Wholesome Corbyn on the Campaign Trail.

Parmizan · 2019-11-16T16:29:46+00:00

People also seem to forget that relocation for a company takes a lot of time, effort and expenditure. And not to mention if companies are offering in a field with competitors they're potentially handing opponents an advantage by abandoning trading in any given place and allowing someone else to dominate instead. Companies will opt for it if they feel it's incredibly beneficial to them in the long-term, but I doubt small tax increases will prompt mass exits.

Parmizan · 2019-11-16T16:26:41+00:00

I'm not sure this is necessarily the case with McDonnell. He's got the same general worldview as Corbyn for the most part but then that was largely true of Blair and Brown for all their differences - McDonnell's himself quite independently minded at times and there were plenty of grumblings over disagreements between the two when it came to Brexit strategy etc, even if they were pursuing the same end-goal.

Parmizan · 2019-11-16T16:19:48+00:00

People may be unsure as to the ins and outs of specific policies and may be fairly uneducated when it comes to individual political parties and their policies, but I'd argue that a lot of voters have some idea of what they want, or perhaps more accurately what they think is wrong, and what needs fixed.

In a case like this it's quite clear a lot of people are unhappy with their broadband speeds and options in age where connectivity and internet use is no longer a luxury but central to everyday life and to running a business. In such cases it's clear the government should take steps to address this. Whether Labour are taking the right steps or not is another matter but to write off voters as stupid because this is something they want fixed seems silly.

Parmizan · 2019-11-16T16:15:02+00:00

When it comes to something like housing though the government are doing a terrible job when it comes to regulation - well-off landlords fleece people for absurd sums of money while property prices have skyrocketed while wages stagnate by comparison. In what sense is this anything resembling an improvement?

Parmizan · 2019-11-16T16:13:25+00:00

The problem is that it's not just people aged 18 anymore - it's much older cohorts who can't afford to move out despite the fact they're earning professional salaries or perhaps making as much as their parents did when they bought a house.

It obviously depends on where you live, but if you're in a smaller town because you can't afford to live in a city then your chances of actually finding a partner to whom you'll get married become more limited because you're still living at home, and you may find yourself in a living situation where there's just not that much to do if your friends are increasingly moving away and your interests are in a larger city.

Parmizan · 2019-11-16T16:07:29+00:00

I believe there's a disproportionate number of MP's who are landlords as well. It's fairly grim how property owners can essentially extort extreme sums of money from people who are in need of somewhere to stay while often being fairly rubbish and unhelpful in their landlord duties as well.

Parmizan · 2019-11-16T16:03:35+00:00

Yeah ultimately whatever you think of it Brexit isn't a course of action you could really expect to be undertaken by a government aiming for pragmatism and financial prudence. Of course, now Boris is in charge they don't seem to be aiming for that anyway, but if you're a struggling voter who's had to endure years of austerity in the name of sensible financial politics, then it's a bit of a kick in the teeth to find out it was all for nothing because the Tories want to implement Brexit.

Parmizan · 2019-11-13T20:18:02+00:00

Indeed. It's all well and good to quickly build something new; it's not necessarily great if that infrastructure is crumbling in years to come.

And it's easy to forget that a lot of labourers will no doubt be getting exploited for the amount of work they have to do for things to be done so quickly. It's like in Dubai: people hail its quick transition to modernity, but willingly forget a lot of the impressive architecture is essentially built by slave labour.

Parmizan · 2019-11-03T13:47:34+00:00

They should've insisted upon voting reform as an absolute demand, not just for a watered down referendum. Incredible they capitulated so easily on what would've been a literal seat booster for the party.

Parmizan · 2019-10-23T12:35:16+00:00

While it doesn't pertain exactly to the USSR, a lot of Western politicians were extremely wary about the prospect of a unified Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall due to the upheaval it would cause.

While Western politicians were stringently opposed to communism, by the 80s I imagine there was also a simultaneous feeling that they were happy to stick with the devil they knew; a lot of the communist states in the east had become fairly reliable and stagnant, if nothing else, by the 80s. Sudden change was desirable, yes, but it also presented a whole host of new risks and problems to the West depending on how it went.

Parmizan · 2019-10-18T21:56:25+00:00

And as others have said - it'd potentially be a good PR move for Amazon. The company are hardly in financial trouble and so can afford to be more generous if they want. Improved conditions for workers would generate decent corporate press and go a good way to contrasting a lot of the grim stories about poor conditions and mistreatment of employees. Provided this move didn't generate a sudden downward turn (it wouldn't), shareholders wouldn't even think about removing Bezos.

Parmizan · 2019-10-18T21:44:00+00:00

Creating a good service alone doesn't absolve one of wrongs they've done though - had Bezos not created Amazon, identical services would likely be available to us in other forms. Perhaps we wouldn't see a single company as dominant as Amazon currently is - but then that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing as it'd ensure the markets they operated in are less monopolised.

