"They are politicians!" – the Politics thread

Topic

Sponsored by General Martok, (Lord Vetinari declined to be involved) here’s the thread for covering political goings on.

Replies

Martin Smith wrote:

Labour party policy is to:
Negotiate a different deal with the EU.
Run a second referendum between that and remaining.

Which isn’t that complicated a position, frankly

Yes. The idea of Corbyn flip-flopping on this and not having a solid position is basically Tory propaganda. This has been Labour’s plainly stated policy and Corbyn and his allies haven’t deviated from it, while the Conservative government have changed their minds multiple times over the last two years. There are factions within the Labour party that don’t like it, but that doesn’t change the fact this it is an official and unwavering policy.

You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation. https://t.co/PSt8N39Er5

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 3, 2019

Jason wrote:

So, what, did you Brits look over here and see Donald Trump and think “Shit, we need to get one of those, too!”

Apparently not, since Johnson was never a reality TV host

Is it just my OCD, as I think, or is it rational to say that given last week’s events, the feds should be investigating the Washington Post editorial staff for connections to isis, no matter the politics of the investigators?

I’m pretty certain it’s your OCD.
The majority of times a screw-up is just a screw-up. Unless there’s something more than a messed-up, quickly fixed headline on a website?
(And, behind closed doors, words were likely had with the headline editor and sub-editor.)

Yup it’s your OCD Kalman, a mistake is taking way too much of your time and attention. It’s been a long time and many posts spent on something that was given an apology and correction.
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There’s no way the Washington Post are even vaguely agents of ISIS, they just had a brain fart and probably overcompensated on style guides not to editorialise news pieces. To give some context a British paper got a similar going over last week for describing Mussolini as a ‘war time leader’ without mentions that he was a fascist dictator and collaborator with the Nazis. The description isn’t inaccurate, he was a war time leader, but like the WP piece it does gloss over the atrocities he was responsible for so they changed it.

The WaPo thing didn’t even make news in Australia and naturally we are the litmus test for all things relevant.

Anonymous wrote:

Is it just my OCD, as I think, or is it rational to say that given last week’s events, the feds should be investigating the Washington Post editorial staff for connections to isis, no matter the politics of the investigators?

Nah, ISIS agents are too smart to give themselves away like that. Only a WaPo journalist can be that dumb.

So this happened. The Conservative Party took an interview from @GMB this morning. They edited it to add on the last shot in which Keir Starmer looks stumped. But that didn't happen. In the original Keir Starmer immediately answered @piersmorgan 's question. https://t.co/G8tU2SUpbq

— Daniel Sandford (@BBCDanielS) November 5, 2019

I wonder who approved that?
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And who will be blamed for approving it?

I think in cases like this, there’s a natural human urge to forget Hanlon’s razor. I mean, at least I wasn’t suggesting, like some people did, WaPo=Anti-Trump, Trump’s Administration ordered ISIS leader death ∴ WaPo sees ISIS as neutral just to spite Trump.

It was an error Kalman, an admitted and corrected one. Move on, everyone else has.

From https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/04/sinn-fein-stand-aside-remain-candidates-three-constituencies-general-election

Who would have thought we’d see the day when Sinn Féin are putting the good of the UK over short-term party gain?

JRCarter wrote:

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Pulling out of the Paris Agreement the day after the election is a real fuckhead move and part of me thinks it is motivated bybthis.

garjones wrote:

It was an error Kalman, an admitted and corrected one. Move on, everyone else has.

I was agreeing; that’s why I brought up Hanlon’s razor.

Focus on the ‘move on’

Nah, in about 150 years time, in the post-post-post-apocalypse world, Kalman’s 7th generation descendant will still be going on about how the 7th generation descendant of those journalists are pro-something-really-bad.

Smooth move there, Irish politicians, you name your party in such a way that even opponents may sound like they’re identifying with you if they want to speak about you.

Anonymous wrote:

Smooth move there, Irish politicians, you name your party in such a way that even opponents may sound like they’re identifying with you if they want to speak about you.

It’s a statement of worker’s solidarity, Sinn Féin came out of the revolutionary/labour rights movement of the early 20th century.

“And yet we have an empty chair”

Pretty devastating rundown of Tory blunders by @KayBurley while party chairman James Cleverly is 15ft away and refusing to come on air

pic.twitter.com/JIpGmmBBPY

— Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) November 6, 2019

Campaign still going well then. Only day 1.

