UK election special

[Monte Carlo]

Supplemental:

 

 

You could have put a NSFW or obscene material warning on this post, Wals.

[BruceVC]

What? Whhhaaaatt?

 

The Rainbow Nation isn't a harmonious melting pot of fairness, a jubilee of hope?

 

You're kidding me, right?

No its fine but I have never believed in this concept of the "Rainbow Nation" because the implementation of it is flawed and I think it sets an unrealistic expectation on the new South Africa. We tend to get judged on the criteria of what the "Rainbow Nation" is suppose to mean and not what we have really achieved..like an end to Apartheid without a devastating civil war

 

People will naturally hang around with people they want to, you can't force people to now believe that just because Apartheid ended everyone is now going to be great friends. And that's fine. As long as we have respect for each other and don't discriminate then people will just gravitate to there own social groups that transcend a racial barrier

 

In South Africa you often people lament the fact that we " aren't a Rainbow Nation "  but we are just not in the way they expect it to be 

[213374U]

"The Reds"?

 

It seems you don't realize that the harshest critics of fractional reserve banking, are Austrian School libertarians.

They believe that it's fraud and that it could not exist in a society with a minimalist government that respects property rights.

 

So yeah, abolishing it is not exactly the hallmark of Communism.

 

You sure you read the link? Because the lawmaker putting the bill forward is from the "centrist Progress Party". Are you suggesting he's actually an anarcho-capitalist in disguise? I don't know if that'd be better than him being a revolutionary subversive, to be honest.

 

 

I should apologise to Numbers for not having been clearer earlier. I know Miliband isn't one Beria short of a gulag. However, I do think there are a lot of things which many Britons would accept which abrogate their freedoms pretty seriously. Which _might_ be OK if I thought for one second that the intended benefits would be felt. They won't. You might as well try to legislate away ageing.

 

Further, I accept that there are some freaks in banking, and they get adulation and prizes. But can you honestly look at most big enterprises and say they aren't run by nutters? The trick is simply to enforce the laws which already exist, and to amp up the punishments. Destroying a pension scheme should not have a lower tariff than burning down a house or stealing some cars.

 

As I said before, I think that sort of over the top characterization prevents meaningful debate, and that's an objectively bad thing. If you want to portrait those clowns as the reincarnation of Ming the Merciless, go right ahead. It just bothers me that the caricaturisation becomes so prevalent that it effectively supplants and becomes the political debate. I don't know, maybe I'm projecting and in the UK it doesn't actually happen.

 

Enforcing the laws is both the obvious solution and unlikely to happen. I've just seen too many examples of subverting public power, conflicts of interest, corrupt officials, crony prosecutors and complacent judges to believe that's anything but a pipe dream. For that to work you need people to have a strong moral fiber — but if they do, they'll do the right thing because it's the right thing, not because it's the law. Unless you believe that those in power in any given society are can be, somehow, consistently possessed of a stronger moral character than those they rule over, laws by themselves just aren't much good. Just like with any other human instrument, results depend more on the person wielding it than the tool itself.

 

 

 

I agree numbers is a sound bloke. He makes solid arguments, even if I don't agree. I hope there are no hard feelings.

 

That's high praise, thanks. No hard feelings whatsoever, of course. Besides, you are a Fallout Tactics fan so you're cool regardless of who you vote for.

 

 

 

This is probably one of the reasons why i have become more fan of the nightwatcher state in the past few years. Maximum political power should go the local municipalities, where the elected officials will be living among the constinuents. The function of the central government should only be military defense, securing the rights of the citizens according the constitution and national infrastructure. 

 

This promotes personal responsibility, which minimizes the risk of creating unnecessary government bodies, filled with beaurocrats doing nothing of value. As for healthcare, the state will pay for the insurance, thus allowing local hospitals with local tax money and private clinics exist.

 

Yeah, i'm a dreamer.

