Interesting stuff

"It was a vote on Brexit"

Apparently...

and if labor had won we would have heard over and over, endlessly and endlessly, what a convincing vote it was for no brexit...

...but that didn't happen, so we're not hearing what a convincing vote it was...

"Throw enough mud…"

"You can’t win an election with the media against you"

"Smear, smear and more smear"

It appears the writer of the article totally missed the election of donald trump

sounds like the usual bullshit and excuses

maybe, just maybe, one side of politics is still deep in denial, and need to have a little think about what voters are actually voting for...

...or against....

UK's longest rolling strikes for 100 years with 85 Tory Govt resignations
People of the world just see UK voted for more record Tory strikes & sackings?

This is the new norm...A shit stain on a border outpost would win a seat.

Shittiest Oz Govt of record strikes & sackings was returned by shittiest voters.
Shittiest US Govt of record strikes & sackings are stirring up the shittiest voters.

Voters through-out western world now queue to reward these laziest pieces of shit.
Ant Bully: 'Fair to say democracy & voting system has officially turned to shit.'

Regardless of Brexit I always though Corbyn was un-electable hence Boris, bend over British middle and lower class you are about to get ........f...k over.

Get brexit done. It was a vote on brexit. We want our sovereignty back.
The people have spoken!

If you think that will affect the establishment capitalistic global agenda and the Tories will improve the lives of the people, expect to be disappointed.

Trumpo, Bojo, and Scomo, what a team!

Meanwhile the Greta vs Goliath Timelord battle is gettin' real bitchy.
Trump exterminates Greta & regenerates as a front page girlie surpermodel Timelord.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ELmTYjhWkAAdISg?format=jpg&name=small

"The neoliberal left thought process goes like this :

“Forget listening to the people, the people are morons ....we will just keep telling them how it’s got to be and if they don’t accept it , well that’s just more proof that they’re idiots and that they are vulnerable to “populism*”"

I hope they keep it up, now that pretty much every loose bit of loyalty I once had has waned, it's quite enjoyable watching them lose

geez you'd think they'd tire of it though...

"Trumpo, Bojo, and Scomo, what a team!"

Clinto, Corbo, and Shorto, what an alternative!

I hate to say it, because I definitely wouldn't have voted for any of them, but, as dismal as things are, they could be worse...

"Clinto, Corbo, and Shorto, what an alternative!"

Touche!

"I hate to say it, because I definitely wouldn't have voted for any of them, but, as dismal as things are, they could be worse..."

Same here, and also agree things could be worse....

Time will tell.

You're dead right blowin, it's more a nervous laugh kind of joy

...but then again...

how can they keep getting it soooo wrong! so so wrong!

View this post on Instagram

how times have changed

Crazy night for UK politics. Not sure anyone predicted such a seismic shift in the political landscape with places that have been staunch labour for 100 years going to the Tories.

Its anyone guess what will happen to Labour now. Corbynites and Momentum were immediately on the defensive blaming anyone but their leader and his socialist policies. Not an ounce of humility on show, apart from the few traditional labour MP's who haven't been forced out or walked and have had to endure a nightmarish campaign shoving shit uphill. Hopefully they will hang around, force the Corbynites out and return the party the centre left. The UK needs a credible opposition party.

For my part I voted Tory this time around, as did my parents for the first time in over 50 years which to me sums up the current situation. I grew up in the Durham coalfields, Dad a shop steward for Norse Hydro, old girl a NUT rep and uncles all miners. For large chunks of the 70's and 80's most of my family were involved in industrial action, some more militant than it should've been but to man and woman everyone we knew was Labour. Thatcher was a dirty word which was spat out. We stayed labour through the Blair and Brown years, Miliband. Then came Corbyn and everything changed.

The worst thing about this election has been seeing old stallwarts in our industrial towns admitting that they are voting Tory for the first time. Barely able to look the interviewer in the eye and hardly believing what they are saying they tell a familiar tale of being let down by the party that was theirs. Personally I thinks these Corbyn fuckwits should be ashamed of themselves for their preachy, holier than though infiltration of a once great institution.

