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The hard-right has managed to change attitudes to benefits over the last forty years or so: the recipients have been moved from being (in general) people who society believes should be helped for the good of society to a drag on the economy who should be treated as unpleasantly as possible. The Conservatives consider that taxpayers money spent on them should be better spent on such things as tax cuts or…well, just on tax cuts. The Labour Party has not helped as, even though its policies are nothing like as hostile as the Conservative ones, they have been pushed so that they dare not speak out for social justice and fairness. Labour has been running scared of the accusation that it is patronising towards those on benefits, so has been much harder than many in it would (I hope) want.
I seem to remember Rachel Reeves having a pop at the disabled and those on benefits as well a few years back. Hardly helps Labour being the party of fairness and social justice.
The hard-right has managed to change attitudes to benefits over the last forty years or so: the recipients have been moved from being (in general) people who society believes should be helped for the good of society to a drag on the economy who should be treated as unpleasantly as possible. The Conservatives consider that taxpayers money spent on them should be better spent on such things as tax cuts or…well, just on tax cuts. The Labour Party has not helped as, even though its policies are nothing like as hostile as the Conservative ones, they have been pushed so that they dare not speak out for social justice and fairness. Labour has been running scared of the accusation that it is patronising towards those on benefits, so has been much harder than many in it would (I hope) want.
This vindictive ideology has been assisted in no small part by the right wing rags printing the same level of lies / misinformation about benefit claimants as they did with Brexit.
Cameron and Osborne probably toyed with the idea of resurrecting workhouses, but then hit on the idea of an "austerity " programme targeting those least able to defend themselves.
That, and to implement their policies, a Gov't Dept staffed by unquestioning moral cowards is required....the DWP responded with undiluted enthusiasm
The hard-right has managed to change attitudes to benefits over the last forty years or so: the recipients have been moved from being (in general) people who society believes should be helped for the good of society to a drag on the economy who should be treated as unpleasantly as possible. The Conservatives consider that taxpayers money spent on them should be better spent on such things as tax cuts or…well, just on tax cuts. The Labour Party has not helped as, even though its policies are nothing like as hostile as the Conservative ones, they have been pushed so that they dare not speak out for social justice and fairness. Labour has been running scared of the accusation that it is patronising towards those on benefits, so has been much harder than many in it would (I hope) want.
Along with the attitude to immigration, which is implemented with a process which is as hostile as possible, and designed to fleece anyone who wants to move to the UK legally. My partner is now a UK citizen and moved to the UK on a US passport in 2000, went through the processes and paid what appeared to be a reasonable amount of money at the time and found the treatment open, honest and welcoming. Now it costs a vast amount of money and appears designed to put people off trying at all.
Which I have always found weird as with an aging population , we need anyone who can to come here, work and pay tax to support the baby bombers socially in old age.
Along with the attitude to immigration, which is implemented with a process which is as hostile as possible, and designed to fleece anyone who wants to move to the UK legally. My partner is now a UK citizen and moved to the UK on a US passport in 2000, went through the processes and paid what appeared to be a reasonable amount of money at the time and found the treatment open, honest and welcoming. Now it costs a vast amount of money and appears designed to put people off trying at all.
Indeed, even if it's a family where one parent has a British passport and the other parent is a fairly high earner and the kids are at private school (i.e. the very "sort" of people the right "should" like to be here).
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Which I have always found weird as with an aging population , we need anyone who can to come here, work and pay tax to support the baby bombers socially in old age.
Indeed, although (before anyone questions this) this also doesn't mean unlimited immigration, in that you can want to have the working age population be (say) 63% of the total population today and slowly fall to 61% of the total population over 20 years, rather than it fall to 58% over (say) 10 years.
From 2025 it's expected that there'll be more births than deaths, so (say) in 20 years time to maintain a broadly flat working age population (i.e. having a small fall but nothing too significant) there's a need to have people coming here to work.