 

Sounds good but in practice it doesn't work so well, in my experience. You'd think elected officials living right next door would be good for transparency and accountability, but it just as easily promotes clientelism and nepotism, it's just human nature. Having most decisions be made at the local level also has great potential to create greater levels of inequality between parts of the country, and it encourages the creation of multiple redundant administrations... which results in an even bigger overall state apparatus -and consequently mismanagement, waste and corruption- than with bona fide centralization, only now we're calling it "local". It also requires a proportionally larger oversight administration, judicial or not, with all that entails.

 

I say maximum political power should go nowhere. Or to Skynet.

[Hiro Protagonist]

You do what most other countries do and impose a property tax on foreign nationals. Although, Bruce, it's lovely to see you embrace Globalised, low-tax ideology when it turns out your family own a multi-million pound property in one of the most expensive Boroughs in the UK.

 

Like most left-wing SJW types, you've never had an opinion you couldn't afford.

 

Or you could restrict foreign ownership to buying new properties instead of existing properties. Because you know foreigners buying existing properties doesn't add homes to the housing market. Building new properties do.

[Monte Carlo]

That's logical, Hiro, but perhaps unfair on foreigners. Many of whom probably treat older property with more respect than the locals (q.v. France, where expat Brits lovingly restore old Gites while the locals happily live in box-shaped monstrosities).

 

IIRC Australia has a simple one per cent tax on foreign property acquisition. I think it should be locally-administered so councils / towns can decided how much external investment they want / need and local people can vote on it.

[sorophx]

so did Nigel Farage win? oh wait, he quit his party...

[Monte Carlo]

He got more votes than the SNP and Lib Duhs combined, yet won only one parliamentary seat. It's another nail in the FPTP coffin, I suspect.

[Elerond]

He got more votes than the SNP and Lib Duhs combined, yet won only one parliamentary seat. It's another nail in the FPTP coffin, I suspect.

 

Democratic systems all have one thing common, which is the fact that after an election there will be somebodies that complain how unfair the system is.

 

Systems that give more places for parties that have gotten more votes get complaints how they cause individual people who got more votes than some members in popular party not get place in parliament (or what ever election is for), and systems that put votes that individual people get over overall number votes that parties get, get complains how it is wrong that parties with smaller number of voters behind them get more seats than more popular parties, just because their candidates individually got more votes. And systems where there is only one electoral district, get complains how smaller communities and rural areas have hard time to get representatives, where high population areas just dominate election, and systems where there are multiple electoral district that get equal representation in parliament (or what ever), get complains how parties get higher percentage of representatives than their percentage of votes in whole country was.

 

So regardless of what democratic elections system you choose there will be people that complain about it after election that didn't have result that they wanted.

[sorophx]

in the case of FPTP systems, it's hardly democratic, because the minority rules the country. with the US' Electoral College I wouldn't even call it a democracy, it's just a circus.

[Meshugger]

 

This is probably one of the reasons why i have become more fan of the nightwatcher state in the past few years. Maximum political power should go the local municipalities, where the elected officials will be living among the constinuents. The function of the central government should only be military defense, securing the rights of the citizens according the constitution and national infrastructure. 

 

This promotes personal responsibility, which minimizes the risk of creating unnecessary government bodies, filled with beaurocrats doing nothing of value. As for healthcare, the state will pay for the insurance, thus allowing local hospitals with local tax money and private clinics exist.

 

Yeah, i'm a dreamer.

 

Sounds good but in practice it doesn't work so well, in my experience. You'd think elected officials living right next door would be good for transparency and accountability, but it just as easily promotes clientelism and nepotism, it's just human nature. Having most decisions be made at the local level also has great potential to create greater levels of inequality between parts of the country, and it encourages the creation of multiple redundant administrations... which results in an even bigger overall state apparatus -and consequently mismanagement, waste and corruption- than with bona fide centralization, only now we're calling it "local". It also requires a proportionally larger oversight administration, judicial or not, with all that entails.

