Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[Dr Nowt]

Jason Spacey ‏@Jason_Spacey

Mr Anti-establishment sticking it to the Man.

 

[Strontium]

Didn't know where to stick this, here seems as good a place as any

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/11310456/Goodbye-to-one-of-the-best-years-in-history.html

 

 

 

Global life expectancy now stands at a new high of 71.5 years, up six years since 1990. In India, life expectancy is up seven years for men, and 10 for women. It’s rising faster in the impoverished east of Africa than anywhere else on the planet. In Rwanda and Ethiopia, life expectancy has risen by 15 years.

 

Fucking capitalism...

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Fucking publicly funded sience. Fucking publicly funded healthcare. Only joking, it was banks going bust and needing public funds that saved us from an early death. Yay capitalism.

[Creator Supreme]

Remind me not to read his posts again, I've got the cunt on ignore for a good reason!

 

Oh and another thing, remember when the banks were nationalised to save them, why can't we nationalise City Link?

 

Oh hang on, I remember, there's no profit in it for big business, and we've just given away a parcel delivery service for about a quid six months ago!

[Jairzinho]

Fucking publicly funded science. Fucking publicly funded healthcare. Only joking, it was banks going bust and needing public funds that saved us from an early death. Yay capitalism.

 

Despite the best efforts of the WTO/IMF/World Bank, etc. 

 

Yay capitalism.

[Strontium]

Remind me not to read his posts again, I've got the cunt on ignore for a good reason!

 

Yes, god forbid you be exposed to anything that challenges your pig ignorant worldview, you evil piece of vermin.

 

Oh and another thing, remember when the banks were nationalised to save them, why can't we nationalise City Link?

 

Because the collapse of City Link, by all accounts a shitty parcel service, is an example of the free market working as it should, rather than an existential threat to our entire way of life.

[Strontium]

Fucking publicly funded sience. Fucking publicly funded healthcare. Only joking, it was banks going bust and needing public funds that saved us from an early death. Yay capitalism.

 

Cretinous. No other word for it.

 

However I know how important it is for you and the rest of the clowns to keep pretending that things aren't getting better, so you believe what you want, sweetcheeks, and don't dare expose yourself to any of those inconvenient things called facts.

[PestiRed]

In real terms, the average wage has fallen by £50 every single week that this government has been in power. That's pretty shocking

 

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/dec/30/british-workers-decade-wages-recover-tuc

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Cretinous. No other word for it.

 

However I know how important it is for you and the rest of the clowns to keep pretending that things aren't getting better, so you believe what you want, sweetcheeks, and don't dare expose yourself to any of those inconvenient things called facts.

What fucking fact is that? You posted a ridiculous, idiotic, fact devoid post with a false correlation between life expectancy and capitalism. Then you've just made a baseless assertion about my post about healthcare (of course, there's no correlation between health and healthcare or advances in medicine and medical sciencw) being cretinous. How vacuous. Again.

 

What exactly makes me a clown? Because I don't agree with your ridiculous, biased, thoughtless view of the world where every post is a partizan statement from the resident liberal democrat, who likes to ignore liberty and democracy infringements? Fuck that, sweetcheeks. You don't care about liberty and democracy, you care about saving face. Surely you realise you've absolutely no credibility? That's why most if your partizan bollocks goes unchallenged these days. Nobody feels the need be a use your word carries no value.

[Strontium]

What fucking fact is that? You posted a ridiculous, idiotic, fact devoid post with a false correlation between life expectancy and capitalism. Then you've just made a baseless assertion about my post about healthcare (of course, there's no correlation between health and healthcare or advances in medicine and medical sciencw) being cretinous. How vacuous. Again.

 

What exactly makes me a clown? Because I don't agree with your ridiculous, biased, thoughtless view of the world where every post is a partizan statement from the resident liberal democrat, who likes to ignore liberty and democracy infringements? Fuck that, sweetcheeks.

 

Ah, so it's just a coincidence that the biggest historic rise in global living standards has coincided with the global adoption of capitalism. Like I said, you believe whatever you want, if it makes you feel better.

 

I do wonder if you give any thought to where all the wealth that supports those science and healthcare advances actually comes from.

 

And if you want to talk about ridiculous and idiotic posts, aim your fire at those who think defence of capitalism is tantamount to endorsement of oligopoly or corporatism.

