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UK politics general discussion

Oh god, they're ganging up on me. It's pretty simple. Don't think the pay is fair? Don't apply for, take the job and then continue doing it for years. I'd guess that 98% of the claimants in the Birmingham cases didn't have any issues with their past employment but then some firm saw a chance to extort some money on a legal technicality and the staff signed up and went along for the ride. I don't blame them, who doesn't want free money? No good for their neighbours though who now have to drive over a million potholes every day and only get their bins emptied every few years.
 
BarryZola said:
Don't think the pay is fair? Don't apply for, take the job and then continue doing it for years. I'd guess that 98% of the claimants in the Birmingham cases didn't have any issues with their past employment but then some firm saw a chance to extort some money on a legal technicality and the staff signed up and went along for the ride. I don't blame them, who doesn't want free money?
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You're missing the point entirely, they should not have been paying someone less because of their gender. I'm not sure how I, or anyone else, can make that any clearer. The council didn't have to pay men as much as they did, is a better way of looking at it. They could have paid men less, they could have paid men at the same rate that they paid women.
BarryZola said:
No good for their neighbours though who now have to drive over a million potholes every day and only get their bins emptied every few years.
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You'll be pleased to hear that bins and potholes will remain unaffected, they're ring fenced, though I'm not sure why those two things are the highest on your list of concerns for underfunded public services. The cuts, instead, are being made to the councils youth and social support programmes (which will inevitably lead to an increase in crime).

IT project misspending isn't helping much. Birmingham City Council has a budget shortfall this year of £86 million, but sorting out the mess that is Oracle is going to cost a further £100 million. The system has already cost £40 million to implement. The budget was set initially at £15 million.

www.birminghammail.co.uk

Birmingham council has to find staggering £100m to fix IT system - here's why

Council's super whizzy IT, personnel and payments system is failing in dramatic fashion - now it's turned out it will cost a staggering £100 million to put right
www.birminghammail.co.uk www.birminghammail.co.uk

Misappropriation of finances, poor budgeting, contracts handed out without oversight in spending? All fine. A settlement to address the illegal gender pay gap scandal? Unthinkable.

Won't somebody please think of the potholes?
 
The remuneration of the head of British Gas has been a discussion problem here this morning.
Ever widening gap between the haves and have nots is sickening.
"Don't blame me for my obscene rate of pay and dodgy benefits for running the place, I didn't pick my own pay package"...
Meanwhile many people freeze because it is heat or eat.
There is no balance, and the imbalance only increases.
 
Now you're just being a bit silly. Of course the poor budgeting etc is also pathetic. I'm sure you're aware that I mentioned potholes and bins on a whim too. I could have easily chosen libraries or any number of other services that are diminished when spurious financial claims are successful against councils such as Birmingham. If a man and a woman were doing the exact same job in the same place at the same time and not being paid the same rate then I would accept that claim as genuine. Show me.
 
BarryZola said:
Now you're just being a bit silly. Of course the poor budgeting etc is also pathetic. I'm sure you're aware that I mentioned potholes and bins on a whim too. I could have easily chosen libraries or any number of other services that are diminished when spurious financial claims are successful against councils such as Birmingham. If a man and a woman were doing the exact same job in the same place at the same time and not being paid the same rate then I would accept that claim as genuine. Show me.
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How many more times do people have to say that the women applying for those jobs did not know there was pay discrepancy.

Pay should be based on the level of skill required to do the job, the council paid jobs mostly done by men more than jobs mostly done by women that requires the SAME SKILL LEVEL. That’s is discrimination.

It’s not rocket science.
 
I completely understand what you're saying. I just don't happen to PERSONALLY agree that morally it merits an equal pay claim. It's that simple. We'll just go around in circles if we continue this, so respectfully I will not continue to argue the same point over and over again.
 
Matt.GC said:
Everything I hate in one post. Twitter, Piers Morgan, The Telegraph, and Rishi Sunak.

Without giving Twitter and The Telegraph clicks, I presume the headline explains it all? That Sunak was pressured by Morgan into pretending that the Lords will allow him to break international law by November?
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John Crace has you covered, with delightful summary of the interview.

www.theguardian.com

The longest hour: Piers Morgan’s excruciating ‘interview’ with Rishi Sunak

Prime minister joined UK Sun God for an exchange of awkward blokey bants, unbased claims and bonfire of vanities
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
What happens when you carry a Ming vase and stand on a banana skin?

