UK Politics Thread

It depends how it develops, but the mutual idea of the people who actually care about it, owning it makes sense

Ministers explore handing Post Office to sub-postmasters www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgvqgqw71ro

www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/reeves-to-announce-major-change-to-fiscal-rules-releasing-50bn-for-spending

Interesting. (as Elon would say).

Actually, the most interesting thing is that the IMF seems to have finally come around to the idea the public spending/investment can be a good thing.

I don't really have a big issue with them opening up a place for people to submit ideas (even in the likely event of those ideas all being completely worthless, I think at least showing engagement with people is a good thing). Having those ideas visible to everybody was really dumb though.

I meant that he’s taken one of the most popular meme-y submissions to the open forum, and sucked all of the fun out of it by doing his own AI bullshit version.

Irish man arrested

Tommy Robinson remanded in custody ahead of court date www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rxlj8d87yo

I continue to not get why journalists find "Working people" hard to parse www.newstatesman.com/thestaggers/2024/10/nancy-mitford-keir-starmer-and-the-new-english-class-war

Even the example they give of someone who got British Gas shares in the 80s/90s. You'd have to own something like 30,000 shares before the dividend bumped you over the capital gains tax limit. As it was something like 4p per share and the tax limit is £5K. I don't think many normal people have that many.

It's been perfectly evident they meant people paying the 3 main taxes, Income tax, National Insurance and VAT, for fucking ages. I just think a lot of journalists either have or have family/friends with investments/weird tax arrangements.

They've not helped themselves by using the term "working people" rather than using something like "income derived from working". That's where the distinction is. A pensioner who's on a £50k/year dividend from their investment portfolio and works at the gift shop of his golf club now and again is in a sense a "working person" even if they clearly aren't a category that needs particular protection from any tax reform.

Similar to the pushback from landlords being called "not working". Lots of landlords do work, and their priority is a side issue. That doesn't mean that their income from being a landlord can be entirely passive (especially if they delegate the running of the place to an agency) and is absolutely un-erned from their labour.

The media are being a bit dogmatic with their aoprent refusal to understand what is meant, but labour aren't exactly helping with their framing of it either.

I think the "Working people." thing, as well as the Labour volunteers helping The Democrats issue, are a sign of the media magnifying minutia for the sake of content. After the last 8 years in particular, News media have become accustomed to a constantly shifting narrative. While that's still the case globally, having a chaotic domestic narrative is far cheaper to cover.

It reasonable that they get pressed for an answer. Everybody with half a brain, even those who work in political journalism, could see that you can't promise to improve public services, be prudent the deficit, and *not* put up taxes.

We all knowing something and them going on the record saying something are completely different things.

There's nothing stopping them, post election and pre Bridget just stonewalling all questions and saying "full details of our fiscal plan will be outlined to the house when we formally announce our budget". They're only getting this pressure because theyr choosing to engage, to extent.

Regardless of right wing bias or whatever in the press, this is the press being the press. If they expected different they're foolish. To expect the press to not try and pin them down is to expect the press to fice them the benefit of the doubt and go easy on them. That's not holding the govt accountable

Working people is a stupid phrase for them to have ever tried to use. They either needed to refer to income or use examples of jobs, like shop workers and factory workers as they clearly indicates what income they mean.

Low income workers as a phrase seems to upset a lot of the right wing.

Tommy Robinson jailed for 18 months for cuntempt of cunt.

Nelsonmuntz.gif

I can understand giving someone a smack in the heat of the moment, especially if you feel threatened.

To then punch someone on the ground isn't reasonable. To do it five times rather puts any mitigation you may later want to bring up to be pointless.

I’m finding more and more that I kind of wish these people fleeced their audience out of even more money. Like the people who sank their life savings into Truth Social stock, it’s got to the point that I actually want to see them homeless.