance:



In this case, and in that para, primarily governments. Try reading it.


Thankyou


Utterly bizarre comment. Doesn't the headline count? (Christ, you're not admitting to have read the whole thing are you?)



No idea what you're on about. Who is talking about victims? Have you been to the pub?

Why wouldn't I defend things I believe in? Don't you? The difference is that I try and argue a case whereas whereas the haters start (and often finish) with cliched virtue signalling abuse.

In reply to Postmanpat:


no its not. Its an incoherent rant about the "left". As are most of his political comments. its much the same as bruces stuff used to be but reversed.


As anyone sensible knows headlines are rarely reliable indicators of whats inside. I skimmed it and then I used secret technology to look for other references. Then again it would appear you read Simon4s rants so not really in a strong position.


The victim mentality beloved of many including apparently yourself.


Apart from you are rather keen on cliches. Either using them directly or projecting onto others.
The stats one is a superb example of it. There were a number of ways to answer it but you tried to turn it into a cliche attack.

Anyway you win. Its all the nasty lefts fault.

In reply to dissonance:


That bit is pretty clear

Help! I'm being victimised, help, help....

What are you on about?


The wot?


Good, that's settled then.

In reply to Andy Morley:

Indeed, competent looking, but hardly competent by international comparison.
Their plans completely messed up the economic recovery, only when they basically gave up all their targets and reversed it they got some glimpse of recovery.
What they are very good at is getting elected on nonsensical plans that don't work, then break all their promises, and pretend the plan worked.

But I think they are in a much more difficult situation now, they have a full majority and they won't be able to blame the lib dem for broken promises.

In reply to RomTheBear:


I'd be curious to hear how your perspective on this squares with the fact that out of all the countries in the world, ours seems to be one of the ones that people from elsewhere are queuing up to get into?

In reply to Andy Morley:

I am not sure how that relates with the economic performance of the UK government, there are many factors at play and the UK was not alone having people queuing up to get into.

Our only "success" compared to the rest of Europe was really the job boom, so mayeb that exaplin some migration, but in terms of economic recovery, standard of living, and poverty rates we did way worse than pretty much every other major western European country.

In reply to RomTheBear:


True, but from my perspective, money isn't everything and if people are also queuing up to get into the UK for non-material reasons, like "it's a nice, comparatively safe place to live", that too would suggest that we're all doing something right.


So let me see if I've got this right. You think that 'the job boom' has nothing to do with 'economic recovery, standard of living, and poverty rates'..?

In reply to Andy Morley:

I agree with that but it's not the whole story.


It doesn't have nothing to do but that's not the whole story, GDP per capita is still down compared to pre-2008 (although you could argue it was inflated), but more importantly France and Germany have done better than us, all with much lower poverty rates, and that is despite a incompetent socialist government in France and the drag of the eurozone...
It's all good to have full employment and I recognised the success of the coalition on that particular point, but if people are still poorer than they were before the crisis, after 7 years, I don't really think it's a particularly good performance.

It's pretty clear to me looking at the figures that Osborne botched it in the first two years with his austerity, policy that he had to pretty much reverse. That was two years lost for nothing.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Nonsense about France. The world Bank stats show the UK just above France for GDP per capita. The IMF projections for 2014 show us just below, but in both cases the difference is so small to be meaningless.

In terms of poverty the UK is only worse off on the ludicrous relative measures which aren't about poverty at all (and of course actually and perversely show poverty as having fallen when poor people have got poorer). When measured in terms of absolutes like key material possessions France generally does worse.Indeed, on these measures the UK is better than Germany.
eg.
http://www.unicef.org.uk/documents/publications/unicef_reportcard10brief_ch...


If you look at this http://blog.euromonitor.com/2014/11/the-recovery-from-the-global-financial-... you'll see that the UK's GDP per working age person has actually pretty much caught up with France's and from a much lower base in2009. i.e.. it has recovered more.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I know it's about the same now. Before the crisis the UK was significantly ahead. I don't think that doing barely as good as France after 7 years, when they are bogged down by the Euro, an incompetent government, and an inflexible job market, is particularly a good performance.


I agree, but if you look carefully you'll find it started picking up some pace only after 2012... after Osborne decided to ditch his austerity plans... If he hadn't screwed up in the first two years we would now be ahead instead of still painfully catching up, which is probably slowing now as they will most likely implement their austerity manifesto (against the advice of the IMF and OECD).

