Snap General Election Called

[Rallyman]

10 minutes ago, Sunset said:

So where's the cash flowing from to pay for all of these public sector wage increases and the NHS?

The magic money tree at the bottom of the garden 

[Collie]

5 minutes ago, simmo said:

Britain is a Democracy not a Monarchy and where did you get the idea I was "anti-immigrant"? I can see that you struggle with anything outside your belief system.

Really? - Have a read of your posts over the last few weeks, completely anti-immigrant if you apply the reasonable person test.

I welcome logical and reasonable debate and my views constantly evolve.

 

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, Rallyman said:

The magic money tree at the bottom of the garden 

JC looks for rainbows while riding his multicultural unicorn.

[Collie]

10 minutes ago, kungfustu said:

.....where on earth do you think I gleaned this impression????

Well please enlighten me on the basis of your anti - Irish comment?

By the way, c. 7m people in the UK have Irish heritage,

[simmo]

1 minute ago, Collie said:

Really? - Have a read of your posts over the last few weeks, completely anti-immigrant if you apply the reasonable person test.

I welcome logical and reasonable debate and my views constantly evolve.

 

Would like to see the formula  used in your "reasonable person test"

[Collie]

It's a concept used in courts of law all the time.

I don't think you'd qualify but i could be wrong 

[simmo]

I find it disturbing the amount of people who voted for Corbyn and McDonnell in the knowledge that they are IRA sympathisers.

[simmo]

Just now, Collie said:

It's a concept used in courts of law all the time.

I don't think you'd qualify but i could be wrong 

so what is it?

[kungfustu]

20 minutes ago, Collie said:

Well please enlighten me on the basis of your anti - Irish comment?

By the way, c. 7m people in the UK have Irish heritage,

don't be daft......there is no need for my own experiences to be played out on here.....If you are Irish....you know first hand how bigoted and small minded a lot of the communities are.....things may have softened in recent years but that deep rooted hatred for anything English still flourishes.

[kungfustu]

27 minutes ago, Collie said:

Well please enlighten me on the basis of your anti - Irish comment?

By the way, c. 7m people in the UK have Irish heritage,

yes....the English have always been very welcoming to our Irish friends....still are.

[Collie]

35 minutes ago, kungfustu said:

don't be daft......there is no need for my own experiences to be played out on here.....If you are Irish....you know first hand how bigoted and small minded a lot of the communities are.....things may have softened in recent years but that deep rooted hatred for anything English still flourishes.

Ok mate, you have obviously had a bad experience which has lead to an anti-irish bias and prejudice.  I'm sorry for your troubles.  Hopefully you will find a way to broaden your mind and not judge an entire race based on your bad experience.  Being bitter only eats at yourself.

There is definitely not a deep rooted hatred of anything English.  c. 250k British people call Ireland home and are happy living there, tens of thousands more visit or holiday there every year and are made welcome.  Trade between Ireland and the UK is huge.

At the height of the troubles in 1973, the English rugby team received a long standing ovation in Lansdowne Road for travelling to Dublin after Scotland and Wales had refused to travel the year before due to security concerns.  The RFU president & team received a further standing ovation at the post game banquet when he said " We may not be very good but at least we turn up"

Anyway, this is off topic for this thread so i will leave you to your prejudice and hope you will find some positive experiences with Irish people (perhaps with the thousands of Irish Doctors or Nurses in the NHS or teachers in UK schools)

 

 

[Guest]

 Having a mod moment here 

There was a topic somewhere. Might be worth attempting to discuss it rather than going off at a tangent. 

And back to you  *cue the topic again*

 

 

[BacktoDemocracy]

4 hours ago, Sunset said:

So where's the cash flowing from to pay for all of these public sector wage increases and the NHS?

I assume from that comment that you are willing to pay for your own health care right up until you die and you are willing to pay individually for all the services provided communally by the state, do you advocate all parents paying for their childrens education..

