The Left: Moribund.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think that you missed my point here, which was that Mr Benn was trying to pont out that we deserve that our politicians be honest, otherwise we could be sure what we'd be voting for or against.

For starters, I wouldn't describe Thatcher as honest.

[Lateralthinking1]

I can't accept the lazy criticism that Michael Foot was "only-half-there". That is Murdoch style talk, donkey jacket and blustering demeanour as the be all and end all. I didn't always agree with him but he had one of the best political brains of the last century and more moral fibre than the current MPs have between them.

[Flosshilde]

And there is no alternative now: ... There is only one practicable solution which, sadly, involves massive cuts to public spending, pensions and increased unemployment.

Not true - there is an alternative - higher taxation for the super-rich, greater efforts (or any effort) to reduce tax evasion, sign up to (& introduce) the Robin Hood tax (which alone would wipe out the deficit). Except that these measure are aimed at the Tories' friends, & you don't hurt your friends, do you?

[Mandryka]

I can't accept the lazy criticism that Michael Foot was "only-half-there". That is Murdoch style talk, donkey jacket as the be all and the end all. I didn't always agree with him but he had one of the best political brains of the last century and more moral fibre than the current MPs have between them.

Excellent writer; very poor politician - he was only brought into front line politics at the request of Jack Jones and was elected Labour leader by an ugly combination of left-wingers and rightist spoilers, who were about to depart to form the SDP. By 1980, his best days as an orator were long gone. He didn't come across to the public, but Labour failed to ditch him before he led them to disaster (part of the reason they didn't knife him was, apparently, because he wasa so generally liked in the Party). His humiliation in 1983 was a sad spectacle, and could (and should) have been avoided.

[Mandryka]

Not true - there is an alternative - higher taxation for the super-rich, greater efforts (or any effort) to reduce tax evasion, sign up to (& introduce) the Robin Hood tax (which alone would wipe out the deficit). Except that these measure are aimed at the Tories' friends, & you don't hurt your friends, do you?

But hasn't this been tried before? That noted left-winger Denis Healey made all sorts of Lear-like threats to 'tax the rich till the pips squeak' in 1974. So, what happened? They either a) found tax loopholes, or b) went into tax exile. Sorry, but taxing the rich just doesn't work - they're always either too clever, or rich enough to hire people who are clever to help them to bypass these schemes.

[Lateralthinking1]

......thanks for responding effectively but here you are talking about winning elections. I would say that he did represent an alternative in terms of political theory, one of at least two alternatives at the time, if I may stretch the language ever so slightly.

[teamsaint]

Not true - there is an alternative - higher taxation for the super-rich, greater efforts (or any effort) to reduce tax evasion, sign up to (& introduce) the Robin Hood tax (which alone would wipe out the deficit). Except that these measure are aimed at the Tories' friends, & you don't hurt your friends, do you?

well today at least we agree.

I would add, stop making people work for years more before they retire, when there are kids unemployed and desperate to make a life for themselves.

Sadly the labour front benches are also full of the bankers friends, so there really is little choice at election time.

[MrGongGong]

I studiously avoid commenting on most Platform 3 threads, preferring to adhere to the wise old pub axiom of "No betting or politics". However, there comes a point...

This ("Self-employed are secretly the biggest fans of state handouts") is, well, not possible to respond to in temperate language.

Re: "I have a question for the self-employed. Why was that your choice?"

Big assumption there. Often no free choice is involved. I and all my colleagues were made compulsorily redundant. No protesting, industrial action, striking or whatever ensued, it would have been utterly futile, self-defeating and is virtually unheard of in the sector. If commercial reality dictates you're not needed any more, you're gone. That's it.

The subsequent position in the relevant sector is that there are now few jobs to go to. It's not just that there are few vacancies, increasingly the jobs no longer exist. Or rather they do, but in China etc. Precisely in order to avoid being "fans of state handouts", i.e. sitting around on your backside collecting JSA, many in this position accept one currently available alternative. Namely, taking short-term contracts of a few months duration on a self-employed basis, wherever in the country there might be some work going on whatever terms are offered.

This of course means no holiday pay, no statutory holidays, no sick pay, little or no compensation in the event of termination, no guarantee of any future work (sometimes from as little as in 1 hour's notice even within a 3 month contract), no protection to speak of from employment law and a whole other long list of nothings.

