effective opposition

I'm still waiting for a fully elected House of Lords, as promised in
1997.

 

Are they the only options?

See, I think they could have done the same thing as they did with
Iceland, and underwritten the first 50 or even 75k of personal savings
for everyone, but still let the bank go to the wall.

99% of the population would have been fine with this, and the general
public wouldn't have been left paying for commercial mismanagement.

 

Was it right for the government to provide a solution to a problem
they were intrumental in bringing aout?

Of course it was.

I don't see Brown or Darling suffering too much for it, though.

Brown's drawn over a year's salary as MP, and has barely turned up for
work, because he's been writing his book.

 

+1

 

I didn't vote labour. Ever. I did vote lib dem for several years, and
did at the last election.

And, with all due respect, you're not in the best position to talk
about being blind to the behaviour of a party. All it takes is the
mention of Tory for you to respond based on the miners strike from
(almost) 30 years ago.

You are right. I have changed my views significantly but mainly
because I have been sick and tired of the actions of UK Uncut and
similar organisations and the expectation that the state is there to
provide for everything they want.

Where do you propose the money comes from to pay these rents?

Now, I don't believe for one moment that the policy will be
implemented in its full extent. However I would be more than happy to
see a cap applied to new claiments.

Yes, it's tough but at the same time why the **** do people expect the
state to take care of them.

Nasty and mean or prudent? I'll accept 'harsh' once people are pushed
out of their houses, until then it's about setting a scene.

The councils took the decision where to cut the expenditure. The
government simply stopped the reckless spending.

It all comes down to what the council prioritise and when I look at
where some spending priorities are made (e.g. bus lanes being built
for 1 mile at a cost of several million and no significant benefit to
transport, road narrowing, silly "look how fast you're going signs",
iPads for councillors because the poor dears can't carry laptops etc.)
I think the problem is with the councils.

Regarding the parents, surely it's the job of a responsible parent to
make sure their children are looked after? To the extent of one
parent working harder so the other can be with the children. People
need to stop being so fucking selfish and take *THEIR*
responsibilities seriously.

Unfortunate but driven by economic situations.

Eh? There were barely any school crossing wardens when I was at school
and few were driven to school.

Half the time the wardens are stopping traffic for parents anyway.
Glad to see them go.

Petrol prices will drive people (excuse the pun) to walk more anyway.
Maybe people will walk their children to school and said kids will
learn some road sense.

OK, so if I remember because I only saw one of these articles, they
claimed 20% or so of parents were incapable of reading to children and
25% of 11 year olds were functionally illiterate?

However, again, it is the schools who are choosing where the axe
falls.

I don't believe it is an ideological experiment.

This lot are trying to put right the damage done in the past.

 

Well, I don't believe 99% of the population have anything like 50k in
savings with a single bank.

What is the current guarantee, 30k? I think that would cover the vast
majority of society.

And letting the banks go to the wall would have been unpleasant but I
think necessary since it is unacceptable that large businesses are
'too big to fail'.

 

Are you?

I'd like to turn the clock back to 97 and have an unelected house of
lords and revert to the 'evening hours' of the house of commons.

 

And this is the crux of it. I don't know what the real risks of our
ratings changing were. However if our credit rating is reduced we end
up paying higher interest on our debts and this risks compounding the
situation. If the Government's positioning (and I think much is
positioning rather than action) has been effective then they have done
well.

I presume the speed of cuts was done to get it over with. But
mentioning speed of cuts, what speed has there been? Has anyone been
kicked out of london because the rent is not being paid by the state
any more? (I don't think so, yet). Maybe we've given a little less to
the arts council. What else? Less money to the councils this year,
less money to higher education from 2012 beyond that?

 

I'd just go back a year or two, to before the recent expansion. But
yes, much as I hate the principle it seems to me that the current HoL
exemplifies "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

 

Well, I *am* still waiting. I'm not necessarily hoping, mind.

I'd ike to turn the clock back to 1970 and tell John Smith to exercise
a bit more.

 

The worst thing about him dying isn't that we missed out on a potentialy
decent PM but he'd probably have had someone other than Brown succeed
him.

 

Trouble is, I can't think of any of NuLab's inner circle that I would
consider a decent successor.

The multiple "coup" attempts revealed several of thme to be spineless
shits, and the likes of Blinky Balls make the blood run cold.

Nice bit earlier in the week with RedEd and Blinky moaning about the
reduced CGT charge paid by the company that sold all those care homes
(that have been in the news recently) a few years ago.

Not only was it a few years ago (hence not a coalition problem), but
the tapering was introduced in 1998, when among GB's special advisers
at the treasury were EB and EM.

 

That would be lovely. Certainly make my day job easier.

Cloud cuckoo land in reality as you are asking people not to be human.
Some 14 year old girls ****, some get pregnant. Adult relationships
break down before babies are born. People drink alcohol, take drugs.
Kids are neglected & abused. People get into uncontrollable debt because
the nice man *sold* them a mortgage they could never afford. I could go
on.

