Labour Party/government Watch

[BritDownUnder]

LTG has a lot to say about disproportionate distribution of wealth, i've always thought that the state finances would struggle until this is addressed; but as i've previously said, i'm no expert on economics and fiscal matters. I can't see how a state can function in hard times when 80% of the wealth is with 20% of the people.

It's the Pareto phenomenom. 20% of the population accounts for 80% of the effect.

[Mark]

I know this area fairly well...

Runcorn has an 'old' town - declining chemical industry, declining town centre, traditional Labour,....
Plus lots of surrounding newer estates - mainly overspill from Liverpool....
Helsby is much more desirable, but lost its main employer (cables) many years ago...
Constituency very 'white' in its demographic.

Alongside all the national issues, HyNet may well be high up on the agenda.....
Stanlow is very close by, and Helsby was proposed for the Hydrogen Home Heating Trial before the locals revoted and the proposal was moved down the road to Whitby (in neighbouring Ellesmere Port). The Greens have a good local presence in Helsby (and Whitby) as a result...

Suspect it will be a narrow Labour hold, but this could be prime territory for a good Reform showing.
The Greens might do quite well as well - maybe 3rd ?
Can't see much support for the Tories or LDs.

MP Mike Amesbury admits street assault:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg96nzr4l0o

Amesbury would need to receive a prison sentence – including a suspended sentence – in order for there to be a recall petition in his seat of Runcorn and Helsby. That recall petition would then need more than 10 per cent of voters in his constituency to sign it to trigger a by-election.

A recall petition would also be triggered if the House of Commons decided to suspend him for 10 sitting days or more. If he were to resign, that would also lead to a by-election.

Can't see how he doesn't get at least get a suspended sentence. so a by-election soon ?

The Bookies are rarely wrong - they see it as Labour vrs Reform, with Labour slight favourites at this early stage......
https://order-order.com/2025/01/16/punt ... bour-race/

[UndercoverElephant]

The Bookies are rarely wrong - they see it as Labour vrs Reform, with Labour slight favourites at this early stage......
https://order-order.com/2025/01/16/punt ... bour-race/

That is a seat Labour took over 50% of the vote in at the general election. If there is a byelection then I suspect Reform will win, and the result will send shockwaves through British politics.

I believe the only way Labour can now protect itself from the onward march of Reform is to come out much harder against the "woke tendencies" in its own party -- it must acknowledge that the tide has turned against the postmodern left. There are signs of this happening already. They have decided to implement the tories' university free speech law (which it looked like they would ditch): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyv43p1z15eo). Also Cooper has announced a new "review" into grooming gangs, and this time it needs to point a very firm finger straight at the Islamic community. They have to find the courage to direct the review to face the truth instead of delivering another whitewash due to fear of accusation of "islamophobia" from the left. All this can be done, but it needs Labour to ideologically shift to the social right. At the same time it needs to shift to the economic left -- it must go hard on the wealth of the richest 10-20%. We need a bit of very conspicuous levelling down. Then it needs to get the small boats crisis under control -- it needs to deliver actual results, not more empty words.

Can they do it? I don't think Starmer has either the guts or the creativity required. He's too "safe". Too scared of shaking things up.

[mr brightside]

The Bookies are rarely wrong - they see it as Labour vrs Reform, with Labour slight favourites at this early stage......
https://order-order.com/2025/01/16/punt ... bour-race/

That is a seat Labour took over 50% of the vote in at the general election. If there is a byelection then I suspect Reform will win, and the result will send shockwaves through British politics.

I believe the only way Labour can now protect itself from the onward march of Reform is to come out much harder against the "woke tendencies" in its own party -- it must acknowledge that the tide has turned against the postmodern left. There are signs of this happening already. They have decided to implement the tories' university free speech law (which it looked like they would ditch): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cyv43p1z15eo). Also Cooper has announced a new "review" into grooming gangs, and this time it needs to point a very firm finger straight at the Islamic community. They have to find the courage to direct the review to face the truth instead of delivering another whitewash due to fear of accusation of "islamophobia" from the left. All this can be done, but it needs Labour to ideologically shift to the social right. At the same time it needs to shift to the economic left -- it must go hard on the wealth of the richest 10-20%. We need a bit of very conspicuous levelling down. Then it needs to get the small boats crisis under control -- it needs to deliver actual results, not more empty words.