This is also political, but perhaps not the bit I want to highlight it for.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-50302172?ns_linkname=wales&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_wales_news&ns_mchannel=social

A rape victim has called on a UK cabinet minister to quit after his former aide – a Tory Welsh assembly candidate – “sabotaged” her trial.

Ross England made claims about the victim’s sexual history in an April 2018 trial which led to its collapse.

Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns denied knowing about this, but BBC Wales has seen an email sent to him in August 2018 mentioning the matter.

Mr England was picked as the assembly election candidate in December 2018.

…
Mr England, who was selected as the candidate for the Vale of Glamorgan, said he had given an “honest answer” while giving evidence at the rape trial of his friend James Hackett.

Mr England told the court he had a casual sexual relationship with the complainant – which she denied – despite the judge in the case making it clear that evidence of the sexual history of the victim was inadmissible.

The judge, Stephen John Hopkins QC, said to him: “Why did you say that? Are you completely stupid?

“You have managed single-handed, and I have no doubt it was deliberate on your part, to sabotage this trial… get out of my court.”

Hackett was subsequently convicted of rape at a retrial.

Alun Cairns is strongly disliked by many in Wales so fingers crossed he buggers off. Better yet he loses his seat in the election, his seat is a Tory/labour marginal.

Update: He has resigned. Good.

Big news out of the Kentucky gubernatorial election results:
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The Democratic candidate has apparently beaten the incumbent Republican governor. Wonder what this means for Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell in his next race…

garjones wrote:

Alun Cairns is strongly disliked by many in Wales so fingers crossed he buggers off. Better yet he loses his seat in the election, his seat is a Tory/labour marginal.

Update: He has resigned. Good.

Does he technically even still have a position to resign from while parliament is dissolved?

And the Lib Dems are using more dodgy charts.

Another very dodgy campaign leaflet from the Lib Dems.

Just spoke to YouGov and they confirm they have not conducted any polling in Putney. pic.twitter.com/1MsxNfPLpO

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) November 6, 2019

Martin Smith wrote:

Does he technically even still have a position to resign from while parliament is dissolved?

I’d assume so because he has resigned from it, cabinet members are still addressed by their job titles during the election lead-up. If some urgent issue happened they’d be expected to attend to it in their role so I’d go with ‘yes’.
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Although of course of they don’t get re-elected then it is rather meaningless.

njerry wrote:

Big news out of the Kentucky gubernatorial election results:
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The Democratic candidate has apparently beaten the incumbent Republican governor. Wonder what this means for Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell in his next race…

Virginia flipped entirely blue as well. New York added ranked choice (as well as increased police oversight) to the city charter.

garjones wrote:

Martin Smith wrote:

Does he technically even still have a position to resign from while parliament is dissolved?

I’d assume so because he has resigned from it, cabinet members are still addressed by their job titles during the election lead-up. If some urgent issue happened they’d be expected to attend to it in their role so I’d go with ‘yes’.
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Although of course of they don’t get re-elected then it is rather meaningless.

And in fact he has now resigned:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-50302173

He had also resigned when I wrote the sentence beginning with ‘I’d assume so because he has resigned’.

Scrutiny also needs to be applied to how Conservative Central Office considered that an individual with a track record of deliberately collapsing a rape trial could be deemed a perfectly fine candidate for any kind of election.
Sure, he’s now suspended since last week, but why were no questions asked?

The Alun Cairns story gets worse:

“The rape victim, a woman in her early 20s who worked in his constituency office for four years, said that the minister had treated her with “utter disrespect” and should not fight the election.

“Alun Cairns had known me for years. For him to endorse somebody who did that, not only to a rape victim in general but someone he knew, it just shows his utter disrespect,” she said.

“I really don’t see how he could possibly ask people to vote for him. If you are a woman, how could you say that you would want him to be an MP? If you are attacked or raped he is not going to care because for him that is not a priority at all, so long as target seats in Wales are won. They thought Ross was the best chance of doing that and they didn’t care who else that affects or the consequences.”

I had no idea he actually knew and worked with the victim. The Tories may be better off offloading him, he has a 2000 majority and if the responses to that thread are at all representative a lot of women ain’t voting for him.

garjones wrote:

a lot of women ain’t voting for him.

