I believe in the politics of rewarding effort, not rewarding laziness, it's a fairly simple ideal.

But, as is the way on here, it's become Socialist Worker where the usual suspects just gang up when they don't like someones opinion.

as you well know, I am far from perfect, but I don't sit and whinge about what opportunities other people are afforded, I get out there and grab them for myself, it's called ambition.

... and slagging people off when you don't approve of them for not, say, planning for potential redundancy 10 years ahead. After all – how very dare they! How lazy of them to have been made redundant – their fault, obviously. And how lazy of them to not have planned for a future covering every possible eventuality.

By the way – nice. Now you're posting as though anyone here wants to 'reward laziness'. Well done. You wouldn't be able to find any evidence to support that, but it's another nice little red herring. And good for you for being one in a million on this forum and standing up for decent values against all those (who don't exist) who want to 'reward laziness'.



Haven't you got rid of that chip yet? You never did explain why, as a white, straight male, you were a poor persecuted little individual and should have a support group.

And now you just run away, without being able to support your comments, claiming that everybody who doesn't agree with you reads a paper that I suggest very few on here would read. You really don't like facts, do you?



You know enough about me to know that I would never read the [iSocialist Worker[/i. You know enough about others here to know the same of them. But that doesn't stop you flinging such statements around because people dare to disagree with you. And, as you've done yet again here, you use such tactics when you've been asked to prove one of your rants.

You've done well and you've had some luck. Good for you. But you actively condemn others for not doing what you think they should. How dare people have a family when they can't guarantee, years ahead, that they'll still be in well-paid work, for instance. And you bring up your saintliness on the issue as a complete red herring when you're challenged to back up a knee-jerking rant, as on this thread.

if you say so Mintball, what people CAN do is take out redundancy insurance etc. but they dont.

as ever, politics is proving devisive and you're getting angry and abusive when people don't agree.

Most people have NI.



Irony alert.

I didn't say we DON'T trade with them. I said Europe PREFERS us to only trade with other European countries.

As I am not involved in this discussion, a view from the sidelines:

The pitiful pleas of "people ganging up on me", etc. as a substitute for reasoned response, are pathetic. What has happened is that more than one person has disagreed with aspects of [iyour[/i post, in writing. It's a forum. If [ieverybody[/i on the forum did so, they are entitled. It would not be in any way "ganging up" and you just make yourself look both stupid and paranoid, as well as implying you cannot debate your points, by claiming it is.

The BB equivalent of taking your ball home.

Grow a pair and debate your points, if you can, or withdraw from the discussion, if you can't, but please, spare us this sort of self-pitying, delusional claptrap.

you are, of course, entitled to your opinion. But on more than one occasion (in fact many hundreds) the political bias of Sin Bin has come to the fore on threads such as this, it's a bit like the anti Thatcher threads that are tolerated, but if I were to post "I wish xxx was dead" and said xxx was a Labour politician it would be seen as bad tatse.

The Sin Bin is biased towards socialism and the trade union movement, and you only need look at the list of admin/moderators to see why.

it's fine, it shows the general politics of the support for the game, it's just boring when it's the same old stagers trading insults and bullying tactics, so as you suggest, I'll withdraw from debate, arguing with agendas is fairly difficult anyway.

have fun, play nicely

Simply not true.
Not only not true but way off the mark, I don't know where you got that idea from, the EU has been working to a united message for trade outside the EU for years now.

Bleat, bleat.
What bullying? If you can't put an argument together without just making bald and sweeping unsubstantiated statements, the problem is yours, no-one else's.

Holy shiit, did you NOT read what I said before?

In addition to my post above I said that Europe wants EUROPE AS ONE ENTITY to trade with everyone else, as opposed to its member states trading individually outside of Europe.

And I still think it's a crap idea.

And you still don't understand.
EU does not want to trade as one entity, (see my previous mention of Germany) but to negotiate from a position of strength (i.e. together) so that individual states can trade within that agreement.

You may think it's a crap idea but there isn't any state within the EU that agrees with you, they all see the strength in numbers.
Nothing is shipped from "Europe", it's all shipped from a member state.

Tariffs and restrictions have all been reduced because of EU membership, each state used to have its own and it was a right rats nest ... if you were China what rules would you rather trade under? Individual, confusing and conflicting tariffs or a set of harmonised tariffs and rules?
Harmonised is actually bringing MORE trade.

Of course they can, providing they can afford it and they could obtain cover in the first place. They could also take out health insurance too, again with the above caveats.

