The future of this country is eBay

 

We need to create a nation of eBay traders, costs to trade are next to nothing, tens of millions of users in the UK, the government and teachers should be drilling it into people to become eBay traders, same with DWP staff, they should be telling the unemployed to start an eBay business - buy a bit of stock, much as can afford even if its £100 worth, sell that, reinvest, sell that reinvest again, rinse and repeat.

Oh right, when I want to buy some food I'll look for it on eBay then. And when I need to go into town, I'll look for a bus journey on eBay. The same applies to train journeys to go further afield. And, of course, it's bound to be a great place to buy life assurance. Or electricity. Or gas. What planet are you on?

A large minority? Got any sources for that other than a Telegraph column?

The only sources Craig believes in are the ones he puts on his food. Presumably bought on eBay.

So you are basing your entire opinion of the British university system on the thoughts of a single American? Wow, I knew you were bone-headed but I didn't realise you were that bad. Besides, don't you think Jobs' success owed just a little bit to Jonathan Ive and his British degree in industrial design?

 

Ive is a great man, and engineering is one of the courses I did list as vital to this country and I would class industrial design under engineering

 

Ive certainly did his bit but Apple was already incredibly successful 2 decades before Ive joined them, Apple were doing amazing till Steve made the mistake of employing the head of Pepsi as CEO and this made Apple too corporate and obsessed with the bottom line as this guy knew nothing else, Steve was a products and user experience guy, the guy from Pepsi was a textbook bean counter and he put the brakes on a lot of Steve's innovation as it was too expensive, Innovation suffered and Apple suffered because of one guy being obsessed with the bottom line and nothing else.

 

The same guy forced Steve out

 

When Steve came back he reimposed his innovation and user experience culture and Apple thrived

 

Steve was a think outside the box innovator, the guy from Pepsi was an MBA corporatist with a successful uni education ;)

Other famous uni dropouts include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Roman Abramovich, all multi billionaires

Mark Zuckerburg wouldn't be a multi-billionair without going to university. The whole Facebook idea was formed and created at Harvard. While he may not have finished he's certainly not an example of Universities stifling creation. I can't speak beyond my own University experience but at Dundee they had and enterprise society thing that actually helped students with enterprising minds and ideas start up and work towards being a success.

 

You'll also actually find that there are probably more drug breakthroughs happening at Universities than at Pharmaceutical companies. Dundee has a world renowned Cancer Research Facility. My employer, the University of St Andrews has some incredible minds working on things that would blow your mind. You literally could not even image some of the things these incredible people are doing.

 

Universities are crucial to develop minds and there are far more people who lead companies and contribute trillions to society that have a university education.

Like it or not our 'rivals' in the next 20 years are going to be India. China, Brazil, Russia, Singapore, Thailand etc

 

They have their problems and at the moment are unequal socities but they are all emerging markets and if Britain doesn't lead the way in enterprise we risk being overtaken by those countries and slipping further and further back

Our rivals in what sense? Oh yes, granted, they'll have larger GDP than us. And I'm sure their factory workers slaving away for 16 hours a day would be producing some wonderful things. Overall though, I'd rather take a high technology knowledge and service economy with high living standards over one that is technically richer by sheer output but with shoddy living standards. I imagine you would too if you had to live in any of those places as an average worker for even a week.

Edited October 12, 201311 yr by Cassandra

Oh right, when I want to buy some food I'll look for it on eBay then. And when I need to go into town, I'll look for a bus journey on eBay. The same applies to train journeys to go further afield. And, of course, it's bound to be a great place to buy life assurance. Or electricity. Or gas. What planet are you on?

 

Of course those businesses will still exist :mellow:

 

I am not literally talking about 30m eBay traders :mellow:

 

And most of the gas, electricity and life assurance companies are foreign owned anyways

Of course those businesses will still exist :mellow:

 

I am not literally talking about 30m eBay traders :mellow:

 

And most of the gas, electricity and life assurance companies are foreign owned anyways

Yes, one of the great successes of privatisation. The power companies, like the rail companies, have been renationalised. By the French and Germans.

Yes, this speech was the first time in ages I've thought they have a chance of winning. Actual concrete proposals that are different to what the other parties are offering, rather than silly empty platitudes like "one nation Labour" or whatever. I'm just worried that some of the cowards at the top of the party will lose their nerve, make the party ditch these pledges and go into the next election and promising essentially nothing distinctive (I've already seen on Newsnight just before a "Labour-supporting" journalist say that promising to freeze energy prices will put "aspirational" voters off Labour -- because obviously, anyone who's aspirational wants lazy executives of big businesses who are already much wealthier than they themselves are pocketing millions in profits, right?), or by supporting things like the "bedroom tax" and driving away people who would consider voting Labour, in a futile attempt to impress people who would never consider voting Labour in a million years.

 

I've actually never thought Ed Miliband's personality was a big obstacle. He will always be very boring and geeky, and will never have the "celebrity" air that Blair, Cameron or even Clegg have, but that isn't even necessarily a bad thing since most people don't trust a word that politicians who are slick and "charismatic" say anyway.