In reply to RomTheBear:


Sheesh. The UK had a much bigger dip 2008-9. I think you can guess why that might have been and why the immediate recovery might therefore have been slower.
2009-12 France had a very marginally quicker recovery.

You are simply ignoring the shape and extent of the downturn and its causes.

In reply to Postmanpat:


There's a reason for that. Most of the politics of the 20th century was about tribal loyalties - you can argue about facts and figures until you are blue in the face with tribalists but that will not changed the entrenched positions of people who, in the 21st century, still hark back to the old world of left and right, flat caps, whippets, toffs in top hats and all that other Beano-style politics.

In reply to Postmanpat:



Where did you see I am ignoring that ? Of course the downturn was bigger in the UK. Did I say otherwise ?
But that's the crux, a much bigger downturn should have meant a bigger bounce back, but that hasn't happened, despite a job boom. Although it did improve when they pretty much gave up their austerity plans, which now they sold to us as the solution, how people swallowed that, I don't know, maybe years of dumbing down country economics as household economics in the media worked.
Now they have two option either they break their promises, or they do implement them and then loosen up towards the end before the next GE, hoping people forget the first part. Most of the specialist press seem to say they will go for the second option, that's what I think they'll do as well. But IMO it's really an irresponsible way to run a country.

In reply to RomTheBear:

No but you're ignoring what it implies. See below.

>
Of course it did: economy A drops from 10 to 5 and recovers to 12
economy B drops from 10 to 7.5 and recovers to 12

which has recovered more??

As for the job boom, you make it sound like isn't part of the recovery. It is. Presumably what you are trying to ask is why that part of the recovery hasn't translated into a consumption boom?

I note, incidentally, that not once do you mention the the pattern of European demand or other external factors as either impacting UK economic performance or the coalition's economic policy.Weird.

In reply to Postmanpat:



Well he problem is that the Uk has not recovered much more than France or Germany, despite plunging more initially. We would have recovered more during that time if we hadn't lost two years in stupid ideological policies.


I am not denying that I have already said it was quite a success. But that's all for nothing in the end if people are still not richer than they were before.

>Presumably what you are trying to ask is why that part of the recovery hasn't translated into a consumption boom?

Not only, but yes.


Because it wasn't the topic. But of course there are lots of factors. My point is simply that the asuterity didn't work, which Osborne pretty much admitted himself by reversing his policy two years in, and now they got elected to do more austerity. I guess they just wanted to push Labour to go with lower spending plans during the campaign, not expecting to win themselves and having to deliver their nonsensical promises.

Ironically the only hope now is that they are responsible enough to break their commitments (again).

In reply to RomTheBear:


Can you just answer my question? Once that is done and we can discuss how it relates to the comparison of the UK and France.


It's not "all for nothing". It is much better that people are in work than out of work. But you seem to think that 2015 is the end game and victory has been declared. It isn't and it hasn't.


Yes, there are lots of factors. Do you think they are independent? Do you think that Osborne and the Treasury didn't look at the impact of the Euro crisis when making policy???


They've screwed up. They thought the libdems would force them to backtrack, but there are no libdems.

In reply to Postmanpat:


Economy A recovers more in your virtual example, of course, I thought it was a rhetorical question. But as you probably now in the case of the UK, we have recovered as much as France, but starting from lower point.

That means the UK, with its own currency, has not managed to do better than a country locked in the euro, with a higher unemployment rate, and led by a socialist incompetent.


I agree it's much better to have people in work which I have said earlier (If you had read). But indeed 2015 is not the end game and they should stop claiming that their plan has worked, what has worked is when they actually ditched the plan.


no, never said so.


Probably yes, never said otherwise.


Well at least we agree on something.

In reply to RomTheBear:


If Economy A has recovered more in my example, why has the UK not recovered more than France, since as in my example, the base for the recovery was lower?



Right, so you will agree that what was going on in Europe was relevant and that the performance of the UK economy and the policies behind it might be the result of what was going on in Europe and not purely on fiscal policy and that it would be simplistic to suggest otherwise.