 

I say maximum political power should go nowhere. Or to Skynet.

 

 

That's problem isn't it? Because of the human condition, power will always attract people like a magnet. You cannot destroy it since that paradoxically requires the power of a god-emperor to enforce it, like Skynet. So therefore i compromise with having political power local as it makes the totality of it fragmented, and at least minimizes the risk of injustice by design with the nightwatcher focused on enforcing rights.

 

Or maybe what humanity really needs purpose through edicts of the philosopher kings, and not plebic democracy. Who knows, i sure don't.

[Hiro Protagonist]

That's logical, Hiro, but perhaps unfair on foreigners. Many of whom probably treat older property with more respect than the locals (q.v. France, where expat Brits lovingly restore old Gites while the locals happily live in box-shaped monstrosities).

 

IIRC Australia has a simple one per cent tax on foreign property acquisition. I think it should be locally-administered so councils / towns can decided how much external investment they want / need and local people can vote on it.

 

The system we have here is foreigners can only buy new dwellings (There's some exceptions but generally foreigners buy off the plan units here) and they can only buy up to 50% in a block of units iirc. eg. New building has 20 new units and only up to 10 can be owned by foreigners. Once the developer reaches 50%, they can't sell anymore to foreigners. Also, once bought by a foreigner, they cannot be sold to other foreigners.

 

There's still problems with our system but at least it's not an open gate where foreigners are flooding in, although we are in a housing boom and it does seem that way at the moment with foreigners buying up off the plan properties. Mainly Chinese, Canadians and Americans. But there are many reasons why prices are on the rise and it's not just foreign buyers. New housing with buildings going up around the area add to the housing market which has benefits and drawbacks (eg. Infrastructure problems such as more people in an area can stress existing infrastructure).

 

Federal Government only handles the Foreign Investment Review Board which all Foreigners must apply in order to buy any property. Stamp Duty (tax) is based on a sliding scale according to the value of the property and is administered by the State Governments. eg. in NSW a $500,000 property will have about $18,000 stamp duty (approx. 3.6%). A $700,000 property will have about $27,000 stamp duty (approx. 3.8%). The higher the value, the more tax (including the approx. percentage) you pay.

 

It sounds like the UK may need to review their foreign ownership if foreigners are buying are property in droves.

[Monte Carlo]

^ It's mainly only top-end properties that are an issue, and predominantly in London / SE England. Although Chinese investors like buying up large swathes of buy-to-let housing stock.

 

'Prime' central London is overwhelmingly Russian and Middle-Eastern now. Upper middle-class English people are having to live in ghastly, hitherto unexplored postcodes that don't have an 'S' and a 'W' in them.

[Raithe]

"So after the election, are we going to have a prize for the first politician to claim he has a vision for 2020?"

[Hiro Protagonist]

Just hope you don't do anything we did 7 years ago. We already had our 2020 summit and what a waste of time and money that was.

[Wrath of Dagon]

The housing market is a perfect example of point one, post one. The British public are cretins.

 

Two fundamental issues they want resolved:

 

- They want to be able to buy and rent more affordably

- They don't want their houses to lose value

 

THESE ARE MUTUALLY ****ING EXCLUSIVE IN THE ONE MARKET.

May be those are different people.

[Legbiter]

You do what most other countries do and impose a property tax on foreign nationals. Although, Bruce, it's lovely to see you embrace Globalised, low-tax ideology when it turns out your family own a multi-million pound property in one of the most expensive Boroughs in the UK.

 

Like most left-wing SJW types, you've never had an opinion you couldn't afford.

 

[Walsingham]

I don't know exactly what that gif is trying to say. But it's an amazing gif.

[Monte Carlo]

I like to think it means my comment was, er, piquant.

[Darth InSidious]

 

 

 

Smug... back-scratching and wallowing in shabby consensus

 

Which is also true of political parties in the first place.

 

 

So Conservatives will govern again, do they need a coalition partner?

