Labour manifesto leaked,

[AliasAggers]

EU aside, I'd rather deal with the Lib Dems than Labour and I think they are a bunch of idiots,
but at least they are, generally, well meaning idiots.

No doubt you consider Labour supporters to be well-meaning idiots, too.?

I supported Labour throughout my working life, even though I progressed up through the ranks of senior management
in industry up to Board level. Why? That's a good question. Maybe it was because I was a devout Christian, and to me
certain aspects of the Conservative way of life did not strike be as being particularly Christian ones. So. was I wrong?

[Workingman]

I have now read quite a few comments in different places and there appears to be a groundswell of support for quite a few things in the draft.

It probably will not change much for this election, but parts of it could become pertinent to the 2022 one. The irony is that a lot of Labour voters are still for a modified 'old Labour' even though they voted to leave the EU. Once Brexit is delivered they will be able to put that issue behind them and, with Corbyn gone, return to their more natural political affiliations.

I do not see many of them becoming long-term Tory voters.

[Kaz]

Nicely said Aggers! Mick is senior in management these days, personally we might even be slightly worse off under Labour, but are worried for the common good under Tory rule. If that makes us idiots, so be it!

[Suff]

No doubt you consider Labour supporters to be well-meaning idiots, too.?

No Aggers, I think that Labour supporters, today, give their loyalty to an ideal which has outlived it's lifetime and to a bunch of charlatans who use that loyalty to their own ends whilst having no intention of living up to their promises.

Take, for instance, the Labour manifesto to replace Trident. The leader of Labour and more than half his front bench plus the majority of the 250,000 Labour party members don't want Trident.

I can understand why you vote Labour and I even know the sense of achievement you got with the post war Labour government. I've read and dug enough to understand the society that existed at that time and what Labour meant. That kind of society and those kind of abuses still exist in the world today, but not in the UK any more.

My take is that "social justice" has become the slogan for people who know that social justice is already here and that what we really need is social support for the worst off and help to allow people to achieve what they are capable of. The Labour voters in the 1940's were intensely self sufficient, all they wanted was a fair shake and a better distribution of the profit being made and they got it.

I do not believe that those voters of the 1940's would recognise the "social justice" of today where more and more people pay for a growing group of people who simply don't want to work, ever.

I do understand your aspirations and loyalty. I just think it's misplaced to a bunch of charlatans who just want your vote and are willing to say anything to get it.

I've voted Tory, I've voted SNP, I've voted Liberal and I've voted BNP (for shock impact). I've never voted Labour because I have never seen the Labour you have. I've only seen the aftermath.

I know I'm very acerbic, but then I have little time for Corbyn and his cronies and even less time for Blairites and their games. If the Tories won't be sensible then I give them a kicking at the polls. I don't ever expect Labour to be sensible so they always get a kicking at the polls.

There is a reason why the current Labour manifesto has only Rail as it's big "Nationalisation" drive. That's because Rail is already covered, in a large part, by the government and we have already eaten the cost. As each contract expires, the government can take over from the operators with minimal cost (well they don't have to buy it but they do have to create a service which will cost billions).

Then they trumpet this as the great socialist revolution of the 21st century....

Is my contempt showing again?? Sorry...

[Workingman]

If those on the right want to convince themselves that Labour is a busted flush and that there is no social injustice in the UK then they do so at their peril. I have never voted Labour and probably never will, but I am not going to kid myself that they have become irrelevant, because they have not.

When I look at May's cabinet I notice that it is almost exclusively populated by people from banking, big business, law and politics. They are almost all privately or grammar school educated and attendees of Oxbridge or Russell Group Universities and have worked most of their lives in.....London. They would not know real social injustice if it crept up and bit them in the privates. They are so far removed from the lives of real people it is incredible.

It would be difficult, though not impossible, to hand pick a group more out of touch with the country than May's cabinet members. They are living proof of the need for a strong Labour party and it is by their actions that Labour will survive and become stronger.

[Suff]

Hmm, I did say in comparison with the conditions prevalent when Labour was created and prior to it's first government.

Corbyn is, of course, a man of the people. Except he isn't. Prep school, Grammar school, Trade Union rep and then politician. Eminently qualified to run the country.

I'll just have to hope that Labour makes itself so irrelevant that it dies of acute enlargement of the spleen..

[Workingman]

The thing is that we Brits have always tended to congregate around the centre when it comes to politics. There has never been a viable far-right or far-left party worthy of note. We like the centre and even though we have allowed parties to drift left or right we only let them go so far then we reel them in.

Today May's Tories are pushing that boundary when it comes to national politics and they are rubbing many people up the wrong way. They can only use Brexit for this one parliament then if is back to normal.