Brexit played a part of course, a big part as Corbyn's ridiculous position of not having a position left working class brexiteers with nowhere to go but Tory if they could stomach it. Despite a well documented anti EU stance throughout his career Corbyn abandoned traditional Labour voters in favour of the largely remain voting middle class Corbynistas who put him in the top job in the first place. He kept them sweet by pledging to be 'neutral' in a second referendum on the EU, after negotiating another 'soft Brexit' deal from this neutral position. He tied himself in knots basically and his bullshit didn't fool traditional labour voters. His blatant anti Semitism and peculiar admiration for those who would do the UK harm told its own tale.

Corbyn's biggest turn off though was his socialist agenda. Nationalising utilities, trains, buses and broadband didn't appeal to many outside the echo chamber. Neither did a four day week or plans to penalise anyone earning more than 80k/year to pay for it. Capital flight was a real possibility with a Corbyn government. As it happened the UK stared socialism in the face and said, yeah nah.

It remains to be seen what the Tories will do with these former Labour strongholds now they have them. They need the investment Johnson has promised and it needs to be delivered in full, not just token gestures. First job is Brexit though. As someone who voted leave I'm glad there's a majority government to push on with it and judging by the reaction from Brussels they are pretty happy as well. Roll on January 31st.

The cost was phenomenal, £200bn + and in reality hadn't been properly costed. No clear plans on how to implement such a huge transition. Nothing against making sure operators pay enough tax but wholesale nationalisation is rooted in Corbyns socialist ideals and it felt like just the start. Both parties taking advantage of low interest rates to borrow but Labour going all in, fine now but down the track if rates rise we'd be in the same position that contributed to 10 years of austerity, GFC notwithstanding.

When we had state owned British rail it was even worse than now. At least now you can get a refund for delayed/cancelled trains. Then it was tough shit. The proposed rail subsidies paid for with tax increases would of really just helped those people commuting around London so billions more spent on another London centric scheme.

I have to agree Blowin, privatisation has been a con.
Stockholm syndrome maybe?

I dont understand why all around the world these political parties are making the same mistakes?

Parties that use to be about everyday people forgetting everyday people and going off on idealistic fairyland trips

Why dont they see what is happening elsewhere and learn from other countries?

@Upnorth Good to read a perspective from boots on the ground.

@VG that video was an interesting watch.

Hmm i dont know, but something not political that i found interesting.

Indonesian 44,000-year-old cave art is earliest known record of pictorial storytelling, researchers say

A cave painting on Indonesia's island of Sulawesi, depicting human-like figures hunting animals, appears to be the earliest known pictorial record of storytelling according to a study by a team of Australian and Indonesian researchers.

More here:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-13/indonesian-cave-art-is-earliest-k...

Tax increases for 'the rich' which meant 80k a year or more were ear marked for the NHS, schools, policing. Nationalisation was all on tick.

We're going to be shafted either way, no doubt. The whole election in the UK was about choosing the least worst option. A demoralising scenario and only tempered by my personal view and in the end it seems also the view of the majority that while the Tories will revert to type a Corbyn government or coalition would take us back to the dark ages of the 70's and 80's.

As a stand alone issue for a stable, progressive, government, properly costed and with the sort of due diligence you'd expect, nationalisation of utilities, rail etc could be a viable. As a back drop to class war and as an old socialists pipe dream it can get fucked.

Shezzas Blowin mighty fine post on infrastructure

I'm no Corbyn fan but that's 80k in £, that's a fair bit of money.

It's all academic now but the breakdown was this -

* £5.4bn from higher income tax on the richest 5 per cent – the 45p rate would kick for incomes above £80,000, with a new 50p rate on those above £125,000.

* £30bn from tax hikes on big companies – by putting corporation tax back up to 26 per cent and through a new “tax on multinationals”.

* £8.8bn from a new financial transactions tax on the City of London – which Labour argues can be introduced without international agreement.

* £6.2bn from tackling tax avoidance and evasion.

Quite a small slice of people were going to pay a single-figure percentage of new found government taxation.

And without "going back to the dark ages of socialism", how do you get any tax at all out of corporations and multi-nationals?

