ED209 wrote:
'Socialism with an ipad' makes me really sad that scot dutchy is currently unavailable to comment

minininja wrote:

Alan B wrote:Just had an email from 38 degrees.

There might not be an election for a while, but being registered matters right now. The government is cutting the number of MPs and basing the cuts on how many people are registered - not actual population. So fewer people registered here could mean Birmingham loses out.

And if that wasn’t enough, not being registered to vote could also impact your credit rating. [3] This can make ordinary things like getting a phone contract, a credit card or buying a car more difficult.

https://speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/keep-your-vote

The government has recently switched to a new system of registering to vote, called "Individual Electoral Registration". The deadline for people to register under the new system is November 20th. Most people have been automatically registered - but an estimated 1.9 million people are still not registered and will be deleted from the register without their knowledge.

How does that work? If they are not on the register, by what criteria can they be deleted?
Seems like a bit of sharp practice going on here or maybe some misunderstanding.

I voted at the last election. How can I be de-registered?

I'm not certain of the details but from what I've heard, if you were previously only registered under the household system (i.e. you didn't register individually online within the last year) and the government cannot verify your registration from tax records national insurance number etc. at your current address, then you get deleted. It's most likely to affect young people, renters, students.
...

catbasket wrote:Please tell me that's a fake. I mean, sixty pence for that rag? NFW!

smudge wrote:

ED209 wrote:

It makes one wonder whether the tories' supporters will ever tire of their staggering economic incompetence.

Luckily for them, any alternative means Foot, Marxism, and a silly beard...

Former Tory minister Esther McVey has landed a £530-a-day, taxpayer funded job, just six months after being booted out as an MP.She’s been appointed Chair of the British Transport Police Authority (BTPA) by her former colleague Transport Minister Patrick McLaughlin.

The £32,000 job requires her to work just 60 days a year.

The Conservative welfare slasher and ex-TV presenter will juggle that job with an ‘advisory role’ at lobbyists Hume Brophy.
Hume Trophy’s clients have included the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, on whose behalf they sent letters to MPs urging them to oppose a ban on the display of tobacco products in shops.

They were unsuccessful.

When the voters of the Wirral booted the woman we call McVile out of Parliament, they were expressing the feelings of right-thinking people across the UK.

It is an insult toe the British people that Transport Minister Patrick McLaughlin is forcing the public to pay her salary again in an act of favouritism that should see him ejected from his own office (but probably won’t).

Not only that, but she has also taken a job with a lobbying firm, proving that the Conservative Party has done nothing at all to curb the power of such companies to sway government policy. The Transparency of Lobbying Act was about restricting trade unions and political campaigners, not commercial lobbyists at all.

chairman bill wrote:It's called cronyism, but maybe more properly 'corruption'.

Everything we hold dear is being cut to the bone. Weep for our country
George Osborne knows he is politically free to do what he wants at Wednesday’s autumn statement: Labour offers no substantive intellectual or political opposition.
(...)
The Conservatives’ choice is driven by a refusal to see any merit in public activity: in their worldview, the point of life and the purpose of civilisation is to celebrate and protect the private individual, the private firm and private property. The state should be as small as possible. It has no role, say, in owning Channel 4 to secure public service broadcasting; it will be privatised with scant care about its ultimate owner. Equally, there was no point in holding the 40% stake in Eurostar, forecast to generate more than £700m in dividends over the next decade and a good payback for £3bn of public investment. Thus it was sold for £757m in March, the government concerned to get the sale through before the general election. You could only proclaim a £2.25bn loss on the public balance sheet and the surrender of £700m of dividends as a “fantastic deal for UK taxpayers”, as Osborne did, if you see zero value in public activity.

It is this philosophy that will drive the choices to be laid out on Wednesday. The spending of the so-called protected departments – the £189bn spent this year on the NHS, schools for five- to 16-year-olds, aid and defence – will rise in cash terms in line with inflation, but only to buy the same in 2019-20 as it does today, an unprecedented decade-long freeze in real terms. The block grants to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be hit slightly harder, protected only in cash terms, implying, after adjusting for inflation, a small real fall. The axe therefore has to fall on what is left – £77bn of spending by 15 departments along with non-school spending.

So if we take the summer budget and Office of Budget Responsibility economic forecasts as the baseline (both may change) – and there are no new tax increases – to meet his target, the chancellor has to find £22bn of cuts from this £77bn, crucial areas of our national life that have already cumulatively been cut by 30% since 2010.

As the Resolution Trust points out, seven of the smaller departments have settled for 21% cuts, which leaves the big five – Business, Communities and Local Government, Justice, the Home Office and non-schools education – to bear the brunt. This can only mean the de facto wind-up of the Department for Business as a pro-active department, further shrinkage of the criminal justice system (mitigated by prison sell-offs), local government reduced to a husk and the knell of further education. Meanwhile, the cuts in welfare will hit the wellbeing of millions, including their children. Expect on top a firesale of government assets – from housing associations to Channel 4.

Is this wanted, necessary or appropriate for these profoundly troubled times? I think it’s a first-order category error and that in 2015 the need – whether protection from terrorism or the promotion of innovation and investment – is for complex collaborative action between a properly resourced, agile public sector and a private sector in desperate need of remoralising and repurposing. There is no magic in a 36% state. But as Osborne knows, he is politically free to do what he wants. The leadership of the Labour party offers no substantive intellectual or political opposition, nor represents a potential governing coalition, nor, wedded to a bankrupt simplistic top-down statism, understands the complexities of these new times. Rarely has the principal opposition party been so irrelevant at a time of national need. All that is left is noises off – the odd newspaper editorial or column and civil society and business beginning to stir as they experience the impact. Weep for our country.

Calilasseia wrote:Well since Alastair Graham was also at the time the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, a role that I suspect he didn't get through corruption of the sort being discussed here, and ended his formal connections with the Trades Union Movement all the way back in 1986, when he stepped down as General Secretary of the Civil and Public Services Association, I somehow think your attempt to erect a fake "symmetry" here is precisely that.

Will Hutton wrote:The leadership of the Labour party offers no substantive intellectual or political opposition, nor represents a potential governing coalition, nor, wedded to a bankrupt simplistic top-down statism, understands the complexities of these new times.

Strontium Dog wrote:So you claim, without a shred of evidence whatsoever.

A Conservative minister charged taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds to stay at a private members club where he would allegedly meet his mistress.

Robert Halfon, who suffers from a form of cerebral palsy, claimed more than £30,000 in expenses to stay at the East India Club from 2010 to 2014.

The minister is allowed to claim for overnight accommodation, despite living within a commutable distance from Westminster, due to his disability.

East India, Devonshire, Sports and Public schools’ club has an annual fee of £1,000 and it costs up to £267 per night for a suite.

Mr Halfon admitted last week that he cheated on his partner, after allegations of blackmail. It has been reported that a Tory party aide, Mark Clarke, attempted to obtain photos of Mr Halfon leaving the East India Club with the woman, to allegedly blackmail the minister without portfolio.

Calilasseia wrote:

Strontium Dog wrote:So you claim, without a shred of evidence whatsoever.

Ha ha ha ha. Did Graham own a private security firm profiting from political favours from the Labour Party? Er, no. Not that facts such as this will get in the way of Tory apologetics.