(14 Oct 2022, 3:48 pm)Adrian wrote I note the small print, but even you must admit that we'd be a poorer country, without the history of fighting for the rights that we enjoy today.

It's incredible that whenever a group of workers want to fight to better themselves, that people instantly compare them to supermarket workers, care workers, nurses or whoever else. Same way as the media always go back to train driver pay, when talking about RMT workers (including cleaners, porters, etc) on strike. 

We really need to get out of this mindset that it's a race to the bottom and that we must always compare ourselves with shitty wages in other sectors.


I can't tell whether you're being serious or you're just incredibly naive. Everything that workers have in this country are a hard-fought victory of Trade Unions. If it wasn't for Unions, our kids would still be getting sent down the pit or up a chimney and people would still be regularly end up dead on the job. No employer does things for the good of workers rights. They do things because they've been forced to, after decades and decade of campaigning.

It's incredible to suggest that 'bus drivers have never had it so good'. You're talking about a headline hourly rate, but not considering that most other industries would pay shift allowance (of at least 20%) for the kind of unsociable shifts that drivers are expected to work, compensating for their lack of work/life balance. You're also ignoring the responsibility of the job, ensuring the safe carriage of up to 80 passengers at a time, the lack of flexibility to take time off, the lack of sanitary facilities in their workplace, physical and verbal assaults whilst working alone, the list goes on. That's why I always find it rich people suggesting they'd do the job for X, but then don't. 

It's also worth remembering that as key workers, bus drivers were expected to work as normal (with no enhancement) throughout COVID, ensuring that that other key workers could continue to travel to their place of work. Or did we seriously think that clapping on our doorsteps on a weekly basis was enough? 

I think Cadbury and Quakers are two examples that debunk the myth that all bosses are evil and all strikes are noble. Evil capitalists have built entire towns with groundbreaking wekfare facilities for their workers (research Saltaire).

A century later, and even Jeremy Corbyn knew it would be political suicide to piffle away his ill gotten tax revenues on silliness like parks and leisure centres for all (especially the poor imigrants starting at the bottom rung), if he did so before making sure the unions were looked after and all work was unionized or nationalised.

History teaches us that if unions had their unfettered way over society, then yes, people really would still be going down pit today, and they would be doing it en masse doing risky life expectency reducing work, unlike the relatively safe largely automated mines that could and should have been brought in during the FIFTIES (see the illustrations in Eagle Annuals of the day) were it not for union obstruction.

Would immigrants or even women even be allowed to drive buses these days if the all powerful transport unions hadn't been swept away as relics?

Bus driving is not an industry per se, the relevant industry is transport and logistics, which, as I said, has been rapidly deprecating the idea that shift working or unsociable hours should carry a high premium, so if bus drivers want more than the industry standard of today, they might want to ask themselves, are they realy worse off than multi-drop HGV drivers being illegally denied access to warehouse toilets, or train drivers having to end shifts hundreds of miles from home at short notice? I think not.

If bus drivers want to harp on about the responsibility of carrying 80 passengers, they ought to honestly engage with the factual observation that wage increases of 10% is incompatible with passenger loads down 20%, and whatever their crap Labour comprehensive education taught them, the shortfall isn't remotely covered by greedily grabbing any and all profit or dividend they can lay their hands on. Just as taxing millionaires 99% on the penny still doesn't even cover a FRACTION of the current NHS budget, let alone the spending commitments of a Corbyn government.

Unions have a lot to answer for some recent exposed failings of collective responsibility to Health and Safety in fatal bus accidents. Too busy thinking up ways to atnagonise and obstruct over pay issues were they? Somehow forgot about that basic of rights, the right to life.

The media harps on about the very well paid train drivers because OF COURSE not a month after we were being told by the sodding RMT that the rail strikes weren't about trains driver's mid level level pay, the drivers went out on strike for better middle rank pay. Huh.

We all well remember the attempts to frame bus drivers and supermarket stackers as key workers, just like nurses. It's what we think about when we see that it is only one of those three sectors that is currently experiencing major strikes allegedly due to the cost of living, and it's the one sector where a long or open ended strike has the potential to get actual key workers fired, or generally disrupt the services those people are providing, if not simply making it harder for those people to make ends meet.

