The Theresa May General Election thread (edited)

Clarky

capo4th said:

DarnWeight said:

capo4th said:

May is the right woman for the job. Corbyn is a dinosaur funded by trade union idiots who continually grind the country to a halt.

People need to stop voting like their parents did 20-30 years ago and make the right decision.

Oh puh-lease.  When was the last time a strike caused the country to grind to a halt?  It sounds more like you're harking back 30 years.

The constant "strong and stable leadership" mantra is getting on my tits already, and we've still got weeks of this shit to wade through yet.

Mate with all due respect you live in Norfolk and probably drive an old Volvo estate or a tractor.

In the capital city where things happen we rely on public transport to move around. 

The recent strikes cost the country millions and it was it was all backed by Jeremy and his union cronies.

We need strong and stable leadership not some fuckin joker wearing a red tie with a beard.

As you were .....

the repeated train and tube strikes have been a major nightmare if I'm honest…
fell foul of them a couple of times myself..

Fretwired

Tim Farron has a new catch phrase .. "smell my spaniel" .. I wonder if its a sin .. :-)

siremoon

DarnWeight said:

Fretwired said:

@DarnWeight - it could be down to age. You are right that there isn't national industrial action any more. I remember revising for exams in the early 1970s by candle light as the power workers were on strike yet again. And back then if the miners came out other unions would support them. However, there are people on here who weren't alive at the time and didn't live through the three day week or the constant disputes in the car plants.

If you live in London public transport is essential so the endless strikes on the tube network cause a lot of pain for people - they blame the unions for their misery.

Oh, I agree.  Strikes happen, and can impact hugely on peoples' day-to-day lives.  Most unions worth their salt go through pretty extensive periods of discussion and negotiation before calling strike action, and as a result striking is generally considered as the last option when all other avenues have been exhausted.  We have extremely tough trade union laws in this country (see the Trade Union Act 2016), so you can be pretty much assured nowadays that if a strike has been called, it will have to have had solid backing from a majority of union members.

The fact is, the unions aren't the force they were, and we have fewer strikes.  To claim otherwise is untrue.

It doesn't seem like it to those of us who live in the Southern Railway area and need to travel every day.

Fretwired

More good news for May who had dinner with the EU Brexit team last night. Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU Commissioner for Trade, has now said the bloc will reach a free trade agreement with the UK after its divorce from Brussels.

holnrew

Printing money and using it to build housing seems like a better use of or than printing it and giving it to investors.

Fretwired

holnrew said:

Printing money and using it to build housing seems like a better use of or than printing it and giving it to investors.

How about not printing it at all .. just leads to inflation.

holnrew

Well yeah, there's that.

Fretwired

Let Housing Associations and Council's raise money in the City. Interest rates are low and plenty of investors would be interested in such a scheme. I worked for a local authority in the 1970s and this is how they funded council house building. It was stable and was offset against rents and tax. Thatcher put an end to the practice.

VimFuego

Fretwired said:

holnrew said:

Printing money and using it to build housing seems like a better use of or than printing it and giving it to investors.

How about not printing it at all .. just leads to inflation.

how do you think money is already created? And who creates it? I know the answer, but I bet you don't. EDIT: vast sums of money are already being printed, with no accountability, by private corportations, that has led to huge inflation. It's even been debated in the commons. Amazes me how little people know about how the world is actually run.

VimFuego

holnrew said:

Printing money and using it to build housing seems like a better use of or than printing it and giving it to investors.

QE, takes money from the poor and gives to the rich.

fields5069

Fretwired said:

More good news for May who had dinner with the EU Brexit team last night. Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU Commissioner for Trade, has now said the bloc will reach a free trade agreement with the UK after its divorce from Brussels.

Indeed, could take some time to reach the agreement though if past examples are anything to go by.

Fretwired

VimFuego said:

Fretwired said:

holnrew said:

Printing money and using it to build housing seems like a better use of or than printing it and giving it to investors.

