Labour Party/government Watch

[Mark]

Extremely poor start from Labour.

Cutting winter fuel allowance was a very 'odd' place to start, especially as it was hardly mentioned in the campaign....
Then there's the mini corruption scandals - nothing on the scale of the Tories (yet), but still not a good look...
Now they're softening us up for a u-turn on their 1 main election tax pledge, which was meant to pay for everything (non-doms)....
There have also been rumours about scrapping single person Council Tax discounts and free bus passes...

Personally, think they should have started with a mini-budget within a few weeks.
The pressure is really on Rachel Reeves to pull it around on 30th October....

[UndercoverElephant]

Extremely poor start from Labour.

Cutting winter fuel allowance was a very 'odd' place to start, especially as it was hardly mentioned in the campaign

I don't agree. It is non-means-tested. That means a lot of money being paid to people who don't need it. The country cannot afford that.

Beyond that I don't think we've seen enough to make much of a judgement. It has all been rather underwhelming so far.

[Forever_Winter]

This Labour party are terrible beyond comprehension. They are so bad that Rosie Duffield has left. What amazes me is that the Tories were crusifed compared with what we it 2 tier Kier is getting away with.

I'm looking forward to the Halloween budget. It is going to be a doozy. Pensions etc all in the cross hairs. I'm sure the stock and bond markets will educate Rachel Reeves in her ineptitude and stupidity. Time to leave I think....

[Forever_Winter]

Extremely poor start from Labour.

Cutting winter fuel allowance was a very 'odd' place to start, especially as it was hardly mentioned in the campaign

I don't agree. It is non-means-tested. That means a lot of money being paid to people who don't need it. The country cannot afford that.

Beyond that I don't think we've seen enough to make much of a judgement. It has all been rather underwhelming so far.

I don't agree. A lot of these pensioners are just over the allowance so cannot claim pension credit. The yields on UK gilts at nearly 5% could have paid for the winter fuel payment. Also, Labour are not taxing the super rich. Not a good look ..

[Forever_Winter]

A great article in the FT about loads of private jets leaving the UK. I'm planning to do the same. I'm not rich but feel the need to leave. Rachel Reeves is a joke. Politics of envy....

I wonder where you are thinking of moving that you feel might be a significant improvement on the UK?

Estonia. North of Tallinn. Lovely place. My nephew has an office out there, so am spending a few months out there. The best thing? A really low crime rate and no wokery. Really impressed so far...

[Forever_Winter]

Folks - you've been had - the party in power is not a labour party. It's a liberal central party. You should be ashamed of yourselves...

[Mark]

Extremely poor start from Labour.

Cutting winter fuel allowance was a very 'odd' place to start, especially as it was hardly mentioned in the campaign

I don't agree. It is non-means-tested. That means a lot of money being paid to people who don't need it. The country cannot afford that.

Beyond that I don't think we've seen enough to make much of a judgement. It has all been rather underwhelming so far.

UE, cutting Winter Fuel Payments will only save about £1.4 billion a year.
But if all the pensioners entitled to pension credit now apply for it, the cost of paying out this unclaimed money would be £2.2 billion a year...
So it might save nothing at all anyway.

The 'Black Hole' is supposed to be about £20 billion, if you believe....
So all this bad blood and bad publicity, and you've only filled 1/20th of the hole at best ?
Agree that it's not means tested, but seemed a very odd issue to pick as your first battle...?

[UndercoverElephant]

Extremely poor start from Labour.

Cutting winter fuel allowance was a very 'odd' place to start, especially as it was hardly mentioned in the campaign

I don't agree. It is non-means-tested. That means a lot of money being paid to people who don't need it. The country cannot afford that.

Beyond that I don't think we've seen enough to make much of a judgement. It has all been rather underwhelming so far.

UE, cutting Winter Fuel Payments will only save about £1.4 billion a year.
But if all the pensioners entitled to pension credit now apply for it, the cost of paying out this unclaimed money would be £2.2 billion a year...
So it might save nothing at all anyway.

The 'Black Hole' is supposed to be about £20 billion, if you believe....

So all this bad blood and bad publicity, and you've only filled 1/20th of the hole at best ?
Agree that it's not means tested, but seemed a very odd issue to pick as your first battle...?

