Tory London mayoral candidate plans to end Sadiq Khan’s “attack on drivers” by switching off red lights

matthewn5 wrote:

Khan's policies aren't 'divisive', they're supportive of the majority of Londoners who do not have access to a car but who suffer the consequences of those Londoners who insist on driving everywhere.

Besides, most of his policies are simply implementing policy decided by the Tories at national level. Sheesh.

It's a regular source of amusement to hear the right frothing about how divisive and hated Mr Khan is and then ask them if that's the case why has he been elected Mayor of London twice and is on course to win a third term in 2024.

Or, indeed, if they've read the Conservatives 2019 manifesto.

Rendel Harris wrote:

matthewn5 wrote:

Khan's policies aren't 'divisive', they're supportive of the majority of Londoners who do not have access to a car but who suffer the consequences of those Londoners who insist on driving everywhere.

Besides, most of his policies are simply implementing policy decided by the Tories at national level. Sheesh.

It's a regular source of amusement to hear the right frothing about how divisive and hated Mr Khan is and then ask them if that's the case why has he been elected Mayor of London twice and is on course to win a third term in 2024.

One could say the same about Brexit. If it's so awful, how come the majority voted for it?

Just because Mr Khan is the preferred option does not necessarily mean he's a good option.

The conservatives set the bar low in 2016 and even lower in 2021.

ShutTheFrontDawes wrote:

One could say the same about Brexit. If it's so awful, how come the majority voted for it?

Ooo - ooo - I know, sir!: was it because they were lied to?

(edit: and didn't really understand the question)

I think it's fair to say that Brexit is turning out to be the complete disaster that was derided as project fear. People voted for it because they were lied to, pure and simple. And know it's becoming apparent to most people that it's gone wrong. Even Nigel Farage says it's been a disaster.

OldRidgeback wrote:

I think it's fair to say that Brexit is turning out to be the complete disaster that was derided as project fear. People voted for it because they were lied to, pure and simple. And know it's becoming apparent to most people that it's gone wrong. Even Nigel Farage says it's been a disaster.

Except Farage is following the line of "Brexit has been a disaster.  But it's only been a disaster because it hasn't been done properly."  He's still not accepting that the concept of Brexit has been a complete train-wreck.

brooksby wrote:

OldRidgeback wrote:

I think it's fair to say that Brexit is turning out to be the complete disaster that was derided as project fear. People voted for it because they were lied to, pure and simple. And know it's becoming apparent to most people that it's gone wrong. Even Nigel Farage says it's been a disaster.

Except Farage is following the line of "Brexit has been a disaster.  But it's only been a disaster because it hasn't been done properly."  He's still not accepting that the concept of Brexit has been a complete train-wreck.

People voted for Brexit because they were promised a whole lot of mutually exclusive things.  Farage says Brexit hasn't been done properly because (despite three PMs having a go - I'm not including Truss) the government hasn't been able to deliver mutually exclusive things.

I certainly don't want to add to the volumes of analysis on why people, or certain groups, voted for Brexit.

I do note that concerns about "can't get the staff" / "wages are too low", "too many / not enough houses" and "immigration" were mentioned.  People still seem to have very strong views on the same issues.  So much so that both Westminster parties likely to be running the show next time are making various aspects of this a key part of their chat.

I'm not sure it was just the promises that were at fault.

Just seen that thankfully we have totally got control of our borders:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-65669832

Perhaps it's a "nice problem to have" - however bad some aspects of the UK may seem LOTS of other people think it's a better bet than where they are.  Or maybe our advertising is just world-beating?

I'm not saying that these concerns are necessarily spurious BTW or unjustified / undesirable.  It's just that many people seem to want things which it's hard to see will work in combination.

chrisonatrike wrote:

Just seen that thankfully we have totally got control of our borders:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-65669832

Perhaps it's a "nice problem to have" - however bad some aspects of the UK may seem LOTS of other people think it's a better bet than where they are.  Or maybe our advertising is just world-beating?

I'm not saying that these concerns are necessarily spurious BTW or unjustified / undesirable.  It's just that many people seem to want things which it's hard to see will work in combination.

I don't see why immigration is such an issue. Certainly our agricultural industries rely on seasonal staff and they're most often poorly paid immigrants. It'd be nice to have them properly compensated which would allow native workers to help with the fruit picking etc. but then we're going to see an increase in food prices. Maybe that's inevitable as we have relatively cheap food compared to a lot of places, but that's going to hit some people really hard. I still think that ultimately some kind of universal basic income is required to deal with the cost of living properly, but that always seems unpopular despite some encouraging trials around the world (which are often cut short before their benefits can be properly realised).

hawkinspeter wrote:

Maybe that's inevitable as we have relatively cheap food compared to a lot of places, but that's going to hit some people really hard. I still think that ultimately some kind of universal basic income is required to deal with the cost of living properly, but that always seems unpopular despite some encouraging trials around the world (which are often cut short before their benefits can be properly realised).

all these other costs hit hard because we are spending so much on housing costs, either in inflated rent or high property prices. Meanwhile the property owners* keep gaining wealth at the expense of everyone else.

