Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Regularity]

54 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

the main opposition party is unwilling to come up with any interesting or inspiring policies.

They have policies?

[Nearholmer]

It is strange, because the Tories have so obviously massacred (or watched the self-immolation of)  their opponents over a period of time that they now "own" a commanding swathe of territory, yet seem totally incapable of arrangining themselves to effectively use the space they've captured. Years ago, things would have been arranged from behind the scenes so that the membership only got presented with safe-enough pairs of hands to select from, but that doesnt seem to happen now. Either "the men in grey suits" no longer care, are themselves incompetent, or (conspiracy theory coming up) actually believe that the best interests of their interests are served by having incompetents in charge.

 

The really big problem. of course, is the yawning gap between the promises held-out by rightist ideology/rhetoric, and what ordinary people actually experience when they put their trust in it. Just about enough people trusted brexit rhetoric to cause that to be put into action and "Phut!", it hasn't delivered (not anything positive for most people anyway); ditto "Levelling Up", another loud "Phut!" so far; protecting the NHS? Pretty much the same; and, so it goes on. Given enough time, the right-fantasists will terminally bngger-up the BBC, gently erode civil liberties until they've all worn away completely, deprive education of sufficient funds so that it really, really can't deliver the knowledge, critical thinking, and life-skills that make a country function, and commit a zillion other acts of treacherous vandalism. A bunch of yobboes!

Edited July 27, 2022 by Nearholmer

[rocor]

2 hours ago, Regularity said:

They have policies?

 

They do, though they are keeping them under wraps until the day before the general election, this is to prevent any that may appeal to the electorate from being misappropriated by the Tories. 

[Regularity]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Given enough time, the right-fantasists will terminally bngger-up the BBC, gently erode civil liberties until they've all worn away completely, deprive education of sufficient funds so that it really, really can't deliver the knowledge, critical thinking, and life-skills that make a country function, and commit a zillion other acts of treacherous vandalism. A bunch of yobboes!

The other thing they do (not just here, but across the pond in the USA)* is to promise lower taxes (to be fair, they have cottoned on to the fact that in the public’s mind, tax=income tax, and they do lower taxes, but only for the wealthiest), more freedom to spend money, and to fund this they increase the national debt. (UK national debt: highest it has ever been - and that’s not just covid.)

 

* Under Reagan and the Bushes, the national debt of the USA went from about 38% of GDP to almost 100%, and whilst they left Clinton and Obama to sort it out, they blamed the Democratic Party rather than themselves.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, rocor said:

 

They do, though they are keeping them under wraps until the day before the general election, this is to prevent any that may appeal to the electorate from being misappropriated by the Tories. 

Last time, they had policies, but no explanation of how they were going to fund them.

I am trying to work out whether the current position is an improvement or retrograde motion.

[Compound2632]

45 minutes ago, Regularity said:

no explanation of how they were going to fund them.

 

I think John McDonnell would disagree with you there. Commenting on the lack of detail in Truss' economic suggestions (policies is too strong a word) which have the full backing of the Daily Mail, he has observed that Labour presented fully costed programmes in 2017 and 2019 but the same paper went ballistic.

[Regularity]

IIRC, he recorded all the costs, but didn’t say how it would be funded.

Don’t get me wrong: I fully understand and appreciate how a progressive taxation system works, and why it is fairer. But I don’t remember anyone making the case for it: it isn’t reducible to a simple sound bite. And that’s the crux of the problem.

Providing decent services is a complicated thing. That’s why we elect people every five years or so: so that they can get on with making those decisions for us. But the advantage lies with those who peddle simple statements, disguised as populist appeal, but which are lies.

Thatcher was clever enough to tap into some things that people wanted, such as buying their own house which was provided at a low rent as part of social provision. The current crop rely on appeals to racism. “We want to control our borders.” Now that we have one, they are complaining about the hold-ups the imposition of the border has created. Never their fault, though, is it?

