Labour La La Land?

Well said Mamacaz!

ooops, somehow this quote didn't register, and a previous one was posted.

It was meant to be 'Hospitals, schools and the police are pushed to the limit.'

I can assure you, that without immigrants, those services would indeed be pushed way beyond the limits.

Benefits can be a lifestyle choice, it is true - there are many private landlords who are only too happy to take housing benefit to pay their buy-to-rent mortgages. And employers who prefer to let the government pay a percentage of their employees' salaries rather than pay them a living wage out of their own profits . Terrible!

Hospitals, schools and the police are pushed to the limit.

They are pushed to the limit by the tory austerity policies. They need investment to improve and extend their services. And by the fact that many of their staff are EU nationals who are leaving because the UK no longer offers them any security.

Oh not the old 'lifestyle choice ' nonsense

Misffodlove 'What's wrong with buying a private health insurance. The rest of the world does.'

I can assure you, that without immigrants, those services would indeed be pushed way beyond the limits.

Jura2&Ilovecheese.

Any organisation with charitable status must be accountable to the charities commission, it is not just a rubber stamp.

Regarding my “prejudices” Jeremy Corbyn wants to end the benefits freeze, McDonnell has said he will fully update benefits from day 1.
This is not sustainable, benefits are now a lifestyle choice for many, not a safety net.

Immigration to the UK is not too high according to Corbyn.
How is our infrastructure going to cope?
Hospitals, schools and the police are pushed to the limit.

I am not racist or prejudiced just practical.

missfoodlove you say "the feckless benefit scroungers will be the winners along with all the migrants that will flood into our country"
Do you have any more prejudices that you would like to air?

Missfoodlove ' the tactics used by many to get grants for top private schools are truly shocking- they don't pay top accountants for nothing. Very few truly underprivileged children get places. So perhaps the so called 'charitable' status should depend on proportion, and places attribution properly investigated by an independent body.

Public and private schools do not automatically receive charitable status.
To receive and maintains its charitable status the public school my children went to educated many underprivileged young people free of charge.

I am currently reading Tom Bowers book”A dangerous hero” about Jeremy Corbyn. It is very concerning.

Our initial plan if he gets in is to get out of the country fast. However I think he and his sidekick McDonnell will find a way to stop us getting our money out before we flee.

Corbyn is a Marxist he will see the people that have achieved and worked suffer, the feckless benefit scroungers will be the winners along with all the migrants that will flood into our country.

btw I forgot to say that my GCs go to top private schools, and so do all my nephews and nieces. Several board at top Public Schools.

And that where I live- there were in the 50s, and there are nowadays - NO private schools at all. Why would anyone need one when the education is so well funded and classes below 20. And that has a massive effect on social cohesion- when in a class is so varied- the CEO's kids who is a billionaire, the local woodcutter and farmer's kids, and the surgeon's and dentist's, and the dustbin man and the cleaning lady, and the unemployed and the millionaire business owner, etc, etc, etc.

One British private school opened in the nearby main town, but soon closed as there was so little take up and mainly expat kids. There is a small Catholic school and another small one for expat kids working for the local international businesses- who intend to return. Other expats have just integrated the local schools, with support, and very happily. Hurrah.

The one argument that the LP use that is 100% right is that austerity is a political choice and has only ever shifted the nation's wealth away from 95% of the population to enrich further the top 5% by income and assets.

It's prime function is to reduce the size of the government and its influence on society at large.

It was no accident that one of the first areas attacked by the Tories was the judicial services including legal aid and the court services, after all if the access to the courts is restricted to the top 5% the risks of judicial reviews are reduced such that government actions are generally unfettered by the rule of law or even by prudent or just management of the nation and its resources.

I'm not altogether sure what the purpose is of the links you posted, Joelsnan Would you clarify?

The point the Tories realised so well is that the realities of the economic situation don't really matter. What matters is how you sell things to the public. If you can persuade them that you are doing the right thing and have no other choice, at the same time blaming the other party for the whole thing you are quids in. You tune in to the British taste for suffering, their liking for shortages and restrictions (a left over from the war) and their need to blame someone. Result you can do as you like.

www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicspending/bulletins/ukgovernmentdebtanddeficitforeurostatmaast/march2019

ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/9510404/2-21012019-AP-EN.pdf/97de2ad5-5b7e-4de9-ab36-7bbf8773aad0

UK debt as a %age of GDP 1993 - 2015:

Well, I would hope so Maizie, but seriously it's pretty basic A level macro-economics. I think economics should be compulsory in schools.

The NHS was actually the brainchild of the Liberal MP, Beveridge, and there certainly was opposition. That's why the doctors had to have their "mouths stuffed with gold" by allowing them to continue with private practice. Dentists have never been fully on board. Bevan was tasked with organising the NHS and it's true that his personality won the day, but it wasn't without a cost.

Oops...forgot the budding porn star pic that Boris gave money to without declaring 'an interest' in. When this first emerged we just thought it was yet another Boris Bonk story (that's the Boris that can't even remember how many kids he's got)....didn't know he'd given her Londoners' council tax cash....

@growstuff

Thank goodness someone else on this board has a grasp of economic theory

I thought the Brexit bus promised £350 million extra a week to the NHS I don't remember anything about life saving medicine shortages. I know people who voted Leave on the basis it would be better for the NHS. The thing is, I was in London as someone who lives in London and under two terms of Boris I'd already sussed he was a shameless liar and a philanderer...now it turns out the budding US porn star got loads of money from the GLA...well over £100k.
We got buses that couldn't negotiate London streets and knocked over and killed pedestrians on the pavement, buses that caught fire, buses that had no windows and got so hot that people passed out in them, an illegal and non-functioning water cannon...oh I could go on...still I suppose we got Boris Bikes...what's that? Ken Livingstone's idea that Boris took the credit for? Well, what a surprise (not that I was a Ken fan, but credit where credit's due).

www.standard.co.uk/news/bendy-buses-the-fatal-facts-6588794.html

www.citylab.com/transportation/2016/07/boris-bus-hot-air/492344/

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-46258584

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santander_Cycles

Eddie Mair was right. Boris is a nasty piece of work.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIpa5MioSrY

Snap Maizie and a much better explanation than mine, which was trying to say the same thing.

eazybee It's not always true that landlords have earned the money they've used to buy property. My ex-husband has a very substantial property portfolio, most of which has been bought with borrowed money. He hasn't worked for the last twenty years. The rental income is much higher than the interest he pays on his mortgages and he is able to live a very comfortable life on the income.

If we can just conjure up money from thin air (with apparently no guarantors) . Why on earth are we paying taxes. Why not quantitive ease all of the country's social needs?

Because if we did that there would be huge amounts of money floating around which would cause inflation. If the state is spending on things like the NHS, education, etc. it is paying out all the time. A huge outflow into people's pockets but what would they do with it once all the available resources had been purchased? It'd be like a burst water main, all gushing out but ultimately going nowhere.. Then we'd be in Venezuela, Zimbabwe territory...

Taxation keeps money circulating, and it also 'destroys' the excess money which would cause inflation. All money returns to the state, sooner or later, via taxation because all money based transactions are taxed, unless it's siphoned off into offshore tax havens.

trisher has explained the reason for 'austerity'.

The Circus comes to Brighton.

At this rate, the Hokey Cokey will soon replace the Red Flag as the Party's anthem.