Nursing vacancies are running at 11% and applications for nursing posts from the EU are down 96% and Trusts are mounting recruitment fairs in the Philippines, India and the far East, universities are already flagging applications for nursing training are down as training bursaries are stopped and applications for head and assistant head teacher posts dry up.

The anti public sector rhetoric that you espouse will lead to a totally stratified society where you have those who have and those who have not, living in that kind of society can seem very attractive for those who have but actually it is deeply unpleasant because of the fear that you live in, fear of crime, fear of going outside your defended territory , fear of the hate that you can feel outside, the neurosis of losing your privileged position,  the neurosis of being told by an outside entity that you have to contribute to the good of society.

Edited June 13, 2017 by BacktoDemocracy

[Collie]

An interesting take from a former NI secretary with more knowledge of the peace process and GF agreement than any of us on here.

 

Peter Hain: Deal with DUP means London is no longer an honest broker in the North

A Tory-DUP deal therefore will be both painful for May, and painful for political stability and peace in Northern Ireland

42 minutes ago

Peter Hain

File photo dated of Arlene Foster (left), leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, with Prime Minister Theresa May, who will hold critical talks on a deal to prop up a Tory minority administration after the Government admitted the Queen’s Speech could be delayed. Charles McQuillan/PA Wire

 

In Northern Ireland, the government must always be seen to act in good faith. I learned this personally when trying to bring together bitter old enemies, the Democratic Unionist party leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, who at the time had never exchanged a word, let alone negotiated with each other.

Some months before they so improbably became the “Chuckle Brothers” ruling Northern Ireland’s newly devolved government, Paisley wanted an absolute assurance that Sinn Féin would back something historically impossible for them: policing and the rule of law. He assured me he would govern with them, but only if that was guaranteed: it was his bottom line.

McGuinness, with the president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, in turn had the superhuman leadership challenge of persuading their rank and file, including former IRA combatants, to do so. They would only attempt this task if Paisley would do what he had always renounced: sharing power with former “terrorists”, or “ the devil ” in his immortal rhetoric. How could they be sure he would?

After exploring the detail with both, I told them Paisley would and I told Paisley they would. Both had learned to rely on me and Tony Blair because we understood and empathised with both sides. We didn’t have to agree with either, but we had to respect each standpoint. we were neutral, non-partisan, with no vested interested in any of Northern Ireland’s parties.

That’s fundamentally why Theresa May’s proposed deal with the DUP is so damaging for the Good Friday agreement and the peace process.

But managing Northern Ireland’s peace process is like carrying a tray of champagne glasses over a high wire. It needs forensic care and constant attention. That, from No 10 downward, was never demonstrated by David Cameron or May – more concerned about party than progress in Northern Ireland, spurning the British parliament’s bipartisan stance which was so important to the hard-won process of winning the peace. Cameron in 2015 had at least one cosy dinner at No 10 with DUP MPs – some of whom gleefully reported to me that parliamentary arithmetic, not Stormont’s functioning, was on the menu.

With a DUP deal as her only way of staying in power, how could May say no to the unionists – for example in the vital but tortuous negotiations to resurrect the devolved government and assembly, disturbingly suspended now for months?

May’s refusal earlier this year to resolve this latest Stormont crisis by convening a summit with the taoiseach – a move that, under Blair and Gordon Brown, frequently resolved seemingly irretrievable breakdowns – was inexplicable.

What’s more, the DUP could also press its own agenda on conflict-related legacy issues, such as blocking the prosecutions of soldiers and police accused of serious crimes. There is a strong argument for a time limit on investigations into crimes during the era of terror and sectarian violence. But this has to be applied across the divide or not at all, otherwise agreement with republicans and nationalists will be immeasurably more difficult than it already is.

Alongside this, a Tory-DUP deal could cause its own internal difficulties. May’s preferred hard Brexit means the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic would be the external EU customs frontier, requiring both goods and people movement to be checked and cleared, with a tariff levied. That both contravenes the Good Friday agreement and jeopardises the increasing integration of both economies. Despite supporting Brexit, the DUP wants – and to maintain domestic political credibility must have – a soft border. And that means the UK being at least within the European customs union, if not the single market.

