Big Boris, Our Prime Minister

[St.Ricky]

2 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

I know you think you are being clever here but you are turning into the guy who was sinbinned a while back.

However, if you are bored and want to continue, why don't you help us all out by explaining why an economic approach in New Zealand would work in Scotland. You could then explain which other countries have adopted this method and if the answer is zero explain why. Finally, why is it that every country has its own system if solving the problem is so easy and obvious as the one you've asked us to comment on.

That way you'll save us all from wasting our time.

Thank you young sir. Your opinion is always welcome but I will decline your invitation but leave it open to the man from the east to enlighten you. As for wasting your time. Suggest you put me on ignore. 

Edited January 5, 2020 by St.Ricky

[Guest TPAFKATS]

For the love of god man stop f**king moaning.
If you want to improve your life get out and do it. Nobody is stopping you and absolutely nobody will do it for you.
Quit making excuses for yourself and others and take control of your own life to whatever extent that is possible.
Or don't. It's your choice.
Just stop f**king moaning and blaming others for things you could fix yourself with a bit of effort.
Sucking  the life out of everything is optional you know.
We'll all be dead soon enough. The clock is ticking.....

Are you OK oaky?

[Cornwall_Saint]

Link

Shock horror, BoJo the clown defends the US clown and supports the assassination of the man who masterminded the downfall of ISIS in Syria.

[Bud the Baker]

On 1/2/2020 at 5:50 PM, oaksoft said:

What distribution of wealth? You reckon that if rich people were abolished that their wealth would be properly redistributed in any meaningful way? You can't be this naive. Can you?

I am also still waiting for a few examples of major life changing innovations which made it to the market without the help of rich individuals. Nobody has stopped governments or the average man over the last few hundred years so where are all these marvellous government and average man achievements? Have they been tucked in a secret vault just waiting for rich men to be abolished before announcing a stream of innovations to thumping house music and a snazzy fireworks show?

I hate to break this to you but our entire way of life has been created by a tiny handful of individuals backed by private wealth and that will never ever change. There is absolutely no evidence of governments or the average man ever stepping up. It would be like expecting toothpaste to miraculously go back into the tube or perfume to return to the bottle once sprayed. You can't prove it won't do it but the likelihood is so small that we are confident enough to call it a scientific Law.

 

Can you name any major life changing innovations that made it to the market without "piggybacking" on the infrastructure provided by the state? Those who benefit most from this piggybacking should contribute back proportionately in taxes - it's called fairness..

[oaksoft]

1 hour ago, Bud the Baker said:

Can you name any major life changing innovations that made it to the market without "piggybacking" on the infrastructure provided by the state? Those who benefit most from this piggybacking should contribute back proportionately in taxes - it's called fairness..

Not off the top of my head but I wasn't arguing against that so I'm not sure of the relevance of your point.

Expecting fairness in life is both naive and simplistic. Life isn't fair and never will be. People should plan accordingly. A good example is my friend phoning me up and asking me to do some business for him. Is it "fair" that nobody else got a chance to provide that service? Technically no but there is 't the slightest chance of me losing one ounce of sleep over it and neither I should,. This "unfairness" happens all over the world every day. It's part of life.

If the unfairness you are talking about relates to tax paid by individuals then unless you have access to the personal tax returns of our richest people then you have no more of an idea of what they pay than anyone else. You can't in good faith make a judgement about whether they are paying a fair amount or not for the use of state provided services.

Edited January 6, 2020 by oaksoft

[antrin]

14 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Not off the top of my head but I wasn't arguing against that so I'm not sure of the relevance of your point.

Expecting fairness in life is both naive and simplistic. Life isn't fair and never will be. People should plan accordingly. A good example is my friend phoning me up and asking me to do some business for him. Is it "fair" that nobody else got a chance to provide that service? Technically no but there is 't the slightest chance of me losing one ounce of sleep over it and neither I should,. This "unfairness" happens all over the world every day. It's part of life.

If the unfairness you are talking about relates to tax paid by individuals then unless you have access to the personal tax returns of our richest people then you have no more of an idea of what they pay than anyone else. You can't in good faith make a judgement about whether they are paying a fair amount or not for the use of state provided services.

Just not true.

There are many avenues open to establish who “earns” what and how much tax is paid.  Published accounts etc.  The richest people are companies: PAYE is not for them.  

Media outlets use them - not often enough- when they want to pillory a person.

 

”naive and simplistic” as you said...
 