I don't have anything to add to what I already said. If you are £20billion short then saving £1.4bn on a non-means-tested benefit is a no-brainer. IMHO.

I think there should be no non-means-tested benefits at all.

[UndercoverElephant]

Folks - you've been had - the party in power is not a labour party. It's a liberal central party. You should be ashamed of yourselves...

Given that they campaigned as a centrist-as-possible-on-everything party, I am not sure why anybody who voted Labour should be ashamed. Who else was there for them to vote for? The goal was to get rid of the tories, and they are gone.

[Forever_Winter]

Folks - you've been had - the party in power is not a labour party. It's a liberal central party. You should be ashamed of yourselves...

Given that they campaigned as a centrist-as-possible-on-everything party, I am not sure why anybody who voted Labour should be ashamed. Who else was there for them to vote for? The goal was to get rid of the tories, and they are gone.

The turnout was extremely low. Therefore, the legitimacy of the current government is questionable. There should be a push for PR which Labour cannot ignore. A lot of labour supporters could have voted for Reform or the Lib Dems...

[UndercoverElephant]

The turnout was extremely low. Therefore, the legitimacy of the current government is questionable.

It wasn't that low, and anyway a low turnout does not delegitimise an election if it was free and fair.

There should be a push for PR which Labour cannot ignore.

Yes, but that's not because of the low turnout. FPTP is a problem regardless of turnout, because it distorts everything.

[kenneal - lagger]

Agree with all the above.

Another thing we should be doing is automating a lot of jobs. We have plenty of trains, for instance, in this country which a fully automated, the DLR is one, and many trains which are automated but run with a driver to supervise which is ridiculous in this day and age. We're looking at autonomous cars for god's sake while we still have people "steering" trains on rails! Those train drivers should be offered really good termination packages and free training for jobs which can't be automated.

Many of the picking jobs in agriculture can be automated just as milking cows has been. It just requires a bit of investment and the payment of enough for the product to make it worthwhile. Interest free loans to farmers for the purchase of the machinery would help.

We had a shortage of trained people for many jobs in the early 1950s when the population was about 42 million. We still have a shortage of people for those jobs today with a population of 67 million and rising. That would suggest that a shortage of people isn't the problem rather than a lack of training for the jobs available.

The reason for mass immigration which, on the above figures has averaged about 300,000 per year, is to promote the cancer of economic growth. More people means more consumers, more houses and offices and roads and shops and hospitals which makes some people very rich. Especially when all those new people keep wages down and the housing supply is manipulated to keep house prices and rents rising.

A friend told me that government isn't intelligent enough to manipulate the system like that. I told him that the government didn't have to be intelligent when they have lobbyists for the various industries bribing the politicians to do as they are told to benefit the industries that the lobbyists come from. The Prostitute State strikes again!!

[BritDownUnder]

Agree with all the above.

Another thing we should be doing is automating a lot of jobs. We have plenty of trains, for instance, in this country which a fully automated, the DLR is one, and many trains which are automated but run with a driver to supervise which is ridiculous in this day and age.

I think the DLR had a ticket checker/door closer when I went on it to work so many years ago. I presumed they were to check that nobody was caught in the door or setting fire to the train. Maybe that thing has gone the way of the Dodo now.

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/l ... r-AA1rSJTV

Labour’s polling lead has fallen to just one point after a rocky start to Sir Keir Starmer’s time in government.

The latest polling comes despite the prime minister attempting to draw a line under the disorder by accepting the resignation of his chief of staff Sue Gray.

The survey, conducted by More in Common for Politico, put Labour on 29 per cent and the Conservative Party on 28 per cent.

Reform UK was on 19 per cent, while the Lib Dems were on 11 per cent. The Green Party was at seven per cent, while the SNP was on two per cent.

That was a short honeymoon. If there was a GE now the result may well be a hung parliament.

[BritDownUnder]

Yeah the "Things can only get better" bandwagon did not get very far this time before the wheels fell off. Starmer has shown some poor judgement early on in his term.

A bit worrying about the Chagos Archipelago news as well. As soon as the US got the 100 year lease on the base they were happy to see it go back to Mauritius. Biden is, after all, a UK hating Irish Nationalist at heart.

I don't see the Falklands and Gibraltar lasting too long at this rate. Cyprus bases too. Could set off a grab for UK territories around the world