In reply to Postmanpat:


I can't bring myself to follow all the ins and outs of the above debate, but on the simple point of which country is doing better economically, I have friends in France who I've know for decades - I know their families, I know their friends, when one of my kids was born, one of their friends' teenage daughters came and helped us out. According to them, life is really quite hard now, particularly if you're starting out in the job market; much more so than in the UK they think. They have both of them, finally managed to qualify as public servants of some kind 'fonctionnaires' which means they have it made because they have security but they are very much aware that they are a privileged minority amongst their fellow countrymen and women for that reason.

I used to stop over in a B&B in Maidenhead when I was working in Slough. It was run by 'Laurent' - a Frenchman living over here inEngland; often other French people stayed there too and I got to know him and his friends quite well. They told a similar story: apparently a lot of French people like living in England because it's better here for those of them who have more 'get up and go' to the extent that this is a big issue for the French government across a number of fronts - I can't remember the details, whether it was voting or military service, but Laurent's son was being hassled by the French authorities on some score. He said that people with entrepreneurial flair preferred England to France bigtime because there is less red tape and there are fewer restrictions on business of any kind.

On the other side of the equation - Brits who like to move to France; I have other friends who own houses in France. They love the lifestyle but keep putting off moving there for similar reasons. The ones who do make the move have money enough, don't need more and just want to enjoy the sun and the wine.

I think all this talk of France somehow being economically better off than England is theoretical/ political rhetoric and not anything that's founded in fact. Some people in France are very well off - in any regulated economy there are winners and there are losers and the winners do very nicely thank-you. But it seems to me that whatever their politics, ordinary English voters are savvy enough to recognise bullsh*t when they hear it, and this thread is no exception to that. 'Saying it's so don't make it so' as they say.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Simply because the UK was quite ahead before 2009. Therefore despite a bigger crash in the UK we started the recovery more or less from the same point as France, and having grown per capita more or less at the same rate since, that's why both countries are basically now on a par.

To follow your example (virtual values but pretty much representative) the UK started at 12, then went down to 7 and back to 10, France started at 10, went down to 7, and now is back to 10 as well. In both case the recovery was three point for both economies

But my point is that the UK, with all the monetary tools at its disposal, should in fact have recovered faster during that time, as a deeper crunch meant there was more potential for catch up growth. But it hasn't happened in the UK, for many different reasons and factors, and one of those reasons being, in my opinion, the two years lost on the austerity experiment.


I agree with that, but you can't pretend fiscal policy had no effect. It's pretty clear in the data the impact the change of fiscal policy during the coalition term had on the economy.

In reply to Andy Morley:

I know all that - being a Frenchman myself. believe me I know what you are on about.
It was not more than a high level economic comparison I was making.
What you have to realise though is that many of these problems in France you describe are structural, it's not new and has in fact not much to do with the credit crisis, it has been like that for ages and every time a government tries to change something the whole country stops and they renounce.

My point is that DESPITE all those deep structural problems France has, overall the standard of living are the same in France as in the UK, and the poverty rates lower in France. My point is, with our flexible labour market, low unemployment, and own currency, strong migration, there was space there to grow the economy and standards of living, and reduce poverty rates quite a bit faster if the right approach had been taken from the start.

I don't think the coalition "failed" by any means. I think they did more or less OK,what has failed is their ideological austerity plans that even them finally had to recognise were crap. And now they are selling us the same crap again, hence my criticism. Why people buy that, I don't know, maybe it is just that the alternative was even less appealing.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Have you actually looked at the link? It is rebased to 1 in 2007 and doesn't show that at all. World Bank figures show the same. The UK didn't bottom at the French level. It bottomed below it.If you have a different series which says something different, so be it.


Yes, but your point is wrong because as the link shows, the UK bottomed lower down and therefore had to recover faster to get to the same place. e


Correlation isn't causation.

In reply to Postmanpat:

No-one can really say, on the basis of facts and figures like these how good a job the government has done because we don't know what would have happened if they'd done things differently. They could have done better, they could have done worse - voters take a punt, it's all they can do. The coalition looked as if it was more competent at running the country and the economy than Labour looked as if they would have been, and that's why we now have a Conservative government, or so it seems to me. When Labour followed pseudo-Thatcherite policies under Tony Blair, they got elected. When they looked as if they might be contemplating a half-hearted return to the ideologies of the past, they got rejected.