BBC News - Labour ditches £28bn green investment pledge
www.bbc.co.uk

Keir Starmer: Labour ditches £28bn green investment pledge

A U-turn on the policy is set to be announced on Thursday, following confusion over the party's position.
www.bbc.co.uk

It seems like this party is hell bent on shooting itself in the foot. The huge electoral gaffs just keep on coming and you have to wonder if Starmer is at all in tune with the electorate or is just trying his luck.

To put this into context, this has been the core policy engine behind Labour for 3 years now. It predates the full corruption of Johnson being exposed, Truss and the Kamequaisi budget. It comes at a time when inflation, economic growth and the state of the public finances have performed better than forecast.

There's 2 things I can think of behind this decision. Either Labour are so confident in the unpopularity of the Tories that they think they can start taking the piss, taking people for granted, and just run as the 'not Tories' and still win anyway by under promising and over delivering. Or the opposite, that they've completely misread the mood in the country, are running scared, and capitulating to Tory attacks. As much as this annoys me, I really hope it's the former.

I've tried my best to understand Starmer and have warmed to him a lot recently. But I'm starting to question my judgement. He's playing very dangerous games. This is either genius or utter incompetence. Only a few days ago he was singing a different tune. It's looking like he's busy stealing defeat from the jaws of victory to me.
 
Matt.GC said:
What happens when you carry a Ming vase and stand on a banana skin?

BBC News - Labour ditches £28bn green investment pledge
www.bbc.co.uk

Keir Starmer: Labour ditches £28bn green investment pledge

A U-turn on the policy is set to be announced on Thursday, following confusion over the party's position.
www.bbc.co.uk

It seems like this party is hell bent on shooting itself in the foot. The huge electoral gaffs just keep on coming and you have to wonder if Starmer is at all in tune with the electorate or is just trying his luck.

To put this into context, this has been the core policy engine behind Labour for 3 years now. It predates the full corruption of Johnson being exposed, Truss and the Kamequaisi budget. It comes at a time when inflation, economic growth and the state of the public finances have performed better than forecast.

There's 2 things I can think of behind this decision. Either Labour are so confident in the unpopularity of the Tories that they think they can start taking the piss, taking people for granted, and just run as the 'not Tories' and still win anyway by under promising and over delivering. Or the opposite, that they've completely misread the mood in the country, are running scared, and capitulating to Tory attacks. As much as this annoys me, I really hope it's the former.

I've tried my best to understand Starmer and have warmed to him a lot recently. But I'm starting to question my judgement. He's playing very dangerous games. This is either genius or utter incompetence. Only a few days ago he was singing a different tune. It's looking like he's busy stealing defeat from the jaws of victory to me.
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The headline is slightly misleading, they are not dropping the pledge they are dropping the guarenteed spend.

The gaff was putting a number on it in the first place, the Tories were making the number a big part of their attack on Labour. It was starting to cut through as well, people don’t generally understand the difference between borrowing for investing and borrowing for other reasons unfortunately.

I think its more a wobble than slipping on a banana skin but we will see, anything can happen in politics:
 
Amusing how that story comes out hours after Sunak was flaming the culture war with the "Trans Issue" making jokes at Starmer's expense whilst Brianna Ghey's mum was in attendance (or on her way to be).

Then doubling down how it was to do with attacks on Labour policy and nothing to do with Tories being abhorrent spineless tossers.
 
To be fair the story on the green pledge has been bubbling for a good few weeks now. Labour have clearly been working behind the scenes on how to defend the Tories attacks on the 'U turn', something they'd been working on for weeks as a way to turn the polls around.

....Only for Rishi to make a crass bet with Piers Morgan on refugees and to dish out offensive attack lines at PMQs yesterday, refuse to apologise and completely ruin any sort of focus that wanted on Labour this week.
 
With Sunak putting his foot in it and embarrassing himself with his silly bet, bungling what he said about the king's diagnosis, and his tasteless cheap shot in front of a grieving mother at PMQ's, today is a good day to bury bad news.