[Bud the Baker]

19 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Not off the top of my head but I wasn't arguing against that so I'm not sure of the relevance of your point.

Expecting fairness in life is both naive and simplistic. Life isn't fair and never will be. People should plan accordingly. A good example is my friend phoning me up and asking me to do some business for him. Is it "fair" that nobody else got a chance to provide that service? Technically no but there is 't the slightest chance of me losing one ounce of sleep over it and neither I should,. This "unfairness" happens all over the world every day. It's part of life.

If the unfairness you are talking about relates to tax paid by individuals then unless you have access to the personal tax returns of our richest people then you have no more of an idea of what they pay than anyone else. You can't in good faith make a judgement about whether they are paying a fair amount or not for the use of state provided services.

Well I think it's relevant to your claim that

Quote

"What distribution of wealth? You reckon that if rich people were abolished that their wealth would be properly redistributed in any meaningful way? You can't be this naive. Can you?"

For 30 years after the end of WW2 the idea that wealth should be redistributed was the dominant economic philosophy in Western Europe - even in the UK the Tories accepted this espousing "one nation Conservatism" until the Oil Crisis & Stagflation in the mid-70's when Keith Joseph & Margaret Thatcher changed the direction of the party. We then saw a more deregulated economy (even under New Labour ) which eventually led us to the Financial Crisis in 2008 - the subsequent years with the populist right blaming the EU & migrants have led to the ugly economic & political situation we have today.

Nobody goes off into the wilderness on their lonesome to discover diamonds/gold anymore - all today's billionaires make their money through being more savvy about spotting opportunities that society provides but these opportunities only exist due to "standing on the shoulders of giants" and my opinion remains that proportional taxation of this wealth is fair. As @antrin says nowadays "the richest people are companies" so your argument that I don't have the personal details of the people concerned is disingenuous.

*************************

Going off at a tangent here but there's a Phillip K. Dick short story from the '50s (yes the 1950s) where the earth's elite bugger off to Mars after destroying the earth's ecology only to discover on arriving in Mars that we had flit from there originally after screwing up there first! My point is we're all in this together and need a Green/Left alliance to manage the planets resources "for the many, not the few" and that's not going to happen while Boris & his newfound friends are in power.

 

[Cornwall_Saint]

Ideal time to post this as the conversation is about wealth and fairness...

Top FTSE bosses earn the average yearly wage in three days

[shull]

2 hours ago, Cornwall_Saint said:

Ideal time to post this as the conversation is about wealth and fairness...

Top FTSE bosses earn the average yearly wage in three days

Well done them. Deserve every penny. 

I deserve every penny  I make also . Not as much as many others, but that's down to me and nobody else.  

[shull]

Frances O'Grady 

Lazy, jealous and envious fandan. 

Lefty arsehole. 

[faraway saint]

I see Boris has made the US aware NOT to attempt to bomb Iranian cultural sites.

Am I ahead of the game as no one else has posted this? 

[shull]

7 hours ago, Cornwall_Saint said:

Ideal time to post this as the conversation is about wealth and fairness...

Top FTSE bosses earn the average yearly wage in three days

 

[oaksoft]

10 hours ago, Bud the Baker said:

Well I think it's relevant to your claim that

For 30 years after the end of WW2 the idea that wealth should be redistributed was the dominant economic philosophy in Western Europe - even in the UK the Tories accepted this espousing "one nation Conservatism" until the Oil Crisis & Stagflation in the mid-70's when Keith Joseph & Margaret Thatcher changed the direction of the party. We then saw a more deregulated economy (even under New Labour ) which eventually led us to the Financial Crisis in 2008 - the subsequent years with the populist right blaming the EU & migrants have led to the ugly economic & political situation we have today.

Nobody goes off into the wilderness on their lonesome to discover diamonds/gold anymore - all today's billionaires make their money through being more savvy about spotting opportunities that society provides but these opportunities only exist due to "standing on the shoulders of giants" and my opinion remains that proportional taxation of this wealth is fair. As @antrin says nowadays "the richest people are companies" so your argument that I don't have the personal details of the people concerned is disingenuous.

 

 

I was certainly talking about "rich people" and how they are at the heart of bringing ideas to the market where governments (quite rightly) and average individuals have shown no ability to do that. The reason I brought that up is because like it or not if we get rid of rich people we have seen no historical evidence that we can be confident that governments and/or average joe will pick up the economic slack. Be careful what you wish for was the point of my argument to one poster. There's positives and negatives in everything, nothing is black and white was a second point I was trying to make.