"Shezzas Blowin mighty fine post on infrastructure"

Indeed! explained the double reaming procedure brilliantly. nice little taxi analogy too

Upnorth, good post, I feel for you and your family’s pain. I know a Yorkshireman who voted leave, blue collar worker in a power station, him and everyone he knows. He also talks about how nothing was put in to help communities/ people after the Thatcher shit show. When last there it was abundantly clear the growth and wealth of the last few decades hasn’t been shared so the vote was assured. The irony, the Tories gave the country neoliberalism and now Brexit sold to the punters as the solution. Of course the Tories will keep on screwing ordinary people, it’s hardwired into their DNA, so it will be interesting these next 5 years and especially so for the Tories now representing traditional working class areas.

The spanner in Boris’ plan will be Scotland, if he is such a defender of democracy he will allow a second referendum and when they leave what will the divided kingdom do without all that North Sea royalties cash?

Finally, no one has mentioned that new EU law banning the use of tax havens that the UK has now avoided signing up to. If Boris does nothing else it’s job done. Here, here, well done old boy, raise your glasses, to Boris!

"I think it’s consensus on an ideology and both sides of the various western democracies are forcing an unwanted program on their populations."

I don't disagree, but is it really their whole hearted ideology? or orders from above?

the agreeance and adherence from all the world'a lefty parties seems much stronger, and much more ingrained/non negotiable than the manifestations of loose cooperative whimsical consensus, or a shared world view spanning oceans

I think the nationalise thing could have been a winner, but like all these lefty nutjobs, he wanted to go too quick way too soon

they're just not realistic

and they seem to have no concept at all about the average man in the street, not even an inkling. or is that their hubris, and tend to condescend, showing?

Kind of ironic considering they're supposedly the ones switched on to all things social

strange times...

guysmiley, second referendums (referenda?) pretty popular with defenders of democracy who dont get the result they want the first time around. worked well for the remainers, did you notice they just had an election?.. remember all those remainer excuses? " people just protesting.. dont really want to leave.." blah blah blah
ever get the feeling you might be on the wrong side of history? (and just about everything else) no, i didnt think so, keep living in the past ("thatcher shit show") how about a few gratuitous swipes at your hero john howard (3 time election winner!) while you are venting. come on lets hear it "children overboard!" "dog-whistle!" "murdoch press!"

I didn't think much of ol' bevan the neoliberal left's stooge at smh, but he's right about this...

"...What we have seen in this election campaign is a Conservative Party that has been willing to lean left on economics and right on culture," Goodwin says. "Boris Johnson has not only promised to deliver Brexit and get tough on crime, but he's also promised to spend more on the National Health Service, more on infrastructure and raise the minimum wage."

same deal across the globe

"This is someone who has clearly grasped the fact that is easier for the right to move left on economics than it is for the left to move right on questions of identity."

Yep yep yep,

I reckon 'the left' of politics has drank so much ip kool-aid that they are literally incapable (or is it forbidden?) of talking about anything that matters to most voters in the modern context...

literally incapable

and that is why it is the right of politics calling out the gross human rights abuses in places like china and saudi arabia. whilst the left is eerily steely silent

the ideology of parts of the left literally will not allow them to talk about anything that is remotely important in the current global climate

they're hobbled by 30 years of academic idealism

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/it-s-not-only-about-brexit-jeremy-co...

Lizard, just stating the obvious about the poor state of the UK that neoliberalism gave them ... and then someone thought up Brexit. Another lie, BUT, Boris has his mandate, god help them, BUT, not in Scotland where the Scots voted even in greater numbers to reject the Tories and Brexit. Something the Tories and Boris cannot ignore.

7 seats SNP won were Tory
6 seats SNP won were Labour
45% of Scotland's total vote for 50 of 59 seats
3.9% of national vote

But yeah, interesting times.

Blowin, I note you are looking for a labour figure or party that actually represents the working class:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Hardie

Note his conclusion that labour couldn't exist within W.E. Gladstone's liberals and also note the formation of Labour party to safeguard wages and conditions against things like immigration diluting the wages. The more things change...