[rocor]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I think John McDonnell would disagree with you there. Commenting on the lack of detail in Truss' economic suggestions (policies is too strong a word) which have the full backing of the Daily Mail, he has observed that Labour presented fully costed programmes in 2017 and 2019 but the same paper went ballistic.

 

Madam Truss's cunning plan to pay for her generous tax cuts appears to consist of kicking the can down the road. There is nothing original to this solution, as it appears to have been practised for a very long time, as evidenced by George Osborne when he was  Chancellor of the exchequer paying off some government debt that related to the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720, the Napoleonic and Crimean wars, the abolition of slavery and the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century.

[Regularity]

36 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

Madam Truss's cunning plan to pay for her generous tax cuts appears to consist of kicking the can down the road. There is nothing original to this solution, as it appears to have been practised for a very long time, as evidenced by George Osborne when he was  Chancellor of the exchequer paying off some government debt that related to the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720, the Napoleonic and Crimean wars, the abolition of slavery and the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century.

Ah yes. Paying off debts incurred by previous governments…

…it’s that national debt thing again: spend today, pay off, whenever.

[CKPR]

To those of us of a certain age (i.e most of us here), the whole Tory leadership 'election' is probably erriely familiar, as it seems akin to the old Soviet internal elections in which only members of The Party had a say with the majority of the population of the USSR watching on with little interest. 

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, CKPR said:

To those of us of a certain age (i.e most of us here), the whole Tory leadership 'election' is probably erriely familiar, as it seems akin to the old Soviet internal elections in which only members of The Party had a say with the majority of the population of the USSR watching on with little interest. 

 

Did anyone outside the politburo really have a say? The party members surely just ratified the choice presented to them. Any other course of action would be unsafe.

[CKPR]

6 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Did anyone outside the politburo really have a say? The party members surely just ratified the choice presented to them. Any other course of action would be unsafe.

Precisely - our current government reminds me of nothing less than a politburo or junta supported by a tiny elite party of the mad, bad and sad. 

Edited July 28, 2022 by CKPR

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, CKPR said:

Precisely - our current government reminds me of nothing less than a politburo or junta supported by a tiny elite party of the mad, bad and sad. 

 

The analogy doesn't quite stand up. In the USSR, the party members voted in an election where the candidates were the politburo's selected man and one or more stooges; the party members knew what was good for them.

 

Here, the parliamentary party has presented the party members with a choice between their favoured candidate and a stooge but the party members don't know what is good for them.

[Ian Simpson]

I think the Conservative Party members may be making a rational choice about what's good for them. They expect Truss to cut some public services, but not their state pensions, their bus passes, their winter fuel payments for well-off pensioners, etc.

Whether it will be quite so good for their children and grandchildren is a different matter.  Public policy is a bit like modelling; any fool can smash things up, but it takes a surprising amount of skill and effort to rebuild them afterwards. 

Edited July 28, 2022 by Ian Simpson

[alastairq]

Sugarlumps! I've still not yet applied for my bus pass!    Ian has just reminded me!

 

It's really a pointless exercise where I live, as the nearest any bus gets to my village is a main road 1 1/2 miles away.

Besides, having spent 25 years driving buses, and knowing how bus drivers really think, I'm not sure I'd want to use a bus any more? [Cynical me?]

 

I have the same view about flying in an airline....the pilots are simply glorified bus drivers at the end of the day....Skills apart, the  endgame responsibilities are exactly the same.

 

I'm thinking of going on strike for more pension! Is anybody with me?

[Ian Simpson]

13 minutes ago, alastairq said:

I'm thinking of going on strike for more pension! Is anybody with me?

 

You could always ask Sam Tarry to join you on the picket line. It's seems he'll have a bit more free time now:

Keir Starmer sacks shadow transport minister who backed rail strikes - BBC News

 

Edited July 28, 2022 by Ian Simpson

[Nearholmer]

44 minutes ago, Ian Simpson said:

Public policy is a bit like modelling; any fool can smash things up, but it takes a surprising amount of skill and effort to rebuild them afterwards. 