If the tanker drivers went on indefinite strike tomorrow, and the government decided to provide free taxis or private buses for all key workers rather than provide fuel deliveries for bus depots, would the drivers be happy that they were ensurung key workers could get to work, or would they be outraged and expect the government to ensure a strike in one sector didn't effect their ability to continue to be what they are? Privately employed public transport workers. Nice to have, but not irreplaceable in an emergency.

So bus drivers (the people who get people to work or allow some people even to just travel somewhere) and nurses (the people who do the day-to-day looking after of ill people) aren't key workers, even though some people would be effectively locked to walking distance if there were no bus drivers, and if there were no nurses, people's health could well be seriously compromised.

So who is a key worker then?

(14 Oct 2022, 7:20 pm)F114TML wrote So who is a key worker then?

Nobody, it's a phrase that never should have existed.
Everybody is equal and all that.

(14 Oct 2022, 7:20 pm)F114TML wrote So bus drivers (the people who get people to work or allow some people even to just travel somewhere) and nurses (the people who do the day-to-day looking after of ill people) aren't key workers, even though some people would be effectively locked to walking distance if there were no bus drivers, and if there were no nurses, people's health could well be seriously compromised.

So who is a key worker then?

Either I miswrote or you misread, but I certainly never said nurses aren't key workers. 

There are actually whole regions in this world where being a bus driver in the UK sense, or indèeed any sense, isn't really a thing et all. And yet it is quite false to suggest these places are dysfunctional backwaters where everyone is locked into an existence of travelling only as far as their feet can carry them. 

Perhaps that is a good definition of key worker. If it's a role that you can find anywhere a critical mass of human civilisation exists to the point strangers routinely interact with strangers to conduct the essentials of survival (eating, sleeping, caring), it is probably a key role.

Buses can always be replaced, the key skill being driving, not bus driving. People perhaps don't take too well to demand responsive or personal ride sharing solutions precisely because it feels too much like you are behaving like your journey is necessary and important. That it is key.

Working so very hard to keep the UK hooked on this idea that transporting fresh air is an essential service, while simultaneously showing very little concern at how often services run early or don't run at all, and often don't serve certain places solely because of the cost of a driver, all far more serious issues for an essential service than simple late running, is perhaps precisely what ubdemines any union claim to be the representatices of key workers.

They are what they are, certainly in the current disputes. Trying to get inflation busting wage rises for their members, with nothing in return for their employers or the people who ultimately pay these wages.

(14 Oct 2022, 8:03 pm)Starscream wrote Either I miswrote or you misread, but I certainly never said nurses aren't key workers. 

There are actually whole regions in this world where being a bus driver in the UK sense, or indèeed any sense, isn't really a thing et all. And yet it is quite false to suggest these places are dysfunctional backwaters where everyone is locked into an existence of travelling only as far as their feet can carry them. 

Perhaps that is a good definition of key worker. If it's a role that you can find anywhere a critical mass of human civilisation exists to the point strangers routinely interact with strangers to conduct the essentials of survival (eating, sleeping, caring), it is probably a key role.

Buses can always be replaced, the key skill being driving, not bus driving. People perhaps don't take too well to demand responsive or personal ride sharing solutions precisely because it feels too much like you are behaving like your journey is necessary and important. That it is key.

Working so very hard to keep the UK hooked on this idea that transporting fresh air is an essential service, while simultaneously showing very little concern at how often services run early or don't run at all, and often don't serve certain places solely because of the cost of a driver, all far more serious issues for an essential service than simple late running, is perhaps precisely what ubdemines any union claim to be the representatices of key workers.

They are what they are, certainly in the current disputes. Trying to get inflation busting wage rises for their members, with nothing in return for their employers or the people who ultimately pay these wages.

The one thing your missing here is if they don't get an increase in wages then they're effectively getting a real terms pay cut.

