Mailwatch(ed) Forum

When the winter fuel allowance was first introduced, it was given to everybody over 60. A few years later my brother in law became entitled to it, at the time he was heading up a team at Oxford University producing NHS statistics for the department of health, I don't know what his salary was, but he was far from poor. He used to donate the money to his cash strapped youngest daughter who, unlike him, actually needed the money and yet was being taxed to help pay her Dad's winter fuel allowance.
Now of course my brother in law is a pensioner. He recently told me that he reckons he has more expendable income than he ever had when he was working. His mortgage is ancient history, his children are long since off the payroll, he has no commuting or work clothing costs, he lives in a well insulated house with solar panels so his fuel bills are small. But the Tories, Corbyn, some Union leaders and (apparently) about 50 Labour MPs think it's just that people who can't afford their own heating should be made to pay for his.

Youngian wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2024 2:46 pm Increasing means testing causes resentment and disengagement from the state among those who have saved and paid lots of tax throughout their lives.

Is that really the case?
Does not 'they'll tax me less now' also apply?

The tories lied their way through a wholesale -22 bn bank balance lie this year.

The tories gift-wrapped 15 bn to their mates during Covid.

The tories turned a blind eye to 7 bn in Covid business-fraud.

John McDonnell voted with the tories this evening. Voting with is worse than voting for. Scousers don't vote for tories. Decent people don't vote for tories.

Former Doncaster MP Caroline Flint is busy forging a media career as a 'says it like it is' voice of common sense.
Here up against the distinctly unpopulist former Tory MP Ed Vazey
https://x.com/GMB/status/18344679443166 ... hdS4Q&s=19

“How to pay for it”?
“Makes some savings”
“Oh not like that…..”

I'm always amazed by what technology can do. But I'm sceptical that automatic number plate readers can actually stop the rogue cars and make arrests. On balance, I think we'll need cops in cars for a while longer.

I don't suppose my big city is any different to others. The speed and red light camera locations are well-known; stay away from them and you'll never see a police car. Drive how you like, ignore red lights, park where you want. You'll never get caught.

"Revelations" as in well-established fact of political life disclosed in a register for as long as I can remember. Agree with it or not, but don't talk like there's some dirty secret that's been dragged out of the Government.

The idea that Conference overturns decisions by the government is like something Richard Burgon would come out with- absolutely absurd.

Even if you felt it was a good idea to reverse, and frankly I think probably needed mean testing before now.

If you arguing for the boundaries to make the whole welfare benefit system fairer then so be it, if you are arguing that people with more money than sense should continue to be paid it by the state every winter then you can go jog off.

If it allows Labour to avoid cuts elsewhere on the vulnerable then so be it, we have reached the point of 100% debt of GDP.

What the hell did Austerity cuts pay for exactly?

Congratulations to all those who engaged with performative heroics at the Labour conference to try and ensure that people like Stanley Johnson, Norman Tebbit, various elderly chairs of 55 Tufton St think tanks and private clubs, Iain Duncan Smith, Ann Widdecombe and countless others get some free money, while complaining (often in the same sentence) that not enough money is being spent elsewhere. Because who cares that 1 in 5 pensioners are millionaires when you can try and frame people you are largely in line with ideologically as being exactly like people you are wholly opposed to ideologically for brownie points eh?

Some claiming it won’t save as much because those who need it will claim it.

This is apparently a bad thing because….Maybe it got lost that Labour are cutting it for those who don’t need it. Easy mistake to be fair considering the media wailing. Maybe Unite will one down work out they are a trade union that supports working people.

The Unions should be focused on keeping the level of retirement as low as possible.

Former MP Beth Winter quits Labour party, saying it's not socialist and just committed to retaining 'neoliberal status quo'

Like Keith Talent in Martin Amis' "London Fields", Beth doesn't use cliches. They're what she actually sees.

The budget raised taxes by £40bn in a highly progressive way, and had enough extra borrowing to cause at least a modest market reaction against it. I'm not sure how sticking it to neoliberalism would have gone. And as former MP for Cynon Valley, you might expect Beth to have been happy with the extra pension miners will now get.

Famously terrible US economy, with no improvement in employment or incomes or investment. You'd have been cock a hoop if Corbyn had achieved that. And Corbyn didn't have to get budgets past Mike Johnson.

How about the border? Or trans rights? Republicans seemed to go pretty hard at them if the election really turned on the economy. I think it's about time you realized people can be doing very well and still vote for bad people for bad reasons.

Here you go. Personal disposable incomes up by $2,000 since the post-Covid squeeze.

Siobhain McDonagh, a Labour MP usually seen as a loyalist, has criticised the bill because of its impact on academies. Under the bill, they will lose some of the freedoms they enjoy and be required to teach the national curriculum. Speaking in the debate, McDonagh said when she was first elected in 1997 two of the four secondary schools in her Mitcham and Morden constituency were in the lowest-performing 5% of schools in London and the capital was the “worst region in the country” when she was first elected in 1997. There are now three academies in her constituency, all rated oustanding, she said.

I like her generally, but she's always been a bit credulous on academies (see the Francis Beckett book, which quotes her sending out an absurd questionnaire). I'm actually more prepared than lots of people to concede that academies had a role (my hometown had a sink school, and I think lots of people were happy for it to take the oiks out of the ones their kids went to). But the idea that teaching the national curriculum is going to be a problem is ridiculous.

Why is learning the national curriculum for academies so bad anyway?

McDonagh makes the point that Ousted praised the curriculum in Harris Merton Academy in her constituency. But as you say, that doesn't mean that the National Curriculum (which has after all been good enough for non-academies all this time) is going to be a problem. I think she's just a bit starry eyed about academies because they're better than what was there before. Which is basically true of all London. Would be surprised if Mitcham and Morden hadn't gentrified a fair bit in that time too.

There's a big rightwing attack on the new curriculum coming, whatever is in it. See Seb Payne the other day making out that Becky Francis was some sort of Sun version of Linda Bellos, when the issue with the old curriculum is that if any group is failed by it, then it's working class white boys.

Stephen Bush in the FT was pretty critical of the bill as well.

First MP to break ranks on a national grooming gang inquiry- must be some self-appointed straight talking rightist, yeah?

Um, no. It's Corbynite Dan Carden. He wants Labour to show "whose side it's on". Presumably Nigel Farage's.

I'd have thought it wasn't too much effort to stick to the Starmer position that there will be one if the victims think it's needed, but these are the actions etc... Dan's ideological mates will doubtless give him hell for this... or not.