If you try to manage that lot through economic measures then you are
just going to drive the black economy. It's already starting to happen
as the reductions in property crime seen in the last decade are starting
to reverse.

In my line of work the economic factors of the last 2 years are starting
to show in an increased number of referrals[1]. Some people are losing
their jobs, some are downsizing into smaller homes. Most are coping but
relationship problems are increasing, especially the levels of domestic
violence and alcohol related problems.

The coalition commissioned the Munro Review which has recently been
published and is pretty damning of the current system of supporting
families and children. The main criticism is too much top down
regulation and not enough freedom for those at the front line to make
decisions based on local need. If local authorities could divert the
funds they are *compelled* to spend on bureaucracy into direct work with
families then we might stand a chance of reducing the 4 million children
still living in poverty[2].

What has the coalition set up to manage the changes? A quango called the
Social Work Reform Board which is making ... top down policy
recommendations.

Whilst the rhetoric of the culture of poverty thesis, with its notion of
the deserving and undeserving poor remains in vogue, I don't hold any
hope of this government bringing about change that narrows income
inequality *and* removes significant numbers of families from living in
poverty[3].


[1] admittedly, some of that is caused by other agencies being
inappropriately risk averse
[2] http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/why-end-child-poverty/key-facts
[3] where poverty is not just a factor of income

 

Heh.

 

All of which seems to be suggesting people shouldn't take
responsibility for themselves and their families and that the state
should provide.

I'm willing to accept that hoping for people to exercise some self
reliance may be a little idealistic but I still don't think that the
assumption that the state provides is a good one to base a society
on. Let alone a life, do these people have no pride?

 

It's a fact. As stated, there are 4 million children living in poverty.
Many of them will do okay despite their fucked up parents. A significant
proportion won't unless there is some sort of intervention. If you want
those children to become productive adults on your terms then you are
going to have to contribute to the resources to bring about change.
Those resources are not just about cash.

They have a different set of values to the ones you live to. The notion
of planning or consequences of actions is alien to many of the people I
work with. Some people, including many of Cameron's peers, would have
that this is a cultural problem brought about by the people themselves.
People certainly *appear* to choose a lifestyle. Most social scientists
would argue that the causes are structural in that "the system" creates
the dependency as there is no exit route. As PC has stated, just
switching off the money supply won't make the problem go away, just
shift it elsewhere unless there are clear exit strategies.

I see the latest initiative is to hand over cash to a bunch of
corporations to get people back to work. Supposedly they will be paid on
results. I guess that system will certainly create jobs: civil servants
to collect all of the data, checking each person remains in a job at 6,
12 & 18 month intervals and making the incremental payments to the
contractors. Well thought out that one: the civil servant who dreamed up
the scheme will be getting plenty of Xmas cards this year from
colleagues.

Incidentally, I've just read the prospectus for this new The Work
Programme. An 18 page document: it does not mention the word "child"
anywhere. Yet the lack of affordable child care provision is one of the
biggest reasons given by parents for not going to work.

 

No, there aren't.

There are a number of figures, depending on who you consult (Barnardo's,
unsurprisingly, is the highest I could find: 4 million.

Save The Children's figure is 25% lower, and STC says 1,5 million in
'severe poverty', which it defines as an income under £12,220/year for a
couple with one child.

Poverty.org says 3.9 million in low-income households: 60% or less of
the national average wage. That's basically Barnardo's figure, and I'd
not call 'low-income' poverty.

There seem to be around 12 million 16 year-olds and under in the UK and
by your figures, one in four of them is poverty-stricken. Once again, I
don't buy that.

 

(The Older Gentleman) wrote in

look up "index of multiple deprivation" - poverty, as you say, is not just
a factor of income. In Wales, the index used by WAG is a composit of 31
separate variables. List on p2
http://wales.gov.uk/docs/statistics/2010/100413sdr572010en.pdf

The 1 in 4 figure is about right. Here's an extract from the literature
review of my dissertation.

"8. Spatial variation: child poverty is highest in North East England
(28%) with Wales, Inner London and West Midlands close behind (27%). Some
Lower Layer Super Output Areas, (LSOA) have zero children at risk, others
have 100%. Child poverty varies widely by local authority e.g. Tower
Hamlets 66.4%, South Northampton 5.9%.
The figures quoted above are from the latest data available, relating to
2007/8 and published in DWP (2009)."

DWP (2009) Households below average income, An analysis of the income
distribution 1994/95-2007/08, online at http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/hbai.asp

 

See reply to TOG ref. index of multiple deprivation

Good for you. It's the shear volume of people living on that sort of
income that bothers me i.e. the ever widening income inequality.

and you were the one saying people should be less selfish

Okay. Let's return to the 1970s and have loads of child assessment
centres full of children from unworthy parents. More tax please.

It could be. You have to make the jobs worthwhile by making transport or
housing affordable - we're back to Paul's point again. You might be able
to afford to commute to Newbury/London for a job but someone on £6ph
won't be able to from a third of the distance.

They used to but they hadn't had their benefits cut and had to find a
job.

 

Of course, we are assuming thejobs are there to be had.