 

Its not a bad result, from an outsiders perspective this doesn't seem like a bad outcome. They have done a good job overall, the UK  economy has recovered for example?

 

They've (re-)inflated a housing bubble, allowed most of our capital city to (continue to) be sold to Russian mobsters, and engendered the creation of a great number of zero-hours jobs. They've cut government services and failed to make savings from it. So no, not really. But no British government has done a good job since the War.

 

We have property in London and when I visit the capital and stay there  two things that most local people talk about are 

 

• Property prices in London  are very expensive and only foreigners  can afford them
• There are many Arabs and Russians who are now effectively buying up London

 

My argument to this would be 

• The market determines the price of a particular property based on numerous factors like location. Is it the governments fault that a flat is that expensive in Chelsea?
• Its a global world, can you really prevent wealthy people from other countries from investing in areas like property? How would you reasonably prevent this?

 

 

Yes. It is the fault of numerous post-war governments deciding to cancel government house-building plans, while maintaining the stringent planning regulations put in place by the Attlee government, which were supposed to be offset by... government house-building. The government is very much to blame for the housing bubble. International capital was attracted to the property market in London because (a) prices were already relatively high, and (b) London is a city for **** .

 

As for it being a global world, yes, you can reasonably prevent the kind of tax-dodging going on with, oh, One Hyde Park, by ending the non-dom rule, introducing taxes of the variety mentioned by Monte, you could introduce regulations requiring property bought to be either lived in or rented out... the point of legislation is precisely to 'redress grievances'. 

 

 

 

The housing market is a perfect example of point one, post one. The British public are cretins.

 

Two fundamental issues they want resolved:

 

- They want to be able to buy and rent more affordably

- They don't want their houses to lose value

 

THESE ARE MUTUALLY ****ING EXCLUSIVE IN THE ONE MARKET.

May be those are different people.

 

 

Sadly not.

Edited May 9, 2015 by Darth InSidious

[Zoraptor]

If anyone thinks the situation is bad housing wise in the uk/aus consider that we have neither stamp duty nor capital gains tax. The government also refuses to count how many properties are bought from overseas, taking advise from an estate agent that it's only 5%. Which literally nobody believes. They also quite deliberately allow more immigrants in than we can build houses for. And all the houses being built are in the8+ times average wage bracket where you have 30%+ of wages going towards interest alone, even with a 200k deposit and the cheapest house bought.

 

Can't really blame people for speculating when they cna get fifteen percent returns per annum with no tax, but it is and will totally asterisk the economy up for everyone when the bubble bursts.

[BruceVC]

If anyone thinks the situation is bad housing wise in the uk/aus consider that we have neither stamp duty nor capital gains tax. The government also refuses to count how many properties are bought from overseas, taking advise from an estate agent that it's only 5%. Which literally nobody believes. They also quite deliberately allow more immigrants in than we can build houses for. And all the houses being built are in the8+ times average wage bracket where you have 30%+ of wages going towards interest alone, even with a 200k deposit and the cheapest house bought.

 

Can't really blame people for speculating when they cna get fifteen percent returns per annum with no tax, but it is and will totally asterisk the economy up for everyone when the bubble bursts.

 

Yeah but who wants to live in NZ? Place is full of aggressive sheep the last time I was there 

[Junai]

No referendum for England. Too bad.

Then again, I'm sure the old boys in Brussels will take good care of you. 

[Monte Carlo]

No referendum for England. Too bad.

Then again, I'm sure the old boys in Brussels will take good care of you. 

 

Er, we're committed to an in/out referendum in 2017. It's happening.

[Raithe]

Heh.

 

NewStatesman - 10 Delusions about Labour's Defeat

 

 

 

Anyone who supported Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership contest and afterwards will find it hard, even now, to admit to their error. Rare will be the commentator who asks him or herself whether it’s possible they were wrong about everything all along.

