POLITICS CORNER

[Whyperion]

One of my sons has a mortgage at 0.15% above base rate. If rates go negative say to - 0.5%, - they just did so in Norway - will the bank will have to pay him?

You know the banks would find a way of avoiding that, Tripps, they're very clever at `avoidance' (but don't tell HMRC). Mind you, they'll probably demand that I pay them for letting them have my savings kept in their electronic vault (otherwise known as a hard disk).

There is probably a 'floor' rate in the agreement.
I don't really like mortgage contracts, they can have too many things written in favour of the lender, including the use of (we make up our own standard lending rate, regardless of the rest of the economy). Most of the analysis of fixed rate offers I have done (except for quite high borrowing levels) is that the upfront fee+ interest paid for period = interest normally charged at standard rate.

[plaques]

I see Ed Miliband is being pilloried for suggesting to reduce the Tax break on pensions down to what would equate to the basic income tax rate of 20%. Currently those earning £40,000+ a year get an allowance on their 40/45% tax when paid into a pension fund. Invariably, when they retire their earnings drop back into the 20% bracket so that in effect they have been given a 20% cash bonus on their previous earnings. This levelling of allowances to 20% for everybody will stop this nice little earner. This of course is not being seen as a levelling but as a tax increase on higher earners. There is also an equally pervasive argument that because there will always be a large number of students who will never be able to pay back university fees then any reduction is a total waste of time. The fact that the unpaid bill, currently approaching black hole proportions, will be picked up by the ordinary tax payer doesn't seem to enter the argument. I personally see this move as a small step to correct the inequality that is being built into our system.

[Stanley]

P. riveting information but at the moment I'm completely turned off politics. Everything I see is electioneering, spin and dodgy statistics. The sooner we get to the meat of voting the better I'll feel about it....

[Tizer]

Have you been listening to Andrew Dilnot's 15-minute programmes on `A History of Britain in Numbers'? We've enjoyed them although they are a bit dry in presentation. I was interested by the 90-year-old man at the end of the last episode who, as an army officer had been given the job of making speeches to the troops on behalf of both Labour and Tories before elections. He said it wasn't difficult, most of what he had to say was the same for each party.
Podcasts can be downloaded here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k5dv ... ts/2015/02

[Stanley]

I have noticed the number of programmes on 'liberty' and I think most of them were generated by the Magna Carta anniversary but now I think there may be more to it. I get a definite sense that political comment is getting very difficult because of the imponderables and the nature of the electioneering. There are several programme threads like the numbers one...

[Tripps]

How refreshing - from Paul Flynn MP.

"If I am re-elected to parliament, I will not accept any payments, other than my parliamentary salary, for my personal use . I will continue with the practice I have advocated in the past in promulgating that a fulltime wage deserves fulltime work and all additional income received by an MP beyond the salary should be given to charity. As I have made clear on numerous occasions all book royalties, serial rights and other income received by me from books, articles, lectures and elsewhere has been paid to charity"
Paul Flynn.

[Stanley]

Very laudable but it won't catch on.....

[Stanley]

A relentless tide of 'good news'. David Cameron announces a 'new initiative' to build one affordable home for every one sold under 'Right to Buy'. What he doesn't mention is that this is not new but a re-vamping of his original scheme to do the same but which has failed miserably with less than one home being built for every five sold. Similar spin on the news that incomes are rising for some people. No mention of the fact that they have a backlog of reduced income to catch up with and complete silence about the possibly 50% of the population whose incomes are still falling because of cuts and who face another 60% of cuts if the Tories get back into power. There are other similar stories about wage increases etc. Of course this is all connected with the May election. The bald truth is that a complete mess has been made of the economy since 2010 with too much austerity and too much concentration on the higher end of the economy. Far from 'cutting the deficit' it has increased. The tide of public and domestic debt rises inexorably and the much trumpeted high levels of the stock exchange indices are increasingly fragile. That's right, I am not impressed.....
11:00. See THIS for a report on the £80,000 payout to the constable who sued Andrew Mitchell. I assume there will be costs on top of that. Mitchell has already paid out £300,000 in damages to the papers and the Police Federation. Apart from the fact that according to the judge who looked at the evidence he lied about what he said, it would probably have been better if he had restrained his anger at being treated the same as anyone else....

[Stanley]

Apart from the fact that it appears that the police operation Midland into CSA in the establishment is ongoing I have a question about David Cameron and the totally spurious TV debate affair. Why is he being so difficult about this? Why do the TV companies need his cooperation anyway? Whey don't they simply issue and invitation to participate and if they don't accept we draw our own conclusions. Is Downing Street running the TV schedules now? If so, we should be told all about it.
Later.... it looks as though the scheduled programmes are going to go ahead as the companies are refusing to back down. Ed says he will participate even if it is only him being grilled for 90 minutes... Good!! If Cameron is allowed to get away with this it diminishes both free speech and true democracy.