 

Never mind. It seems they've lost their nerve already, if the "Labour promise to be tougher than the Tories on benefits" headlines are anything to go by. Still don't understand how they expect to win an election by alienating everyone who would consider voting for them, in an attempt to chase people who are never going to vote for them in 2015 no matter what. Not to mention that u-turning on any policy that they think is unpopular doesn't make them look like they're on the "centre-ground", it just makes them look cheap, cynical and untrustworthy. But oh well, as you were.

Edited October 13, 201311 yr by Danny

'In an attempt to chase people who are never going to vote for them in 2015 no matter what.'

 

Really? Labour's record on benefits/immigration is pretty much the number one thing people will bring up as something standing in the way of them voting Labour again, even past the economy. The polling figure there of 64% of Labour/Tory floaters backing the government's benefits cuts should indicate pretty much that there are people out there who would consider

 

I'd probably disagree strongly with whatever 'being tougher than the Tories on benefits' constituted (that said, I don't think it's an accident that there's no new policy or any new commitment announced in the interview for me to actually pick up and disagree with, hence I'm inclined to think it's just rhetoric), but saying it wouldn't have any electoral benefit at all is a pretty dodgy claim.

'In an attempt to chase people who are never going to vote for them in 2015 no matter what.'

 

Really? Labour's record on benefits/immigration is pretty much the number one thing people will bring up as something standing in the way of them voting Labour again, even past the economy. The polling figure there of 64% of Labour/Tory floaters backing the government's benefits cuts should indicate pretty much that there are people out there who would consider

 

I'd probably disagree strongly with whatever 'being tougher than the Tories on benefits' constituted (that said, I don't think it's an accident that there's no new policy or any new commitment announced in the interview for me to actually pick up and disagree with, hence I'm inclined to think it's just rhetoric), but saying it wouldn't have any electoral benefit at all is a pretty dodgy claim.

 

But you're basing this on the assumption that immigrant/benefit-bashers would actually believe claims that Labour would be "tough" anyway. They almost certainly won't; the perception that they're "soft" on benefits and immigrants is too entrenched among certain groups for it to be changed at this point, no matter who the Labour leader is or no matter what they say. So very few people who say "Labour is too soft on benefits and immigration" will be won over, far too few to offset the benefit-claimants and immigrants who will be insulted by themselves being demonised (and pre-empting the "there's no risk of them not voting Labour because they have nowhere else to go": that is patently not true in the age of half the country not voting in elections). Alienating huge swathes of your own voters is simply a TERRIBLE political strategy.

 

And it doesn't even really matter if there's no policy behind the "we'll be tougher than the Tories on welfare" talk, because tbh in some ways the anti-welfare rhetoric is in some ways more insulting than the policies themselves. The talk from the media and the government (and now Labour, apparently) is stoking huge public resentment against people on benefits (and, ironically, actually making it less likely for many of them to ever get into work, since many people on benefits have mental health problems and being told they're a waste of space only crushes their self-esteem further and makes it even harder for them to have the motivation to get out of bed and trying to make something of themselves) and Labour who are supposed to stand up for the neediest should be playing no part in it.

I don't really believe there are many ways any perception can be too entrenched for anything to be done about it. You could've said the same about Labour on perceptions of economic competence in the 1980s/early 1990s, but they still managed to turn that around by the time of the election (even if the Tories did still occasionally lead in the lead-up to 1997 on the IPSOS MORI questions of economic competence, but it was pretty even between the two).

 

That said, I don't think I'd be too happy to see whatever would turn around such an entrenched view on Labour with regards to welfare. Short of taking away benefits from people after 2 years full stop, I can't think of many policies that could possibly go further than how strict things are already. Possibly things like limiting child benefit after a certain number of children, but not enacting it retrospectively.

I don't really believe there are many ways any perception can be too entrenched for anything to be done about it. You could've said the same about Labour on perceptions of economic competence in the 1980s/early 1990s, but they still managed to turn that around by the time of the election (even if the Tories did still occasionally lead in the lead-up to 1997 on the IPSOS MORI questions of economic competence, but it was pretty even between the two).

 

The crucial difference is that, in the 1990s, people were more likely to believe what politicians said. At this point though, if a politician says something which seems to go so against what a particular person thinks about a party, they'll simply assume the politician is lying -- and a large reason for that distrust is because of the Blair/New Labour approach of disowning any policy position which isn't immediately popular - which despite it's initial huge success, in the long term only fed the perception that Labour was a bunch of power-hungry empty suits who'd ditch any principles they had to get in government, a perception which things like this risk continuing to feed.