These are perfect conditions for cognitive dissonance, which occurs when the brain attempts to accommodate fiercely held prior beliefs with contradictory new information. Self-delusions will bloom like daffodils in Spring.

In order to get through the coming symphony of spurious rationalisations it might help if you take a drink – I suggest something non-alcoholic if you want to avoid liver failure – every time you hear one of these explanations for Labour’s defeat:

 

 

1. THE MEDIA DID IT

No left-wing account of this defeat will be complete without a reference to the Tory press (bonus drink for “Murdoch-controlled”) and its supposed inexorable hold over the political psyche of the nation. Funny: the day before the election everyone decided The Sun was a joke and nobody reads newspapers anyway.

 

2. THE ESTABLISHMENT STITCHED IT UP

Obviously related to (1). but with a wider scope. The forces said to be ranged against a Labour victory will be described as powerful and subterranean. They will include bankers.

 

3. CLEVER TORIES

It will be said that the Tories, in their ruthlessly efficient way, pinned the blame for austerity on Labour and Labour allowed it to stick. Clever Tories. Few will mention that the Tories were, for the most part, a hubristic and directionless shambles, divided amongst themselves, the authors of several howlingly stupid own goals that would certainly have sunk them had they not got so lucky with their opponent.

 

4. VOTERS ARE STUPID AND VENAL

You will hear much wailing about the selfishness of voters, their hard hearts and closed minds. This tweet from Hari Kunzru expresses the contempt for ordinary people that eats away at the soul of many a bien penseur:

 

 

5. THE SNP STOLE OUR VICTORY

 

It is true that nobody, but nobody, foresaw the SNP tidal wave. But it’s not true that Labour would have won or even done OK without it. Labour saw a net gain of one seat from the Tories in England. One. Seat. One seat, in an election where everything favoured them. One seat, after five years of a shabby and meretricious government making unpopular decisions and a third party that virtually donated its voters to them. An epic failure.

 

6. LABOUR WASN’T LEFT WING ENOUGH

Many of your drinks will be prompted by variations on this perennial theme. Labour accepted the austerity narrative. Labour weren’t green enough. Labour weren’t radical (which has somehow come to be used as a synonym for left-wing). Given that the last time Labour won an election without Tony Blair was 1974 it’s hard to believe people still think the answer is to move left. But people still do. I sort of love these people for their stubbornness. But I don’t want them picking the next leader.

 

7. TONY BLAIR

Rule number one of left-wingery: it is always, somehow, Tony Blair’s fault.

 

8. POLITICS IS TOO SUPERFICIAL

This seems to have been Ed Miliband’s understanding of the problem. He made a speech last summer in which he bemoaned the primacy of image in modern politics. Then last Sunday he stood for the cameras in front of a giant limestone monolith. So perhaps he’s ambivalent. But undoubtedly we’ll hear his supporters declare sadly that we live in shallow times. A man can’t even talk about pre-distribution any more without being pilloried. This one is essentially a variation on (4).

 

9. ED WAS THE WRONG MESSENGER

This explanation will be expressed with ruefulness and come garlanded with references to the former leader’s decency and integrity and intellect. The thing is, they’ll say, he really wasn’t suited to TV (refer to (  here). In person, my God, it was like Elvis was in the room. Now, this is a tricky one to stand by because the day before the election everyone agreed that Ed being weird wasn’t a problem any more. People who cling to this reason are committing the very sin of which they accuse the voters and media. Labour lost (mainly) because of the message, not the messenger.

 

10. ANTI-POLITICS

Ed Miliband somehow ran smack into a wave of anti-political sentiment that David Cameron somehow managed to sidestep. Mystical visions of a new kind of politics rooted in the real lives of working-class people will abound.

 

The non-delusional explanation is simple. It was proffered, some time before 7 May, by a former Labour leader. When a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, you get a traditional result.

 

 

[Walsingham]

Part of the problem is that by moving left they were trying to appeal to the kind of people who deface war memorials and want to burn down London in order to end austerity.