That’s a good way of expressing what I was trying to say yesterday. I genuinely see the present generation of the Tory party as deeply destructive, far more so than during the Thatcher and post-Thatcher years. It’s not that it is constructive, but constructing things that I don’t like, that I could sort of live (uncomfortably) with; I honestly can’t think of anything that it has constructed since Cameron let go of the steering wheel. ‘Levelling up’ held the potential to be constructive, but has evapourated before everyone’s eyes. To repeat myself: a bunch of yobboes, trashing all of our children’s futures.

[alastairq]

In my view, he got what he deserved!

Having indulged in strike action on several occasions at my last place-of-work , [versus the MoD]...I fully understand how delicate the issue of who is seen standing on, or with, on an official picket line, really can be.... and why.

 

I recall, on my last strike [PCS taking on the civil service....and won!]... the military management 'joined' us in an unofficial show of 'solidarity'....[they agreed with our beef, as it indirectly could have affected them as well, and they cannot strike!!]...also providing endless bacon sarnies courtesy of the Establishment's Cook House.....and the Commandant [a full colonel] got into hot watter for being photographed standing with a whole bunch of us ''strikers '', by a local press photographer.

Not that he was really 'bothered' by the reprimand, methinks?

 

Strike action is hide-bound by legislation these days.  Unions have to be seen as squeaky-clean, especially with regards to picket lines.

The days of 'reds under the beds' have long gone....and so has the now-mythical Union support for the 'Labour' party.

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, CKPR said:

Precisely - our current government reminds me of nothing less than a politburo or junta supported by a tiny elite party of the mad, bad and sad. 

And definitely dangerous to know!

[Hroth]

21 minutes ago, Regularity said:

And definitely dangerous to know!

Or more unpleasantly, dangerous to be governed by.

 

On strikes, the only one I ever took part in was in the early 80s, when university technicians got a bit miffed about a derisory pay offer.  Normally a placid bunch, we marched out one afternoon and stood outside Senate House with our ASTMS placards requesting that they might reconsider....

 

I don't recall it having any effect!

 

 

Edited July 28, 2022 by Hroth

[Edwardian]

RIP Bernard Cribbins

 

[alastairq]

I note the price of KitKAts is going up again?

 

Oh well, that'll be 'fewer breaks' from tedium, then?

 It's so energy-sapping, being retired!

 

 

[Regularity]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

Or more unpleasantly, dangerous to be governed by.

 

On strikes, the only one I ever took part in was in the early 80s, when university technicians got a bit miffed about a derisory pay offer.  Normally a placid bunch, we marched out one afternoon and stood outside Senate House with our ASTMS placards requesting that they might reconsider....

 

I don't recall it having any effect!

 

 

In the early 90s, there was a vote for similar action (I had such a job then) and there wasn’t a desire to strike. One of our local guys told me that he thought that a half-day strike would have shown we were 

Incidentally, our branch Secretary was the first person in the world to be genetically profiled as she was worked for (the Dr, later Dr. Sir) Alec Jeffries!

[Hroth]

5 minutes ago, alastairq said:

I note the price of KitKAts is going up again?

 

Oh well, that'll be 'fewer breaks' from tedium, then?

 It's so energy-sapping, being retired!

 

 

 

Price goes up AND the quantity comes down.

 

You'll buy less, eat less and put on less weight!  A win-win situation!

 

It was national news yesterday that McDonalds were putting the price of a cheeseburger up. I don't remember the increment, but I don't recall when I last sampled one of their comestibles either, so its no skin off my nose!

 

If consumer cuts down on these expensive "luxury food" items, then they'll be able to put some more pennies towards the extortionate energy bills we're being promised this winter.  And perhaps now is the time to explore Oxfam (other charity shops are available) for inexpensive warm clothing for winter, before there's a run on the maroet or they hike their prices too.

[Hroth]

1 minute ago, Regularity said:

In the early 90s, there was a vote for similar action (I had such a job then) and there wasn’t a desire to strike. One of our local guys told me that he thought that a half-day strike would have shown we were 

 

Yes, a half day inaction, I bet yours was carefully chosen not to impinge on exams and so forth too?