This comes from the Guardian this morning and says better than I could what I intended to put in a blog:
To describe the Tories as con-artists is to be too kind.
They know workplace rights are now effectively unenforceable for most people because of fees they have imposed and then they talk about supposedly extending those rights whilst leaving all the impediments in place.
I wish people would get very angry.
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Any political journalists: Please asks Tories?
They won’t ask them -as usual Corbyn’s ‘fictitious’ funding issues will be the focus.
The media is beyond contempt.
This was published by the media
how much broad coverage will it get? Already the Grauniad is buying into the meme of the Tories being the new’workers’ party.’ (see: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/15/are-tories-workers-party-labour-polling-figures-suggest-they-are)
By ‘media’ I meant the mainstream, of course, not some nook and cranny.
The interview with Damian Green on Today this morning was comical. Green claimed that workers would have a voice on the board because they could speak to someone on the board.
When John Humphrys pressed him, “But they are not actually on the board, are they?” he kept repeating how they would have a voice. I do wonder how long it is possible to get away with such sophistry and broken promises.
My thought he was set up to look like the sacrificial idiot
I thought it so gracious that he would encourage the board to talk to workers
There again, most probably haven’t
I don’t believe Green needs any setting up to look like an idiot.
I am very angry!
Unfortunately, this is now UK politics 2017. The two words that sum it up are ‘Dishonesty and Stupidity’.
A Tory party that will say anything to get the votes of a guillible electorate. Dishonest. And a divided opposition that should have stopped this election being called at all. Stupid.
Yes can anyone suggest a good reason why Labour M.P.s voted for a snap election? Talk about Turkeys voting for Christmas!
Eric, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t JC impose a 3 line whip on them to do so? Much as I like JC for trying to pull politics to the left to counter-balance the extent to which it’s gone so far right, it was a huge mistake to let May get away with her piece of cynical political opportunism.
Mind you, if the polls are correct, turkeys voting for Christmas is exactly what a substantial proportion of the electorate are as well.
Sorry Richard a large number of the British people prefer to have periodic temper tantrums and vote into office political parties who largely fail to act in their best interests and the politicians of these parties prefer the deceitful ideas and ideology of the socioeconomic elite ruling the country. The temper tantrums substitute for having to spend energy thinking through how economic and monetary systems actually work in today’s world. The British have increasingly become a nation of immature young children over the last forty odd decades. Voting for Austerity and Brexit is the culmination of this process.
Despite all the evidence o keepy faith on people
‘The British have increasingly become a nation of immature young children over the last forty odd decades.’
There is a lot of truth in that observation -I suspect the public will have to drink this stuff down to the bitter dregs before they realise how much they have been groomed and manipulated by shysters.
As Richard says, we need to maintain faith in people and there are plenty of fine young people questioning the legacy of their parents and Labour is showing some improvement in the polls even though it might not translate into seats -the resistance to the rentiers will go on.
‘The British have increasingly become a nation of immature young children over the last forty odd decades (years, surely?).’
That’s how my Mum has always regarded any Trade Unionist or anyone to the left of Margaret Thatcher.
I hate to tell you your mum was wrong
But I hope you can come to terms with it
Same issue with the Tories panicky coughing up of some supposed answer to the housing crisis by building homes to sell in 15 years to reinvest money on the assumption that the asset bubble continues.
Filthy Fallon (Mr.LOBO man) presenting this on the BBC sounded like another Thatcherian promise of the ‘home owning nation’ jive of the 80’s whilst the opposite happens as people are suckered into more debt.
The Tories: xth hand car salespeople on steroids.
I see vey little anger.
All I see after 7 years of austerity is hope in people.
And that is what these Tories are callously exploiting.
Typical Tory triangulation and it sucks that the electorate will believe it..
This dropped through the e-mail box – it shows the reality of a population manipulated & a population that does not use the evidence of its own eyes:
starts:
“The tragedy of the right’s manipulation of poverty and lack of affordable housing. Yesterday I canvassed Bexhill Road in Woodingdean – which is in an impoverished road of social housing. The children of the residents can not get social housing, as there is almost no available social housing available in Brighton, and they can not afford private rented accommodation, or to get a mortgage. One of the people in the road told me they were voting Tory as the council houses in their road were full of EU migrants and that was what was stopping her children get housing. In the 100s of people we canvassed there I met NO European people at all (although EU nationals are not on the electoral roll); but we canvassed nearly every house – and every person I met was White British. Looking through the electoral roll on the road group sheet there were probably less than 2% of people who had obviously non-British names; and they were not Europeans. The Tories have cleverly persuaded people that the lack of affordable homes and low incomes has got nothing to their management of the economy where the rich thrive and the poor suffer; no, it’s all the cause of migration. That is clearly not the case in this part of Brighton; but 75% of the impoverished council house residents we canvassed were voting Tory. Compare this to the 90% Labour response I got in an area of the Town where most of the residents are earning-enough (but completely disillusioned) health and education workers in private housing.”
ends.