 

And who is ignoring infringements of liberty and democracy? Certainly not me. I'll leave it to those people who think power should be concentrated in the hands of the state rather than devolved to the people.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Not one word to back up your original post. Just empty fluff. You seem to be calling me a clown on the basis that those you constantly butt heads with disagree with you and I disagree with you, so I must be one of them. I'm part of no leftist cabal on here. I just think your post praising capitalism for risinglife expectancy is ridiculous. That doesn't mean I want Stalin as supreme leader. You complain that some make you into a caricature and misrepresent your views. Fair enough. Just don't turn around and do the same to others, it makes you look like a hypocrite. It makes you look small.

[Section_31]

You can't trust stats anymore, only the other day there was talk of changing the acceptable response time for ambulances from 8 minutes to 19 minutes, the police force was recently outed for the widespread misrecording and non recording of crime, and one of the first things the coalition did was set out to redefine the definition of child poverty.

 

My Mrs is a teacher and has kids coming up into her class who are well further behind than their stats say they are, because their previous teachers are now on performance related pay thanks to Mr Gove. They're told these kids 'have' to make progress, so of course they do come hell or high water.

 

Schools look better, crime goes down, poverty levels stay stable, ambulance response times stay stable, everything is great!

[Rico1304]

Remind me not to read his posts again, I've got the cunt on ignore for a good reason!

 

Oh and another thing, remember when the banks were nationalised to save them, why can't we nationalise City Link?

 

Oh hang on, I remember, there's no profit in it for big business, and we've just given away a parcel delivery service for about a quid six months ago!

I'm assuming I'm the cunt in question. Surely the point of ignore is to ignore, not mention it. Anyway, of to get my razor blade out again.

 

My take on the article is that things are getting better at a macro level, less people dying earlier, people living longer across the world which is a good thing. We see more people having a tougher time but in relative terms we've absolutely nothing to moan about.

[Section_31]

I'm assuming I'm the cunt in question. Surely the point of ignore is to ignore, not mention it. Anyway, of to get my razor blade out again.

 

My take on the article is that things are getting better at a macro level, less people dying earlier, people living longer across the world which is a good thing. We see more people having a tougher time but in relative terms we've absolutely nothing to moan about.

 

It's all relative of course and I take yoru point to a degree, but you've got to compare eggs with eggs. You can say we've got it better than people in the 1920s, but we're also the first generation since the second world war that has inferior living standards to its predecessors. You can say 'ah yes but we have penicillin'. but that's like the constantly baffling quote my nan used to come out with whenever I didn't want to eat her onion stew 'there's kid in Africa with nothing to eat', indeed, but that doesn't mean I should like onions. 

 

It's interesting that the image in that article is of an elderly couple. It's widely accepted that the baby boomers are a golden generation, they're the ones who are currently 'living longer' according to the article. They're unlike no other, they're not like the generations which went before, old people these days don't just sit there and get old, they go on holidays, get out, use iPads, and that's because they're probably the last generation with widespread wealth.

 

Many people these days, evem with two people working, can only get on the property ladder with help from this generation above them, because they're still the only people with any money.

 

Why is that? Why is their health relatively good? Why do they have money?

 

It's because they had jobs which paid well, stable jobs, decent pensions, good nationalised healthcare. It's the loss of those things which people lament, so in some ways that article actually makes our point for us.

 

With regards capitalism spreading wealth around the globe, to an extent I agree, but it also destracts wealth from other places, if you're prepared to live with the consquences of that then so be it, but it'll almost certainly mean your kids growing up in a much more dangerous, much more unstable and generally unsavoury country. The underlcass are the working class with no work to do, and you can see the fallout everywhere. That underclass will grow bigger too, as even many of the middle classes are now being dubbed 'the copeing class'.

 

The spread of capitalism around the globe is also mirroring what happened here too. We're seeing the rise of a middle and working class in places like China, but they're not union protected jobs with fair wages, the wealth is still concentrated among a super elite, as it is in India. It's oligarchy, a smattering of billionaires and everyone else trying to get some small piece of the pie.

 

It pisses me off somewhat that not liking that idea means your'e a hard core communist. There are fair ways to do capitalism, it's just that it's been corrupted by those at the top. Our brand of capitalism is to capitalism what ISIS is to islam.