And yet – Trump.
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Politics is not humanity at it’s finest, not the voted or the voters.
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In other news, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party is stepping down, which is being presented as a non-political decision, but it’s hardly helpful in the run up to an election.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50325666

SteveUK wrote:

In other news, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party is stepping down, which is being presented as a non-political decision, but it’s hardly helpful in the run up to an election.

I’m not sure it doesn’t even out to be honest. I like Watson for his campaigns but the ‘elected rather than appointed’ deputy post has proven to be a bit a bit of a detractor with him being out of synch with the leadership most of the time. It’s maybe an idea they would like to revisit next time. The deputy leader post in British politics, unlike the Vice President in the US, is a somewhat sporadic one. A lot of leaders, including the current PM, just dispense with the role.

SteveUK wrote:

And yet – Trump.

Carried along more women than expected but his core vote was white males. Yes a sample of comments is no real indicator at all but when you have a very marginal seat it’s a risk. If he turns off just 10% then he’s toast. You can be a bit more gung-ho about it all if you have a 10k majority.

garjones wrote:

The deputy leader post in British politics, unlike the Vice President in the US, is a somewhat sporadic one. A lot of leaders, including the current PM, just dispense with the role.

Is there an obvious position that defaults as acting PM when the PM is out of action (overseas or on leave)? Does Boris just pick someone each time he leaves the country?

He’s chosen to give the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, a second position of ‘first secretary of state’ so he would do it. Because you can make decisions on the road then that’s pretty much restricted to taking Prime Minister’s questions on a Wednesday when parliament is in session.

Surprise goatse?

Don’t think I’ve seen anyone look so out of place than Boris Johnson at the Festival of Remembrance.

Nigel Farage: “The Tory deal isn’t a Brexit at all, I’m going to have to reluctantly come out of retirement and fight them”
Also Nigel Farage: “The Brexit Party isn’t going to stand candidates in any constituencies where we might have to fight Tories”

DavidM wrote:

Nigel Farage: “The Tory deal isn’t a Brexit at all, I’m going to have to reluctantly come out of retirement and fight them”
Also Nigel Farage: “The Brexit Party isn’t going to stand candidates in any constituencies where we might have to fight Tories”

He’s been bought off with a peerage. But I suspect his unilateral decision will see at least a few prospective Brexit Party candidates (who may have already started campaigning before finding out they weren’t being fielded) defect back to UKIP. Hopefully.

One has already declared on Twitter he’s going to stand as an Independent Brexit Party (or something along those lines) MP. Quite angry he’d paid money to stand and appointed staff so has no interest in backing down now and doesn’t agree with Boris’ deal.

Brexit doesn’t nearly go far enough, we need to remove Britain from this space time continuum.

garjones wrote:

One has already declared on Twitter he’s going to stand as an Independent Brexit Party (or something along those lines) MP. Quite angry he’d paid money to stand and appointed staff so has no interest in backing down now and doesn’t agree with Boris’ deal.

Yeah and he’s quite justified to be that angry. This is the problem with cult of personality political parties. There’s nothing in the Brexit Party’s structure to prevent Farage making unilateral decisions like this, regardless of what anyone else might think.

Apparently this Wayne Bayley guy who’s looking to talk to UKIP is also a Scientologist. So he’s well-versed in being the victim of scams

You are right that UKIP is also an unknown here. Not to generalise too much but a decent chunk of the ‘let’s get Brexit done’ crowd are not that politically literate and mostly follow the instructions in tabloid headlines. Not all by any means but a significant amount. Many won’t really know the difference between UKIP and Brexit (and the latter really only stood in the European elections which have a very poor turnout).

Anonymous wrote:

Brexit doesn’t nearly go far enough, we need to remove Britain from this space time continuum.

But…what would happen to the Premier League?!!

The Premier League makes more money than the rest of the UK economy so will declare independence as its own nation.

BRB, founding PLEP

Latest Labour policy announcement: nationalising BT Openreach.

It’s going to get trashed by the right wing, already being mocked as “free broadband funded by a magic money tree” etc, but I think it’s a really good idea. The internet is an important national infrastructure and leaving it being properly extended across the whole country to the whims and profit margins of a private company is stupid. Rural areas have struggled to get good connections for decades now, because they’re not seen as profitable extensions of the broadband, now fibre, network when there’s such low customer density. This is absolutely the kind of area the state should step in to cover, rolling out high speed broadband access nationally on an equal basis, not that of profit. The benefit to business, let alone living standards, makes it justifiable.