Declaring Northern Ireland a “special zone” to try to solve this problem, as the European commission appears to have suggested, is not acceptable to the DUP because it would imply a distinct status within the UK in breach of their unionist imperative.

Besides, DUP members are not Tories. They have a significant working-class base. They don’t buy Tory austerity. They will insist on much more public investment and spending. Nor will they accept policies to reduce state pension benefits or May’s reactionary “dementia tax”.

They are seasoned, tough negotiators – none more so than Nigel Dodds, their able parliamentary leader. And they have a pathological opposition to imposed deadlines, as I also know from personal experience. A Tory-DUP deal therefore will be both painful for May, and painful for political stability and peace in Northern Ireland.

Peter Hain was Labour MP for Neath from 1991 to 2015 and secretary of state for Northern Ireland from 2005 to 2007.

[BacktoDemocracy]

3 hours ago, kungfustu said:

don't be daft......there is no need for my own experiences to be played out on here.....If you are Irish....you know first hand how bigoted and small minded a lot of the communities are.....things may have softened in recent years but that deep rooted hatred for anything English still flourishes.

Look up and understand Irish history from about 1550 on and realise that Ireland was an English colony

[Phenol]

3 minutes ago, Collie said:

An interesting take from a former NI secretary with more knowledge of the peace process and GF agreement than any of us on here.

 

Peter Hain: Deal with DUP means London is no longer an honest broker in the North

A Tory-DUP deal therefore will be both painful for May, and painful for political stability and peace in Northern Ireland

42 minutes ago

Peter Hain

File photo dated of Arlene Foster (left), leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, with Prime Minister Theresa May, who will hold critical talks on a deal to prop up a Tory minority administration after the Government admitted the Queen’s Speech could be delayed. Charles McQuillan/PA Wire

 

In Northern Ireland, the government must always be seen to act in good faith. I learned this personally when trying to bring together bitter old enemies, the Democratic Unionist party leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, who at the time had never exchanged a word, let alone negotiated with each other.

Some months before they so improbably became the “Chuckle Brothers” ruling Northern Ireland’s newly devolved government, Paisley wanted an absolute assurance that Sinn Féin would back something historically impossible for them: policing and the rule of law. He assured me he would govern with them, but only if that was guaranteed: it was his bottom line.

McGuinness, with the president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, in turn had the superhuman leadership challenge of persuading their rank and file, including former IRA combatants, to do so. They would only attempt this task if Paisley would do what he had always renounced: sharing power with former “terrorists”, or “ the devil ” in his immortal rhetoric. How could they be sure he would?

After exploring the detail with both, I told them Paisley would and I told Paisley they would. Both had learned to rely on me and Tony Blair because we understood and empathised with both sides. We didn’t have to agree with either, but we had to respect each standpoint. we were neutral, non-partisan, with no vested interested in any of Northern Ireland’s parties.

That’s fundamentally why Theresa May’s proposed deal with the DUP is so damaging for the Good Friday agreement and the peace process.

But managing Northern Ireland’s peace process is like carrying a tray of champagne glasses over a high wire. It needs forensic care and constant attention. That, from No 10 downward, was never demonstrated by David Cameron or May – more concerned about party than progress in Northern Ireland, spurning the British parliament’s bipartisan stance which was so important to the hard-won process of winning the peace. Cameron in 2015 had at least one cosy dinner at No 10 with DUP MPs – some of whom gleefully reported to me that parliamentary arithmetic, not Stormont’s functioning, was on the menu.

With a DUP deal as her only way of staying in power, how could May say no to the unionists – for example in the vital but tortuous negotiations to resurrect the devolved government and assembly, disturbingly suspended now for months?

May’s refusal earlier this year to resolve this latest Stormont crisis by convening a summit with the taoiseach – a move that, under Blair and Gordon Brown, frequently resolved seemingly irretrievable breakdowns – was inexplicable.