What then happens to a self-employed person who, through no fault of his own, contracts a debilitating, chronic illness. What should he do with his kids? Stuff 'em back up his wife?

The "political bias" of the Sin Bin is a figment of your imagination. The Sin Bin is not a person. Whatever the personal views of the mods, there is no "views" qualification for anyone to post on it.

But people in glass houses etc., and you are among the worse offenders. Just a couple of minutes' research worth of your own reasoned debate, with no insults, or bullying tactics, just reasoned posts, nothing even mildly personal or insulting or abusive (no examples aimed at me btw) :



Elsewhere you said to another poster:


It's a shame you don't practice what your preach.

Out of reach of your average working wage, I checked it out when I was earning a substantial salary as a business proprietor and other than the fact that as the business owner I didn't qualify anyway, I would not have considered it then and certainly don't now when I am on a more modest stipend - along with Proprietor Health Cover it was over-priced and so laden with get-out clauses for the insurer that I viewed it as unworkable.

As an insurance policy its as reliable as the credit card protection policies that banks have reserving billions in refund compensation for, something so reliable and robust that they expect to have to give you all your money back because they conned you.

My, you [iare[/i having an off day, aren't you?



If all you're going to do is throw up straw men mixed in with a touch of ad hominem then I'll leave you to it. We both know where this will end and TBH I could do without spending time deleting messages from my PM inbox.

Looks to me that Standee is happy for people to have opinions, as long as they agree with his. And then has the nerve to have a go at other people for having opinions.

Perhaps next time Standee posts we should all just agree with him and leave it at that.

I'm just bloody glad he chose not to have children.

Describing Tony Blair as average politically is ridiculous. He was the most politically shrewd politician we have had for decades. That doesn't mean everything he did was brilliant or correct - his decisions on Iraq finished him off IMO (something gets them all in the end) but as a politician he is light years ahead of anyone on either front bench at the moment. The only people that scared him were the likes of Robin Cook.



You certainly need a salesman, which is what Cameron is (it is all he is in fact) but behind the scenes the work is still done by the Sir Humphrey's. The civil servants at the FCO for example are the ones who know how to negotiate as was shown by what happened when you don't use them in that fiasco before Christmas when Cameron froze them and Hague out of the EU summit negotiations.

Aye, can you imagine the moaning if he had to pay for his own as well as yours, mine and everyone else's?

If you take out of the equation his disastrous ventures into foreign policy, I thought Blair's domestic politics were the most in touch with mainstream UK opinion of any major politician I can remember, hence him winning three elections including two huge landslides. A lot of his views on responsibilities as well as rights, rule of law and order, 'hand up rather than hand out' on welfare, would have been broadly shared by the public and the business community liked the fact that he was essentially pro business and didn't interfere with them or tax them too highly. Blair was Labour leader for 13 years and in all that time the Tories were never in the ball game, even at the height of his unpopularity over the Iraq war and tuition fees in 2003-2004, it was only when people saw that Blair was going to be handing over the reins in his last 18 months, that Labour's dominance dropped, and that was a very messy succession that IMO sowed the seeds of Labour's defeat in 2010.

The biggest handicap he had was having Brown in the Treasury and his cabal of allies effectively pursuing a different agenda to his. I think if Blair had kept his nose out of foreign policy and had a 'Blairite' Chancellor (eg had Darling been in No.11 from 1997 rather than Brown) I think Blair could have managed a fourth term in office, or at least a Blairite successor like David Miliband would have won the fourth term for Labour.

However the flipside of that is with a Blairite Chancellor and no policy distractions we might have gone into the Euro.

Do you remember when he was bleating on and on when Cameron didn't bow down to Europe. Making out the world was going to end, total scaremongering. Well we are all still here and Cameron is more popular than ever.

It's a rugby league forum, league is a northern sport. They love Labour and socialism up there and haven't quite forgiven Maggie for when she didn't let the miners get what they wanted.

I strongly suspect Europe is still here and has rather more of a say than Little England.

Or do you think that Little England carries more weight in the world? If you do I suspect you are perhaps incorrect.

"These are the hard yards of opposition. We have taken the hard road, not the line of least resistance. I think it is a fight. I always knew it was going to be a fight. It is one I relish – I never expected it to be anything else."

Dont think he's done himself any favours with this. When have Labour taken the hard road under Miliband? Taking the line of least resistance probably sums up his leadership.