How about not printing it at all .. just leads to inflation.

how do you think money is already created? And who creates it? I know the answer, but I bet you don't. EDIT: vast sums of money are already being printed, with no accountability, by private corportations, that has led to huge inflation. It's even been debated in the commons. Amazes me how little people know about how the world is actually run.

Actually I do .. I have a degree in economics and worked in a bank for a while (for all the good it's done me) .. :-)

Banks are worse than governments ... they can create money out of thin air

Fretwired

fields5069 said:

Fretwired said:

More good news for May who had dinner with the EU Brexit team last night. Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU Commissioner for Trade, has now said the bloc will reach a free trade agreement with the UK after its divorce from Brussels.

Indeed, could take some time to reach the agreement though if past examples are anything to go by.

Agreed, but it should calm markets and business leaders and take some heat out of the negotiations. It sometimes easier to agree on some outcomes first and then negotiate the deal that gets you there.

VimFuego

then you'll already know that money creation is creating massive houseprice inflation (which is causing huge hardship to a lot of people, tho good for people like me and IIRC you, who own the asset that is being inflated), what corbyn is propsing is at least make that money creation accountable to a democratic institution. Hardly economic illirtracy. EDIT: I was reading today that some £70bn of QE is being pumped into the stock market (which, ofc, pumps up share prices which benefits the already wealthy), why not take that money and build houses or invest in jobs and training? It's the same amount of money, but being spread aroound for maximum benefit.

ICBM

It's probably worth mentioning, since there seems to be this idea that the Tories are trustworthy with the economy and Labour aren't, that in six years George Osborne borrowed more money than all the Labour governments put together, including Brown's. Not only that, Labour actually has a better historical record of paying back the debt. The reason is simple - they don't give it away in tax cuts.

On a couple of specific points about Corbyn's policies:

Rail renationalisation won't cost a penny - in fact it will make money for the government. They will simply wait until each operating company's franchise ends, and then not give out a new one. The railways are profitable - during the time East Coast Trains was back in public ownership it produced millions of pounds of profits, which went directly into public finances. The Tories then threw that away by re-privatising it.

And no matter what it takes, it's worth ending PFI - a Tory policy, stolen and expanded by Brown in order to artificially cook the figures on borrowing - which is nothing more than a licence to print money for the private sector. It's vastly more expensive than the government simply borrowing the money and financing the projects itself.

I won't deny that Brown borrowed far too much money - that can't be changed now. What can be changed is the Tory economic strategy, which has resulted in both 'austerity' *and* failure to fix the deficit - a double whammy which has got us into an even worse mess than Brown ever did, regardless of how much he is to blame for starting it. But that's because Blair and Brown's policies were largely stolen Tory ones...

Fretwired

VimFuego said:

then you'll already know that money creation is creating massive houseprice inflation (which is causing huge hardship to a lot of people, tho good for people like me and IIRC you, who own the asset that is being inflated), what corbyn is propsing is at least make that money creation accountable to a democratic institution. Hardly economic illirtracy. EDIT: I was reading today that some £70bn of QE is being pumped into the stock market (which, ofc, pumps up share prices which benefits the already wealthy), why not take that money and build houses or invest in jobs and training? It's the same amount of money, but being spread aroound for maximum benefit.

A lot of QE went to banks that simply used the money to recapitalise their balance sheets. They didn't lend it to SMEs.

The solution to the housing crisis isn't printing money or big schemes as Corbyn suggests. It's allowing local authorities and housing associations to raise money to build new homes with affordable rents to meet the needs of local residents. Over time this would hit the buy-to-let market and those houses will be released back on the market as renting doesn't pay for the highly leveraged landlord.  I know someone who owns 75 flats and in a high proportion of them he has someone whose rent is being paid by a local authority. He's not rich - he just took a risk with buy-to-let mortgages when they were freely available.

My local authority is run by the Tories but they've been clever in working with developers to get council houses in exchange for land and private homes, but its small beer. However, when you find a bunch of Tories moaning about the system you know its broken.