What’s more, the DUP could also press its own agenda on conflict-related legacy issues, such as blocking the prosecutions of soldiers and police accused of serious crimes. There is a strong argument for a time limit on investigations into crimes during the era of terror and sectarian violence. But this has to be applied across the divide or not at all, otherwise agreement with republicans and nationalists will be immeasurably more difficult than it already is.

Alongside this, a Tory-DUP deal could cause its own internal difficulties. May’s preferred hard Brexit means the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic would be the external EU customs frontier, requiring both goods and people movement to be checked and cleared, with a tariff levied. That both contravenes the Good Friday agreement and jeopardises the increasing integration of both economies. Despite supporting Brexit, the DUP wants – and to maintain domestic political credibility must have – a soft border. And that means the UK being at least within the European customs union, if not the single market.

Declaring Northern Ireland a “special zone” to try to solve this problem, as the European commission appears to have suggested, is not acceptable to the DUP because it would imply a distinct status within the UK in breach of their unionist imperative.

Besides, DUP members are not Tories. They have a significant working-class base. They don’t buy Tory austerity. They will insist on much more public investment and spending. Nor will they accept policies to reduce state pension benefits or May’s reactionary “dementia tax”.

They are seasoned, tough negotiators – none more so than Nigel Dodds, their able parliamentary leader. And they have a pathological opposition to imposed deadlines, as I also know from personal experience. A Tory-DUP deal therefore will be both painful for May, and painful for political stability and peace in Northern Ireland.

Peter Hain was Labour MP for Neath from 1991 to 2015 and secretary of state for Northern Ireland from 2005 to 2007.

Stop remoaning Hain! Enemy of the people! 

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, BacktoDemocracy said:

I assume from that comment that you are willing to pay for your own health care right up until you die and you are willing to pay individually for all the services provided communally by the state, do you advocate all parents paying for their childrens education..

Nursing vacancies are running at 11% and applications for nursing posts from the EU are down 96% and Trusts are mounting recruitment fairs in the Philippines, India and the far East, universities are already flagging applications for nursing training are down as training bursaries are stopped and applications for head and assistant head teacher posts dry up.

The anti public sector rhetoric that you espouse will lead to a totally stratified society where you have those who have and those who have not, living in that kind of society can seem very attractive for those who have but actually it is deeply unpleasant because of the fear that you live in, fear of crime, fear of going outside your defended territory , fear of the hate that you can feel outside, the neurosis of losing your privileged position,  the neurosis of being told by an outside entity that you have to contribute to the good of society.

Assumption wrong - just asking where it's all coming from I will find it interesting to hear a reasonable answer one that carries some weight with firm/solid monetary backing of course. 

[BacktoDemocracy]

26 minutes ago, Sunset said:

Assumption wrong - just asking where it's all coming from I will find it interesting to hear a reasonable answer one that carries some weight with firm/solid monetary backing of course. 

If my assumption is wrong why are you critical of public sector workers wanting to be paid properly fo the services they provide.

People will have to pay more taxes, you can't have the services demanded and pay less and less taxes, it's simple, and it will have to be direct taxation which means the richest pay more and big business will have to pay more and stop avoiding payment by off shoring profits to British tax havens , who do you think bankrolls the Tories, the people who want those tax havens to go on existing .

If you want an equal society tax is the only way to achieve it.

Edited June 13, 2017 by BacktoDemocracy

[simmo]

5 minutes ago, BacktoDemocracy said:

People will have to pay more taxes, you can't have the services demanded and pay less and less taxes, it's simple, and it will have to be direct taxation which means the richest pay more and big business will have to pay more and stop avoiding payment by off shoring profits to British tax havens , who do you think bankrolls the Tories, the people who want those tax havens to go on existing .

If you want an equal society tax is the only way to achieve it.

if i had any spare firm/solid money, I would back that post.

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, BacktoDemocracy said:

If my assumption is wrong why are you critical of public sector workers wanting to be paid properly fo the services they provide.