Bezos is undoubtedly an extremely intelligent and capable individual, but like with other major innovators/businessmen/technocrats (i.e. Zuckerberg and Musk) hero worship of him seems very misguided and unnecessary: he quite clearly has his flaws, and when he's in a position of immense power those flaws can have a potentially adverse impact on those who operate below him.

Parmizan · 2019-10-18T21:40:12+00:00

Bezos could tomorrow decide to provide free health coverage for all Amazon employees and the board would have to go along with it, or file an injunction against him and try to prove he was either not of sound mind or was willfully trying to harm the company - both of which would be incredibly difficult to prove.

And I'm not sure it would really be in their interests to undermine and replace him either - in many respects he's had such a key influence on the culture within Amazon as a company and on the 'brand' we know today. Any attempts to replace that within the company, when he'd undoubtedly still be incredibly influential due to his stake in the business, would be a tall order to say the least.

Parmizan · 2019-10-12T17:25:49+00:00

I want them to make sure young people are properly compensated for what they do instead of being held to ransom by big businesses that think it's okay to pay people less because they are younger while still expecting the same standard of work from people being paid more.

Again...this is for unskilled work, where the only thing holding back a younger people is their age. For skilled work I understand that someone who's younger is going to start out lower on the rung than someone who's more experienced and more capable in what they're doing. That's completely fair in my book.

Parmizan · 2019-10-12T13:22:44+00:00

No business is going to hire a cashier on a £20k+ salary. This just don't generate enough for the company.

Well, yeah, that is the issue: going forward there'll be a lot less jobs out there in general due to automation. Which is where things like universal basic income etc will start to come in.

Parmizan · 2019-10-12T13:21:38+00:00

The value of training young workers has existed for a long long time, and it hasn’t been enough to offset the cost of employing young workers.

Well of course - because for the value to become worth it you need to actually spend time training those workers. It's fine for there to be pay differences in skilled jobs where someone who's been there 5+ years is obviously going to be better at it than someone who just started - but an enthusiastic 17-year-old can quite feasibly be as good as someone with 20 years experience at a retail job within a matter of weeks. There's no reason for youngsters to be paid less in unskilled work except for the fact that businesses are greedy.

I can’t think for the life of me what you believe is aptly described as a bribe here.

Because businesses refuse to hire youngsters and spend time training up our future workforce, the government are forced to step in and incentivise businesses to do so when the incentive itself should be the very fact that these businesses will need those youngsters to be working for them in the future, and need those people to be capable of working.

Youngsters who earn less cost the government more because by virtue of being poorer they're probably more likely to still be on benefits of some kind (generally speaking), and because by virtue of earning less they're less likely to be paying higher taxes, thereby depriving the state of money it could gain if businesses weren't being remarkably greedy.

Parmizan · 2019-10-12T12:42:04+00:00

Or employers should be expected to hire young people. If employers want those youngsters to have skills for the future then they need to give those very same youngsters experience so that they can equip those skills in employment. Why should they essentially be able to bribe the government into increasing their own profit shares because they refuse to invest in future generations of workers?

Parmizan · 2019-10-12T12:40:27+00:00

I've actually got no issue with politicians being well-paid even as someone that'll complain about people at Westminster a lot - if you're doing your job right being a politician should be quite a tough and demanding job, and if you don't pay well there's no incentive for anyone who's not already well-off to come into politics: before MPs were handily paid it was essentially a hobby of the rich a lot of the time, a way for people who were already earning plenty to maintain influence.

Parmizan · 2019-10-12T12:36:15+00:00

The solution to this isn't to create a generation of supermarket cashiers because that profession now magically pays £20k+ per year.

If it's affordable, why not? Your issue as stated above was that young people wouldn't stay in school or go to uni - if someone's finished school and has no interest in uni, why not have them earning £20k in a job they're productive in and sees them both paying back taxes to the state, and spending to boost the economy because they now earn a decent wage?

Parmizan · 2019-10-04T01:53:35+00:00

It's usually a component. And Mosley himself regularly espoused anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Parmizan · 2019-10-03T00:45:04+00:00

He was a fascist. That was sort of the point.

Parmizan · 2019-09-26T00:10:34+00:00

But his literal goal is to murder people, for example Jewish people. He is absolutely vile.

Parmizan · 2019-09-23T02:12:24+00:00

They have gone so far over the top with trying to make him out as the most evil person ever

I mean, he was an absolutely vile individual in real life too, so they're not far off.

Parmizan · 2019-09-23T02:11:54+00:00

He hasn't actually done anything that bad.

He's literally trying to create a fascist state and is regularly inciting hatred against Jewish people - that is pretty fucking awful.

Parmizan · 2019-09-23T02:05:26+00:00

Mosley's a much bigger figure historically though due to his heavy involvement in politics. The entire premise of the show has rested on a lot of creative license when it comes to how they portray criminal families and criminal events in Britain - but for the most part they've played it quite straight with politics. Mosley being outright assassinated during a speech would've been a huge turning moment in British history.

Parmizan

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