*owners of multiple properties acting as landlords, not people who own their own homes. Homeowners gain no benefit from increasing house prices.

wycombewheeler wrote:

all these other costs hit hard because we are spending so much on housing costs, either in inflated rent or high property prices. Meanwhile the property owners* keep gaining wealth at the expense of everyone else.

*owners of multiple properties acting as landlords, not people who own their own homes. Homeowners gain no benefit from increasing house prices.

Housing costs are not an easy thing to fix.

Obviously, we can blame Thatcher for a large part of it: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/26/right-to-buy-margaret-thatcher-david-cameron-housing-crisis

The problem is that as the prices rise, it becomes more attractive as a way of earning profit from capital and so a huge amount of capital is dumped into the housing market which only serves to further increase prices and push home ownership out of most people's reach. Combine that with a lot of demand (it's not like people have much of a choice between living somewhere or on the streets) and it's not clear that prices will ever lower significantly. Even worse is that schemes to help people buy houses also serves to keep the prices propped up and puts more money into the hands of developers and landlords (or parasites as I like to think of them).

The main problem people have with immigration is that it can occur much faster than the necessary increases in public services.

When you have net migration running at half a million a year it takes multiple decades for school, NHS and housing capacity to catch up.

Invariably this leads to increased prices in terms of housing and decreased quality in terms of public services.

We're currently at the start of a demographic bulge entering secondary school, this bulge was secondary to Blair's immigration policies. Despite having had over a decade to prepare there will still be far more pressure on secondary school places for the next decade or so.

Rich_cb wrote:

The main problem people have with immigration is that it can occur much faster than the necessary increases in public services. When you have net migration running at half a million a year it takes multiple decades for school, NHS and housing capacity to catch up. Invariably this leads to increased prices in terms of housing and decreased quality in terms of public services. We're currently at the start of a demographic bulge entering secondary school, this bulge was secondary to Blair's immigration policies. Despite having had over a decade to prepare there will still be far more pressure on secondary school places for the next decade or so.

To my mind, that's more of an issue with proper scaling of public services as immigrants are likely to be paying taxes etc. and thus adding to the economy. I did a brief search on figures and found out that we recently had more deaths than births (by a small margin) for the first time in ages - possibly a Covid influence but also likely that young people are less likely to feel financially stable enough for planned pregnancies.

But yes, I can see how people feel that public services are rapidly declining and thus don't want any further pressure on the system.

Well perhaps those of us past, say, forty could take it upon ourselves to quit living soonest?  That would leave more space (houses, jobs, doctor's appointments) for younger people.  It would massively ease the burden on health and social services - especially if you didn't lower the pension age!

It's almost impossible to scale public services that fast though.

It takes 15 years minimum to train an NHS consultant.

If a large increase in immigration suddenly drives a similarly large increase in demand for maternity services (as it did about 15 years ago) how can you respond quickly?

Increasing hospital capacity and training staff takes a long time.

I'm not sure what the figure is now but a few years ago I read that you had to earn >35k per year to be a net contributor to the Exchequer so for anyone earning less than about 40k the extra pressure on public services and housing probably doesn't justify the small net increase in tax revenue.

Birth rates are plummeting globally, within a generation the global population will start to fall and the current issue of 'too much' immigration will likely reverse.

Rich_cb wrote:

It's almost impossible to scale public services that fast though. It takes 15 years minimum to train an NHS consultant. 

You do know that large numbers of NHS consultants are immigrants who trained elsewhere, right?

We've been running worldwide recruitment campaigns for decades (which in itself has been ethically dubious IMO). We're still woefully short of consultants in most specialities.

Public services cannot scale up their capacity anywhere near fast enough to deal with the increased demand caused by net migration in the 100s of thousands.

Rich_cb wrote:

Public services cannot scale up their capacity anywhere near fast enough to deal with the increased demand caused by net migration in the 100s of thousands.

Immigration does bring increased demand - but it also brings increased supply of skills and labour. It's a solution as well as a problem.
It's a complex, multi-faceted issue - but you could argue the bottom line is that this latest net migration represents about 1% population increase in a year. And while they won't be spread evenly acoss places or in their demand for services, it doesn't seem like it should be an impossible challenge in most cases.
There are lots of other factors which are probably more important in the quality of many public services too: certainly under-investment in some, existing workers leaving (early retirement, ill health, poor pay/conditions, etc.) or just not joining. Housing ("the first of the social services", according to Churchill) is a huge issue too - but you can't accuse successive governments of doing their best to improve that situation. Quite the reverse.
And there's the overarching issue of the UK's unusually poor record of productivity growth. Tackling that would ease a lot of chronic problems - but again, there's not much effort in that direction.

Rich_cb wrote:

I'm not sure what the figure is now but a few years ago I read that you had to earn >35k per year to be a net contributor to the Exchequer

The Daily Mail et al love those figures, citing them as evidence of "something for nothing" Britain. In fact they are fairly meaningless as they ignore how much the work of people on low wages contributes to the incomes of those on very high wages who pay more tax.