In reply to Postmanpat:

On that very same link indeed the Uk bottoms lower but also end up lower in 2014. Other series with different ways of looking at currencies and PPP show the same level and end up at the same level. They all tell the same consistent story : recovery in France and in the UK happened at the same rate. I can't believe we are arguing about this given that this obvious in the very link you referenced, and pretty much no official data set I have seen contradicts this.

Another one here with GDP per capita PPP for reference :
https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ny_gdp_...


?? Maybe put your spectacles on. On that very link you are talking about, the difference on their index for both countries between 2009 and 2014 is of ~0.05 for both, basically GDP per cpaita increase by roughly 5% in the Uk and France between 2009 and 2014.;


Which doesn't mean you have to ignore correlation. But anyway it's not only correlation the link between austerity and impact on growth has been widely explored by economists, if now the OECD and the IMF (not really a bunch of lefties) are urging Osborne to spread his cuts more smoothly that's because they now perfectly well that too much austerity too fast is bad for growth. I suspect Osborne not being entirely stupid is perfectly aware of that as well and will now try to mitigate his own manifesto pledges.

In reply to RomTheBear:



We are now in mid 2015. We don't have the data behind the chart but the UK bottomed at about 0.93 and has recovered to 1.03. France bottomed at 0.96 and is now 1.04. Do, as they say, the maths.

This World bank series shows the same thing, the UK GDP per cap (US$ base) growing 13% against France's 2.8% off the low,We are now in mid 2015. We don't have the data behind the cart but the UK bottomed at about 0.93 and has recovered to 1.03. France bottomed at 0.96 and is now 1.04. Do, as they say, the maths.

This World bank series shows the same thing, the UK GDP per cap (US$ base) growing 13% against France's 2.8% off the low,http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD
and that is only up to 2013.


You are ignoring the elephant in the room: that bond markets were rabid in 2010 and demanded fiscal caution Without them it was believed that gilt yields would have soared and the economy plummeted. Osborne's trick was to convince them he was pursuing a policy of austerity when, compared to previous periods of austerity (Sunny Jim Callaghan) he'd done next to nothing.

In reply to Postmanpat:

What a joke you are using mid 2015 on a chart that is from 2014. These are projected values, the new GDP per capita figure for 2015 is not known yet, If you stick the the actual values the Uk has grown roughly as much as France during that period.

Maybe in the future the UK GDP per capita will grow faster, but in the first quarter the UK has grown less than the eurozone (despite high immigration) so doesn't look that promising right now, that could all change depending on what the chancellor does and what happens in the eurozone.


Well down you managed to pull the only series that is completely irrelevant for this type of comparison, given the huge variation in the currency in that period it's not surprising if you take data at current US dollar to get wildly different results.


You really think that bond markets are so stupid to not see through that ? The UK bonds are now historically low in most of europe, including in France where they are even lower even though they did not go through the same austerity. They became low not because of "fake" austerity measure or increased credibility (that coudl hardly be the case given that our debt has increased massively) but simply because of the weak growth expectations, that's what has driven them down in the UK and in most of Europe.

In reply to RomTheBear:

And in 2014 the UK outperformed both forecasts and France.


And you've used a series which excludes a quarter of the period under review!! Even up to 2013 the recovery was pari passu at least and the UK then shot ahead


Nothing to do with the BOE buying the best part of £370 bn of gilts either I guess?!!! You have a very short memory if you don't remember the daily gyrations of the gilt market on the basis of fears of Brown winning and spending.Osborne replaced fiscal with monetary stimulus. Simple.

And of course Draghi i.e..Germany's commitment to "do what is necessary" had nothing to do with Euro bond yields falling?!!!

In reply to Postmanpat:

The period under review is 2009-2014 ! Period under which the Uk has grown has much as France, as per the link you quoted.
There is just no data for 2015.


Exactly what I was saying in regards to Osborne stopping austerity mid way, as soon as he started to break his electoral promise, the economy started growing at the rate it should have been growing in the first place if he hadn't screwed it. And now he got elected on the pledge to do what didn't work. I wouldn't like to be in his shoes right now.


Ho so what you are saying is that what Osborne did in the end didn't work then, leaving it to the BOE to clear up the mess ?
Of course not, that money printing venture is a different matter altogether.