[Chairman Meow]

You can't trust stats anymore, only the other day there was talk of changing the acceptable response time for ambulances from 8 minutes to 19 minutes, the police force was recently outed for the widespread misrecording and non recording of crime, and one of the first things the coalition did was set out to redefine the definition of child poverty.

 

My Mrs is a teacher and has kids coming up into her class who are well further behind than their stats say they are, because their previous teachers are now on performance related pay thanks to Mr Gove. They're told these kids 'have' to make progress, so of course they do come hell or high water.

 

Schools look better, crime goes down, poverty levels stay stable, ambulance response times stay stable, everything is great!

 

One of the things I learned from my time at HMRC is that I wouldn't trust a single stat they ever produce, the amount of times we successfully completed work that hadn't even been touched was ridiculous. We aren't talking small amounts here either, I'm talking hundreds of thousands of cases ignored and in tens of millions of pounds not collected.

 

It's all fine though because senior managers say it was all done and then get promoted because the work they were in charge of is done and complete.

 

The rest of us got left to deal with the complaints and angry punters.

 

I've worked in some pretty fucked up shambles of companies both big and small but never seen anything like the clusterfuck that is HMRC. I'm genuinely talking about stuff so fucked up you would think I made it up. 

[Section_31]

One of the things I learned from my time at HMRC is that I wouldn't trust a single stat they ever produce, the amount of times we successfully completed work that hadn't even been touched was ridiculous. We aren't talking small amounts here either, I'm talking hundreds of thousands of cases ignored and in tens of millions of pounds not collected.

 

It's all fine though because senior managers say it was all done and then get promoted because the work they were in charge of is done and complete.

 

The rest of us got left to deal with the complaints and angry punters.

 

I've worked in some pretty fucked up shambles of companies both big and small but never seen anything like the clusterfuck that is HMRC. I'm genuinely talking about stuff so fucked up you would think I made it up. 

 

The concept of crimes 'taken into consideration' is the most astonishing thing I've ever seen.

 

Basically a copper can get a convicted burglar, give him a packet of fags and a cheeseburger and get him to claim 'credit' for 40 other burglaries, none of which go on his record and none of which he can be convicted for, but it shows up on the force's clearance rate as 40 crimes solved.

 

There's a kid in my Mrs's school who  they're planning to expell, but they're waiting until after the SATs because he's predicted to get decent grades and it will improve the school's average score.

 

My sister is autistic and when she was younger, instead of stick her in a suitable school they used to send her to an 'annex' of another school, which was basically a flat where a teacher would do things like let her colour in and bake cakes. She did this for two years despite being really sharp. It was done purely so she was off NEET (not in education, employment or training) books.

 

I don't think these these hings are anything especially to do with the coalition, but they're all by products of our national ethos. We don't look at teh country as one entity, we don't care about the impact of not solving crime properly or not schooling kids properly unless it directly impacts us as indidviuals, our personal saftey or our kids. It's individualism run riot, and it impacts everything, from professionals keeping their heads below the parapet to  government policy.

 

Shining shit and calling it gold ad infinitum.

[Chairman Meow]

I have little doubt that some of the stuff I saw was going on long before the current government was in place and probably before the previous one.

 

We had one batch of work, first year we did it with about 500 staff and missed deadline but it was claimed everything was done on time. Second year they cut that to about 300 and we missed deadline even more spectacularly but it was claimed everything was done on time, this year it dropped to about 150 staff and we missed deadline by an even higher margin, it was claimed everything was done on time! People got promoted on the back of this being a success. 

 

Early stages of the process this year and the senior managers can't understand why we aren't getting through work as quickly, they couldn't grasp that not only were most of the 150 doing the work for the first time so aren't as fast as the people doing it in previous years but that because we'd lied about completing last year we just didn't have enough bodies. They stopped having me in meetings about the work because I was the only one who would open my mouth and be honest about the work.

 

I genuinely think that eventually it's going to be a passport agency style fuck up which they can't hide. One of the options genuinely discussed this year was just not doing it at all! You're only talking about 3 million or so taxpayers so nothing major.

 

Every time I said that the only way we would improve the process is by being honest about the fact it failed and then looking to improve from there you would think I was talking in Klingon or something.