And of course, no pension. In some cases rates of pay are such that people in this position aren't left with any disposable income to put into a private pension. Particularly so when they have no idea whether their income is going to drop to £0 an hour in 1 hour's time upon being given notice. Despite this, the legal arrangement under which they may need to operate can require them to pay National Insurance at a marginal rate of around 25% since they may end up paying both employers and employees NICs. If anyone should expect some sort of state pension in return, it's them...

Meanwhile, those who are able to put some income aside in money-purchase pensions (the only other mainstream option bar ordinary saving from taxed income) are all too aware of the cost and fallibility of these. Something on the order of 20% of gross income needs to be put into these, continuously, to result in a fairly derisory pension at the end. That's on the kind of optimistic assumptions on which they're sold, ignoring the financial chaos all around us which presents all too high a likelihood of much worse future performance at best and total destruction at worst.

This is all old-hat to many who will, years ago, have crossed a similar pensions reality-gap courtesy of their employers. Experiences tended to go a bit like this:

Employer announces that they're closing the defined-benefit scheme (even getting on for two decades ago, there was no such thing as a final salary scheme available to most younger employees). Employee contributions to rise from 1% to 6-7% for much less likely benefit, with a large risk element being introduced, all of which is assumed by employees.

We are given two choices: 1) Accept the change 2) Tough luck, go to 1). A debate ensues in which employer stance is, barely paraphrasing, "if you don't like it you're very welcome to **** off and work for someone else who will offer you something better". Basically, this alternative employer doesn't exist, everyone knows it, the new pensions reality spreads across the sector and is accepted as a fait accompli. That's reality for you out there in an open market. Over time, fund performance is consistently poor, contributions continue to rise for the same or less likely result. Then idiot genius Brown comes along and in the true cynical style of politicians of all hues pulls a taxation stroke he's hoping the average schmuck(/voter) is too thick to notice as it's to do with something obscure like ACT relief on dividends, not income tax which is apparently all we're fit to understand. This really messes the whole business up in grand style.

Over time it's become necessary to put more and more in to (give or take the near total uncertainty as to what the outcome will be anyway) to get less out. Latterly, employee contributions of at least 12% were needed, as an overall contribution of 20% is reckoned to be required and even generous employers rarely match employee contributions at greater than 8%.

In this light, what the government is proposing for public sector pensions does indeed seem comparitively generous.

How on earth if not Self-employed do you expect people to be musicians ? (for example ????)
I thought this government were supposed to be in favour of self determination and wanted to encourage enterprise when the (not unsurprising !) results always seem to make it harder and harder for people to have "portfolio careers " !!!

[Mandryka]

......thanks for responding effectively but here you are talking about winning elections. I would say that he did represent an alternative in terms of political theory, one of at least two alternatives at the time, if I may stretch the language ever so slightly.

He represented an alternative but it was an alternative that, by 1983, the electorate had already had a taste of - it was very easy for the Tories to depict the 1983 Labour manifesto as several steps down the road to communism and a lot of its more radical suggestions (leave Common Market, leave NATO, disarm) made rich pickings for the Toreis. Of course, by 1983 'Tory radicalism' had succeeded in making Labour look like a conservative Party, anyway, stuck with the helpless task of defending the old Butskellite status quo.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not true - there is an alternative - higher taxation for the super-rich, greater efforts (or any effort) to reduce tax evasion, sign up to (& introduce) the Robin Hood tax (which alone would wipe out the deficit). Except that these measure are aimed at the Tories' friends, & you don't hurt your friends, do you?

I agree with this. They will always parrot, "But they, the ones with brains, money and entrepreneurial skills, will leave the country if you do all those things". Well, let them go. We need alternatives coming up from shop floors, today's equivalents of the Lucas Aerospace Alternative Plan of the 70s, where, in the face of redundancy due to lack of outlets for existing products, and a management bereft of ideas, alternative products, environmentally friendly as happens, were run through to prototype after being market targeted with evidence of consumer interest which would have safeguarded most if not all the threatened jobs, only to be turned down because the ****** so-called Broad Left union leadership didn't back the ideas, ("we're here to fight for working conditions, management manage") the labour Govt refused to back, (tho Benn was supportive), and management turned them down because they hadn't thought them up.

