Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[Bobby Hundreds]

They probably could do those things. There's probably a tonne of shit about them I wouldn't agree with yet there seems to be more I do agree with them than there is any other party. Anyway I hate plastic bags.

[Stu Monty]

You totally failed to address the point. There's a big difference between the individual and the collective.

 

Create nonsensical implication in head that nobody was stating "Firefighters are immune to human flaws".

 

Knock it down.

 

Strawman: Worst. Superhero. Ever.

[Strontium]

You totally failed to address the point. There's a big difference between the individual and the collective.

 

What, so every politician and banker is fiddling expenses and shafting the world? That's even more ridiculous than it was before!

 

I think there is more shit spouted about politicians and bankers than any other group of people in history.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

What, so every politician and banker is fiddling expenses and shafting the world? That's even more ridiculous than it was before!

 

I think there is more shit spouted about politicians and bankers than any other group of people in history.

Quite a lot of it by you in response to your own questions, I'd imagine. There was systemic abuse not somebody doing something away from their profession.

[Strontium]

Quite a lot of it by you in response to your own questions, I'd imagine. There was systemic abuse not somebody doing something away from their profession.

 

Okay, I see where the issue is now. The sign contains a false dichotomy, but when I make reference to this false dichotomy to criticise it, I'm accused of perpetrating a false dichotomy.

 

Stellar stuff.

[Stu Monty]

Haha. False dichotomy.

 

The banking sector brought broke the capitalism system and it had to have it's complete failure socialised; the brunt of which has been borne by the many, not the few.

 

The fire-fighting system didn't.

 

It's not a fucking complicated message, even if you try to make it so with daft statements about "Inferring fire-fighters don't have human failings"

[Stu Monty]

Just as an aside HSBC had windows built especially for the easy receipt of drug money.

 

Nobody from HSBC has gone to jail for this.

[Moctezuma]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27289148

 

Benefits risk to jobseekers refusing zero-hours contracts

 

Jobseekers risk losing their benefits if they turn down certain zero-hours contracts without good reason, the government has said.

 

Until now, people on Jobseeker's Allowance could refuse to accept such jobs without facing penalties.

But the new universal credit system demands that people take up the casual contracts - even though they do not always guarantee work.

The government insisted such contracts offer an average 25 hours work a week.

Continue reading the main story “Start Quote

It is right that people do everything they can to find work and that we support them to build up their working hours and earnings”

End Quote Department for Work and Pensions

 

A spokesman also explained that when workers did not get the hours they needed, their universal credit payments would adjust automatically to ensure they were financially supported.

 

Under the new scheme, claimants who turn down a zero-hours contract when it is thought to be suitable could lose payments for more than three months.

 

Employment Minister Esther McVey outlined the change in a letter to Labour MP Sheila Gilmore about benefits sanctions, the Guardian has reported.

 

The newspaper said Jobcentre "coaches" would be able to "mandate" zero-hours contracts if they thought the role was suitable for the claimant.

A spokesman from the Department for Work and Pensions said claimants needed to do everything they could to get work.

'Hassle'

He said: "As now, if there's a good reason someone can't just take a particular job they won't be sanctioned.

People face losing their benefits for more than three months if they refuse zero-hours contracts

"But it is right that people do everything they can to find work and that we support them to build up their working hours and earnings."

He said the average zero-hours contract provided workers with 25 hours of work a week and could "lead to long-term opportunities".

"Universal credit payments will adjust automatically depending on the hours a person works to ensure that people whose hours may change are financially supported and do not face the hassle and bureaucracy of switching their benefit claims," the spokesman added.

Ms Gilmore said while she did not object to the principle of either universal credit or zero-hours contracts, she was "concerned" by the policy change.

"I also fear that if people are required to take jobs with zero-hours contracts, they could be prevented from taking training courses or applying for other jobs that might lead to more stable and sustainable employment in the long term," she told the Guardian.