 

I don't really think what Labour did in the 1990s in accepting free markets is really comparable to what's going on right now anyway: in the 1990s, while the policies they were supporting were questionable, they didn't (in themselves) hurt people. This time, they are insulting and threatening to inflict real pain on (and thus alienating) sections of society. As I think I've said before, Germany shows why the idea that left-wing parties gain "credibility" by giving up their traditional stances and screwing over their traditional supporters, is total nonsense: since the Social Democrats there brought in benefit cuts and redundancies for industrial workers in the early 00s (even more radical/right-wing than anything New Labour did), they have been getting hammered at every election, because loads of their traditional supporters were driven either to more radical left-wing parties or to simply stay at home, while they didn't gain any conservative voters to compensate either.

Edited October 13, 201311 yr by Danny

The crucial difference is that, in the 1990s, people were more likely to believe what politicians said. At this point though, if a politician says something which seems to go so against what a particular person thinks about a party, they'll simply assume the politician is lying -- and a large reason for that distrust is because of the Blair/New Labour approach of disowning any policy position which isn't immediately popular - which despite it's initial huge success, in the long term only fed the perception that Labour was a bunch of power-hungry empty suits who'd ditch any principles they had to get in government, a perception which things like this risk continuing to feed.

 

I don't really think what Labour did in the 1990s in accepting free markets is really comparable to what's going on right now anyway: in the 1990s, while the policies they were supporting were questionable, they didn't (in themselves) hurt people. This time, they are insulting and threatening to inflict real pain on (and thus alienating) sections of society. As I think I've said before, Germany shows why the idea that left-wing parties gain "credibility" by giving up their traditional stances and screwing over their traditional supporters, is total nonsense: since the Social Democrats there brought in benefit cuts and redundancies for industrial workers in the early 00s (even more radical/right-wing than anything New Labour did), they have been getting hammered at every election, because loads of their traditional supporters were driven either to more radical left-wing parties or to simply stay at home, while they didn't gain any conservative voters to compensate either.

But in Germany the electoral system means that a change in voting allegiance means something. Germans switching from the SPD to Die Linke helped to elect people to parliament. If Labour voters switch to a more left wing alternative, that is more likely to help the Tories.

The crucial difference is that, in the 1990s, people were more likely to believe what politicians said. At this point though, if a politician says something which seems to go so against what a particular person thinks about a party, they'll simply assume the politician is lying -- and a large reason for that distrust is because of the Blair/New Labour approach of disowning any policy position which isn't immediately popular - which despite it's initial huge success, in the long term only fed the perception that Labour was a bunch of power-hungry empty suits who'd ditch any principles they had to get in government, a perception which things like this risk continuing to feed.

 

I don't really think what Labour did in the 1990s in accepting free markets is really comparable to what's going on right now anyway: in the 1990s, while the policies they were supporting were questionable, they didn't (in themselves) hurt people. This time, they are insulting and threatening to inflict real pain on (and thus alienating) sections of society. As I think I've said before, Germany shows why the idea that left-wing parties gain "credibility" by giving up their traditional stances and screwing over their traditional supporters, is total nonsense: since the Social Democrats there brought in benefit cuts and redundancies for industrial workers in the early 00s (even more radical/right-wing than anything New Labour did), they have been getting hammered at every election, because loads of their traditional supporters were driven either to more radical left-wing parties or to simply stay at home, while they didn't gain any conservative voters to compensate either.

The difference being that the Germans have a reasonably centrist centre-right party that is still a credible option to most demographics in most areas of the country, so the SPD have their work cut out taking any votes away from them.

 

I personally reckon that Reeves' comments were just posturing and the lack of any real policies was indicative. I don't like the rhetoric but her predecessor went strangely quiet after saying similar things so I'm not too worried yet.

But in Germany the electoral system means that a change in voting allegiance means something. Germans switching from the SPD to Die Linke helped to elect people to parliament. If Labour voters switch to a more left wing alternative, that is more likely to help the Tories.

 

But the issue is whether these voters will care about helping the Tories if they consider a Labour government to be almost as nasty as them anyway.

 

I don't expect some radical left-wing party to surge as soon as 2015 (because there isn't one well-positioned right now - the Greens are probably seen as too middle-class to get the kind of votes I'm talking about, and the Respect Party are going nowhere) but if Labour continues their lines of attack on benefits and to a lesser extent immigration then I definitely think there's a risk of huge numbers of those people not voting at all.

Excellent article on why their anti-welfare rhetoric is disastrous both morally and politically: http://labourlist.org/2013/10/18-months-of...y-in-1-article/

Yet again Miliband is shown up as being a cynical opportunist with no meaningful policies of his own

 

At the tory conference IDS said he will stop benefits for the under 25's

 

What do labour announce today? that they are going to stop benefits for the under 25's, pathetic, even if the policy does have some merits it just shows labour as copycats as opposed to a party of principle setting the agendas

 

 

 

Yet again Miliband is shown up as being a cynical opportunist with no meaningful policies of his own

 

At the tory conference IDS said he will stop benefits for the under 25's

 

What do labour announce today? that they are going to stop benefits for the under 25's, pathetic, even if the policy does have some merits it just shows labour as copycats as opposed to a party of principle setting the agendas

Do your research, it's been completely denied by the party.