The National Broadband Network (NBN) was Australian Labor Party policy in 2007; FTTP (Fibre to the premises) nationwide. By 2010 it was being built, with regional areas prioritised – the benefits going well beyond Netflix and CoD to anyone with brains. Remote working, e-Health, web-enabled education, private business gains, etc.

When the conservatives regained power in 2013 they scrapped the initial plan and opted for FTTN (fibre to the node), saying that it would be cheaper and just as effective, against the advice of all experts.

It is strongly suggested our old pal Rupert Murdoch had a hand in this as his Foxtel cable TV service stood to lose out in a big way once more people could access super-fast internet for overseas streaming outlets (he’s long been very tight with the conservative parties here*).

So now the project is long delayed, still busting budgets, and delivering a 3rd tier network (reliant on comparatively ancient copper wires) that will need wide-scale upgrades probably within a decade.

(Most egregious that went by without much notice was that while conservative Tony Abbott was Prime Minister he would visit the Murdoch outlet headquarters each week or fortnight to discuss policy and presumably messaging strategy. There’s not really a left-wing or Labor equivalent, but if a Labor Prime Minister was meeting weekly with The Guardian (not a great example as both here and in the UK they aren’t really pro-Labor/Labour) there would be outrage.)

You don’t have to reach for an analogy in the UK. It wasn’t quite as frequent as Abbott’s visits but during the phone hacking saga it was documented that David Cameron had frequent meetings with the Murdoch’s and close personal ties.

There’s also the story about Murdoch and Kerry Stokes meeting to discuss who they would make more money under.

Stokes is a fuckhead, by the way.

There is some evidence that FTTN made sense in rural areas, but it’s a dumb as dogshit idea for low-to-medium density and above.

A friend of mine wrote a book about Murdoch, btw.

Buy it!

He’s a professor of politics at Sydney uni and hes written a history of our political coups too, which is really good.

Johnson answering phone-in questions on the radio this morning.
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Virtually every answer he gives contains some degree of a lie.
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Boris Johnson said that after Brexit: “We’ll take back control of our VAT – we’ll be able to cut VAT on things that we currently can’t under EU rules – sanitary products, you name it.”
He was challenged by the presenter that the UK can still cut VAT on most things while still in the EU and he conceded that “we can on a lot of things but there are some things we currently can’t”.
The situation is that the EU places a minimum of 15% for the standard rate of VAT – the UK’s current standard rate is 20%, so the VAT on most things could indeed be cut by five percentage points.

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Boris Johnson said under a Jeremy Corbyn government there would be a second Scottish referendum “next year”.
On Wednesday Mr Corbyn said he would “not countenance an independence referendum in the early years of a Labour government because our priorities will be elsewhere.”

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Asked by presenter Rachel Burden whether he knew what proportion of people coming to the UK came from within the EU, he said “from memory” it was about 50/50.
“You are wrong about that,” says Burden, citing statistics which show over 200,000 people came from countries outside the EU, and about 59,000 came from within the EU.

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Mr Johnson says he is “a million per cent committed” to the union and “there will be no border down the Irish Sea”.
He says the withdrawal agreement specifically says that Northern Ireland is part of the UK’s customs territory.
Presenter Rachel Burden says that Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay acknowledged there would be exit declaration forms for Northern Irish businesses, however, and customs experts have said checks could be necessary.

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It won’t make any difference to his electability, of course

DavidM wrote:

Boris Johnson said that after Brexit: “We’ll take back control of our VAT – we’ll be able to cut VAT on things that we currently can’t under EU rules – sanitary products, you name it.”
He was challenged by the presenter that the UK can still cut VAT on most things while still in the EU and he conceded that “we can on a lot of things but there are some things we currently can’t”.
The situation is that the EU places a minimum of 15% for the standard rate of VAT – the UK’s current standard rate is 20%, so the VAT on most things could indeed be cut by five percentage points.

This one is a little mixed. There are certain products that the UK are beholden by EU law to charge VAT on and the most controversial of those is women’s sanitary products. If we left then they would be able to add those to zero rated products like books and children’s clothing.
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However it is absolutely right that they have been able to reduce VAT on everything else all along, the latest increase in VAT (and most of them in history) has come under the Conservative government, it was 15% when Cameron first got into office.
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The rest are just blatant lies.