Since then you and now antrim have tried to switch the goalposts twice. Once to make this about "don't rich people use state assets"? which I have never argued against and fail to see the significance of and then secondly to attempt to move the definition of "rich people" from people to companies. It's pretty clear that the intention of both of you is to simply bring this back to a blanket attack the rich (companies or people) with no appreciation of any positives that they bring. Quite happy to debate stuff but I'm not really interested in the direction this is taking so I'll probably withdraw at this point for the moment.

Edited January 6, 2020 by oaksoft

[Cornwall_Saint]

2 hours ago, shull said:

 

I chucked my union membership last year. The company I used to work for were enforcing contract changes that were unacceptable. The union in question pretty much knew what was needed to force the company into giving in, but never opted to take the steps necessary.

I only work for the company on a seasonal basis now and have moved onto pastures new (into a job you can highly relate to), and as it happens the union membership would be near useless anyway. However, if I was still unfortunate enough to still be at the previous company, I would still have cancelled the union membership after the contract changes came into force.

[Guest TPAFKATS]

Surprised it took so long

I was certainly talking about "rich people" and how they are at the heart of bringing ideas to the market where governments (quite rightly) and average individuals have shown no ability to do that. The reason I brought that up is because like it or not if we get rid of rich people we have seen no historical evidence that we can be confident that governments and/or average joe will pick up the economic slack. Be careful what you wish for was the point of my argument to one poster. There's positives and negatives in everything, nothing is black and white was a second point I was trying to make.
Since then you and now antrim have tried to switch the goalposts twice. Once to make this about "don't rich people use state assets"? which I have never argued against and fail to see the significance of and then secondly to attempt to move the definition of "rich people" from people to companies. It's pretty clear that the intention of both of you is to simply bring this back to a blanket attack the rich (companies or people) with no appreciation of any positives that they bring. Quite happy to debate stuff but I'm not really interested in the direction this is taking so I'll probably withdraw at this point for the moment.

[oaksoft]

1 minute ago, Cornwall_Saint said:

I chucked my union membership last year. The company I used to work for were enforcing contract changes that were unacceptable. The union in question pretty much knew what was needed to force the company into giving in, but never opted to take the steps necessary.

I only work for the company on a seasonal basis now and have moved onto pastures new (into a job you can highly relate to), and as it happens the union membership would be near useless anyway. However, if I was still unfortunate enough to still be at the previous company, I would still have cancelled the union membership after the contract changes came into force.

Two things of interest.

Firstly, unions are absolutely useless. It's not their fault. If a company brings in new contracts which don't break the law there is absolutely nothing a union can practically do about it. Striking really isn't an option anymore in this day and age because it doesn't appear to work.

Secondly, you quoted shull's post which I wouldn't normally see but the tweet he posted is interesting. They only chose to include those union bosses with salaries over £100k presumably to make the results look as bad as possible rather than letting the data talk for itself. What happens when salaries of union bosses under £100k are included? I bet the average drops like a stone. They don't mention the spread of salaries in that bracket either so quoting an average is useless. They also mention "total remuneration" but don't say what that includes. The whole thing might have a valid point to make but not in those statistics. That is as clear a case of abuse of statistics as I can think of. As such the entire thing is rendered meaningless.

[oaksoft]

1 minute ago, TPAFKATS said:

Surprised it took so long

Bud, discussing anything with people like you just sucks the life out of everything.

Neither of us wins when that happens so you might want to ditch the smug pish.

Edited January 6, 2020 by oaksoft

[Guest TPAFKATS]

Bud, discussing anything with people like you just sucks the life out of everything.
Neither of us wins when that happens so you might want to ditch the smug pish.

"People like you "
Your debating and influencing skills know no bounds

[St.Ricky]

13 hours ago, oaksoft said:

Not off the top of my head but I wasn't arguing against that so I'm not sure of the relevance of your point.

Expecting fairness in life is both naive and simplistic. Life isn't fair and never will be. People should plan accordingly. A good example is my friend phoning me up and asking me to do some business for him. Is it "fair" that nobody else got a chance to provide that service? Technically no but there is 't the slightest chance of me losing one ounce of sleep over it and neither I should,. This "unfairness" happens all over the world every day. It's part of life.