I'm guessing you have some figures to back that up?

It's obviously not the case for all low paid workers though.

Especially when you consider that the government have been pretty consistently spending more than they raise in tax for decades (a handful of years of surplus since the 1970s IIRC).

Rich_cb wrote:

I'm guessing you have some figures to back that up?

Sealion! No, just simple common sense. Say you own a business which employs 1000 people earning £12,000 a year, so none of them pays tax. Now let's say your business makes you a profit of £10 million a year so you pay roughly £4.7 million in tax. Are you the only person of the 1001 who's paying your way? The oft-touted (by the rich) concept that the rich subsidise the workers and the workers don't pay their own way is a pernicious one in that it completely ignores the extent to which the workers subsidise the rich by providing them with the profits derived from their work.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

I'm guessing you have some figures to back that up?

Sealion! No, just simple common sense. Say you own a business which employs 1000 people earning £12,000 a year, so none of them pays tax. Now let's say your business makes you a profit of £10 million a year so you pay roughly £4.7 million in tax. Are you the only person of the 1001 who's paying your way? The oft-touted (by the rich) concept that the rich subsidise the workers and the workers don't pay their own way is a pernicious one in that it completely ignores the extent to which the workers subsidise the rich by providing them with the profits derived from their work.

In that specific hypothetical example, the 1000 people on £12k pa will be in receipt of universal credit, council tax support, and other top up benefits from the government which will mostly likely be more than £4700 each, wiping out the £4.7m to the exchequer paid by the business owner. The goverment/tax payers are effectively subsidising the business.

mark1a wrote:

Rendel Harris wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

I'm guessing you have some figures to back that up?

Sealion! No, just simple common sense. Say you own a business which employs 1000 people earning £12,000 a year, so none of them pays tax. Now let's say your business makes you a profit of £10 million a year so you pay roughly £4.7 million in tax. Are you the only person of the 1001 who's paying your way? The oft-touted (by the rich) concept that the rich subsidise the workers and the workers don't pay their own way is a pernicious one in that it completely ignores the extent to which the workers subsidise the rich by providing them with the profits derived from their work.

In that specific hypothetical example, the 1000 people on £12k pa will be in receipt of universal credit, council tax support, and other top up benefits from the government which will mostly likely be more than £4700 each, wiping out the £4.7m to the exchequer paid by the business owner. The goverment/tax payers are effectively subsidising the business.

Okay, I'll change the example to they all earn £30,000 a year, so they will be paying about £6000 in tax and national insurance as well as the contribution they are making to their employer's profits and receiving no benefits, but according to Rich's figures they would still be a net loss to the Exchequer because the profits they make for their employer on which their employer pays tax are disregarded.

'Benefit' received from the government is not just cash although it is possible to recieve cash benefits on an income far above £30k.

The NHS, bin collections, schools etc all have a cash value too.

It's possible to fudge a hypothetical situation together, where every employee earns exactly the right amount to balance out every penny in benefit they receive from the government and the company is hugely profitable, to make your assertion work.

The question remains; is this commonplace?

It's not sealioning to ask you to back up your hypothetical scenario with some real world figures.

Rich_cb wrote:

It's not sealioning to ask you to back up your hypothetical scenario with some real world figures.

Honestly old chap, when your "real world figures" amount to:

Quote:

I'm not sure what the figure is now but a few years ago I read that you had to earn >35k per year to be a net contributor to the Exchequer

I'm not sure you're in a position to demand authoritative fully audited figures from others. In any case, you have ignored my point, which is that there is more to contributing to the Exchequer than simply the tax one pays when one's work makes profits for someone else who pays tax on said profits.

So that's a no.

You've just made something up to fit your own argument.

No change there then.

What happens if the organisation you work for doesn't make much/any profit? How does that fit your theory?

If you wanted more detail Rendel you just had to ask, I won't even accuse you of sealioning:
https://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/State-dependency-FINAL.pdf.

Looks like the figure is now >£42k.

Ah, the well known unbiased thinktank Civitas, postal address Tufton Street along with so many other totally unbiased organisations.

You are, I assume deliberately, completely ignoring my point. I don't dispute that many/most people do not contribute an equivalent amount in tax to the Exchequer as they receive in overall benefit from the government, but that does not take account of the profits and taxes generated by their work and so to class them as effectively a drag on the economy and to imply that only those on higher incomes are actually paying their own way is both unfair and inaccurate. I thought this sort of thinking had gone out with the Victorian era where the millowners paid a pittance, raked in enormous profits and then complained about the costs of poor relief for the "feckless" working classes who made them their profits. Obviously in Tufton Street that sort of thinking is alive and well.

I've hardly ignored your point Rendel.

I said that hypothetically it could work.

The counter point, which you have ignored, is that your imagined scenario doesn't apply to all lower paid workers and you seem incapable of giving even an estimate as to how many workers it does apply to.

Attacking the source rather than the data as well. Poor show.