People will have to pay more taxes, you can't have the services demanded and pay less and less taxes, it's simple, and it will have to be direct taxation which means the richest pay more and big business will have to pay more and stop avoiding payment by off shoring profits to British tax havens , who do you think bankrolls the Tories, the people who want those tax havens to go on existing .

If you want an equal society tax is the only way to achieve it.

Again assumption, i have never said anything about anyone being overpaid. so massive tax increases is the only way WHAT A SURPRISE. Tories - do us a favour i mean labor...all the bloody same say this do that pay more ut than you get back, blah de bloody blah blah blah.

[Rallyman]

1 hour ago, BacktoDemocracy said:

I assume from that comment that you are willing to pay for your own health care right up until you die and you are willing to pay individually for all the services provided communally by the state, do you advocate all parents paying for their childrens education..

Nursing vacancies are running at 11% and applications for nursing posts from the EU are down 96% and Trusts are mounting recruitment fairs in the Philippines, India and the far East, universities are already flagging applications for nursing training are down as training bursaries are stopped and applications for head and assistant head teacher posts dry up.

The anti public sector rhetoric that you espouse will lead to a totally stratified society where you have those who have and those who have not, living in that kind of society can seem very attractive for those who have but actually it is deeply unpleasant because of the fear that you live in, fear of crime, fear of going outside your defended territory , fear of the hate that you can feel outside, the neurosis of losing your privileged position,  the neurosis of being told by an outside entity that you have to contribute to the good of society.

Would be interesting where the money is going to come from to pay for all this , not that I am against it as my wife was a nurse in the uk and they fully deserve more money but in reality how's it going to be paid for ?

Also the 11 billion in tuition fees Mr Corbyn had promised . 

[BacktoDemocracy]

24 minutes ago, Sunset said:

Again assumption, i have never said anything about anyone being overpaid. so massive tax increases is the only way WHAT A SURPRISE. Tories - do us a favour i mean labor...all the bloody same say this do that pay more ut than you get back, blah de bloody blah blah blah.

How about reading what I wrote, I answered your query with a logical statement, I never said anything about overpaid and I set out a position about an unequal society and the downsides to that and pointed out that consistently reducing taxation reduces equity and means that individuals have to pay for everything and all I get is more rhetoric about how you don't want to pay taxes so I assume you are willing to pay for everything yourself and live in a unequal society. 

Other countries pay much higher taxes and recognise that is the cost of a functioning society and there appears to be a correlation between higher taxation, equality, crime levels and happiness 

[kungfustu]

1 hour ago, BacktoDemocracy said:

Look up and understand Irish history from about 1550 on and realise that Ireland was an English colony

what on earth this has to do with anything I dont know.....we are not discussing how or why it all started,,,,,,1550 is going back to the dark ages my old friend.....more recently in 1775 we had the American war of independence.....a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.....us the Americans, French and Spanish now have an excellent relationship with mutual respect......and have had for many decades.....partly because all sides forgave and moved on.....maybe there's a bit of a clue there......mmmmm

[simmo]

Those bloody english!!!

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, BacktoDemocracy said:

How about reading what I wrote, I answered your query with a logical statement, I never said anything about overpaid and I set out a position about an unequal society and the downsides to that and pointed out that consistently reducing taxation reduces equity and means that individuals have to pay for everything and all I get is more rhetoric about how you don't want to pay taxes so I assume you are willing to pay for everything yourself and live in a unequal society. 

Other countries pay much higher taxes and recognise that is the cost of a functioning society and there appears to be a correlation between higher taxation, equality, crime levels and happiness 

I read it, granted while eating toast but hey ho. Bottom line a fair system is one where everyone contributes the same amount. Regardless of wage amount how rich you are or what else could be used as an excuse, the service being provided is the same regardless - using your system would mean because i own a jag i pay more for an MOT than you with your old vauxhall viva wouldn't it - because i earn more than you I should pay more for bread or a maccas?