Rayvin

Have you ever been homeless? How would you have any idea how 'easy' it is to be on the breadline, or how difficult it is to be impoverished. The only way we can understand it is by listening to people who are. We've reduced mental health spending, we've reduced homelessness funding, and we live in a world where it is getting harder and harder to raise yourself up with social mobility - so much so that even the Labour party recently abandoned the notion. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jun/15/social-mobility-in-richest-countries-has-stalled-since-1990s What if your experience to get to where you are simply can't be recreated now? What if you had it easy?

Feel free to challenge me robustly I get worked up about this issue more than most tbh.

Are you saying that the same opportunities are available to younger people as they were to older people? I mean, I shouldn't have to pay the pensions of people who retire at 65 when I will probably be working until 78 (or more likely the day I die) - and yet I have no choice. I mean seriously, I recall in the early 2000s my parents bought a house for around £90k and then 5 years later sold it for £200k immediately paying off their entire mortgage. If that kind of benefit occurs in my lifetime as an adult I'll be absolutely amazed. That generation were lucky as sin to live through the era they did, a Labour era I'll stress, while all my generation has had is years of 'drawbridge pulling up' Tory bollocks. In answer to your question - if I had worked hard through my young age, as I have, and put spare funds away, as I have, and bought property with the money - and then was told later in life when I'm comfortable and without financial concern that someone was going to buy the house I was renting out at some kind of agreed upon rate that would enable them to have a better life and had the net positive effect that society wouldn't literally tear itself apart further down the line, then yeah I probably would be ok with it as long as it was being done in a fair and equitable way. I would expect them to start at the very top of society and work down - you know, the ones who haven't actually worked all that hard but were born into their wealth and network based privilege.

Well, maybe they could do that then? Put the policy in place against people who have more than 2 homes.

It's the corporations that need to change, not the people. But yes, that needs to count in India as much as in the US.

I don't have a very high opinion of him either, but given long enough with the Tories and Brexit causing an absolute clusterfuck, people might well go for it.

So what do you propose we do? I'm not an advocate of this policy but we have a situation where if you haven't bought a house by the age of 39, you probably never will. Less than 50% of young people will ever be able to afford to. What about their futures and pensions? Ah right yeah, they work until they die. Eventually wealth HAS to be redistributed in a less ridiculous way or we will get full on social collapse.

Maybe? And if Corbyn was his Deputy Leader and constantly undermining him, he'd want him gone. I'm not taking Corbyn's side here since for one thing he doesn't appear to have been involved since he has no power to do anything about Watson anyway and for another thing he actually seems to have encouraged everyone to drop it before the news even hit this morning - but from a purely pragmatic point of view, can you imagine another political party where the Deputy Leader spends so much time taking up contrary positions to the main party policy? The situation seems to be that a large chunk of the membership have wanted Watson out for ages but couldn't get the 20% of PLP MPs to back a vote on him, and the NEC finally felt it had enough support to try for it by eliminating the role, the only way members could actually have a say in it. It failed, losing the vote, and Corbyn subsequently intervened to tell them to back off. Gosh, how frightfully Stalinesque. Venezuela must be more democratically normal than I thought. I mean Watson's Brexit position is referendum then election. Labour's is election then referendum. Would it really have been so hard for him to just fucking side with the party? He's the Deputy Leader ffs.

Lemme ask then, has Labour high command gone to war with Watson, or has Watson gone to war with Labour high command (over the course of several years)? It's the latter. I don't agree with them ousting him, it's not the right time and it's just going to be used to make Johnson look coherent, but Watson has done himself absolutely no favours. Although it does look as though he survived the attempt so I'm not clear on what exactly everyone is getting so excited about. Also, this statement from him is just unforgivable: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7488679/Tom-Watson-slams-attempt-oust-Labour-deputy-leader-says-Jeremy-Corbyn-stop-it.html "Ousting me is like something that would happen in Venezuela" If Watson gave a shit about Labour's electoral chances over his own fucking career, he would not have said that. The Venezuela comparison has been haunting Corbyn with no legitimacy for a couple of years now. Why in fuck would Watson say that if not for petty, personal, bullshit revenge reasons?