Continue reading the main story

• One in five employers has at least one employee on a zero-hours contract
• Staff have no guaranteed hours
• They are entitled to holiday pay
• The contracts are often used in retail and in the hospitality sector

• What are zero-hours contracts?

Unions last week called for action against zero-hours working.

This followed a study that showed around 1.4 million jobs involved contracts that did not guarantee a minimum number of hours.

The Office for National Statistics said most of the contracts were zero hours.

Under these contracts, people are not guaranteed work from one week to the next. But officials have pointed out that some workers could have more than one contract at a time.

[Moctezuma]

The juking of the stats with regards unemployment in the UK is unreal. I still think Labour will do reasonably well with their 'cost of living crisis' speil because a huge number of people are feeling very little benefit in terms of what the tories are calling an economic recovery.

[Strontium]

 

Haha. False dichotomy.

 

The banking sector brought broke the capitalism system and it had to have it's complete failure socialised; the brunt of which has been borne by the many, not the few.

 

The fire-fighting system didn't.

 

It's not a fucking complicated message, even if you try to make it so with daft statements about "Inferring fire-fighters don't have human failings"

 

It's a false dichotomy (or false equivalence or whatever) because it's not comparing like with like.

 

If firefighting was contributing one seventh of this country's GDP (impossible, of course, but for the sake of argument) then do you not think there would be similar corruption and misdeeds in firefighting?

[Nelly-Szoboszlai]

He's finally lost it. Stop talking shite, Stronts.

 

Bankers and politicians are at it on a much higher percentage, and on a much greater scale. Undeniable.

 

Those pesky firefighters, fixing interest rates for their own benefit. Replace them all with robots, I say!

[Section_31]

I'm Spartacus

[Stu Monty]

 

 

It's a false dichotomy (or false equivalence or whatever) because it's not comparing like with like.

 

If firefighting was contributing one seventh of this country's GDP (impossible, of course, but for the sake of argument) then do you not think there would be similar corruption and misdeeds in firefighting?

 

Jesus! Are you fucking serious? You honestly don't see the difference between the actual functions of the two industries? You don't grasp that people putting out fires cannot, regardless of how many fires they put out, systematically, give loaded mortgages to people to deliberately ruin them and cause economic global mayhem? They cannot set time-bombs in a country's treasury knowing they can come in later for some rich IMF pickings. They cannot deliberately undervalue a national asset when some fucking retard asks them to value something they'll be getting a preferential chunk of, then promise not to sell it, then, OBVIOUSLY, sell it when the price rises in the first week, costing the people fortunes in revenue. They can't fix the interest rates (and therefore the value of every damn exchange that happens) to fuck over everyone. They put out fires. Same would go if they made cars. Not systemically possible to cause the same damage. Not the heartbeat of the global capitalist system.

 

How can you not see that? How can you be looking at individuals doing dodgy stuff as opposed to seeing that it is a systemic problem (one that hasn't been solved too) that this system and these people have the tools, and are often incentivised, to deliberately cause economic damage to make a few quid. And that then when they do, absolutely shit all of consequence is done to them.

 

How naive do you have to be coming at this from an angle where you don't see a systemic problem but just a statistical fact of there being a lot of people so a lot of bad stuff will happen? Seriously? The only difference between hedge fund managers and firefighter in terms of damage to the population is that there's more of the cunts? Come on!

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Barcalys cutting 19,000 jobs, with half of them to be cut in Britain.

 

I found the bolded bit quite interesting. 20,000 losing their jobs to technology, but not doing 3 day weeks for 5 days pay as boldly claimed by Stronts.

 

 

Barclays to cut 19,000 jobs as it scales back investment bank business

More than half of overall losses will be in UK as part of shake-up by boss Antony Jenkins including creation of a 'bad bank'

Barclays is axing 19,000 jobs in a radical overhaul of its business, including a dramatic scaling back of its troublesome investment banking operations, where almost one in three jobs are to go. More than half of the 19,000 job cuts will fall in the UK.

 

Facing pressure to bolster the bank's profits, Barclays' chief executive, Antony Jenkins, said: "This is a bold simplification of Barclays. We will be a focused international bank, operating only in areas where we have capability, scale and competitive advantage."