[Bruff]

Mr Cameron knows that in a TV debate he will not be able to throw around among other things the casual insults, half-truths and outright lies that characterise both his performance at the dispatch box and in one-to-one interviews, and his personality. He will in these debates be challenged to give, so far as we might expect any politician to give, an honest answer to an honest question and be quick and nimble of mind. He is extremely weak at this and he knows it – on policy, on argument, in debate, the Leader of the Opposition beats him hands down as you would expect of someone who is interested in the details of policy and the very serious business of running a country. Mr Cameron likes the trapping of PM because (and we know this because he said it) he ‘thought he would be rather good at it’. The triteness of this comment will be exposed in any 1:1 debate for all to see.

The broadcasters should grow a backbone and ‘empty chair’ him.

I must add of course that I do not like the idea of ‘leaders’ debates’ as we are not electing a President and was a bit disappointed we went down the route of debates last time. The current PM was instrumental in securing these, latching on to the bandwagon Sky started rolling. I guess the PR-spiv in him thought it a good idea at the time, having no concern at all for the long term. Oh well.

On other matters I note that the Hon Member for Pendle’s mate Mr Treddinick MP (he’s the guy who’s Early Day Motion calling for homeopathy on the NHS Mr Stephenson MP signed as a part of his commitment to and understanding of evidence-based policy/decision-making and wise public spend), has moved on. Mr Treddinick is now very interested in the role astrology can play in medical interventions. This promoted a response from Professor Brian Cox. Foolishly of course – Prof Cox reckoned without Mr Treddinick’s killer argument that the good Professor did not know what he was talking about……

The tragedy in all of this is the number of idiots, and they are rank idiots, who will still vote for this chump in May in Bosworth, Leics.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

I agree with you entirely Richard. Having seven participants reduces the exposure he will get. We will have to wait to see whether the broadcasting companies back down but even if they do, the damage done by this will not go away. Cameron is an arrogant Bullingdon Yob still. He thinks he has a God given right to be a leader. Pity he's so thick. Overall, this 'breaking of the log jam' (which he caused) is a massive political mistake.
On a slightly different tack I see that Osborne is getting his retaliation in first as speculation mounts about a give-away budget massaging the rich. He is clinging to the completely spurious 'trickle down affect' argument which posits that a rising tide floats all boats. This economic cretin is our chancellor.... God help us!

[Stanley]

At the moment the TV companies are standing firm and say that if necessary they will 'empty chair' Cameron. Good! Now we have to wait and see who blinks first. Whatever happens, this episode is a disastrous miscalculation on the part of the Tories. Even gooder!!!!
I have to correct a grave error I made earlier when I said that the Coalition had only built one affordable home for every five sold under right to buy. I was wrong. The latest figures show that it was less than one in eleven.....

[Stanley]

I forecast last year that this election campaign would get dirty but the main characteristic I identify at the moment is how far divorced from reality some of our politicians have become. I am not including Lord Baker in this, what he said about a National Government has much truth in it (REPORT). I advocated the same thing when we were in the middle of the 2008 Credit Crisis. My argument was that this was such and obvious clear and present danger to the UK we should take the course we took in 1939. Forget the politics, concentrate on reality and unite to fight for improvement.
Look at yesterday's spat (BBC REPORT) between Cameron and Milliband when, in response to a taunt from Milliband about Cameron's attempt to control the TV debate Cameron ducked the question and responded by raising the bogey man of an SNP/Labour Coalition. He could do nothing else because he has painted himself into a corner because of arrogance and stupidity. Even his own back benchers realise this. The reality is that if there is a hung vote a coalition will emerge between the parties with the most seats and at this point all bets are off. Tory DNA will be ditched in the pursuit of power, that's how we got the present unlikely alliance between the Liberals and the Tories.
The reality is that any intelligent observer has to note that in all the major areas of policy the Tories have failed. They can manipulate statistics 'til the cows come home but in any rational debate this will be laid bare. This is why Cameron is doing all he can to ensure that he doesn't get into a situation where this will be laid bare, like a head to head debate with Milliband. Cameron knows he is an open target.
What would be so bad about a Labour/SNP partnership? Milliband may cut a poor figure in his personal presentation but in matters of policy he is strong and convincing. Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon are possibly the two most impressive political figures of the last decade. We need people like this at the centre of government working together and not locked in confrontation over archaic arguments based on 'tradition' and the status quo. If ever there was a time for original thinking and new policies it is now. In 1940 politicians who were diametrically opposed banded together and worked honestly for the good of the country. By 1945 Churchill was singing the praises of Aneurin Bevan! Who could have forecast that?
I hate predictions about something as flawed and influenced by knee-jerk stupidity as our voting progress and refuse to make any. However, if the facts have any weight and by some miracle the electorate examine them and come to a rational decision, on any measure, the Tories are unelectable. Mind you, my dream team would be just as fantastic, Margaret Hodge and Nicola Surgeon in charge for five years.... We are allowed to dream....