Excellent post on infrastructure btw, who's enjoying the East Coast Gas Cartel presently?

Also for post above re: Churchill being first to recognise danger of Germany, N.Chamberlain is usually pilloried for 'peace in our time'; however after about 35-36 the nation's military was frantically re-arming so this would tend to suggest that he knew what was going on.

AndyM, no problem with squeezing corporations and multinationals at all but it needs to be done sensibly. Corbyns plan would take UK national income raised through corporation tax from average to the highest in the G7. Surely the burden would be passed on to company employees through lower wages and customers through higher prices?

GuySmiley, there's a good series of documentaries about Brexit from the bbc if you get a chance to see them. Tens years of turmoil is one, behind closed doors is another I think. Fly on the wall stuff showing Cameron basically sleep walking into the referendum. He went to Brussels with what now look like tame demands for reform and exemptions which were dismissed. He was made to look weak and came back with nothing having been convinced the EU would at least throw him a bone. This gave Tory Euro sceptics the leverage they needed and he made the decision to hold the referendum hoping to draw a line under it for a generation. The question of the EU had been rumbling on for decades. He lost of course, narrowly, quit and here we are now. I think people on both sides of the debate wonder where we'd be if Brussels had made concessions.

The SNP could be Johnson's Achilles heel, they certainly won't give him an inch in the push for a referendum. Scotland did vote remain in the Brexit referendum and I think its being part of EU rather than independence that gave the SNP their election boost. I voted SNP once when I was a student in Scotland and I still feel if they want it let them have it, I think they'll be worse off but let them crack on. Same for Wales and Northern Ireland. There are assumptions about revenue from oil but more than half of North Sea oil is off Shetland which has one of the highest GDP per head in Scotland and has its own designs on independence. Shetlanders have as much in common with Norway as Scotland, what's good for the goose.

Sounds like the corporations have got governments (and us) over a barrel then Upnorth.

And the situation in the UK looks similar to that in Oz

"One in five of Britain’s large businesses paid no corporation tax last year, while more than half paid less than £10m, according to an official report into the mounting cost of tax reliefs."

https://www.ft.com/content/46aa42bc-b5d4-11e3-b40e-00144feabdc0

And

"Starbucks, for example, had sales of £400m in the UK last year, but paid no corporation tax. It transferred some money to a Dutch sister company in royalty payments, bought coffee beans from Switzerland and paid high interest rates to borrow from other parts of the business.
Amazon, which had sales in the UK of £3.35bn in 2011, only reported a "tax expense" of £1.8m.
And Google's UK unit paid just £6m to the Treasury in 2011 on UK turnover of £395m."

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20560359

Maybe talk of raising company tax is one big red herring.

Andy, I reckon Capital has won and the past few decades of prosperity for the average worker should be seen as a historical aberration and we are just returning to the centuries old tread line. It sounds defeatist so I'll ask what global event or series of events will turn this around? I read that wage growth forecasts for Australia have just taken another hit, not surprising really when you factor in the 750,000 foreign workers here, so which political party will reverse that? A good friend of mine has been trying for 2 years to buy a business in a specialised agricultural field without any luck, why? every time one is on the market some Chinese family drops double the asking price on the table in the full knowledge the purchase comes with citizenship! We're screwed.

Australian workers are ‘standing on the outside looking in’ as the wealthy share the pie.
According to the September Wage Price Index, private sector wages rose by 2.2% in the year to the end of September. Public sector was a little better at 2.5%. Neither of them approach the 3.5% that had been predicted by Treasury in the 2016-17 budget or even the 2.75% forecast in April.

Josh Frydenberg predicted in the last budget that wages would grow by 3.75% next financial year. That is also sure to be cut tomorrow.

Meanwhile, corporate profits are booming. Despite “global headwinds”, over the last three financial years, profits have increased by 22.2%, 10.0% and 10.9%.

Whilst the CEOs and shareholders might be reaping the benefits, the workers whose labour produces this wealth are not.

The latest HILDA survey, which measures Australia’s Household, Income and Labour Dynamics, revealed an interesting fact.