Can they do it? I don't think Starmer has either the guts or the creativity required. He's too "safe". Too scared of shaking things up.

We can hope. I've got everything crossed. They can take my single occupancy discount, but the can't take my hope.

[Forever_Winter]

Watching Lisa Nandy this morning. Talking about putting more money in working (public sector) people's pockets, more 'focus on the victims of the grooming gangs ' Sorting out the BBC....... absolutely empty words. God help us.

[BritDownUnder]

Labour is fatally infiltrated by Islamists and Communists. And the Greens too lets not forget - especially in Australia.

Every time I go into a polling station I repeat to myself the words said to me by an Uncle many years ago.

"Never, ever, vote Labour."

So far I have kept to this.

[Mark]

Labour is fatally infiltrated by Islamists and Communists. And the Greens too lets not forget.

That's just plain stupid.
Exactly the same as somebody on the left saying that the Tories and Reform are fatally infiltrated by Fascists and white supremacists....
Remember, the 2nd Gulf War was fought under the last Labour Government and was probably a big factor in them not getting re-elected...
Depends on your definition of 'communist' - yours seems to be anyone to the left of Maggie ?

[Potemkin Villager]

"And the Greens too lets not forget - especially in Australia."

Indeed let us not forget the Greens.

Would you care to enlarge on this? You seem to have missed out how
they are so obviously controlled by the Chinese!

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2y0yv1yyro

Speaking at a weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Reeves said: "Kick starting economic growth is this Labour government's number one mission because I do not believe low growth is our destiny.

"Will that growth come easy? No. There are no easy routes out.

"Over the past six months as chancellor, my experience is that government has become used to saying 'no'.

"That must change. We must start saying 'yes.'

"Yes, to new jobs. Yes, to higher living standards. Yes, to investment. And yes, to growth."

This is cargo cult level thinking now. If we say the word "yes" more often than "no" then the abject failure to deal with reality will go away.

[clv101]

I can kind of see her point about saying 'yes' and government getting out of the way, compare US with Europe (if you simply want GPD growth). However her examples of jobs, living standards, investment and growth just sound daft - be specific!

[mr brightside]

Speaking at a weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Reeves said: "Kick starting economic growth is this Labour government's number one mission because I do not believe low growth is our destiny.

"Will that growth come easy? No. There are no easy routes out.

"Over the past six months as chancellor, my experience is that government has become used to saying 'no'.

"That must change. We must start saying 'yes.'

"Yes, to new jobs. Yes, to higher living standards. Yes, to investment. And yes, to growth."

Yeswashing?

[Mark]

If only it was that easy - just say something and it happens....

Interesting that one of the main government hopes for UK growth seems to be pinned on AI....
Except the Chinese seem to have stolen a march, even on the Americans...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd643wx888qo

[clv101]

The Chinese model is good news for just about everyone rooting for AI. They have shown, publicly, how to dramatically reduce training costs, and delivered a model with lower inference cost (for a given performance). Western companies will be able to rapidly reduce their training costs too and as the cost of inference falls demand will rocket (we're all familiar with Jevons). The only possible loser is OpenAI has they still don't have a significant revenue stream (unlike Meta, Google etc).

I've spent a bit of time with Deepseek R1 over the last few days and it's by far the best model I've used, I'm able to run it locally on my machine and with the limited hardware I have nothing else comes close.

[Mark]

One of the good points about DeepSeek, is that it seems to require a lot less computing power to operate.....
Which is going to be a blessing if AI takes off the way everybody seems to think it will...

[mr brightside]

One of the good points about DeepSeek, is that it seems to require a lot less computing power to operate.....
Which is going to be a blessing if AI takes off the way everybody seems to think it will...

Here is another quite interesting report on the uses, or lack thereof, of AI sought facts.

https://itsahill.wordpress.com/