Haighus
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Post by Haighus on Mar 27, 2024 6:04:20 GMT -5
Although this is quite chicken-and-egg, as those property prices are so high because of people earning above-average income. Anyway, even with that they probably spend a lower proportion of their income on housing than folk on minimum wage AND get a capital asset in return rather than paying for someone else's mortgage via rent.
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herzlos
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Post by herzlos on Mar 27, 2024 9:04:41 GMT -5
To be fair, I'm not sure Hunt personally knows many people earning under £100k. He must be vaguely aware than national minimum wage workers exist.
What's also interesting is that he's implying MP's are paid less than what he thinks is average. Though as Chancellor he's on £155k not including any side-income.
On his actual statement:
"I spoke to a lady from Godalming about eligibility for the government’s childcare offer which is not available if one parent is earning over £100,000"
I certainly don't think the Government need to be subsidizing child care for someone on about 3 times the national average wage. Approximately 4% of the UK earn over £100k. Overhauling the child tax credit to stop a £50k earner getting screwed over is one thing, but I'm not convinced many people on £100k aren't prevented from working due to child care costs.
Interestingly enough, a single £100k salary will barely get a mortgage in his constituency without an enormous deposit.
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Haighus
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Post by Haighus on Apr 3, 2024 15:02:52 GMT -5
Three British citizens amongst 7 aid workers killed after being clearly targeted by the IDF. The reporting from Haaretz suggests that the IDF essentially considered aid workers acceptable collateral for hitting a possible Hamas militant. There was no militant.
Somewhat depressingly*, it looks like this event may be what finally pushes the UK government to halt arms shipments to Israel. 6 months too late, but better late than never. I am not holding my breath though.
*Depressing in the sense that 32000+ Palestinian lives wasn't enough, but 3 Brits might be.
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mdgv2
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Post by mdgv2 on Apr 29, 2024 7:15:40 GMT -5
That’s Hamza Yosuaf quit as First Minister of Scotland.
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herzlos
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Post by herzlos on Apr 29, 2024 9:25:57 GMT -5
It's bizarre when a leader messes something up and resigns now.
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mdgv2
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Post by mdgv2 on Apr 30, 2024 2:30:10 GMT -5
In objectively good news? Thick Lizzie’s book has sold a frankly piss poor 2,228 copies.
Hopefully we can now resign her and her demented waffling to the annals of history. And whilst Tories being Tories, it’s Sunak that’ll get the blame? We all know it’s her and Bogjob that did the big damage through a poor mix of ego and abject incompetence.
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Haighus
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Post by Haighus on Apr 30, 2024 3:09:21 GMT -5
I think Johnson's personal conduct is and has been awful, but I maintain he was the best Tory PM of the current run.
His incompetence at enacting the bad stuff combined with his need to cut ribbons meaning he tended to spend more on projects meant he did less harm and more good than the others.
The pandemic policy was a disaster, but I don't think that would have been any better under Cameron or Sunak or Truss or May.
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herzlos
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Post by herzlos on Apr 30, 2024 3:54:47 GMT -5
It's also bad that the best thing you can say about a PM was that he was too distracted to mess anything up too badly. I'm not sure I agree there though because the stuff he did do was catastrophic.
But then would anyone else have done a better job dealing with Covid? The best plan would probably have been to leave it alone and let the experts deal with it.
In objectively good news? Thick Lizzie’s book has sold a frankly piss poor 2,228 copies.
I wonder how many of those were for reviews / work rather than actually being interested.
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Post by crispy78 on Apr 30, 2024 8:30:58 GMT -5
I think Boris was the least Tory of the current run of Tory PMs - might be a better way to put it. He was still extremely shit in his own way - but his own overriding personal priorities of 'will it make me more popular / will I get a shag out of it' did go some way to blunt the Tory nastiness.
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Post by punishedmcbogus on May 1, 2024 4:25:37 GMT -5
huh? Boris is maybe the worst of the lot - rampant corruption and cronyism, pulled the trigger on leaving the EU, repeatedly broke the law, prorogued parliament, and ignored the constitutional conventions that are meant to prevent politicians lying to the public, left the UK, US and EU on a collision course on his sticking-plaster-on-a-sucking-chest-wound deal over Northern Ireland and how many covid deaths??? He was barely PM for more than 2 years! He wasn't as bad? He put Priti Patel in charge of the home office! Any of you seen any of that "leveling up" cash in your constituencies? He had to be dragged out of downing street, and invoked an actual dictator in his leaving speech. I know Truss and Sunak have been shite, but christ alive guys, he was BAD. The fat blond turd is still making shitloads of cash off just the ex-PM paycheck, when frankly he should be exiled to a leaky shack on some sandbar off the northeast coast. From the referendum to now, Johnson has been a political disease in the UK, sunak and truss are just symptoms of that - Truss's conspiracism and desire to slash so-called "red tape" are both classics from the bojo playbook, while Sunak's lack of any apparent ideology beyond "I think I should be prime minister" and his willingness to say what he thinks will sound good in voxpops are charmlessly cribbed from his former boss.
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Haighus
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Post by Haighus on May 1, 2024 4:55:28 GMT -5
Brexit was going to happen regardless by the time Johnson was in power- Cameron is the one to blame for that. Once the vote happened, a hard Brexit became increasingly inevitable. In addition, anything Johnson did pales in comparison to the damage of austerity.