Inflation is 10%, so effectively everyone should be getting a 10% pay rise. 4% is a 6% pay cut, not to mention most bus drivers didn't get a rise last year either.

Just because call centres want to pay below the national living wage and the workers have to do OnlyFans or use food banks to make a living doesn't mean others should have to do the same. Call centres are also an extra service so can be ditched without any real issue whereas drivers are actually needed (key difference between the two) which makes striking very different. If you shut an O2 call centre down it wouldn't impact anyone so wouldn't get them anywhere.

£12.40 is £1.50 above the minimum wage (to live) to do a job which is much harder than a basic supermarket job etc. Yet again driver's don't give a toss about their boss on £150k a year, bus routes not running, whether Betty has soup for her tea or whatever. They care about money for thereself and they've been treat like shit for years. If you run a business which can't pay a proper wage for their staff then that's a business problem and needs fixing and is a failure of the market.

Being a key worker or not is irrelevant here.

A 10% pay rise in the entire public sector would cost £23 billion, while even before the pandemic, the government was spending £54 billion more than it earns.

This is how screwed the UK economy is when restricted solely to funding actually essential services from a captive market, and facing claims that public sector workers have been treat like shit since 2010.

The free market really won't treat drivers any better than nurses, for good reason, and you can see fine well that the public finances need the pay demands of Sunderland drivers like a hole in the head.

If there is a third model that works here, I've never heard of it.

(14 Oct 2022, 10:20 pm)Starscream wrote A 10% pay rise in the entire public sector would cost £23 billion, while even before the pandemic, the government was spending £54 billion more than it earns.

Maybe if the Tories get Amazon, Starbucks & Google to pay their taxes that may go down! Not to mention the 18 Billion in the increased Corporation tax, the UK is truly in trouble, more Foodbanks than McDonalds, Pound Crashing, Billions from the Bank of England to save pensions. 

Not to mention the truly irreversible damage of Brexit, lead by the Lie on the Double Decker bus, imagine millions of people falling for a lie on a bus not to mention when they try and get deals done the new Home Secretary who disagrees with everything Liz Truss is doing and reportedly has no say on any form of immigration made a off handed remark about Indian Immigrants, which puts the trade deal Liz Truss has been working on for years in jeopardy. 


From 2010 to 2019, total gross government debt increased by £643 bn from £1.2 trillion to £1.8 trillion.

After today, Tories are fucked. This reminds me of the 1992 Black Wednesday. Only difference , I have a mortgage. Any kid on here, who thinks the Tories are great , needs a fucking lesson in the difference between bus spotting and real life

(14 Oct 2022, 11:41 pm)Economic505 wrote After today, Tories are fucked. This reminds me of the 1992 Black Wednesday. Only difference , I have a mortgage. Any kid on here, who thinks the Tories are great , needs a fucking lesson in the difference between bus spotting and real life

Bang on.

---

(14 Oct 2022, 10:39 pm)Unber43 wrote Maybe if the Tories get Amazon, Starbucks & Google to pay their taxes that may go down! Not to mention the 18 Billion in the increased Corporation tax, the UK is truly in trouble, more Foodbanks than McDonalds, Pound Crashing, Billions from the Bank of England to save pensions. 

Not to mention the truly irreversible damage of Brexit, lead by the Lie on the Double Decker bus, imagine millions of people falling for a lie on a bus not to mention when they try and get deals done the new Home Secretary who disagrees with everything Liz Truss is doing and reportedly has no say on any form of immigration made a off handed remark about Indian Immigrants, which puts the trade deal Liz Truss has been working on for years in jeopardy. 


From 2010 to 2019, total gross government debt increased by £643 bn from £1.2 trillion to £1.8 trillion.

Well said.

Taxing the entire global profits of Amazon at 50% only raises around £20bn. John McDonnell could probably have only got £2bn of that, if he resorted to extreme measures.

Measures ensuring that measly £2bn was wiped out in the same way Truss quickly evaporated her own mythical calculus at the altar of the markets. It was hilarious to see McDonnell not realising this sort of market punishment of batshit economics is exactly why many said his lot would crash the pound.