 

The cutbacks will see the headcount reduced to 120,000 by 2016 although Jenkins has previously indicated the number could eventually fall to 100,000 as technology replaces people.

 

Barclays shares rose 3% in early trading despite concerns from analysts that the bank would lose revenue as a result of the cuts in the investment banking division, traditionally the group's powerhouse.

 

The investment bank, which was built up by Jenkins' predecessor Bob Diamond, is to lose 7,000 jobs from a workforce of about 24,000. The division – once known as Barclays Capital and the most controversial of the bank's business areas – shifts away from its traditional area of expertise in fixed income, currencies and commodities and more towards corporate finance and equities.

 

Jenkins, who replaced Diamond in the wake of the Libor rigging scandal, said in February that up to 12,000 jobs would go this year. That total is now being raised to 14,000 as another 2,000 jobs will go in the investment bank this year. That leaves 5,000 investment bankers facing redundancy by 2016.

 

The cuts to the investment bank take place after a year in which Jenkins was criticised for increasing bonuses by 10% when profits fell 32% because he feared what he described as a "death spiral" as top bankers defected.

 

Jenkins said the changes in the investment banking division were talking place because of regulatory demands that the bank hold more capital. "There have been two very significant changes in the last 12 months. Regulation has become much clearer, and the impact of regulation on certain aspects of the investment bank, which are much more capital intensive," he told CNBC.

 

"We also believe the economic environment has deteriorated for the FICC [fixed income, currencies and commodities] business and some of the pressures we saw on the business towards the end of last year are clearly structural as well as cyclical, so now is the right time to reposition the bank," he said.

 

He intends to reduce the proportion of the banks' assets used for investment banking from 50% to 30% by 2016, so that personal and corporate banking, Barclaycard and the business in Africa make up the majority of the business.

 

Unions expressed concerned about the impact on the high street bank, where there are expectations that Barclays will close more branches.

"These have been extraordinarily turbulent times for ordinary Barclays workers who have worked hard to keep the bank on track against a backdrop of continued uncertainty and redundancies. The bank needs to recognise their tireless work to put customers first while jobs have been lost and give reassurances over their futures," said Dominic Hook, a Unite national officer.

 

A noncore division – dubbed a "bad bank" – will be created to take on £90bn of unwanted business in the investment banking side, including commodities, derivatives and some emerging markets products, together with about £16bn deployed in the European high street bank businesses, including in Spain, which could be spun off in a stock market flotation, and £9bn from corporate, Barclaycard and the wealth division.

 

"As a consequence of these changes, Barclays will become significantly more balanced and in turn able to deliver higher, more sustainable returns through the cycle," the bank said.

 

Sandy Chen, analyst at Cenkos, said: "Let's be clear: shrinking the investment bank drastically and pulling back from European banking are good things to do for Barclays, and we agree with management that this will increase longer-term sustainable, through-the-cycle profitability. It's just the uncertainties involved with the next two to three years of hacking back the brambles that we're a bit concerned about – and the income-generating capacity of the severely pruned Investment Bank that will emerge".

 

Jenkins – who has set himself on a plan to turn Barclays into the "go to" bank – said the cuts would cost another £800m on top of the existing £2.7bn already announced to turnaround the group.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/may/08/barclays-to-cut-19000-jobs-scale-back-investment-bank-antony-jenkins

 

 

 

 

[Skidfingers McGonical]

[Strontium]

 

Jesus! Are you fucking serious? You honestly don't see the difference between the actual functions of the two industries?

Yes I do. That's the entire point.

[Strontium]

Barcalys cutting 19,000 jobs, with half of them to be cut in Britain.

 

I found the bolded bit quite interesting. 20,000 losing their jobs to technology, but not doing 3 day weeks for 5 days pay as boldly claimed by Stronts.

 

No, as predicted by me, for some unspecified point in the mid to distant future.

 

But clearly, misrepresenting me is more fun, isn't it.