But this policy was gaining traction. It looks like capitulation to Tory attacks. I think they would be far better off continuing to make the investment argument rather than bat away the attacks that they don't have many policies at all. Maybe people were too stupid to understand how investment works in the Cameron and Osborne years, but now that we've seen hard evidence of how ineffective austerity was in sorting out the public finances, how it's strangled growth, productivity, and public services, this looks like Starmer is again trying to fight the battles of yesteryear.

The public are crying out for a solution and change. This requires considerable expectation management as I don't think there's a wider understanding of just how bad things are to expect a quick turnaround. But this policy stood as a Keynesian dividing line and a change from the status quo. By detaching the numbers, it gets relegated to an aspirational foot note in the manifesto and will be hard to talk about going forward without the 'U-turn' finger being pointed every single time, whether there's truth behind that attack or not.

Meanwhile, it paves the way for the Tories to continue to nick labour policies whilst opening the cheque book to scorch the earth themselves. I note that they've also just borrowed much of labour's dentistry plan, Hunt spent billions on Tax cuts that will be hard to reverse, and looks set to do so again either in the spring or autumn, consigning public services to more cuts in the process. I think Sunak and Hunt will claim a victory on this subject, double down on their "flip flop" and "no plan" arguments, whilst continuing to disassociate themselves with the policies of their own party that led us to this situation in the first place.

I fear that cold feet could set in, and that's what toppled Kinnock in 92. Labour went in to 92 a reformed party, but in the process it looked like they were running scared from their past so the sticking to the devil you know, albeit with a fresh face argument stuck, coupled with assassinations on Kinnock's character.

Sunak has been around longer and has closer associations with the past than Major. The Tories are more divided now and Sunak's repeated and offensive culture war comments as he tries to keep the back benchers together and fight off Reform, are alienating people who don't care about that stuff. But Starmer seems to be disrupting his enemies whilst they're making mistakes. He's not very popular and people who really don't want to vote Tory anymore are begging labour for change. They better have a belter of a last minute manifesto lined up because I can see 10 months of tax cuts and pointing to better than expected growth, inflation, and borrowing forecasts to pretend that everything is OK.
 
Matt.GC said:
With Sunak putting his foot in it and embarrassing himself with his silly bet, bungling what he said about the king's diagnosis, and his tasteless cheap shot in front of a grieving mother at PMQ's, today is a good day to bury bad news.

But this policy was gaining traction. It looks like capitulation to Tory attacks. I think they would be far better off continuing to make the investment argument rather than bat away the attacks that they don't have many policies at all. Maybe people were too stupid to understand how investment works in the Cameron and Osborne years, but now that we've seen hard evidence of how ineffective austerity was in sorting out the public finances, how it's strangled growth, productivity, and public services, this looks like Starmer is again trying to fight the battles of yesteryear.

The public are crying out for a solution and change. This requires considerable expectation management as I don't think there's a wider understanding of just how bad things are to expect a quick turnaround. But this policy stood as a Keynesian dividing line and a change from the status quo. By detaching the numbers, it gets relegated to an aspirational foot note in the manifesto and will be hard to talk about going forward without the 'U-turn' finger being pointed every single time, whether there's truth behind that attack or not.

Meanwhile, it paves the way for the Tories to continue to nick labour policies whilst opening the cheque book to scorch the earth themselves. I note that they've also just borrowed much of labour's dentistry plan, Hunt spent billions on Tax cuts that will be hard to reverse, and looks set to do so again either in the spring or autumn, consigning public services to more cuts in the process. I think Sunak and Hunt will claim a victory on this subject, double down on their "flip flop" and "no plan" arguments, whilst continuing to disassociate themselves with the policies of their own party that led us to this situation in the first place.

I fear that cold feet could set in, and that's what toppled Kinnock in 92. Labour went in to 92 a reformed party, but in the process it looked like they were running scared from their past so the sticking to the devil you know, albeit with a fresh face argument stuck, coupled with assassinations on Kinnock's character.