You might as well be saying bus drivers can pay their higher bills by lifting the sofa cushions and raiding their penny jars for all the sense it makes.

Both the markets and swing voters see through utter bollox like this quite easily.

If Kier Starmer takes wet dream union derived hot garbage like this to the ballot box at the next election as his economic plan, especially if at that time the country is still gripped by strikes and a leadership vacuum, it's an odds on certainty he will lose. 

In that scenario, the parts of the country that matter in an election will want the dead eyed conviction of a real Thatcher Reborn, not the superficial mimicry of Truss. Think Lord Protector Mogg.

And as we all surely know by now, in our system, which Kier Starmer has no public plans to change, anything less than a straight up majority, is a loss. The suspicion that he might use a majority to usher in PR without a mandate only makes it even less likely he will win the key battlegrounds.

If striking bus drivers can't do basic addition and subtraction, let alone understand Politics 101, maybe their claims of what a fair wage looks like to them, is indeed complete Trot? Or should we say Truss now?

Thanks to Thatcher's dead eyed conviction, busting the unions and freeing up capital such that even low born oiks like me could thrive, I'm alright. Less than £10 a week does me fine, as I see out the last twenty years of my economic usefulness to my beloved country. 

At a stretch I can even afford a car if bus drivers think they can out do the likes of me in the game of Fuck You Jack.

And I'm norbutt an extremely liberal minded One Nation Conservative, who can see quite well, even if the Red Remainers can't, that the ultimate cause of Brexit was David Cameron rather stupidly believing the EU were a reasonable bunch who shared British values of decency and fair play. More fool us.

As the blue rinse set dies out, there's entire generations out there raised on much harsher ideological grounds, ready and willing to ensure a Union Official in sheeps clothing, as Starmer continues to appear to be, doesn't get his hands on the Keys To The Kingdom.

You would hope the country would have come to a consensus by now on this asburd claim that all you need do to thrive is tax the rich and corporations, in the same way that all now seem to accept trickle down economics is bollocks too. But sadly not.

How many times must the socialist dream fail to even get a chance of being implemented, before they realise its about time they came up with a different theory, if they hate neoliberal cornerstones like having a competitive corporate tax rate, so much?

Unlike previous generations, you risk ensuring your children live their entire lives without ever seeing the politics they are raised to believe is the correct one.

How ironic to think that a lifetime of sufferance for a doomed cause is so very.....Soviet.

Should we be arming ourselves to repel an insurrection next year? Or are the proles going to come to their senses and return to the land of common sense and pragmatism?

It's always been rather obvious that if you claim to speak for the down trodden super majority and yet you can't even reliably win a 50%+1 electoral vote, that somewhere along the line you started to lose the plot big time.

As their official Spokesperson, the Blue Collar Northern (shy) Tories would welcome a return to a sensible battle of sensible ideas as part of the daily cut and thrust of politics. By all means, join us in this goal.

Or not. 

I'm quite sure Amazon are laughing at you either way. 

I buy my shopping at Lidl and my jeans at Primark. I make the clear choice (and it is still a choice in our country) to avoid giving Amazon any money at all, out of loyalty to my father, who was a multi drop HGV driver. 

It is noted however that in these straightened times, Amazon seem to be quite fond of working with independent minded self starting haulage contractors, men like my father, rather than their corporate peers, afflicted as they still are with unreasonable unionised workforces.

If I'm the naive child here, you's lot haven't got a chance of achieving anything in life. Except perhaps giving yourselves ulcers at fifty. I'm in rude health, as confirmed by a full medical at a recent job that wasn't hard won by strikes or socialist claptrap, but the clear common sense of Tory employment policy (it benefits all concerned if companies are highly motivated to ensure their workplaces aren't hazardous to their employees health).

Like much of claimed progress under Labour or labour, much of the actual progress in things like how to stop work being hazardous or discriminatory or soul crushingly depressing, has been done by Tory governments quietly working on the business of making laws and general governance.

Things like asessing pandemic preparedness, one of many things that didnt happen in the Parliamentary sessions between the Brexit vote and the election of Johnson, by which time, following the grand traditions of Labour and labour, the damage had already been done.