 

Anyway, I thought we all wanted bankers to lose their jobs? Scum of the earth, aren't they?

[Section_31]

Found this interesting, from the right wing Economist of all places.

 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains

 

 

IT IS the economics book taking the world by storm. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", written by the French economist Thomas Piketty, was published in French last year and in English in March of this year. The English version quickly became an unlikely bestseller, and it has prompted a broad and energetic debate on the book’s subject: the outlook for global inequality. Some reckon it heralds or may itself cause a pronounced shift in the focus of economic policy, toward distributional questions. This newspaper has hailed Mr Piketty as "the modern Marx" (Karl, that is). But what’s it all about?

"Capital" is built on more than a decade of research by Mr Piketty and a handful of other economists, detailing historical changes in the concentration of income and wealth. This pile of data allows Mr Piketty to sketch out the evolution of inequality since the beginning of the industrial revolution. In the 18th and 19th centuries western European society was highly unequal. Private wealth dwarfed national income and was concentrated in the hands of the rich families who sat atop a relatively rigid class structure. This system persisted even as industrialisation slowly contributed to rising wages for workers. Only the chaos of the first and second world wars and the Depression disrupted this pattern. High taxes, inflation, bankruptcies, and the growth of sprawling welfare states caused wealth to shrink dramatically, and ushered in a period in which both income and wealth were distributed in relatively egalitarian fashion. But the shocks of the early 20th century have faded and wealth is now reasserting itself. On many measures, Mr Piketty reckons, the importance of wealth in modern economies is approaching levels last seen before the first world war.

Advertisement

 

 

 

From this history, Mr Piketty derives a grand theory of capital and inequality. As a general rule wealth grows faster than economic output, he explains, a concept he captures in the expression r > g (where r is the rate of return to wealth and g is the economic growth rate). Other things being equal, faster economic growth will diminish the importance of wealth in a society, whereas slower growth will increase it (and demographic change that slows global growth will make capital more dominant). But there are no natural forces pushing against the steady concentration of wealth. Only a burst of rapid growth (from technological progress or rising population) or government intervention can be counted on to keep economies from returning to the “patrimonial capitalism” that worried Karl Marx. Mr Piketty closes the book by recommending that governments step in now, by adopting a global tax on wealth, to prevent soaring inequality contributing to economic or political instability down the road.

The book has unsurprisingly attracted plenty of criticism. Some wonder whether Mr Piketty is right to think the future will look like the past. Theory argues that it should become ever harder to earn a good return on wealth the more there is of it. And today’s super-rich mostly come by their wealth through work, rather than via inheritance. Others argue that Mr Piketty’s policy recommendations are more ideologically than economically driven and could do more harm than good. But many of the sceptics nonetheless have kind words for the book’s contributions, in terms of data and analysis. Whether or not Mr Piketty succeeds in changing policy, he will have influenced the way thousands of readers and plenty of economists think about these issues.

- See more at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains#sthash.8eGAiTg5.dpuf

[Skidfingers McGonical]

No, as predicted by me, for some unspecified point in the mid to distant future.

 

But clearly, misrepresenting me is more fun, isn't it.

How can WE be misrepresenting you when you are the one doing a sterling job of that on your own?

 

 

[Stu Monty]

 

 

Yes I do. That's the entire point.

 

Comprehensive stuff.

 

It wasn't your point. It wasn't the point you typed out anyway, if it was the one in your head.

 

if you keep your answers very brief and vague then you can keep saying you're getting misrepresented though. Good plan. Flesh on the bones gives people targets and good politicia...sorry... any good poster knows that.

[Carvalho Diablo]

 

Typical. Jail the tory cunt.

 

Nah, hang on, hang the tory cunt.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Would you bum her first?

[Carvalho Diablo]

Would you bum her first?

 

I would burn her first.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

I would burn her first.

That's what I meant.

[Bobby Hundreds]

I'd frack her. In my back garden, No nimbyism here. Then I'd fire her from a huge catapult into the sea.