So because the London Bridge attack was caused by an Islamic supporter the Conservatives are within their rights to be islamophobic. I note that they have three supporters being investigated for being anti Semitic.
You have a party funded by Russian oligarchs and are sitting on a report regarding Russian involvement why.
I see you have been reading the conservative leaflet mummy will be proud.

Fortunately your rather extreme views on most issues are a long way from the mainstream in British society.

You say Labour have a credibility problem however the polls suggest Corbyn is trusted more than Johnson.

Depends what you term "mainstream society".

You presume the majority view the world as you do. You might wonder, then, why Labour aren't romping home.

And this is where I see a huge paradox with traditional working class Labour support. I don't hear many working class folk expressing any love for freedom of movement and mass immigration, I don't hear any positive language around Islam, I don't hear any love for the EU. Working class folk don't generally care for "progressive" and "woke" standards of political correctness. A spade is a spade. You can take your offence and fook right off, is pretty much how it goes.

Go into a pub in some of our beloved towns across the north and the language will be anything but woke or correct. Most working class folk don't care about comments like 'letterbox' burkas. Most chuckle and say 'that's naughty', and get on with their lives. Actually, just as most non-working class folk with more important things to worry about do.

Academics, journalists, left politicians and other lefty types simply can't accept or understand any of this. That's why when I predicted a leave vote in 2016, every single one of my London-based "woke" colleagues saw their 4rse at me. Guess who was a smug bast'rd the next time I saw them.

If you can find a pub that is still open after 9 years of Conservative rule.

I thought this narrative had fizzled out. Austerity wasnt forced because of Labour. The financial crash of 2008 was a global crash following dodgy sub prime mortgages in the US packaged with fraudulent credit ratings packing as CDO's that were worthless. The bubble burst and it led to a tightening of credit ratings across Europe with banks realising the safe mortgages they bought were worthless so a decrease in lending (credit crunch) and shortage in liquidity. We had to bail out the banks to the tune of 500 billion. The tax payer footed the bill with 10 years of austerity and Labour/immigration took the blame.

Public services slashed; the NHS brought to its knees through underfunding; police, fire and nursing numbers cut. Libraries closed down. A record number of foodbanks opened and used; record numbers of homelessness; record numbers of in-work poverty (that is people who are in full-time employment, working every hour they can, and still having to claim benefits and use foodbanks); we’ve heard a headteacher in Morecambe break down as they tell us about children scavenging in bins in schools for an old apple core, because they are that hungry (look it up).

Four million children in poverty in the 5th richest economy in the world. Food bank use in 2009 was at 47,000. In 2018 that figure stands at 1.6 million. 1.6 million! 4 million children in poverty. Incredible! We are all one accident away from falling on tough times. Meanwhile, we have seen the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich that we have ever seen. How can that sit right with anyone?

Global scientific consensus tells us we have 11 years to reverse climate change before it is too late. And yet we have a prime minister who could not be bothered to debate it. At the last leaders debate on ITV, climate change was never even brought up! Fritnin!

I see a lot of crap thrown at the way of Jeremy Corbyn. For whatever you think of his leadership or his policies between him and Alexander Boris De Feffal Johnson who has the interest of the working class at heart? Pissed off at the personal attacks on Corbyn who is - if nothing else - a genuine, compassionate man, full of integrity, who has stood up for the most vulnerable in society his entire life. He has fought racism of every kind (including anti-Semitism) his entire life.

By comparison, and in the last 10 years alone, Boris Johnson has called gay men “tank top wearing bum boys”, he has called Muslim women “Letterboxes” and “bank robbers”, he has called black people “picanninies” with “watermelon smiles”. He said that the city of Liverpool was full of people always wanting to be the victims (about Hillsborough). He has been sacked twice for dishonesty. He is a serial adulterer. He is on record arranging for a journalist to be beaten up. He has banned the Daily Mirror from his tour bus. Refused to take part in certain debates. Dodged the Andrew Neil interview. Expelled members of his own party for voting against him. In the words of Basil Fawlty "otherwise okay?".

Political correctness has gone too far. I'm not a fan of the far left. I believe you can still be liberal and have common sense. Some of Corbyn's shadow cabinet I'm not dancing for joy at (like Diane Abbott) but with what is front of you ask yourselves this; Who really has the interest of the working class at heart? I have not found it difficult to choose which party to vote for when faced with that question.

Our politics are obsessed with Brexit. This is the Brexit election. Corbyn has been absolutely played on this. He should have passed the withdrawal bill and then had an election. If memory serves didn't parliament pass the withdrawal bill through to its second reading (on it's way to becoming law) and then Johnson called an election? Now why did he do that?