Corbyn wasn't deputy leader though. Nailed on he would have been ousted by Blair for similar public displays of disagreement if he had been. Agree on the second part up to the potential voters bit. The membership maybe, although I'm not convinced - potential voters I really don't know. Depends who the potential voters are. Labour have been fairly clear for some time that the potential voters aren't you and I. Being honest about it, as much as we may agree with him, he's consistently been setting himself up as an obstacle more than a support.

How do you handle the fallout of outright revoke though? I wouldn't have had the original referendum to start with but now that we have I don't see any other politically legitimate way of resolving it.

I do now. And honestly even if I'm wrong, I'll be less pissed about No Deal if it's actually clear that the public voted for it instead of the whole process being hijacked.

I'm sure this is wishful thinking but it's still interesting: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/21/bankers-corbyn-tories-no-deal-capitalism-radical-government Bankers starting to think Corbyn might not be as dangerous as the Tories. McDonnell has apparently been circulating in banking circles for months now and doesn't seem to be putting anyone off...?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/20/thornberry-labour-could-back-tory-brexit-deal-in-exchange-for-referendum Labour could vote through any deal Boris comes back with as long as we get a referendum on it. I think I'm ok on this idea.

It's an interesting one because Watson does pretty much spend all of his time disagreeing with Labour high command and apparently hasn't been to a cabinet meeting for some time. I can see their reason for removing him 100%. The problem is of course that he's right about Brexit and tbh probably most of the other issues as well. It's hard to say, maybe having a stronger sense of unity going into a GE will help them win more votes - if that's the case then fine. I couldn't care less about what shape Labour is in at the end of this as long as Brexit is cancelled. I'm struggling to imagine it will harm them given the moderates (and even my own self) have abandoned them for the LDs already.

No, wasn't an identity based issue - I don't think my 5 year old self had realised that 'people can be divided based on petty bullshit like skin colour and religion'

I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think the big risk is that Parliament folds and we crash out or get some kind of last minute stitch up arrangement that is basically hard brexit. If we can get past October 31st, even if we have to go through an election first, I think we'll come out on top in the end. Although I'm more confident about the referendum outcome than I am about a GE, which may be a prerequisite for the former. Having said that, you have to imagine that as far as the likes of the Daily Mail are concerned, it'll be a cold day in hell before they watch Corbyn walk into Downing Street off the back of a vote to keep us in the EU.

Unless we vote Remain. Which I genuinely think will happen if we get the chance. The loudest round of applause in QT isn't anything that should alarm you - these people are loud in comment sections, on twitter, in the pub - but it doesn't make them a majority. Even the last time out, it was the marginal Brexit voters who cost us the whole thing - not the gammons. We don't need to bring them on board, all we need is the people who just want the whole thing to go away and to be able to make ends meet.

What are you basing that on though? So what if a handful of people had some ridiculous views, that tells us nothing about the country at large. Even if the show pulls together a cross section of the public with the same level of impartiality and rigour as polling companies do, did they assess the extent to which the leavers had a majority within the audience there?

I get what you're saying but I'm not having a hard time believing that this could happen

True, but if I was Johnson I'd take that. Workers rights and the environment - easily things that can be rode roughshod over once we're out.

I think that's where we have to rely on the People's Vote group to be the 'informal and unofficial remain pact'. If this is to be a single issue election, anyone seeking remain over and above any other considerations should vote the way they're suggested to.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/19/peoples-vote-tells-labour-mps-not-to-back-a-johnson-brexit-deal On the other hand, about 20-30 Labour MPs are apparently poised to vote for a deal if Johnson provides one.

The Remain coalition + Labour gives us that second vote though.

There's a chance he could end up campaigning on two fronts though, against Johnson and Corbyn. Johnson has a tough choice to make with this - if he opens the door to Farage, he loses moderates. If he closes the door, the Brexit vote is split in key regions. I've even seen commenters in the Mail saying they will ditch the Tories if they ally with Farage. So if we get past October 31st I think Farage will be emboldened but it will be at the expense of the Tories. Also, Farage has failed on 7 occasions to be elected as an MP. I'm sure he'll manage it this time, but he clearly isn't fantastic at GEs.