Yes, the EU rate for sanitary products is 5%, which his what the UK also charges, so he’s not entirely wrong on that one. However, the EU is currently in the process of changing that to zero percent. I don’t think there’s a timetable for it coming into law, so it’s entirely possible that the UK government could secure Brexit and unilaterally lower the VAT before the EU did. But bearing in mind that Johnson’s current “deal” locks us into regulatory alignment through to the end of 2020, there’s no chance he could lower the VAT before then — unless the EU does first, of course.

The BBC seem to have buried this pretty far down the business news. Fair enough, it’s probably only of interest to business types, it’s not as if the rest of us are facing a decision about whether we want to see Brexit pursued or not:
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50419130
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Countries including Australia have asked for trade compensation from the UK and the EU over Brexit disruption.
Fifteen countries, including the US, India and New Zealand, have been setting out Brexit concerns at a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Geneva.
Australian officials said their beef and lamb exporters had already been hit after several Brexit delays.
Brazil said Brexit plans for Northern Ireland could breach WTO rules.

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It’s an outrage that we as a sovereign nation could be forced to give compensation because of undemocratic WTO rules that we didn’t vote for. I demand a WTOexit

I have a horrible sense of resignation about all of this now, because it’s 100% expected that he’ll lie, it’s 100% expected that he’ll get called on it, and it’s 100% expected that it won’t make a blind bit of difference either way.

I think he’s successfully co-opted the Trump model and lowered the bar so far that calling out his lies and unstatesmanlike behaviour is the standard backdrop of politics now, so barely registers for most voters either way.

It registers with people who wont vote for him anyway.
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Attacking him on Brexit needs to happen, but it wont change the general election results or the next referendum, should we have one.
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What may sway voters is his record outside Brexit? But only if they aren’t committed to Brexit, one way or the other.

DavidM wrote:

Yes, the EU rate for sanitary products is 5%, which his what the UK also charges, so he’s not entirely wrong on that one. However, the EU is currently in the process of changing that to zero percent. I don’t think there’s a timetable for it coming into law, so it’s entirely possible that the UK government could secure Brexit and unilaterally lower the VAT before the EU did. But bearing in mind that Johnson’s current “deal” locks us into regulatory alignment through to the end of 2020, there’s no chance he could lower the VAT before then — unless the EU does first, of course.

And the EU is allowing zero-rate VAT on sanitary products because the UK campaigned for it and we convinced everyone else to allow it, thereby proving that we can and do influence EU rules and laws. Yet the “tampon tax” still gets brought up as an example of the evil EU telling us what to do.

Starting to think this’ll be the election for each side going:

We are considerably, considerably more lunatic than you!

Hopefully this is just the beginning:

Trump associate Roger Stone found guilty of lies that protected Trump

The beginning of what? It’s the end of the indictments from Mueller’s investigation.

Don’t know enough about Deval Patrick to have any opinion on him. I do have some doubts that this country is ready to have another person of color in the Oval Office.

White is a color.

Anonymous wrote:

White is a color.

So is orange

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Apparently this Wayne Bayley guy who’s looking to talk to UKIP is also a Scientologist. So he’s well-versed in being the victim of scams

Scientology is just ISIS that bribed their way into not being terrorists.

I think this dude has a good chance.

The thing about Biden is we have to wait until at least the House hearings on Trump’s impeachment are done. They’re going to determine the GOP strategy in dealing with the allegations about the President: Can they claim the allegations are false without alienating moderates, or is it more strategic to admit that while what Trump did was “ethically questionable”, it’s not an impeachable offense. Why does this matter? The second strategy will lead to asking “Why did the President investigate the Bidens? Is it just a political move against a possible rival, or is there something that looks bad with Biden that couldn’t be confirmed yet?” How strong they pursue that line of questioning and what they find out, an how reliable it is could be trouble for the ex-veep’s campaign.

I just don’t think Biden will make it, regardless of the Trump circus. Biden doesn’t come across well at all. Buttigieg can tell a story without embarrassing himself, and he doesn’t seem like a total jerk. In this field that’s a winner.

Buttigieg is a joke. Biden will probably be the nominee and will then lose to Trump.
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Deval Patrick appears to be another centrist Democrat that adds nothing new to the options available.

Andrew wrote:

Biden will probably be the nominee

I kind of doubt it, I think his popularity lies outside the Democrat electorate for the primaries.