[plaques]

he has painted himself into a corner

I like the quote attributed to John Major, " When you find yourself in a corner with your back up against a wall: turn round and fight your way out".
One question to be asked is how did the SNP get to its present position. Years of neglect from Thatcher, Blair and now Cameron has given the impression that Scotland has nothing to lose and everything to gain by being independent. With respect to land ownership and natural resources Scotland is still living under a feudal system. Cameron and the right wing press are making a big play about the possibility of a Labour / SNP coalition challenging Miliband to rule it out. This is a bit like playing chess where your opponent gets to pick which piece you should move next. No doubt we shall see more of this nonsense about what should or should not be in someone else's manifesto.

[Pluggy]

You've got to admit, its a little more interesting than the 'bipolar' politics we've had for decades....

I've been turned off cold by politics, but when its more than a choice between Labour and the Tories, even I start paying (a lttle) attention.

[Thomo]

I find it rather sad that a "Community Website" such as this should have such a one sided view of politics. Everyone has their own opinions, "to each their own" I believe is what it is all about. It is true that we have the option of a choice of topics to look at, yet natural curiosity can determine a look at the broader aspect of such a site. It is at this point where it becomes clear just why this site has lost so many members and visitors, not just locally, but globally as well. Name calling, derogatory and at times almost childish comments do nothing to convince they who may have a difference of opinion, that this is a stable platform for debate. This is not America, and we are not about to elect a new President. Popular promises of this that and the other are just a drop in the bucket when unsubstantiated by the facts as to how they will be achieved.

[PanBiker]

This is an open forum and everyone is entitled to their opinion. Can't be helped if most of the active posters are of the same mind. Always room for an alternative viewpoint. Cant say that this thread in itself has led to a loss in posters or visitors to the site. On what do you base this statement on Thomo?

[Sunray10]

This is great reading from Stanley. Keep it coming. Yes, I agree everyone is entitled to an opinion. It's that 'freedom of speech' thingy again rearing its head - and why not for this is indeed a "Community Website" is it not? Well said Stanley

[Stanley]

Interesting posts... Pluggy is possibly the least 'political' of all our contributors but the new politics is attracting his attention. This is a good thing! If Thomo thinks we are dragging the site down perhaps he should weigh in with some evidence based arguments, God knows they are thin on the ground from the Right. P is dead right about Scotland, London based politics has treated them as a colony for centuries and at last they have woken up. Same story in Ireland and it's becoming obvious now that anywhere North of Watford has been getting the same treatment. I said at the time of the expenses scandal that things were changing and it looks as though I might have been right. This has been reinforced by the shift in economic thinking away from deregulation and blind belief in the efficacy of the market. This is because it is abundantly clear that policies based on massaging the capital holders, advocating austerity and attacking social reform won at great cost over the last century have failed.
Don't worry Ray, I for one will continue to attack the obvious flaws in Tory policies and thinking. If they don't like it they should stop attacking opponents and come forward with some evidence based arguments. The biggest political failure of the last twenty years was when Labour finally won a working majority and swung to the Right under Blair and his cohorts. The May election might possibly result in a government that gets a chance to reverse this. All I am sure of at the moment is that this initiative is more likely to come from North of the Border than England itself....
Pluggy is right, things are getting interesting.....

[Bruff]

Some interesting commentary today arguing that every attack on the SNP is another nail in the Union that has held for so long.

Christmas just gone, over the Xmas lunch, my wife and I spent a long time discussion ‘Scotland’ with a young couple likely to soon be a part of an extended step-family on the wife’s side. They lived in Aberdeen though were English born and bred, and they were recent graduates of the University there having both gone up aged 18 to study and remained. They were fervently pro-independence and had spent a large part of their time actively campaigning for independence.

They were Green Party supporters. They noted that some Tory and Labour voters were pro-independence. It is not just SNP supporters, it is cross-party (though clearly, the SNP by definition will have a lot of the pro camp, as will other left groupings). But they also noted that a lot of people will vote for the SNP because they like their social-democratic, left-of-centre, open, inclusive, pro-EU policies whilst retaining the right to, in a referendum on independence, vote ‘no’. This is the attraction, to many Scots at least, of the SNP leaders call for an alternative to the orthodoxy of austerity.

Scotland is it would seem a very, very different country now to (much of) England. Very different. That perhaps is what worries Westminster. Facinating times.