Would it be worthwhile, do you think, making up a list of verifiable statistics (and quote the source, such as the electoral register) that show the percentage of non-immigrant people who inhabit that particular estate? If you could? Then deliver the fact sheet to their door? Just a thought. They need to be shaken loose from their belief in false ‘facts.’
‘Hens in the hen house’ syndrome Mike. When a higher status hen pecks another, that other hen then turns on a hen of lower status than itself, rather than fight back against it’s aggressor.
We’ve seen this before in other right wing societies in history, often accompanied by racism. The rural poor in the Deep South turning on black people as someone of even lower status than themselves. Ditto apartheid S.Africa.
The anger and bitterness caused by the right’s own policies are being used by the nationalist right to promote their own agenda, just as in 1930’s Germany.
The British political right really are the absolute scum of the earth, aren’t they?
Yes & if you want to see them red in tooth & claw Euractiv is quite a good site – much more fun than the Daily Vermingraph. I wonder where it is all leading to.
The road to hell is paved with Tory votes
Apologies for the long post.
I’ve been doing some research on the effect of introducing fees for employment tribunals, and I’m genuinely shocked by what I’ve found. The information is from the link below.
https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/review-of-fees-in-employment-tribunals/supporting_documents/Reviewofintroductionoffeesinemploymenttribunals.pdf
Since the introduction of fees,the claim rate has fallen by around 60%. Let’s start by saying that if the idea is to reduce nuisance claims then it would be critical to show that success rates (in favour of the claimant) have substantially risen, showing that you’ve weeded out the bad cases. They haven’t. Success rates have actually fallen. That means there is no evidence that only people with weak cases are being put off. The report concedes:
“Overall, we have concluded that there has not been a significant change in the outcomes of claims following the introduction of fees. ”
The report is from the ministry of justice. There are some absolute belters in there.
This is what they say about so called ‘poor people’ who tell them that the reason they didn’t bring a case is that they allegedly ‘can’t afford it’:
“We acknowledge that the Acas evaluation of the early conciliation service has identified a group (which we estimate to be between 3,000 and 8,000 people) who were unable to resolve their disputes through conciliation, but who did not go on to issue proceedings because they said that they could not afford to pay. We do not believe, however, that this necessarily means that those people could not realistically afford to pay the fee. It may mean, for example,
ï‚· that paying the fee might involve having to reduce other areas of non-essential spending;
In other words, those people were wrong to say they couldn’t afford the fees, they could just have bought less other stuff.
Now, on discrimination cases:
“It is clear that fees have discouraged some people from bringing ET claims, including discrimination claims, but we have concluded that this has been broadly a positive outcome to the extent that it has helped a significant proportion of people to avoid the ETs by resolving their disputes through conciliation. There is no conclusive evidence that ET fees have prevented people from bringing claims. ”
So, even though people told them they weren’t pursuing a discrimination case because they couldn’t afford the fees, the MoJ doesn’t believe them and says the reduction in cases is ‘broadly positive’. Presumably not to those who have been sexually or racially discriminated against, of course.
And the scale of the fees generated? A massive £9m. Regardless of which party you support, I think we could all agree on the importance of access to justice. It makes me furious.
Might this be shared more widely?
Maybe on Progressive Pulse?
We’d be delighted to receive an article on the subject for posting on Progressive Pulse!
Knocking on doors I’m finding pensioners are blaming Corbyn for pushing the pension age forward.
Young people are also blaming him for not being able to afford to buy their own home
People out of work say it is his fault they cannot find proper work.
Etc., etc., etc.
Simple explanations about who has been in Government for the last 7 years makes them determined to vote labour
I’m angry
I’m angry at the mass media for making people think thatCorbyn is a fool and everything wrong in life is Corbyns fault.
Upon being alerted that the people were suffering due to widespread employment abuses Theresa May then proclaimed “let them eat employment rights”.
Does no-one who has posted here have access to the Labour Party at national level? Surely the Labour Party could exploit this issue to disabuse voters of the Tory propaganda on employment rights and make Mrs May look untrustworthy.
At the very least Andrew Marr, the BBC, Channel 4 et al could raise the question? How can the Conservatives offer new workers rights, when the fees to exercise their rights would prohibit them from so doing?
Mrs May seems to have set up herslf as the sole arbiter of Conservative values, vote Conservative and you are voting for me – strong and secure leadership. So why are the Labour Party not disabusing voters? Young people seem to have got the message, the rest of us need to get onboard.
Mrs May, despite her protestations to the opposite, will only act in the best interests of her party and the money that funds her party. The rest is spin. We should be angry. The last thing we should be is disempowered. While we have the present voting system, we need to oppose this government and even if the Labour opposition is still finding new feet, I am starting to realise we should vote for them. The real opposition still have a voice. The real opposition are our registered voters, and we can act to bring down, or hobble, this “austere” government.