The whole thing is a very bad joke. Nothing is going to happen. If the law was serious about justice these people would be in jail. Why is Ghislaine Maxwell free?

edit: oops, wrong thread

Honestly, last election taught me that trying to predict these things is impossible. Until the debates, everybody thought Trump was going to crash and burn early. He even lost the Iowa caucus, and before Super Tuesday it looked like he was going to take just a few rural states, but crash with urban Republicans (except maybe NY). Then there’s the whole Rubio situation. If after Super Tuesday, somebody would have said that the primaries were going to come down to Trump, Cruz and someone else, I would’ve said without missing breath that the third candidate would have been Rubio. Never in a million years would I have guessed Kasich.

I really believe that these endless polls are useless and are actually detrimental to the nomination process. Instead of people having to actually read about each candidate’s position on topics that should be of interest, we just listen to poll results and think “Oh, I should vote for Bernie” or “Warren is obviously the best choice” or, now, “Buttagieg is the ONE!!”
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In 2008 Obama came out of nowhere and “stole” the nomination from Hillary. In 2016 Trump did the same to Cruz, Jeb Bush, and Rubio, and then surprised everyone (including the pollsters) by winning the election. The one thing I’ve learned from polls is DON’T BELIEVE THEM!!!

And if you’re going to put any stock in them, use the most recent ones. The day before the 2016 election, I said on the old board that, while I doubt that Trump would take PA, it was possible, and that if Hillary won the state, it would be very very close. Jim thought that was crazy, saying that PA would be a landslide for Hillary. Jim was looking at a week old poll, I was looking at a poll released the day before the election. Trump took PA

Lorraine Kelly getting fed up with Boris’ former mistress.

Go on Lorraine! @GMB 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/X0ZCZWTWpk

— Dixie (@dixieonline) November 18, 2019

Anonymous wrote:

And if you’re going to put any stock in them, use the most recent ones. The day before the 2016 election, I said on the old board that, while I doubt that Trump would take PA, it was possible, and that if Hillary won the state, it would be very very close. Jim thought that was crazy, saying that PA would be a landslide for Hillary. Jim was looking at a week old poll, I was looking at a poll released the day before the election. Trump took PA

I thought Trump had a tiny chance but I didn’t see him winning all those rust belt states. Michael Moore is a moron but he actually thought Trump could do that.

I think it’s still likely that Warren will get the nomination. And I would really like to see it happen. I think she’s the only one qualified and willing to change the way things have been developing where erasion of the public sector and rising social inequality are concerned.

Anonymous wrote:

KalmanL wrote:

And if you’re going to put any stock in them, use the most recent ones. The day before the 2016 election, I said on the old board that, while I doubt that Trump would take PA, it was possible, and that if Hillary won the state, it would be very very close. Jim thought that was crazy, saying that PA would be a landslide for Hillary. Jim was looking at a week old poll, I was looking at a poll released the day before the election. Trump took PA

I thought Trump had a tiny chance but I didn’t see him winning all those rust belt states. Michael Moore is a moron but he actually thought Trump could do that.

If you at the data, in most of the Midwestern swing States, Trump barely won. IIRC, a couple of them nobody could predict until 99% of the votes were counted.
As a native Philadelphian, I object to your calling PA “rust belt”. It’s half rust belt, half East Coast. IIRC, with 50% of the votes in, it looked like Hillary had a lock, if you’re not aware of the demographics, as the East Coast half had most of the votes counted at that point, but then the Rust Belt half came with a strong Trump bias, and he barely squeaked past; even at 99%, when it looked like Trump had a lock, I still thought it was to early to tell, as he was only winning by around a thousand votes.

One of the biggest problems in Western countries is housing prices I think. It’s crazy almost no one seems to be able to buy a place to live anymore unless you’re a millionaire. I think Germany has one of the lowest ownership rates worldwide. In the US the problem might be a bit different, in the big cities I think housing prices are incredibly high while in smaller towns it is more affordable than in Western Europe.

I wonder what solutions there could be for this. Maybe make housing a right everybody has, so if there is nothing avaliable that you can afford the government has to provide you with a place to live.

edit: I have this idea that if we all had to spend less of our income on housing, it would really stimulate the economy because we could spend it on other things. A large part of the economy now seems to be tied up in real estate, which doesn’t seem like such a good thing to me.

Anonymous wrote:

I wonder what solutions there could be for this. Maybe make housing a right everybody has, so if there is nothing avaliable that you can afford the government has to provide you with a place to live.

This is already the case in the UK. We still have increasing levels of homelessness, so it’s apparently not (by itself) a solution.