Fretwired

ICBM said:

It's probably worth mentioning, since there seems to be this idea that the Tories are trustworthy with the economy and Labour aren't, that in six years George Osborne borrowed more money than all the Labour governments put together, including Brown's. Not only that, Labour actually has a better historical record of paying back the debt. The reason is simple - they don't give it away in tax cuts.

I'm not sure Osborne had much choice to be honest (and you know I'm not a fan of his) and he was in a coalition so some compromises had to be made. Had the Tories gone for even more cuts it could have tipped the economy into a recession. As it was he kept the ship afloat and we had some growth. The deficit has been cut and our debt is lower although it's still higher as a percentage of GDP than the likes of France and Germany.

The left moans about the austerity but it could have been much worse - the Tories would have lost the 2015 election and Wallace and Gromit would have been in power.

VimFuego

Fretwired said:

VimFuego said:

then you'll already know that money creation is creating massive houseprice inflation (which is causing huge hardship to a lot of people, tho good for people like me and IIRC you, who own the asset that is being inflated), what corbyn is propsing is at least make that money creation accountable to a democratic institution. Hardly economic illirtracy. EDIT: I was reading today that some £70bn of QE is being pumped into the stock market (which, ofc, pumps up share prices which benefits the already wealthy), why not take that money and build houses or invest in jobs and training? It's the same amount of money, but being spread aroound for maximum benefit.

A lot of QE went to banks that simply used the money to recapitalise their balance sheets. They didn't lend it to SMEs.

The solution to the housing crisis isn't printing money or big schemes as Corbyn suggests. It's allowing local authorities and housing associations to raise money to build new homes with affordable rents to meet the needs of local residents. Over time this would hit the buy-to-let market and those houses will be released back on the market as renting doesn't pay for the highly leveraged landlord.  I know someone who owns 75 flats and in a high proportion of them he has someone whose rent is being paid by a local authority. He's not rich - he just took a risk with buy-to-let mortgages when they were freely available.

My local authority is run by the Tories but they've been clever in working with developers to get council houses in exchange for land and private homes, but its small beer. However, when you find a bunch of Tories moaning about the system you know its broken.

is this tory policy then? I see you criticise labour, who at least have a workable plan (tho one you don't agree with, still a workable plan tho) but I don't see you mention any tory plans for dealing with the housing crisis. Until you break the stranglehold the banks have on the housing market, you will never deal with the crisis.

Fretwired

VimFuego said:

is this tory policy then? I see you criticise labour, who at least have a workable plan (tho one you don't agree with, still a workable plan tho) but I don't see you mention any tory plans for dealing with the housing crisis. Until you break the stranglehold the banks have on the housing market, you will never deal with the crisis.

No it isn't but it should be - that's why my local council is moaning. Totally agree about the banks stranglehold.

The problem with Corbyn's plan is it's the usual big London-based, money sucking quango that will take ages to get anything done. Look at the current fiasco with the Tories. We have a plan that says the council has to agree to 16,000 houses where I live. There's no provision for new roads, schools, GPs or anything. It's a mess and everyone agrees its impossible as it's just a central government diktat. No developer will take that size of project on so where's the money coming from?

The Tories don't have a policy. The only way to get things working is to get it done at a local level. I was told by a government minister that on average if the government collects £10 of tax by the time it's gone though the system and reached say a patient in a hospital there's only £1 left. 

VimFuego

I agree that corbyn is very much of the big problems require a big government solution, which as you say, is unlikely to deliver all of what is needed, but at least he has an understanding of the problem even if his solution is flawed. The tory plan is to continue as normal, which wil only make things worse. I am of the mind that there is nothing more important to the economy than dealing with the issue of FIAT currency and how money is created in western economies. We are witnessing the largest transfer of wealth since the middle ages and people are literally being run into by it. Any politian with the balls/cunny to address this gets my attention, especially over someone who thinks the system is working.