I don't think any of the recent PMs would have handled COVID significantly different- Sunak even instigated the disastrous "eat out to help out" policy that accelerated a fresh wave.
Truss was only in office for the time it took a lettuce to wilt, and managed to crash the economy. Imagine if she'd been at the helm during COVID.
Johnson's corruption is only remarkable in how open it was- Tories are usually better at hiding it. The £3 million to become a lord" scheme had been running prior to Johnson, for example. This openness has helped turn public opinion against the Tories. Again, I prefer an incompetent Tory to a competent one. Competent ones do things like austerity.
Come to think of it, May was probably better than Boris as she blandly did almost nothing and rarely had the political capital to achieve anything she did want to do. But the Home office remained pretty horrible under her tenure too.
To reiterate- Johnson is probably the most loathsome at a personal level. He is an amoral hypocrite. But as crispy78 says, he is the least Tory of the recent Tories and his damage was limited by this plus incompetence.
I don't want a competent Tory government. They are better at hurting the majority in this country in the interests of the wealthy few.
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mdgv2
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Post by mdgv2 on May 1, 2024 5:23:20 GMT -5
I disagree on COVID.
Bogjob dithered. A lot. Expert Advisors were routinely ignored. Lockdown was delayed. He’s on record as at least considering just letting it rip. Excess deaths aren’t “the least of things”. At all. PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE HE’S AN INCOMPETENT, VICIOUS CUNT.
He’s an incompetent bumblecunt, utterly ill suited to high office of any kind. Never mind the lies, the hypocrisy and the self serving nature of the man? He’s a danger.
Like May? He coveted the job, but had fuck all intention of actually doing the job.
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Haighus
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Post by Haighus on May 1, 2024 5:44:38 GMT -5
I disagree on COVID. Bogjob dithered. A lot. Expert Advisors were routinely ignored. Lockdown was delayed. He’s on record as at least considering just letting it rip. Excess deaths aren’t “the least of things”. At all. PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE HE’S AN INCOMPETENT, VICIOUS CUNT. He’s an incompetent bumblecunt, utterly ill suited to high office of any kind. Never mind the lies, the hypocrisy and the self serving nature of the man? He’s a danger. Like May? He coveted the job, but had fuck all intention of actually doing the job. I agree he is unsuitable for high office of any kind, I'm certainly not arguing Johnson is good, merely less bad. I don't think any of the last 5 PMs have been suited to high office. Do you think Cameron, May, or Truss would have done any better with COVID? We know Sunak wouldn't, he was complicit through most of it as Chancellor and instigated some of the bad policies. All of them are vicious and do not care about the welfare of the majority of the country. Cameron is even the reason the NHS and social care system was so vulnerable in the first place! UK pandemic preparedness was high before they gutted the system through austerity. Truss is a free market libertarian truther and probably would have just let COVID run wild and allowed the NHS and social care to properly collapse at the peaks. May was weak and couldn't make a decision either and would have dithered too. For reference, the number of excess deaths due to austerity from 2011 to 2019 is estimated at about double the number of excess deaths during the pandemic from 2020-2023 (and the impact of austerity undoubtedly would have caused some of the COVID excess mortality).
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Post by punishedmcbogus on May 1, 2024 5:46:21 GMT -5
The notion that Tory incompetence is somehow to be a measure of how good or bad someone is as PM is like... a hill I personally wouldn't want to die on. How much money has Sunak wasted trying to drag the Rwanda Bill through? While people are literally starving? Incompetent leaders who are wicked are just as dangerous as competent leaders who are wicked. Sunak, May, Truss, Cameron, Cameron-Clegg, I dislike all of them deeply, but the watershed for all of this was the referendum that Johnson used to launch this chapter of his career - if Gove hadn't stitched him up at the last minute, he would've been PM after the referendum, not May. The Tories pivoted to the open race for power and aping American culture-war nonsense because they'd seen how it'd galvanized the republicans.
And for the idea that Johnson's corruption was only remarkable for how open it was? It really wasn't. Go around the back of downing street and look at how close the cops are there. Then think about the noise those parties must have made. The met were actively involved in covering up a culture of lawbreaking while people died en-masse. To protect the PM, when evidence piled up that he broke his own laws because he didn't think they should apply to him. Truss is a mad fuckup, but no-one paid for her to have special gold wallpaper. Sunak is a vapid little viper who can't wait to fuck off back to California to try and be a tech-bro, but you can't play tennis with him. I'm not saying they aren't corrupt, of course they are, just look at how much influence Hester and Mansour get for chucking bundles of cash at them, but things were historically dreadful under bojo, and the less chance he has of coming back, the better we all are for it.
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Haighus
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Post by Haighus on May 1, 2024 5:58:02 GMT -5
The Met has protected those in power since its founding, that is hardly remarkable.
Is Johnson having parties more dangerous* than all the MPs who (legally) have "side jobs" with big corporations where they are paid hundreds of thousands for a few hours work each year? Clearly those roles are only worth it to the corporations for undue access to Parliament and the ability to corrupt UK policy in their favour.
Or the fact that anyone with £3 million and some time can become a UK life peer and influence legislation from the heart of the government?
All the corruption is still happening under the water, Johnson just floated it to the top like the turd he is.
I agree I don't want Johnson back though *shudders*
*Obviously morally repugnant.
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