That’s surprising. Housing is a legal right in the UK? Was this done under a tories government? It’s my experience here in the Netherlands at least that the right wing is not stingier on things like welfare than the left is.

Anonymous wrote:

One of the biggest problems in Western countries is housing prices I think. It’s crazy almost no one seems to be able to buy a place to live anymore unless you’re a millionaire. I think Germany has one of the lowest ownership rates worldwide. In the US the problem might be a bit different, in the big cities I think housing prices are incredibly high while in smaller towns it is more affordable than in Western Europe.

Yeah, this has become a more and more urgent conversation, especially in the bigger cities where rents just keep rising. Germany has introduced a law that’s supposed to stop the rents from rising too quickly, and the county of Berlin is about to introduce a law that goes even further in that it bans raising the rent at all on flats and houses that are more than a few years old, for the foreseeable time.
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Those aren’t perfect solutions yet, but they’re important steps, I think, coupled with the state building more houses and flats especially in urban areas.

You could also do some kind of eminent domain law where the government could get land and use it for public housing. Or give out land for free for people to build houses on, so you would only have to pay for the materials and construction. In the Netherlands that would be tough, we have the highest density in Europe I think. Not much land to build on. And we want to keep the green spaces we have.

Anonymous wrote:

That’s surprising. Housing is a legal right in the UK?

To a basic degree. Technically nobody should be homeless, the government should find you a place to sleep. That doesn’t mean getting you a house but an indoor place to sleep in lieu of finding the means to support yourself.

In practice it doesn’t work as well as the theory.

It’s a huge issue here, with plenty of laws favouring landlords and investors over renters and home-owners. Way too much money is tied up in housing as a non-productive asset, not only making things tougher for everyone in terms of not only not being able to afford a home in a convenient location, but also slowing the economy in general (money could be pumped into productive assets like shares or businesses).
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There was a case study on TV last night – a young couple in Perth bought a house 4 years ago for 330k (talked down from 355) – it’s most recently been valued at 280k. Now it probably will return to its former value in time but if this couple’s situation changes and they have to suddenly sell they stand to lose a lot.
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Over the past five years or so there have been efforts to restrict foreign investment in property; portrayed by some as racist but it’s really just sensible social policy. Inner city apartments designed to cater to city workers and reduce congestion were snapped up by overseas buyers, left vacant (why risk a tenant damaging it?) with the intent to sell them in 10-15 years at a massive profit. That totally breaks the supply and demand model.

Andrew is correct.

As always.

100 points for Andrew!

The thing with house pricing is it is notional. A bit like share value or currency value only more so. I mean the value is only good for what is agreed. It is variable not really based on intrinsic worth despite the bricks and mortar involved. It goes up and down based on nothing more than current perceived market value.

Yes, individually, you could realise the equity in your home by selling and put the money in the bank, but say some general situation arose where everybody decided to do so? Say some circumstance or other arose whereby you had to sell your house to get food or medicine and that that was a general scenario? In that instance, house value would rapidly drop to sub equity levels. The question is, in that circumstance, where did the money go? Did it just disappear into thin air? Sure, real money has been paid in to buy the place but that means nothing if everything goes tits up.

Yeah – we see this when people have a house valued at a million dollars so start thinking they’re a millionaire.
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Even if they own it outright, and they probably don’t, while they could sell it at the right time and hold a million dollars in their hands they’d be down a house.
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Unless they’re planning on downsizing dramatically or moving to a less desirable area or to a cheaper country they’ll probably need to spend a million dollars on a new house.

Weirdly if you check the ownership rates per country, Cuba and China are very high. They should get more serious about abolishing private property!

Anonymous wrote:

Weirdly if you check the ownership rates per country, Cuba and China are very high. They should get more serious about abolishing private property!

That’s not what private property means.

Of course, when someone points out your misconceptions reacting with violence or ignorance is easier than accepting it and learning.

We’re all ignoring the really big political story of the day.

Count Binface: Former Lord Buckethead takes aim at election rival who took his name as he bids to unseat Boris Johnson

Bringing back Ceefax is a definite vote-winner.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Of course, when someone points out your misconceptions reacting with violence or ignorance is easier than accepting it and learning.

Sorry, the image may have been inappropriate. I think memri is hilarious, because of the hysterical hyperbole but I don’t condone unprovoked political violence.

I’m not going into the private property thing. Maybe I’m wrong, but it was really a joke.