These are the things that one hopes are being discussed at the St Pauls peace camp forum, or being taken into the discussions. I have one glimmer of hope, and it comes from observing that smaller businesses appear to be siding with the mass of the people in blaming the banks for the mess, for it is they who are unable to borrow to invest in readiness for trade recovery.

[Lateralthinking1]

Quote - "(even getting on for two decades ago, there was no such thing as a final salary scheme available to most younger employees)".

SimonB - And yet an alternative available to all in 1992 would have been application for entry to the public sector. You could have accumulated 20 years worth of pension. I assume for various reasons you chose otherwise.

My feeling is that you actually entered employment considerably more than 20 years ago. You walked into the private sector knowing full well that the situation would be different in respect of redundancy. The goal posts didn't move, nor did they move hugely on pensions until Brown's changes late in the last decade. Commitments weren't broken. You weren't lied to with a percentage of the public cheering those lies like an amoral rabble at an 18th Century ducking stool. It's really horrible.

No, you thought there's more short term money in the private sector, the gamble on pensions will pay off as the markets flourish and they will be better than those for the chumps who are working hard to save peoples' lives. I wasn't a nurse but I did, among many other things, put new road safety schemes in place. I also worked hard with others to ensure that packaging was sound enough to prevent explosions, fires, gas leaks and toxic poisoning. This for the roads and railways, in the air and on the sea.

Were there low interest rates on mortgages too for private sector staff before the lay-offs? Yes, in many places. In parallel, many people were told about the "guaranteed" returns on endowments and unit trust funds. Remember those? Believe me, many of we public sector staff were completely buggered by your sector there in connection with mortgages. It hasn't been just you and that all came first. Not Brown's changes. I've been trying to cope with private sector robbery as a public servant all my adult life. Misselling. I got some of that money back from the FSA but I want the rest. Some chance.

I can see it now. I wasn't living on another planet. How naive do you think we are? You were in your early 20s, a little bit rock star, you chucked your shirt on a pony and it limped across the finishing line pathetically. And now in middle age you regret your sheer foolhardiness. All of those head filled fantasies of youth. "Yeah, things should work out alright. Why settle for low paid drudgery? The sky's the limit". Today you vent your fury on those who took a mature responsibility for their future lives.

This isn't personal. Some of my best friends were the same etc. Given a few twists and turns, I might have been similar although never enthusiastically because I was cautious and thinking by nature. But what I have just outlined is more or less the truth of it. And from what I can see the emotions now aren't dissimilar from those that led to the original choices.

[Pilchardman]

OK, if you say so (and I'm not about to disagree), but if that's the reason why a General Election will change nothing, it'll be the self-same reason why riots will also change nothing, because the electors and the rioters will, broadly speaking, be the same people.

Where did I say anything about riots?

[Flosshilde]

Cited article did not offer convincing evidence. It really is not good enough to just post a link to an article on another website in lieu of advancing a CONVINCING counter-argument.

Would you be convinced by any evidence at all?

[ahinton]

Not true - there is an alternative - higher taxation for the super-rich, greater efforts (or any effort) to reduce tax evasion, sign up to (& introduce) the Robin Hood tax (which alone would wipe out the deficit). Except that these measure are aimed at the Tories' friends, & you don't hurt your friends, do you?

Higher taxation for the super-rich not only drives them away to other tax régimes but also brings in very little extra revenue from those who decide to stay put. Efforts to reduce tax evasion are always welcome provided that they are directed solely at illegal evasion as distinct from legal avoidance but they are necessary at alltimes, not just as a contributory solution to the present woes. The "Robin Hood" tax will damage the City of London immensely if introduced and, whilst that may not both some people, it will as a consequence also damage the British economy which will affect many people adversely; not only that, like a tax on banks, it'll only get passed on to the poor long-siffering customer and there's nothing that anyone will be able to do to prevent that.

[ahinton]

Where did I say anything about riots?

I cannot now recall or be bothered to check now, but someone (quite possibly not you) mentioned riots, hence my response; if you assumed that I meant you and you hadn't mentioned that, I apologise, but my remark was directed towards whoever it was that did.

P.S. - I have just checked - it was Flosshilde in #162.