Richard Broughton

[Thomo]

As I see it much of what Bruff has just posted is true. If they want independence in Scotland, it is the right of the people who's families have been Scottish for generations to make their case. The same of course applies to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. If they are absolutely certain that it could work, then fine, just as long as they understand that once done, there may be no way back. There was a time not long ago that within the British Isles, people regarded themselves as either English, Scots, Welsh or Irish, few regarded themselves as coming under the modern generalisation of simply British regardless of where they actually lived. I am English, and despite local border changes, a Yorkshireman. Nothing can change this. It would be nice to imagine that independence could work, but the problems that may arise will not be easily overcome, this is not something that can happen overnight. The Green Party, my Daughter has been a candidate for this party in North Somerset for many years. This I see as proof that even within a family political beliefs can change, as basically the family being "working class" traditionally voted Labour on "principle". Several terms are applied to politics, Left and far Left, or Right and Far right, so what about the middle ground, the ones who see what is being offered or worse "promised" as tempting yet without a substantial answer has to just how all of these promises and improvements will be funded. This country, if it is to be broken up into its component parts will all have to look long and hard at where its money is spent, it is very noble to give to they who are in need, this may no longer be practical when applied to overseas.

[Tizer]

If I seem quiet on the topic of politics and the coming election it's because I currently have confidence in none of the parties. The late astronomer Sir Patrick Moore was the finance minister of the Monster Raving Loony Party for a short time. He once said that the party "... had an advantage over all the other parties, in that they knew they were loonies." I have sympathy with Sir Patrick's feelings.

[plaques]

This 'Englishness' is a very complicated business. Both my wife and myself consider ourselves to be English but of the red rose variety. However, our paternal lineage, probably like most people, is far more complicated. Mine is Ireland, Scotland, probably French etc. My Wife's, Ireland, German, etc; and as Stanley says both out of Africa. Our parents were 'working class' and lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. Somehow, this experience coloured their political thinking. My father used to say that the Tories engineered slumps to correct the class order. Something that in my youth I found hard to believe. At that time Crick and Watson hadn't discovered DNA but from what we are now seeing with austerity for the working class it does appear to be in their DNA. Probably because we have all experience different working lives we have all 'evolved' a different solution to what we think is best and in this sense I mean best for the generations to come. Turning the clock back to those Victorian values, which only exists in some magical world of mythology, is to deny the truth. We are now at a turning point where we can chose to go backwards or try to develop a more equal society. You have a vote, use it.

[Stanley]

No need to worry Thomo, you are still living in Yorkshire, even Eric Pickles admitted that the old shire boundaries cannot be altered as they are nothing to do with administration.
P is right, we are all mongrels, even the name 'England' derives from the Angles, a north Germanic race. He is also right about outdated Victorian values. That's where the Tories want to take us, back to 19th century laisser faire where the sun never set on the Empire, workers had no rights and the wealthy were taught how to rule on the playing fields of Eton. The present state of politics reflects exactly the chaos induced by such outdated modes of thinking.
See THIS for a report on the latest moves by the Tories to, in effect, privatise education. They deny this of course but the fact remains that the new 'Free Schools' suck funding and control out of the system which, on the whole, has done a good job for over 100 years.

[Bruff]

Well there have been folk with my surname living in Barlick for the best part of half a millennium so I don’t think that part of my heritage has strayed too far. On the other side, as there’s a MacDonald then I imagine there’s some Scottish in there but again the rest are firmly Northern England.

The wife’s side is a little more mixed – her father’s is Lithuanian two generations back and then Dutch if you go back 250 years. The Dutch side includes as a direct descendent one of Victorian England’s finest water colourists, who hung out with Dickens and illustrated one of his novels and who, much to my wife’s delight, turned down a knighthood from the Queen! Her late mother’s side were Cotswold farmers for generations. She has a huge step-family who are half-Swiss.

I would note that with respects to the Scottish referendum, it wasn’t folk who were Scottish for generations that made the decision. All voters who had been resident in Scotland for 6+ months had a vote; no Scots living anywhere else did. The difficulty in putting a generational limit on things is that today’s immigrant is simply the potential parent of a British child as many British people resident in say France for whatever reason are the potential parents of a French child. And if one goes back further then of course my wife would find herself in some difficulty.

On the Monster Raving Loony Party I think I’m right in noting that when they were founded, one of their ‘loony’ policies was to lower the voting age to 18…And I used to work next to a chap who voted Loony in the famous Bootle bye-election that saw them beating David Owen’s SDP (with an offer from Loony leader Lord Sutch of merger coming straight after the vote). He attended the party meetings in a pub down The Strand Shopping Centre where everyone got sloshed and acted the goat.

I know I bang on about politics being a serious business but there is something rather life-affirming about the democratic process here when, beamed into TVs around the world on election night, the person likely to be PM is elected at their count standing next to Lord Bucket-Head and/or Miss Whiplash and/or a Pirate and so on. I just wish there weren’t so many bucket-heads in Govt. at the moment!

Richard Broughton