Because Brexit is the Lynton Crosby dead cat strategy. Without it (and if you park it from your mind) the horrific tenure of this Conservative government is left hopelessly exposed. They don't have a leg to stand on. Nurses numbers, police numbers, education, the NHS - all public services, their policies are ripped to shreds. They are now. From the ridiculous nurses recruitment through to the policing numbers through to the number of hospitals built. Day time TV anchors have done damage there. It is why Johnson will not stand up to scrutiny of Neil & co and yet it doesnt matter because Brexit is the fallback, the scapegoat.

I know you're massively triggered by people who show empathy to others but, if you actually read what Sal P posted, it was mostly a list of right wing economic ideas which polls show aren't particularly popular in this country.

You've gone off on one down a culture war line which is what you seem to love but which wasn't really the point.

If you could comprehend it would be a big help - so I will spell it out in simple terms that even you and your mummy will be able to understand.

How many attacks have we had in the country from the Jewish community? How many attacks have we had from the Muslim community? Which branch of religion do you think offers the greatest threat of physical injury to the population of the UK?

So would you say a fear of Islam has more tangible substance than a fear of Judiasm? I ask again why are Labour so scared of the Jews.

As for funding - the Labour party draws most of its funds from pretty hard left trade unions who are currently mobilising followers to disrupt political gatherings - democracy isn't something Labour really want.

I never the financial state that the Tories inherited from Labour was caused by Labour - just the Tories inherited it and something needed to be done. That involved controlling the one thing they could - public spending - do you think they took great pleasure in that a definite vote loser?

4 million children in poverty - what do you determine as poverty - poverty is what you see in Africa. These kids come from low income families where benefits top up their income to agreed levels. When you read about nurses earning £30k+ using food banks it does make you question?

Climate change can only be tackled on a global basis - yes we can do our bit - perhaps if we didn't buy Chinese products until they have cleaned up their act then it might make a difference. Fracking has reduced carbon output in the US yet we don't want to endorse it here.

The idea that the Labour party cares about the working class is simply not born out by their actions - Labour is now a north London elitist party controlled by Momentum and its cheerleaders like Owen Jones and Ash Sakar. It is now a party that lacks any kind of substance or gravitas.

Boris has simply learned from the mistakes made by May last time and his opponents this time - all he is trying to do is not screw up - Corbyn would do the same if he were in power and protecting his position. I doubt he will ever be interviewed by Neil again.

Corbyn is an agitator and always has been - he has a nasty temper on him when challenged - a defender of extreme organisation with whom he appears to have significant empathy.

Starting salary for a nurse is £23k, healthcare assistants earn around £18k.

The average rent is £926pm (£11k pa) in England and £1,665 (£20k pa) in London.

But sure, poverty only exists in Africa

And how many of these nurses earning £23k live in accommodation that costs £926p/m - its the same as how many people will actually gain the whole £6,700 Labour is promising?

So what constitutes poverty?

Hundreds in Leeds - the city is full of bars and pubs, its like you can go 50 yards with seeing one - that is despite beer being £6 a pint.

Pubs fail because of a few key factors - smoking ban, cheap off sale alcohol, dinking/driving etc nothing to do with the Conservatives.

So why are the Tories so far ahead in the polls? Perhaps its you that is way off knowing what real people think - perhaps rather than signing of their payroll you need to go out and speak to some of them - but then you would have to stop looking down on them from your lofty perch.

They have a lead in the polls due to their clear "Brexit" policy and the love in from the majority of the media for Boris, coupled with fear of a Corbyn government- propagated by the vast majority of the media.
The truth is that Labour have utterly failed to capitalise on a split ruling party and if we're honest, this does fall on Corbyn's shoulders.

However, the Tories should not be forgiven for their austerity program, which has squeezed the life from some of those at the bottom of the pile and their policies continue to massively affect the very poorest people in the country, something that they and their supporters should be ashamed of.
Unfortunately, the Tory ethos of putting personal interest above collective success continues unabated.

Haven't the Tories shown a significant increase in the national minimum wage £2/hr - a 33% increase. Combine that with increases in personal allowances of £6k - surely these policies positively impact the poorly paid.

So given the financial situation the Tories inherited what do you think they should have done?

The idea that Corbyn is negatively impacted by the press needs to be offset by the strength of Labour with social media - who actually buys a newspaper these days? Far more people read/use Twitter so its just a spurious excuse because we don't want the state to own all our businesses and Labour's message simply doesn't stack up to scrutiny.

McDonald showed the angry side of Labour on Marr today - lost his cool and the argument.