IM not sure whether to laugh or cry but the above post has got to be a wind up! Is that you Streetdeck fan you tinker??

(15 Oct 2022, 10:21 am)Rob44 wrote IM not sure whether to laugh or cry but the above post has got to be a wind up!  Is that you Streetdeck fan you tinker??

I thought that for a second. Then realised (reading through tears of laughter/bewilderment), that there was no mention of the X21.

So, in conclusion. No, it cant be streetdeckfan.

(15 Oct 2022, 10:44 am)Andreos1 wrote I thought that for a second. Then realised (reading through tears of laughter/bewilderment), that there was no mention of the X21.

So, in conclusion. No, it cant be streetdeckfan.

 Very true

(15 Oct 2022, 10:44 am)Andreos1 wrote I thought that for a second. Then realised (reading through tears of laughter/bewilderment), that there was no mention of the X21.

So, in conclusion. No, it cant be streetdeckfan.

I couldn't be arsed to write that much!

I just write the bare minimum to cause drama, and I'd like to think, given that my day job is 90% writing, you'd at least be able to follow what I write without getting a headache!

I assume starscream is a satirical columnist for Private Eye

Genius satire - otherwise nobody can be that...well....like that

Genuine post/er. I do tend to get carried away though, so no hard feelings if people are baffled why anyone would write so much on a bus forum. Don't mind me

The next generation...

https://www.route-one.net/people/morebus...amways-19/

Good luck trying to persuade them that they should show solidarity with striking drivers. She is perhaps already well prepared for a future where home ownership is out of her reach, and will hopefully be unconvinced by any claims that changing that basic reality of our times starts with trying to screw over her
customers.

It starts at the ballot box, but it seems unlikely Kier Starmer has what it takes to swing the voters that matter, who of course don't live in her locality or ours.

And of course, she's not really got the luxury of simply rocking up at another company's depot if a strike at her depot goes badly, because as it turned out, unsurprisingly in these times, neither a local employee buyout nor a multinational foreign state owned conglomerate can make a small ex municipal survive rapidly changing market conditions.

Conditions Kier Starmer cannot change, unless he plans to further mortgage away this girls future in buying the bus companies with yet more borrowing.

What GNE did works, focusing on customers, a success story even in these times (a very attractive proposition according to their new owners) but unions don't like to be reminded of enterprising workers becoming evil capitalist pigs, itself a story a little too close to home in Busway's territory. It might give the workers who keep them in tea and biscuits ideas above their assigned station.

It's GA or bust for her. A situation 19 year olds in Sunderland could soon also be faced with, thanks to the legacy of self interest couched as collectivism.

Thatcher had it right. Thatcher was on this girl's parents side, since it's a fair bet that her parents buying their council house is the reason this girl even has access to a car at her age, so she can earn her keep and pay her taxes by transporting people with less than her. A car perhaps even made in Sunderland. What a thought.

The drivers deserve all our support. The tory trash on this forum represents the lowest form of traitors to our region. If the drivers call the blacklegs scabs, that's fine by me. Scabs they are and the same goes for the those who support the vermin that have brought us to where we are today.

(15 Oct 2022, 7:14 pm)Starscream wrote The next generation...

https://www.route-one.net/people/morebus...amways-19/

Good luck trying to persuade them that they should show solidarity with striking drivers. She is perhaps already well prepared for a future where home ownership is out of her reach, and will hopefully be unconvinced by any claims that changing that basic reality of our times starts with trying to screw over her
customers.

It starts at the ballot box, but it seems unlikely Kier Starmer has what it takes to swing the voters that matter, who of course don't live in her locality or ours.

And of course, she's not really got the luxury of simply rocking up at another company's depot if a strike at her depot goes badly, because as it turned out, unsurprisingly in these times, neither a local employee buyout nor a multinational foreign state owned conglomerate can make a small ex municipal survive rapidly changing market conditions.

Conditions Kier Starmer cannot change, unless he plans to further mortgage away this girls future in buying the bus companies with yet more borrowing.