The overwhelming majority of people realise that for government to work for all the people it needs a strong opposition. Labour, as I said the other day, are currently the only party with the resources to provide that opposition. If they use the next parliament, which will obviously be Tory, to regroup, they will come back as a force to be reckoned with: I will put money on it.

[Suff]

All true but, on my interpretation, to a degree.

The main problem, as I see it, is that people don't want to know the issues or the resolutions to them. They just want someone to tell them what is wrong and what they are going to do to fix it.

Yes the Tories make the country make money so that it works well and we don't wind up perpetually in debt. Of course, in order for the country to make money people need to get rich.

Labour, on the other hand, wants to spend money and “distribute the wealth”. For which they need to take money from the country. They also want to force those who “get rich” to give as much as possible to the people who only want to spend a day earning money and go down the pub and spend it. Yes, yes I know it’s not the worst case and there are families struggling etc … etc…

I keep hearing about how Labour is needed and the Tories are bad and inequality is sooo incredibly bad and we have to “share the wealth”.

So let’s go and test the truth of some of these Labour statements…

UK Wages Over the Past Four Decades - 2014
Data in the link.

Key Points



•Employees aged 21 in 1995 earned 40% more after adjusting for inflation by the age of 39 than those aged 21 in 1975 did up to the age of 39
•Average hourly earnings peaked at older ages in 2013 compared to 1975
•The difference between male and female average pay for the under 30s has decreased dramatically since 1975.
•Since 2011 the top 10% of full-time earners have had the largest falls in wages after adjusting for inflation.
•Since 1975 average earnings for full-time employees have more than doubled after accounting for inflation.
•Since the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, wage growth at the bottom of the earnings distribution has been strong for both full and part-time employees.
•Almost a third (32.6%) of those in the top 10% of earners worked in London in 2013 while 12.3% of the bottom 10% of earners worked in the North West
•Hourly wage inequality has fallen across the regions and devolved countries of the UK since 1998

Real Average Salary since 1855



That drop at the top is the reality of a global financial crisis which nearly caused a larger depression that the 1930's. The fact that it did not make people starve is down to those Labour policies already implemented and upheld by the Tories. Remember it was Labour and Labour borrowing that presided over the Global financial crisis...

You might note that the large increases of wages started after the first Labour government. Also the massive inflation in the 1970's hugely skewed wage rise (driven generally by Oil prices but exacerbated by Labour incompetence), but, more interesting, is the massive growth in wages during the Blair government, fuelled by minimum wages and government borrowing.

Another point to note is that more and more money is going to wages but less of that money is going to taxes. Because the people that money is going to are, essentially, tax exempt. So the government finds it even harder to avoid borrowing. What has happened is the money has been taken from the companies and the pension funds and the rich and wealthy and has been given to people who don't pay tax. A net reduction in tax revenues as against the CPI inflation.

As I said, Labour did it's job but is selling the same story over and over again, trying to cling to power by twisting the economy, society and everything else by selling a view of Utopia which doesn't exist. Essentially for the Labour rhetoric to work every company in the country would have to be nationalised and everyone would be paid a fixed wage regardless of how much they produce.

It really worked for the USSR didn't it.

The Proof of what has been done is in the stats. The fact that rich people have enabled that massive climb in real average salary is something Labour will never tell you.

In America a poor person see's a rolls going by and says "I want to be that person". In the UK a poor person see's a rolls going by and wants to key the car and drag that person down to their level.

The policies and politics of Labour.

Unsurprisingly it does not appeal.

Everyone in the country is still paying the price of the excesses of Blair and Brown to fuel that wage rise. Labour wants to borrow more all over again.

What is most enervating is that people actually believe what they say. Hence the acclaim of this manifesto.

[Workingman]

Suff that is all very interesting, but ultimately pointless.

Members of the electorate are not going to do any academic exercises to help them decide which way to vote. If they did they would find an equal number of arguments for and against either side. They are going to vote for what they know, and what they "know" is already deeply embedded in the heads of many millions of them: Tory and Labour or whatever.

It is only those who are unaligned who will go looking for answers and with any luck they will avoid the propaganda from each side and its followers. Neutral information is out there, but it does not make for good headlines.

BTW did you know that £5,000 in 1855 is worth ~£375,000 today. I do not think I know anyone on that kind of "average" wage.

[Suff]

BTW did you know that £5,000 in 1855 is worth ~£375,000 today. I do not think I know anyone on that kind of "average" wage.

The chart is already CPI adjusted to take in inflation...

It was probably a few pounds...

I know you are right about what people "know". It is what I was saying about politicians telling people what they want to hear and not the truth. Yes the honest unvarnished and bare truth is not very complimentary to any of the parties. However it is vastly less complimentary to some than to others.