Quote ="Sal Paradise"Haven't the Tories shown a significant increase in the national minimum wage £2/hr - a 33% increase. Combine that with increases in personal allowances of £6k - surely these policies positively impact the poorly paid. So given the financial situation the Tories inherited what do you think they should have done? The idea that Corbyn is negatively impacted by the press needs to be offset by the strength of Labour with social media - who actually buys a newspaper these days? Far more people read/use Twitter so its just a spurious excuse because we don't want the state to own all our businesses and Labour's message simply doesn't stack up to scrutiny. McDonald showed the angry side of Labour on Marr today - lost his cool and the argument.'" I agree with the first 2 points that you make, which are offset by the younger workers and the dreaded zero hours contracts - £2 and hour more, if you lose 3 or 4 hours of work may still be a reduction ?? and of course you dont mention those who, for a multitude of reasons, cant work and should we gloss over child poverty, crime and massive increase in foodbanks, all as a direct result of austerity cuts And, just to show the utter contempt that the Tories have for the poorest people in the country, their candidate for Broxstowe, tells people, rather than use foodbanks, they should take out payday loans https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/ ... yday-loan/ As long as his conscience is clear Is this who we should vote in on Thursday ??

Quote ="Sal Paradise"Haven't the Tories shown a significant increase in the national minimum wage £2/hr - a 33% increase. Combine that with increases in personal allowances of £6k - surely these policies positively impact the poorly paid. So given the financial situation the Tories inherited what do you think they should have done? The idea that Corbyn is negatively impacted by the press needs to be offset by the strength of Labour with social media - who actually buys a newspaper these days? Far more people read/use Twitter so its just a spurious excuse because we don't want the state to own all our businesses and Labour's message simply doesn't stack up to scrutiny. McDonald showed the angry side of Labour on Marr today - lost his cool and the argument.'" I agree with the first 2 points that you make, which are offset by the younger workers and the dreaded zero hours contracts - £2 and hour more, if you lose 3 or 4 hours of work may still be a reduction ?? and of course you dont mention those who, for a multitude of reasons, cant work and should we gloss over child poverty, crime and massive increase in foodbanks, all as a direct result of austerity cuts And, just to show the utter contempt that the Tories have for the poorest people in the country, their candidate for Broxstowe, tells people, rather than use foodbanks, they should take out payday loans https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/ ... yday-loan/ As long as his conscience is clear Is this who we should vote in on Thursday ??

On the issue of austerity and public finances:

In 2006/07 the budget deficit was 2.6 per cent of GDP. In the 2007 Tory conference, George Osborne [url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1562023/Tories-vow-to-match-Labour-spending.htmlcommitted the Conservatives to matching Labour's spending plans[/url and said it was a myth that the Conservatives would not invest as much in public services as Labour.

The financial crisis hit in 2008 and tax receipts crumbled and the budget deficit jumped up to 9.9 per cent of GDP. At this point the Tories saw electoral advantage in making the deficit their key campaigning point and so they started to say Labour had been spending too much for years and that's why the public finances were such a mess. It would have been more credible if in 2007, they had made a big deal about the 2.6 per cent deficit and said we need this to be zero so we would reduce spending, but when you campaign on 'we will match Labour's spending' and then subsequently claim Labour's spending was too high, you can see this was based on political opportunism not economics.

As for how to reduce a budget deficit: you're looking at government spending minus tax receipts, where tax receipts are a function of tax levels and economic growth. When spending cuts limit negatively on economic growth you're going to reduce your tax intake, especially when you slash investment spending like Osborne did in the early years before belatedly reversing some of that in Spending Review 2015.

Osborne inherited a budget deficit of 9.9 per cent and left a deficit of 3.8. That's a 6.1 percentage point reduction over 6 years.

In comparison, there was a budget deficit of 6.6 per cent in 1994 (this was after 15 years of Conservative government some of which coincided with the time we had the windfall from the oil receipts, strangely we didn't hear so much about this government being careless with the public finances...)

Ken Clarke introduced a few tax rises that caused a bit of a stir in the Daily Telegraph but didn't drive hordes of wealth creators out of the UK. The budget deficit was 3.0 at the point the Tories left office in 1997, and was 0 per cent in 1998, which can be credited still to Clarke's plans given that Gordon Brown committed to using Clarke's spending plans for the first three years of Labour's term.

That was a deficit reduction programme which took out 6.6 percentage points in four years - more effective than Osborne's and without anything like the scale of cuts.

I haven't gone into anything about the inequality aspects of Osborne's austerity, just the basic public finances. The idea that 'there was no alternative' is false. Osborne actually chose a less effective path.