Arguably it's "better" to have students come here to study at university and then stay here for work rather than people have children and the state have to pay for them to be raised and educated. Of course, that would mean competition for those who already live here and that isn't what the right want.
This vindictive ideology has been assisted in no small part by the right wing rags printing the same level of lies / misinformation about benefit claimants as they did with Brexit.
Indeed. Tebbit was perhaps the first person to do this but the real instigator was Peter Lilley, holder of the award for Worst Live Vocal Performance By A Male Solo Artist of the 90s, namely "I've got a little list" from the 1992 Tory conference, a particularly unpleasant piece of benefits-demonising hard-right extremism. Then he followed it up with 1998's "Land of Pseudo-Tories", a relatively harmless but silly piece of fuddy-duddyism about Labour.
This man seemed to make it his aim in life to slander the unemployed.
He is of course also the Brexiter with a second home in France. Bought before Brexit, of course. Nuff said. He's all right, Jack.
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Along with the attitude to immigration, which is implemented with a process which is as hostile as possible, and designed to fleece anyone who wants to move to the UK legally. My partner is now a UK citizen and moved to the UK on a US passport in 2000, went through the processes and paid what appeared to be a reasonable amount of money at the time and found the treatment open, honest and welcoming. Now it costs a vast amount of money and appears designed to put people off trying at all.
Interesting that Brexiters often claim that a "virtue" of Brexit is that it treats EU citizens the same as any other country outside the UK and Ireland. Given that what you said relates to non-EU immigrants, it appears that the Government are trying to discourage any non-UK citizens from living here at all, wherever in the world they come from. So I guess in that respect all foreigners are treated equally. Equally badly.
But in fact we need the people to fill the jobs in some areas, such as the NHS. So making it expensive for foreigners to come here is in fact making life difficult for everyone.
One tory MP, I do have a lot of respect for is Robert Buckland, he seems to want to help people like myself and others. He seems a quite nice and geniune chap from what I've seen.
Tracy crouch is another good one, was a bit apprehensive at moving to a constituency served by a conservative as some of them are a bit extreme even for my tastes but have been impressed thus far
One tory MP, I do have a lot of respect for is Robert Buckland, he seems to want to help people like myself and others. He seems a quite nice and geniune chap from what I've seen.
When he was Justice Secretary and Sajid Javid was Home Secretary he made an appearance on BBC1's Question Time where he refused to condone Javid's decision to revoke Shamima Begum's citizenship, even suggesting that a court might later rule against it. So, as you say, respect for fair-mindedness and not toeing the government line.
Rishi Sunak is planning the next election on the 31st of October 2024, so just over a years time
Edit: disregard this, this might’ve been created for a joke based on the below posts
This appears to be based on a comment by Sunak in a recent video, “So what can a country achieve in 52 weeks? Watch this space.” This is just about as reliable as most political ‘promises’ and could even be deliberately misleading.
If the Tory party want to announce pre-election tax cuts the only way they can do so is right before an election, as there is no fiscal room for them in a formal budget. Therefore I still think May/June is most likely, so cuts can be announced earlier in the Spring.
I think it's the product of over-analysis by people who haven't got anything better to do.
I'm not getting at speculators here, by the way, we're all interested and have our own ideas which are interesting to share. No, there are people in Westminster who have nothing else to do and who therefore over-analyse the whole thing and come up with "solutions".
In the end it'd be better for Sunak to come up with a rough idea, maybe pencil in a few different dates, and then see what he thinks nearer the time and go with his instinct.
The Times also reported 31/10/24 yesterday as a potential date, by the way, but it may not be an independent source.
But the problem with the people in Westminster is that they're detached from reality, they've been in power for too long, and I wouldn't personally trust much that they say any more. If I ever did.
There is concern that the US election may not proceed, how shall we say, smoothly? So potentially having the US in chaos and the UK in the grips of an election campaign (and then a new Government needing to find it's feet if the elections plays out as expected) is considered sub-optimal as it means that two of the mainstays of the Western alliances would be distracted at the same moment when the global security situation is somewhat tenuous.