What GNE did works, focusing on customers, a success story even in these times (a very attractive proposition according to their new owners) but unions don't like to be reminded of enterprising workers becoming evil capitalist pigs, itself a story a little too close to home in Busway's territory. It might give the workers who keep them in tea and biscuits ideas above their assigned station.

It's GA or bust for her. A situation 19 year olds in Sunderland could soon also be faced with, thanks to the legacy of self interest couched as collectivism.

Thatcher had it right. Thatcher was on this girl's parents side, since it's a fair bet that her parents buying their council house is the reason this girl even has access to a car at her age, so she can earn her keep and pay her taxes by transporting people with less than her. A car perhaps even made in Sunderland. What a thought.

The lass in that post wont last a year. Learning to drive a bus is fairly easy, putting up with all the crap you get after that is far harder.

Traitors to this region? Pah.

I work for one of the most well known Newcastle based busineses, privately owned by a Newcastle family for over a hundred years, working at the very lowest possible pay scale they have.

Everyone in this building, from the gaffer to myself, for very different reasons, all tied to our desire to remain and be a useful part of this region's economy, knows the cost of living here. There is but one mackem working here rather than his own area, and he is decidedly not an economic migrant marvelling at our gold pavements.

That is why we can say with some certainty, that these striking bus drivers, many of whom gladly sold their shares in a local employee owned business to tie their fortunes to what became the Amazon of bus services, are lying greedy parasites. It's our work that keeps them in work to begin with.

It is precisely our local roots, our wages, barely above minimum, that makes their cravenly opportunistic attempt to turn our lost wages and pensions into their gain, taking directly from us to feather their nests, that makes us want to poke their scabby little eyes out with our locally sourced wares.

We'll support them alright. We can certainly stretch to a one way ticket to somewhere else for every last one of them. Scotland is my vote.

I wish we had their details, so we could blacklist them, and see their reaction to losing one of the few benefits of being born up here. A truly local way to deal with an imported problem if ever there was one.

---

(16 Oct 2022, 12:02 am)Driver9*** wrote The lass in that post wont last a year. Learning to drive a bus is fairly easy, putting up with all the crap you get after that is far harder.

Check her CV. She likely already knows what putting up with crap looks like, and she was recruited precisely because she wants to do it behind a wheel.

(15 Oct 2022, 10:50 pm)54APhotography wrote The drivers deserve all our support. The tory trash on this forum represents the lowest form of traitors to our region. If the drivers call the blacklegs scabs, that's fine by me. Scabs they are and the same goes for the those who support the vermin that have brought us to where we are today.

It feels like I've stumbled onto the Daily Mail the past few days. Why anyone would support the current Tory party is a mystery to me when they're more bothered about reducing taxes for the rich than actually helping anyone not in the top 1%. They've literally just nearly crashed the economy if it wasn't for the Bank of England.

Totally agreed with supporting the drivers.

(16 Oct 2022, 7:50 am)Storx wrote It feels like I've stumbled onto the Daily Mail the past few days. Why anyone would support the current Tory party is a mystery to me when they're more bothered about reducing taxes for the rich than actually helping anyone not in the top 1%. They've literally just nearly crashed the economy if it wasn't for the Bank of England.

Totally agreed with supporting the drivers.

Quite. I find myself politically left of centre. I can be sympathetic to the aims of a genuine one nation tory, even if I don't wholeheartedly agree with them, but they are a very rare breed, particularly among those who proclaim it loudly. I find the current incompetent shit show truly terrifying and understand fully why so many people are exercising their right to strike, in both the public and private sector.

I used to quite enjoy following politics, but now I can't! It's just embarrassing!

Boris may have been... something, but let's be real, nothing that came out about him during the plot to oust him was a surprise to anyone!
We knew what we were getting ourselves into.

I bet the party are regretting forcing him out now

I’m all for the drama and interest of a good debate, but I’m finding the ramblings of one particular poster on this thread (and a couple of other threads) quite offensive, not in the views expressed (as everybody has the right to their views) but in the words used.