Source: [url=https://obr.uk/data/OBR data[/url

Well nearly all nurses starting out will be renting as they are very unlikely to own property so the vast majority will be paying somewhere close to the national average rent.

Well for starters I was referring to your views not those of the Conservative party. Well not very many of your views have made it into their manifesto - what they'll actually do is open to question of course as I imagine many of them actually harbour opinions that are rather closer to the ones you express.

Most when they start will be living in shared accommodation as they would do at university or even in halls if their degree allows.

That's alright then, why would or should they ever want their own place


We could pay them a bit less, cos they're only nurses - not like proper doctors ??

Quote ="wrencat1873"I agree with the first 2 points that you make, which are offset by the younger workers and the dreaded zero hours contracts - £2 and hour more, if you lose 3 or 4 hours of work may still be a reduction ?? and of course you dont mention those who, for a multitude of reasons, cant work and should we gloss over child poverty, crime and massive increase in foodbanks, all as a direct result of austerity cuts And, just to show the utter contempt that the Tories have for the poorest people in the country, their candidate for Broxstowe, tells people, rather than use foodbanks, they should take out payday loans https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/ ... yday-loan/ As long as his conscience is clear Is this who we should vote in on Thursday ??'" I agree with you about those that can't work - the concept of universal credit is a good idea the application by the Tories has been cruel and heartless - yes I get the six weeks if you just walk out on a job but in the real world you would be paid notice and holiday pay to cushion the blow. Six weeks with no money I don't agree with. Crime is a society issue - people's attitude to authority has shifted significantly - would having more police on the streets sort out the gang issues in London, domestic abuse, widespread drug availability etc. no it wont - they might catch more of us speeding. I ask again what is considered poverty and realistically how many people does that cover - if we say food banks gave out 5m parcels and we say there are 30m people buying food every week that represents .03% yes it should not happen and if the aforementioned benefit system worked properly then the number would be far less - but there will always be people who for whatever reason get into financial strive so you will never fully eradicate it - same goes for homelessness. There are homeless people in every major city in the western world. You call out the Tories but you could equally call out Labour on a whole area of issues - racism being one.

Quote ="wrencat1873"I agree with the first 2 points that you make, which are offset by the younger workers and the dreaded zero hours contracts - £2 and hour more, if you lose 3 or 4 hours of work may still be a reduction ?? and of course you dont mention those who, for a multitude of reasons, cant work and should we gloss over child poverty, crime and massive increase in foodbanks, all as a direct result of austerity cuts And, just to show the utter contempt that the Tories have for the poorest people in the country, their candidate for Broxstowe, tells people, rather than use foodbanks, they should take out payday loans https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/ ... yday-loan/ As long as his conscience is clear Is this who we should vote in on Thursday ??'" I agree with you about those that can't work - the concept of universal credit is a good idea the application by the Tories has been cruel and heartless - yes I get the six weeks if you just walk out on a job but in the real world you would be paid notice and holiday pay to cushion the blow. Six weeks with no money I don't agree with. Crime is a society issue - people's attitude to authority has shifted significantly - would having more police on the streets sort out the gang issues in London, domestic abuse, widespread drug availability etc. no it wont - they might catch more of us speeding. I ask again what is considered poverty and realistically how many people does that cover - if we say food banks gave out 5m parcels and we say there are 30m people buying food every week that represents .03% yes it should not happen and if the aforementioned benefit system worked properly then the number would be far less - but there will always be people who for whatever reason get into financial strive so you will never fully eradicate it - same goes for homelessness. There are homeless people in every major city in the western world. You call out the Tories but you could equally call out Labour on a whole area of issues - racism being one.

If you really want to encourage people in to work then the benefits system needs to incentivise people who come out of unemployment to take insecure jobs and guarantee an 'income floor' for a certain period which guarantees that they will be better off than sitting on benefits.

So if you take low-paid part-time, variable hours work, the benefits system should smooth your income and avoid income gaps.

The big problem with the current system is because of the gaps in receiving payments when your status changes, people can't risk it because they don't have a cushion of savings to smooth cash flow problems.

There has been a lot of good thinking on welfare reform and incentive design from both left and right wing policy groups but the UC reforms have been undermined by the fact the government has targeted reducing the overall benefits bill, which means they look to chip away wherever they can, rather than thinking strategically how best to create a system that incentivises work.

Because they get a partner and together they want to build a future together and renting is dead money where its council property or a private landlord. Anybody with half a brain can see that.

Who has suggested paying nurses less - certainly not me, both my parents were SRN's in their youth - father left to work for a pharmaceutical company because in the 60s he couldn't support his family on the monies Labour under Wilson were prepared to pay.