Personally I'm not entirely convinced that the UKs role in global affairs is so large anymore that us being distracted with an election campaign and then forming a Government is especially problematic. Not in comparison to the US descending into utter chaos if the election is contested. It smacks a little bit of certain sections of Whitehall who still think the UK could fill the boots of the US if required.
I think it's the product of over-analysis by people who haven't got anything better to do.
I'm not getting at speculators here, by the way, we're all interested and have our own ideas which are interesting to share. No, there are people in Westminster who have nothing else to do and who therefore over-analyse the whole thing and come up with "solutions".
In the end it'd be better for Sunak to come up with a rough idea, maybe pencil in a few different dates, and then see what he thinks nearer the time and go with his instinct.
The Times also reported 31/10/24 yesterday as a potential date, by the way, but it may not be an independent source.
But the problem with the people in Westminster is that they're detached from reality, they've been in power for too long, and I wouldn't personally trust much that they say any more. If I ever did.
I realise the date could well be fiction, but I'd be surprised if they went with 31/10/24. The dark evenings may well impact turnout and will impact last-minute campaigning.
I'd expect it to be held within BST.
Weather wise, it seems to be the pattern that the first half of October is often relatively benign, while the second half is often very wet - this year is simply an exaggerated version of the norm. So I'd probably expect it to be held around the middle of October at the latest, e.g. 17/10?
But really, they need to hold it in May. Sunak is an utterly useless PM who is doing nothing for this country (besides fighting culture wars) and the longer he holds on, the more people will think of him as arrogant and lustful for power - and consequently, the worse they will do in an election. I still maintain that their losses will be less if they hold it in spring. People are more optimistic in spring, they have summer (and several months without high fuel bills) to look forward to, and thus are less likely to take their anger out on the government than in the darker, wetter and colder months.
The (Whitehall) insider said: “There are huge security and market implications if two Five Eyes countries are holding elections at once. It could potentially open up two countries to cyberwarfare and electoral manipulation from hostile states and if a security threat were to arise during a campaign it would leave western countries exposed.”
A second Whitehall source said: “Far more care would have to be taken around national security and meddling from hostile countries.”
Both officials said their standing advice to ministers was that clashing elections were best avoided.
To clarify though, when I said "fighting" I wasn't saying he was against culture wars, rather that he is fighting one from the right-wing/conservative perspective. An anti-woke culture war, if you like.
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"Five Eyes" seems a very anglophone-centric thing though, which almost implies that only anglophone countries have anything to say about world security.
That's Whitehall for you. Can't be bothered to plan for a pandemic, but any excuse for puffed-up self-importance when playing at global affairs. If the they can find some American insiders who think it's an issue then it might conceivably be worth listening to
While it's true that we're two separate countries, we both have more or less the same set of enemies and a high degree of cooperation between our intelligence services. It's enough of a strain to detect and deter interference in one election campaign, doubling the task, on opposite sides of the world makes it more likely that something or someone will slip through.
The special relationship which is all one-way of course. The UK is foolish enough to help the US out in its military escapades, but doesn't get much in return over other western countries...
The special relationship which is all one-way of course. The UK is foolish enough to help the US out in its military escapades, but doesn't get much in return over other western countries...
Don't underestimate the importance of the Five Eyes arrangement. There's a reason that the UK hasn't seen the kind of mass terror events as other European countries with the frequency that they have. And, prior to 2019, the UK was the USA's gateway to Europe - there was little that they did that we didn't have involvement with, be it economic or political.
Don't underestimate the importance of the Five Eyes arrangement. There's a reason that the UK hasn't seen the kind of mass terror events as other European countries with the frequency that they have. And, prior to 2019, the UK was the USA's gateway to Europe - there was little that they did that we didn't have involvement with, be it economic or political.
