"Lab leak" may or may not be true, but it's (a) going to be extremely hard to find evidence for given time and China, and (b) .. ultimately irrelevant? Are there people who think "COVID was a bioweapon and therefore we shouldn't mask up and get vaccinated"?
There really isn't a lot of slack in the welfare system unless you're prepared to be very short sighted and go back to "tent city" levels of homelessness. Which is partly why all previous attempts to cut it have failed. Maybe declaring certain areas of high rent off-limits for housing benefit, but then you have to raise the salaries of NHS staff and teachers living in London so they can afford to work there.
Maybe if the Miliband reforms pay off and certain critical things get built and gas prices return to normal, Labour will be able to take credit for lower electricity prices? Unless it's all spent on datacenters, which would be even worse political doom.
Personally I'd go with the "mansion tax" but that requires ignoring the well-connected screaming. They did manage that with VAT on private school fees.
A rough calculation: £8,580 funding per child at state school, ~90,000 less in private schools and in state schools so about £770 million more required for state school funding and this measure is supposed to bring in about £1.7 billion a year...
So it looks like it would pay for itself?
Edit: We don't charge VAT on private healthcare - so charging it on private education looks a bit inconsistent to me.
As someone who has lived in a 'mixed block' in zone 1, I think it's delusional to characterise social housing tenants as 'teachers and nurses'. I suspect most teachers and nurses are already in private sector housing in London.
I think it could be OK to sell all social hosing in Zone 1/2 and use that money to pay higher wages for teachers and nurses plus state built replacement social housing in zone 4-6. There's probably some other space in the welfare system, look at the motability scandal or the increase in PIP claims.
ETA: there are possibly five hundred schools in Zone 2 alone. That is maybe 35,000 school staff you're saying should not be socially housed in about 35 square miles. They all have to commute in because, why?
That's fine that should stay as social housing then. It's probably even better this way as it's still possible to place people who for example absolutely have to be in kensington or islington there.
EEA like Norway would be both a significant improvement, and does not require Euro. I do think we have to get to the point where we can say that actually Schengen was good and we should have been part of it before we get economically overtaken by Poland.
I agree with you generally but the RAF are part of the state and not meaningfully "capital". If you attack the military then yes obviously you are going to get the book thrown at you. That does _not_ justify going after the people with signs.
"Corner, a former student at the University of Oxford, was also convicted of causing grievous bodily harm after he fractured Sgt Kate Evans' spine with a sledgehammer in the raid."
But again, let's be clear: that justifies the conviction of the person with the hammer. Not the people with signs.
Ugh, thank you - I was not aware of this. I agree with you - this should have got that person prosecuted. People with signs is perhaps a tad exaggerated.
They actually hacked holes in the things with a crowbar too. That didn't do as much damage as expected though.
And they videoed themselves doing it and published that.
And the aircraft weren't usable in the Israel-Palestine conflict but were in the Ukraine one. You have to wonder considering the Russian connections of the principal sponsor of Palestine Action: Fergie Chambers. Worth reading up on him.
Actions of a traitor or enemy saboteur. Lucky they didn't get shot.
Some of these protesters seem to think they're invincible these days because they support a popular cause (Palestine or climate, usually). They need to get a grip on what reasonable 'direct action' is. Obstructive protests are generally OK, Destructive protests aren't.
> to the point that we had arson attacks in Belfast
Not to argue against the point you're making but these aren't good examples. Policing in both Northern Ireland and Scotland are fully devolved and operate independently of the government in Westminster.
True. The modern far right is both a social media and traditional media driven phenomenon, internationally, and I don't have great suggestions for dealing with it other than "maybe the government should boycott Twitter before they ban sixteen year olds from it".
Nowadays you savages can't even be behead a citizen without people rioting.
About time the gang rapes by pakis and you Epstein-leftists result in some life sentences.
Police has no choice but to arrest people who commit a serious criminal offence on purpose and very publicly. It would undermine their credibility and the rule of law not to arrest them.
This is orthogonal with how police should tackle the violence you mention.
Edit in response to @pjc50's replay below:
The signs are a serious criminal offence. Supporting a proscribed terror organisation is a serious criminal offence according to the law and arrest is unavoidable.
Edit 2: What constitutes a "serious criminal offence" is not subjective based on one's personal opinion, it is what the law defines as such...
> What constitutes a "serious criminal offence" is not subjective based on one's personal opinion, it is what the law defines as such
This was literally a decision Starmer personally made, to put Palestine Action on the proscribed organization list. Without that the signs would not be an offence.
The attack on Brieze Norton was a serious criminal offence. The signs are not, no matter how much people want to pretend they are to conflate the two issues.
The police always have a choice as to which crimes they investigate. This is why petty theft in London is almost totally ignored.
(and the underlying decision to proscribe Palestine action was, of course, taken by Keir Starmer. It is a significant part of why he is out now.)
(edit war: "the signs are a serious criminal offence" -- this is why the Americans will be laughing at us about freedom of speech when they wake up on this forum.)
I don't see corresponding arrests being deployed against Twitter posters who were supporting the riots in Belfast, including the firebombing of immigrant homes, for example. I guess that's because they're not an organisation with a name, which is the important thing, rather than the actual violence?
How can this be squared with the decisions to not prosecute burglars, drug dealers, rapists and armed gangs, however? They are all people who commit serious criminal offences on purpose in Britain today without facing arrest.
People are desperate for change! It's just that due to a misinformation fuelled online (and traditional media!) environment, nobody can agree what that is.
Most of the real power is in the budget, which is technically a bill, but I would 100% go for "change the voting system". Almost anything except D'Hondt is better than FPTP; for simplicity, we could just copy the Scottish Parliament's use of AMS.
I would also insert a trapdoor that future changes to the voting system would require the approval of >50% of eligible voters, including non-voters. Yes, I know Parliament cannot bind its successors and all that, but at least I can make it look bad to change it again.
Does this solve any of the immediate problems? No. Does it solve the dysfunctionality since 2008? I think so, especially given that polling these days looks like five parties getting 20% of the vote each. Labour themselves came to power on 38% of the vote.
Lots of the problems in the UK stem from a lack of strategic vision. More coalitions, infighting, compromises, etc aren't going to drive serious change home. Don't really care if it's Labour or Tory, tbh, just want national politics focus on bigger picture stuff and bulldoze through regs if it's a matter of strategic investment.
What would be nice for voting reform, is to add regional elections across the nation (replacing the old European ones). This would be a great layer of government to vote in coalitions, who deal with 'softer day to day areas of government' (care, benefits, roads, etc). Would be a great incubator for national talent, too. We should be able to see how future PMs deal with a region before trusting them with national affairs.
The grand coalition governments of the EU are not in any way better. They just result in bickering and gridlock because parties that hate each other get stuck in the same room.
This is your pet issue, completely based on the grass looking greener on the other side.
The gridlock is real whether it happens inside or outside the party. This is partly why we're here in the first place! Starmer is out because he couldn't do coalition management inside the Labour party.
Starmer being an ideologue is a pretty funny take. I think most people would say he failed because he's a technocrat with no descernible principles or ideas.
Diversity over everything. Does not care about anything else. He is not a technocrat, to be a technocrat he would need to have evidence based policy, which he clearly did not. He is a pure, single minded, ideologue. Every event, every opportunity was just a conduit to express his single mindless slogan of diversity being our strength.
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