 

Every HMRC related workload or project I was involved in was claimed to be a success. As far as I could tell HMRC never fail at anything ever. 

[dennis tooth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3YeIqpDVwI

[Gnasher]

This Frazer Nelson fella has converted me, why focus on food banks, the failing Nhs, people losing their jobs and all the other shit when you can listen to Julie Andrews,

 

" raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens.

bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens.

 

brown paper packages tied up with string

wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

 

girls in white dresses with blue coloured sashes

snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

silver white winters that melt into spring

 

These are a few of my favourite things"

[Stu Monty]

You're a desperately pathetic man SD.

 

You've just reacted to a neg by going through my posting history and negging it.

 

That pretty much defines you as a poster now. A trolling snide.

[VladimirIlyich]

This Frazer Nelson fella has converted me, why focus on food banks, the failing Nhs, people losing their jobs and all the other shit when you can listen to Julie Andrews,

 

" raindrops on roses, whiskers on tramps,

just because he cannot get a few food stamps.

 

brown paper packages tied up with string

drinking gallons of whisky to forget everything

 

girls in white dresses with blue coloured sashes

NHS cuts mean 'ashes to ashes'

Freezing cold winters that melt into spring

Greedy energy bosses price up everything

 

.

[Vincent Vega]

Mervy King nailing the ConDem lie that the deficit and subsequent recession were all the fault of Labour.

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/29/labour-government-not-responsible-crash-bank-england-governor-mervyn-king

 

Labour not responsible for crash, says former Bank of England governor

 

Mervyn King says there was shared intellectual responsibility across political parties for failing to foresee problems

 

Patrick Wintour, political editor
The Guardian, Monday 29 December 2014 12.36 GMT

 

The former Bank of England governor Mervyn King has denied that the previous Labour government was responsible for the financial crash, saying there was a shared intellectual responsibility across the political parties and financial institutions for failing to foresee the problems.

Saying his view on the cause of the crisis had evolved, he said he doubted any single one country could have found their way through the crisis.

 

His remarks on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, which he was guest-editing, will please the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, as he prepares to battle a Conservative claim at the next election that Labour mismanagement of City regulation and excessive public spending were jointly responsible for the crash from which the UK economy is still recovering.

 

In the past King has hinted at select committee sessions that Labour allowed public spending to rise too fast but his latest remarks are one of his clearest exonerations of Labour for the financial crash.

 

Asked how culpable Labour was, he replied: “I am not going to talk about individual parties’ culpability because I think the real problem was a shared intellectual view right across the entire political spectrum and shared across the financial markets that things were going pretty well.

 

“There were imbalances – we knew things were unsustainable – but it was not entirely obvious where it would come unstuck – and I think that is something everyone shared, and the right thing is to make it better for the future.”

 

He added: “I don’t think it is easy to go back and say any one country on its own around the world could have found their way through it. We did talk in the Bank of England about whether we should have had much higher interest rates before the crisis.

 

“If we had done that we undoubtedly would have had a downturn, probably a recession even, unemployment and inflation well below the target. But we as one country could not have stopped the financial crisis occurring so I think we should have been shooting ourselves in the foot; even if you could argue that if every country had done that it may be we would not have been in such a difficult position.”

 

He said he did not think the cause of the crisis lay in the regulation itself but “a complete change in psychology and fear in the financial markets about the credit-worthiness of banks”.

 

“Looking back the leverage of banks was absurdly high and should have been lower. I don’t think there is any point blaming them for it. It came as an enormous surprise to everyone that banks were not creditworthy.”

 

However, he said he was not sure that policymakers had “yet got to the heart of what went wrong”, and said he was not yet sure the banking system was safe enough.

 

 

[Stu Monty]

"We pretty much make this shit up as we go along so we couldn't really have foreseen any issues".

 

Cheers Merv.

[Section_31]

The fact he's having to say that at all shows you how ridiculous the spin has become, yes, Gordon Brown sold all those sub prime mortgages.

[Coro]

The fact he's having to say that at all shows you how ridiculous the spin has become, yes, Gordon Brown sold all those sub prime mortgages.

 

How come New Labour didn't look to regulate the banks more strictly?

 

I keep thinking it's because they're a rabid bunch of Thatcherites.