(16 Oct 2022, 2:58 pm)Bazza wrote I’m all for the drama and interest of a good debate, but I’m finding the ramblings of one particular poster on this thread (and a couple of other threads) quite offensive, not in the views expressed (as everybody has the right to their views) but in the words used.

You're quite right, some of the things they have said have been rather offensive. Things like

The tory trash on this forum represents the lowest form of traitors to our region.

and

Only scabs vote for or support Tories in the North East..

Scabs.

Oh, we're talking about different people?

(16 Oct 2022, 7:50 am)Storx wrote It feels like I've stumbled onto the Daily Mail the past few days. Why anyone would support the current Tory party is a mystery to me when they're more bothered about reducing taxes for the rich than actually helping anyone not in the top 1%. They've literally just nearly crashed the economy if it wasn't for the Bank of England.

Totally agreed with supporting the drivers.

You could start by acknowledging the Daily Mail is the most popular newspaper in Britain, seen by the public as the most right wing too, so it clearly does a good job of reflecting the British people far more than the Mirror (can't tell the chancellor from a random black man) or The Guardian (prints Labour campaign talking points as if they had been the words of random British people).

And then accept that the sheer number of people who vote Tory is pretty hard to reconcile if garbage like they're only working for the 1% was even remotely true.

The market crashed precisely because reducing taxes for the rich atm isn't actually popular even among most Tory voters, members and MPs. So the policy has been dumped, and maybe even everyone involved in conceiving it. Anathema to Labour, who consistently need to have their asses kicked at the ballot box before they ever admit they were wrong (and often not even then).

Would Labour really have done the same if Corbyn had got in and the markets had had their say on plans to spend trillions buying back everything Thatcher and Major sold off (a policy I might add that was only even legal thanks to Brexit, a Daily Mail victory for the ages). 

I think not. Labour is addicted to dogma and top down enforcement of what a few thousand activist "delegates" think is good public policy. It is their sad lot in life that most of the time most of the voting public hate that with a passion, even if a lot of the time that is an unfair characterisation of a system that at least had its origins in democratic organising. 

Hate the Daily Mail all you want. But I suspect this is largely because you already know that perusing its pages at any given moment gives you a pretty good idea of how to win a general election in this country.

Streetdeckfan - You have made a good point. Maybe all those involved should be given a time out in order to contemplate the language they are using.

(16 Oct 2022, 3:18 pm)Starscream wrote You could start by acknowledging the Daily Mail is the most popular newspaper in Britain, seen by the public as the most right wing too, so it clearly does a good job of reflecting the British people far more than the Mirror (can't tell the chancellor from a random black man) or The Guardian (prints Labour campaign talking points as if they had been the words of random British people).

And then accept that the sheer number of people who vote Tory is pretty hard to reconcile if garbage like they're only working for the 1% was even remotely true.

The market crashed precisely because reducing taxes for the rich atm isn't actually popular even among most Tory voters, members and MPs. So the policy has been dumped, and maybe even everyone involved in conceiving it. Anathema to Labour, who consistently need to have their asses kicked at the ballot box before they ever admit they were wrong (and often not even then).

Would Labour really have done the same if Corbyn had got in and the markets had had their say on plans to spend trillions buying back everything Thatcher and Major sold off (a policy I might add that was only even legal thanks to Brexit, a Daily Mail victory for the ages). 

I think not. Labour is addicted to dogma and top down enforcement of what a few thousand activist "delegates" think is good public policy. It is their sad lot in life that most of the time most of the voting public hate that with a passion, even if a lot of the time that is an unfair characterisation of a system that at least had its origins in democratic organising. 

Hate the Daily Mail all you want. But I suspect this is largely because you already know that perusing its pages at any given moment gives you a pretty good idea of how to win a general election in this country.

I tend to avoid the Daily Mail, not because of it's political leanings, but because 90% of the stuff it posts is utter shite! But, to be fair, that goes for just about any newspaper these days!
Although, even as a Conservative voter I do often choose to read the Guardian, but then I sometimes have to balance it out with The Daily Express!