Sunak has been around longer and has closer associations with the past than Major. The Tories are more divided now and Sunak's repeated and offensive culture war comments as he tries to keep the back benchers together and fight off Reform, are alienating people who don't care about that stuff. But Starmer seems to be disrupting his enemies whilst they're making mistakes. He's not very popular and people who really don't want to vote Tory anymore are begging labour for change. They better have a belter of a last minute manifesto lined up because I can see 10 months of tax cuts and pointing to better than expected growth, inflation, and borrowing forecasts to pretend that everything is OK.
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I’m not sure it was gaining traction, the issue is we all (even if we try not to) only really see our bubble these days thanks to algorithms throwing us stuff it thinks we want to see.

Political parties have polling data that is far more detailed than the ones released publicly, I suspect that is showing the policy was not very popular and the Tory attack line was working.

I suspect the policy will still be in the manifesto, just without the spending commitment. They will say they can’t commit to a spend until the election as they don’t know how badly the Tories will have screwed the economy until then.

There is a slightly weird scenario playing out at the moment that people are pushing Labour for costed policy decisions prior to the GE campaign, it’s not really possible or sensible and previously no one expected the opposition to make such solid claims until purdah, but for some reason people seem to want it this time. Hence why I think they should have never put a price on this when they did last year.
 
Craig said:
To be fair the story on the green pledge has been bubbling for a good few weeks now
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The right response to this U-turn from a Labour point-of view would be government debt. Government debt has tripled since they left office, we have almost 10k pp debt compared to Germany. Our economy is in a very poor state - debt is ultimately over 85% of GDP. Any government coming in should be aiming to reduce that to something more sustainable (60-ish%). of course the whole problem with this is, mention Austerity and they will hemorrhage votes.

Politics are fickle.
 
Dave said:
I’m not sure it was gaining traction, the issue is we all (even if we try not to) only really see our bubble these days thanks to algorithms throwing us stuff it thinks we want to see.

Political parties have polling data that is far more detailed than the ones released publicly, I suspect that is showing the policy was not very popular and the Tory attack line was working.

I suspect the policy will still be in the manifesto, just without the spending commitment. They will say they can’t commit to a spend until the election as they don’t know how badly the Tories will have screwed the economy until then.

There is a slightly weird scenario playing out at the moment that people are pushing Labour for costed policy decisions prior to the GE campaign, it’s not really possible or sensible and previously no one expected the opposition to make such solid claims until purdah, but for some reason people seem to want it this time. Hence why I think they should have never put a price on this when they did last year.
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Sidelining my own personal admiration for the policy, and the belief that it was sellable and acted as a clear line of distinction between 2 party's who are struggling to strike a positive rapport with voters, it's highly dependent on who is being polled and the strategy behind it.

Unlike voting intentions which are more quantitative in nature, polling opinions on specific policies provide highly qualitative results. The truth is in the eyes of the beholder. You see the patterns and interpret the data how you want to see it. It could well be that they're targeting specific voters, as strategically that's what they see as their route to power. But that creates its own bubble, its own algorithmic echo chamber around the party leadership.

Electoral strategy is what will win or loose this election when you have a governing party so consistently and deeply unpopular. But whatever the truth behind the comments he made about transformational leadership, or whether he attaches a monetary value to his flagship policy or not, headlines will read "Starmer praises Thatcher and Blair" and "Labour U-turns on another pledge" regardless. If this is rooted in the strategy of wooing traditional Conservatives in shires and leafy suburbs as they seem this is a good way to split the right vote between Tory and Reform and hoover up the votes of everyone else then fine. These voters tend to dislike high taxes, high spending, don't trust Labour with money, yet feel homeless since the Tories themselves have proved incompetent in these areas, they're not interested in bashing immigrants and culture wars, they worry about the crumbling of basic services, dishonesty, and the disregard for institutions and international agreements.

They can spend so much time and effort trying to push the Tories further to the right, that there's a real danger they can leave themselves exposed on both flanks from the SNP, Reform and even the Greens and Plaid in a few areas (I actually think that a successful GE for the Lib Dems is in Labours best interest).

But I don't think this has come from polling or strategy as much as it probably has from Rachel Reeves. A very impressive politician, rising in popularity who I'm starting to think is actually pulling the strings. Even though she was the one who attached the £28bn to the policy in the first place, she's been resolute recently about the purse strings. Even George Osbourne and Ken Clark have shown admiration for her.
 
Matt.GC said:
Sidelining my own personal admiration for the policy, and the belief that it was sellable and acted as a clear line of distinction between 2 party's who are struggling to strike a positive rapport with voters, it's highly dependent on who is being polled and the strategy behind it.