If the unfairness you are talking about relates to tax paid by individuals then unless you have access to the personal tax returns of our richest people then you have no more of an idea of what they pay than anyone else. You can't in good faith make a judgement about whether they are paying a fair amount or not for the use of state provided services.

Bud's suggestion is supported the book Fifth Risk. Lays the damage he is doing in the public sector research capability. Shredding it. 

[shull]

 

[oaksoft]

6 hours ago, St.Ricky said:

Bud's suggestion is supported the book Fifth Risk. Lays the damage he is doing in the public sector research capability. Shredding it. 

Which suggestion? Not sure what you mean by "supported by". This is a book, not peer-reviewed research. Is there something special about this author's opinion?

Your last two sentences make no sense. Were you on the wine last night? 

Edited January 7, 2020 by oaksoft

[oaksoft]

7 hours ago, TPAFKATS said:

"People like you "
Your debating and influencing skills know no bounds

I'm not trying to influence you or anyone else. I'm merely saying it as I see it.

You don't debate in good faith.

You enter a discussion with a fixed opinion and you direct everything towards that. There's no attempt to share views and agree or disagree on things because you are only interested in talking rather than listening. You enter a debate to "win" the debate rather than share and explore ideas.

It's the most common form of "debate" and for those of us who genuinely like to hear a range of views it is demoralising, utterly negative and it sucks the energy out of everything, Have a look at the likes of antrim for further examples. Personally I'm not interested in any of it. Failing that you could listen to any politician "debating". No wonder people have switched off from political debates.

"People like you" is an appropriate phrase here.

Edited January 7, 2020 by oaksoft

[St.Ricky]

1 hour ago, oaksoft said:

Which suggestion? Not sure what you mean by "supported by". This is a book, not peer-reviewed research. Is there something special about this author's opinion?

Your last two sentences make no sense. Were you on the wine last night? 

Ah dear. I forgot that you are a sequential thinker with s need to join the dots. Should you wish to form your own opinion then I suggest you read reviews of the book. 

[Cornwall_Saint]

9 hours ago, oaksoft said:

Two things of interest.

Firstly, unions are absolutely useless. It's not their fault. If a company brings in new contracts which don't break the law there is absolutely nothing a union can practically do about it. Striking really isn't an option anymore in this day and age because it doesn't appear to work.

Secondly, you quoted shull's post which I wouldn't normally see but the tweet he posted is interesting. They only chose to include those union bosses with salaries over £100k presumably to make the results look as bad as possible rather than letting the data talk for itself. What happens when salaries of union bosses under £100k are included? I bet the average drops like a stone. They don't mention the spread of salaries in that bracket either so quoting an average is useless. They also mention "total remuneration" but don't say what that includes. The whole thing might have a valid point to make but not in those statistics. That is as clear a case of abuse of statistics as I can think of. As such the entire thing is rendered meaningless.

I wouldn’t say the unions are 100% useless. In the past they had helped me out a couple of times. One occasion seen the company aim to shift me department without any real warning, and as a result breached contract. After days of arguing with management over it (who couldn’t seem to give me a valid reason for the move) I contacted the union and the company immediately backed down. The other occasion involved myself facing disciplinary proceedings, to which the union aided me well and helped me through the case. 
 

Unfortunately their lack of action over the recent situation was enough to make me cancel my membership. Indeed the incoming contracts were a big reason into my decision to move on and escape (I’m still there on a seasonal basis but no longer rely on it).

Your second point is spot on.

[Guest TPAFKATS]

I'm not trying to influence you or anyone else. I'm merely saying it as I see it.
You don't debate in good faith.
You enter a discussion with a fixed opinion and you direct everything towards that. There's no attempt to share views and agree or disagree on things because you are only interested in talking rather than listening. You enter a debate to "win" the debate rather than share and explore ideas.
It's the most common form of "debate" and for those of us who genuinely like to hear a range of views it is demoralising, utterly negative and it sucks the energy out of everything, Have a look at the likes of antrim for further examples. Personally I'm not interested in any of it. Failing that you could listen to any politician "debating". No wonder people have switched off from political debates.
"People like you" is an appropriate phrase here.

The lack of self awareness in your post is astonishing.
You've basically just described yourself but in your mind it's anyone who doesn't agree with you.
Every thread you enter into on here involves you telling everyone you are right.
I'm still trying to comprehend the meltdown reply you had to me when I mentioned trickle down economics and billionaires. It bore absolutely no relevance to my post but I suppose that's my fault as well [emoji849]