Of course the guilt market moved as they did everywhere else, but there was no particular jolt in 2010, in fact they were already a lot lower in 2010 than in 2007, and then even went up for a while after he was elected. The claim from Osborne that the low yield are the result of renewed confidence have been laughed across the board, in fact EU countries that have not gone through the same spending cuts such as France or Germany, have even smaller borrowing costs than the UK now, I can't really see how, in retrospect, anyone can still argue that it was necessary to go through those spending cuts so quickly to keep borrowing cheap.


Well yes not sure how that relates to that.

In reply to RomTheBear:

The period under under review is 2009 to now. You are ignoring 2014 and Q1 2015 which makes your analysis meaningless. We know awhat happened to GDP in 2014 and have estimates for 2015 so you can either use that or just say ,"we don't know"


Repeatedly asserting that doesn't make it true. Even were it true it might still have been correct to have a period of mild austerity to reset the benchmark of public spending.
I don't think anybody really believed austerity would stimulate growth but it was necessary to stabilise things. QE was a reaction to poor Euro growth. not the failure of austerity.


"In retrospect" being the giveaway. Even critics like Sidelsky in the FT acknowledged at the time that his early budgets reduced gilt yields. By early 2012 10 yr gilts were yield half the French equivalent having been 50bps higher two years earlier.


The ECB says it will do what is necessary i.e..print money to buy bonds=european including French bonds are guaranteed=bond yields fall.

Anyway, it's a pointless argument. Basically it was a typical British muddle through accompanied by much sound and fury. I think we are probably in better shape than we would have been with an alternative government and in better shape than France. But the recovery is basically just another housing led surge, adding debt to already too high debt levels,which will end in tears so I'm not exactly hanging out the bunting.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I am not ignoring 2014, I am ignoring the projection for 2015 which is clearly going to be wrong.


Even if that was true that we needed a small period of austerity to reassure bond market and keep bond yields low, how does that justify getting re-elected on a manifesto of even harder and faster cuts, even though our borrowing costs are low ? really that doesn't make sense, we should be making those cuts over a much longer period.


Indeed, it was a reaction to poor growth, not a reaction to bond yields like you suggested earlier.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Which data are you using for 2014?


Electioneering , a belief that the State should have a more efficient role, and that as aggregate demand picks up the State should crowd out the private sector probably. Worked for jobs so far.


I didn't. I said it had the effect of depressing bond yields which is good for growth.

In reply to Postmanpat:



But the recovery is basically just another housing led surge, adding debt to already too high debt levels,which will end in tears so I'm not exactly hanging out the bunting.

It is a spot on observation. I do not think any of the political parties have a clue as to how to solve this structural issue.All the so called slashing at red tape for business is " media soundbiting" and nobody really has any clues as to how to support manufacturing or grow high tec companies ( which create well paid but few jobs). The growth in service type industries catering /hospitality etc usually means lots of low value jobs.There has been a poor growth in exporting, because we have nothing overall much to export. My own company manufactures a niche product and we sell 95% overseas, and yet I still get very little support- it is shockingly poor compared with the likes of Germany..

As you say we will muddle through..maybe that is the best we can hope for.

In reply to Postmanpat:


Well I agree as the economy recovers we can reduce the size of the state and start paying back our debt, what I don't understand is the need for the pace of cuts to be that fast and that harsh, given that our borrowing costs are record low. Not only it will slow growth (and ultimately make repaying the debt more difficult), but these have real life consequence on the poorests.


I misunderstood your earlier comment then.

In reply to RomTheBear:


Well, as I said, I think Osborne assumed his proposals would be watered down by the libdems and is now hoist by his own petard. Expect some not very subtle fudges.

In reply to Postmanpat:

Well I think we agree then.
But that's exactly what people hate with UK politics. Politicians who mislead the public with promises that are no more than political games to win, and then break them all in a disorderly fashion. Not a responsible or honest way to run a country or an economy.

In reply to Postmanpat:


since you seem to imagine "the left" meaning the government I am not so sure.


Your consistent complaints about victimisation.
For example straw manning and throwing "tory scum" around to avoid a point.
Then another classic of "we cant talk about it" whilst talking about it endlessly.

In reply to dissonance:



In your mind,old chap.


LoL, it hasnt crossed your mind that shouting "tory scum" is their way of avoiding the point ? Just a sign of their intellectual bankruptcy, so quite encouraging.


For example?