Unlike voting intentions which are more quantitative in nature, polling opinions on specific policies provide highly qualitative results. The truth is in the eyes of the beholder. You see the patterns and interpret the data how you want to see it. It could well be that they're targeting specific voters, as strategically that's what they see as their route to power. But that creates its own bubble, its own algorithmic echo chamber around the party leadership.

Electoral strategy is what will win or loose this election when you have a governing party so consistently and deeply unpopular. But whatever the truth behind the comments he made about transformational leadership, or whether he attaches a monetary value to his flagship policy or not, headlines will read "Starmer praises Thatcher and Blair" and "Labour U-turns on another pledge" regardless. If this is rooted in the strategy of wooing traditional Conservatives in shires and leafy suburbs as they seem this is a good way to split the right vote between Tory and Reform and hoover up the votes of everyone else then fine. These voters tend to dislike high taxes, high spending, don't trust Labour with money, yet feel homeless since the Tories themselves have proved incompetent in these areas, they're not interested in bashing immigrants and culture wars, they worry about the crumbling of basic services, dishonesty, and the disregard for institutions and international agreements.

They can spend so much time and effort trying to push the Tories further to the right, that there's a real danger they can leave themselves exposed on both flanks from the SNP, Reform and even the Greens and Plaid in a few areas (I actually think that a successful GE for the Lib Dems is in Labours best interest).

But I don't think this has come from polling or strategy as much as it probably has from Rachel Reeves. A very impressive politician, rising in popularity who I'm starting to think is actually pulling the strings. Even though she was the one who attached the £28bn to the policy in the first place, she's been absolutely resolute recently about the purse strings. Even George Osbourne and Ken Clark have shown admiration for her.
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Actually polling opinion is easier than polling likely vote share, it’s why voting intention polls are so varied. There is only really YouGov and Opinium who get it right.

Pollsters always go for a full spread of the electorate when polling so they won’t have focused on any one group. But the reason polling opinion is easier than predicting voter share is you are simply asking people what their opinion is and how important it is to their electoral choices. The issue with vote share is complex models are needed to work out what to do with “don’t know” and how to weight “likely voters”.

Plus private polls for parties are always more accurate, labours internal poll in 1992 showed they were losing when all the public polls had them winning.
 
Dave said:
Actually polling opinion is easier than polling likely vote share, it’s why voting intention polls are so varied. There is only really YouGov and Opinium who get it right.

Pollsters always go for a full spread of the electorate when polling so they won’t have focused on any one group. But the reason polling opinion is easier than predicting voter share is you are simply asking people what their opinion is and how important it is to their electoral choices. The issue with vote share is complex models are needed to work out what to do with “don’t know” and how to weight “likely voters”.

Plus private polls for parties are always more accurate, labours internal poll in 1992 showed they were losing when all the public polls had them winning.
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The polling itself is easier as you're not predicting what "don't know" means, the interpretation of the results I would argue isn't.

Say you're being told that your policy is too expensive, and the reason for that is that people cannot see where the money is coming from or understand how the investment will pay back, unless the pollster, who then has to conduct themselves identically to their colleagues elsewhere, sits in a participants living room all day probing for hours on end, you'll still get a data set that requires a lot of analytical interpretation.

Even after that interpretation has been decided on, you then have to look at what the groups of people you are targeting are saying and assume that you are right about that strategy as well. Although it can provide far more data and deep insight than binary "will you vote for us, yes or no?" polling, it's still very much routed in approximation and characterisation.

It's pretty clear the country requires a new government, and that both main party leaders are not popular. The length of time those numbers have been available for shows consistency. I would argue that it's about time they started being a bit daring this close to a GE, stick to some policies, create larger dividing lines, and defend them vigorously. Unless of course they've not convinced themselves on some of their own policies, hence why I think this is more to do with Reeves as much as it may be with any focus groups.
 
Might also be due to the public falling out of interest with being green at the moment and more focused on the cost of living crisis. People don’t want money spent on green schemes unless it’s going to make things cheaper for them in a very short space of time. Might be that Labour have noticed this and will shift their focus on to other schemes which might appeal to the public more at this moment in time.
 
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