The fact of the matter is, for the last 10 or so years, more people in the UK have voted for Conservatives over Labour. If, as some people suggest, nobody likes the Conservatives, then they wouldn't have won any elections! Conversely, if Labour were as great as people make out, they would be in power!

If there was an election called tomorrow, I think Labour would probably win. Not because I think they are the better choice, but because people just don't Truss Liz!

Would changing the leader of the party again change anything, realistically, probably not at this point. Bringing back Boris could genuinely be an option, after all, he is who we voted for.

Then again, maybe Labour winning the next election will be a good thing for the Conservatives, they can use that time to refresh themselves, like what Labour has sort of done under Starmer. They went from being completely unelectable under Corbyn, to almost being an option.

People voted tory because of Boris Johnson and that "oven ready deal" and his other flashy slogans, and because the alternative was Corbyn, who, at the time, was being embroiled in a massive anti-semitism scandal. I doubt Johnson would've been re-elected because of the whole lockdown partying thing and how he handled it, and I don't see him coming back and winning an election. Truss had the opportunity to bury it all, start fresh and make the party electable again. She's royally fucked it.

Nevertheless here's something for Starscream to enjoy themselves at; Truss seems to have written an article in The Sun in which she says she's going to mega clamp down on protesting and strike action.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20119764/l...si-growth/

Put Reese Mogg in unopposed, and see if a sharp return to Thatcherite principles reaps any benefits.

Smashing Unite and progressing British Volt etc would be a great start. Remembering as we must that Thatcher wasn't the evil witch most think she was - she was talking about climate change and energy security and facing down threats from the east when Starmer was in short trousers at grammar school. To repeat, GRAMMAR school.

The party would surely by then see the wisdom in unifying around one message and preparing the case to make at the next election.

If not, then the absolute shit show
that would be Starmer The Great Unifier trying to extricate himself from an inconclusive result or weak majority, riven by ongoing splits over Brexit, the Union, all the isms, and under constant attack from the right wing media for any mistep or personal failing, especially in areas requiring statesmanship or diplomacy, having to give real answers every day, every hour, rather than blaming the Tories and being Captain Hindsight/Obvious on a loop, would be both hilarious and prepare the ground quite well for the next Tory Leader to emerge and establish the clear alternative.

It's pretty damn hilarious to me that his very first task as Prime Minister will possibly have to be to guide or even negotiate pay settlements with the unions, while reassuring the markets his Administration knows how to do basic maths.

The voters really won't care if his main (only) defence to having to make deeply unpopular decisions is that the Tories alleged maladministration has tied his hands, just like they really didn't cut the Tories any slack for not having any say over how Gordon Brown handled the 2008 crash or our rainy day fund.

Will the striking bus drivers let Kier Starmer get away with claiming there is no money left and their ideas of how to make up the shortfall won't paas the markets any more than Trussonomics?

No.

Good.

A Kier Starmer giving in to the unions is an easy target at the next election.

A Kier Starmer facing down the unions, is a man who enters the next election with one of his oars already broken.

A Kier Starmer that is indecisive or secretive about his true opinion of and thus future approach to the strikes, is the man you already see before you. A very very easy target.

As always, even on the cusp of power, the unions make sure their political wing looks a decidedly unsafe pair of hands to most swing voters.

Two things are true in politics.

1. Voters swing right in hard times, drifting left when times are good.

2. Voters do not practice the doctrine of, well, why not give the other lot a chance, it can't get any worse. Absent a clear alternative, they go with what they know, or give incumbents a chance.

I've never felt more confident that I am living through the era that finally consigns hard left politics to the dustbin. Not that it has had a sniff of real power here for a very long time anyway.

Starmer can be Blair 2.0, or he can lose.

Scotland is the real problem for Starmer the Great, before and after an election. He probably dreams of being able to be in power but also posess a legitimate reason why he isn't getting the results his politics suggest should be the outcome of his government. It's all the boogie man's fault.

Scotland won't resolve that little conundrum any time soon, not nearly quickly enough to help Starmer escape being the next victim of the natural order of things at the end of his one term, if he even gets that far.

This is the way.