Since 2009 and the global financial crisis, the average and the median (or typical) disposable income have moved in different directions.

The average household’s annual real disposable income has climbed by $3,156. The median household’s income has fallen $542.

This shows that the rich are getting richer.

As Alan Austin points out:

“Clearly, the big corporations are dining out while the majority of Australians are finding their income, wealth and quality of life gradually declining. The Coalition’s management of the economy is allowing foreign predators to extract Australia’s wealth with little or no return to the people of Australia, and to permit local corporations to escape the tax burden the majority of workers are unable to avoid. These policies are serving neither the economy nor the citizens.”

It’s all very well to aim to “grow the pie”, but most of us are outside looking in at the feast being shared by the privileged few.

https://theaimn.com/australian-workers-are-standing-on-the-outside-looki...

"A good friend of mine has been trying for 2 years to buy a business in a specialised agricultural field without any luck, why? every time one is on the market some Chinese family drops double the asking price on the table in the full knowledge the purchase comes with citizenship! We're screwed."

Blowin...where are you? :P

I'm currently reading 'Rainbownesia' by Michael Kew, documenting his surf travels around Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, and negative Chinese influence, especially around the Marianas, is prominent. Ugly tourism is a minor gripe against the spectre of creeping political friction. In many places he goes the shadows of past war looms large - on Tinian he visits the dock where Little Boy and Fat Man were loaded - yet at others there's a sense of future war; a belligerent empire expanding into the northwest Pacific basin.

Two weeks ago I walked from Jakarta international to domestic terminal chatting to a botanist who'd been in the forests of the Malukus and she was very anxious about what would happen to that corner of Indonesia when the capital gets built.

Also, she said it was a bad choice of site as it's just 20kms from a major river delta that will make it difficult to build infrastructure and they'd likely just repeat the same sinking issues they're currently experiencing at Jakarta.

Got friends and family living on the Great Ocean Road, just don’t get any of them started on the numbers and behaviour of Chinese tourists down there.

"JUST AS WAS TRUE when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday’s issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds.

Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI’s gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims."

"...In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It’s brimming with proof of FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not true..."

"...As the Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi – one of the few left/liberal journalists with the courage and integrity to dissent from the DNC/MSNBC script on these issues – put it in a detailed article: “Democrats are not going to want to hear this, since conventional wisdom says former House Intelligence chief Devin Nunes is a conspiratorial evildoer, but the Horowitz report ratifies the major claims of the infamous ‘Nunes memo.’”

That the Page warrant was based on the Steele Dossier was something that the media servants of the FBI and CIA rushed to deny. Did they have any evidence for those denials? That would be hard to believe, given that the FISA warrant applications are highly classified. It seems far more likely that – as usual – they were just repeating what the FBI and CIA (and the pathologically dishonest Rep. Adam Schiff) told them to say, like the good and loyal puppets that they are. But either way, what they kept telling the public – in highly definitive tones – was completely false, as we now know from the IG Report:

"...Perhaps these revelations will finally lead to a realization about how rogue, and dangerous, these police state agencies have become, and how urgently needed is serious reform. But if nothing else, it must serve as a tonic to the three years of unrelenting media propaganda that has deceived and misled millions of Americans into believing things that are simply untrue."

feeling possibly misled anyone?

I'm thinking probably not... still...

https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/the-inspector-generals-report-on-201...

A problem with the current political narrative is the effective use by conservative parties dog whistling of racism and nationalism and the failure of the left to be able to counter argue the case.

The US Republicans have turned it into a art form so much so US Latinos vote Republican.

My own thoughts are you cannot counter argue such is the inbuilt human code for family, clans and tribalism.

Every one is a racist and everyone is a nationalist oi oi oi.

Trump used this to great effect, Mexican rapist, Brexit was largely about immigrates, Coalition have longed used boat people, its a very effective political tool so much so the north of the UK voted for Boris completely against their best interests.

I understand Upnorths views but rolling the dice thinking the Tories will GAF about the north of England when they know it will revert back to Labor shows a lot about how Corbyn was a failure but also there s a lot more going on.