They seem to forget the good things his Government did such as introducing the minimum wage. :)

Blair's first term was generally very good. The defining moment was the September 11 attacks. After that things got steadily worse. It wasn't just the invasion of Iraq, it was the way they used the threat of a terrorist attack to introduce all sorts of illiberal laws.

Labour have hired David Axelrod, one of the main masterminds behind Obama's election campaigns:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27062278

 

Very interesting move, and gives me SLIGHT cause for optimism since the Obama campaigns have been much more left-wing than any of the unprincipled guff Labour have come out with of late. The 2012 Obama campaign was in some ways even more impressive than the 2008 one, in that they rejected the cosy establishment consensus that cutting the deficit was the most important thing, "re-framed" what the defining issues were, and managed to change people's minds and convince them that the deficit wasn't that important at all (there was a sharp drop in US opinion polls between mid-2011 at the height of Tea Party insanity compared to late 2012 on the question of how big a priority people thought the deficit was). That's definitely something Labour will have to do. And the Obama campaigns also rejected the Blair/Clinton-esque cartoonish stereotype of the typical "aspirational" middle-class voter, and recognised that even the moderately affluent are utterly disgusted at fat cats thinking they don't have to pay any tax and big businesses who think they deserve to call the shots on everything that matters to the country.

 

Maybe Labour want to win this election after all.

Ironic given the Obama administration has been more right wing than a Miliband government ever would be.

The difference being that a) it's far easier to define the conversation when you're the incumbent, and b) the Republicans had just spent eight years running up record deficits and saying they didn't matter, so it wasn't an attack they could use in '08 and one that rang false in '12. Plus, the US is in a bit of a unique position re: deficits anyway - having the world's reserve currency essentially safeguards them from people ever losing confidence in them, regardless of how gargantuan their debts get. Not that they aren't buggered if that state of play ever changes though...

New constituency poll puts UKIP on course to win in Eastleigh in the general election: they're on 32%, with the Tories on 28% and the Lib Dems on 27%. (This was the seat which the Lib Dems won in a by-election last year, with UKIP a closeish second.)

 

This comes after another poll a few weeks ago which put UKIP just 2% off winning in Folkestone in Kent.

Edited April 19, 201411 yr by Danny

New constituency poll puts UKIP on course to win in Eastleigh in the general election: they're on 32%, with the Tories on 28% and the Lib Dems on 27%. (This was the seat which the Lib Dems won in a by-election last year, with UKIP a closeish second.)

 

This comes after another poll a few weeks ago which put UKIP just 2% off winning in Folkestone in Kent.

 

 

Farage should stand in Eastleigh then!

Farage should stand in Eastleigh then!

 

I think he said he's been holding off choosing a seat so far because he wants to see if there's any by-elections in UKIP-friendly territory that come up (there was a suggestion that that dodgy Lib Dem MP in Portsmouth might stand down, and Portsmouth is the type of place where UKIP typically have been doing well). But yeah, if no by-elections come up then he'll probably go for Eastleigh next year.

Edited April 19, 201411 yr by Danny

Jesus, Ed Miliband will really never learn anything about politics.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27151514

 

A pledge to "bear down on zero-hour contracts", but loaded down with caveats which will mean any employer can wriggle out of it and make the whole pledge worthless. Either ban the outrageous exploitation of zero-hour contracts outright, or don't bother saying anything at all. This triangulating "centre-ground" bullshit, where he says to the public that he's fighting injustice and ensuring all employees will get fair conditions, while at the same turning round and winking to the fat cats that they won't have to treat their employees fairly at all if they jump through some loopholes, will once again impress absolutely nobody.

Eh? It's recognising the reality that zero-hours contracts are totally necessarily for some people and working to actually protect the ones who are being exploited by them. There's not much an employer can do to wriggle out of an automatic fixed-hours contract requirement, and all of those provisions are bringing zero-hours in line with the legislation on fixed-hours agency work, which works pretty well.

Eh? It's recognising the reality that zero-hours contracts are totally necessarily for some people and working to actually protect the ones who are being exploited by them. There's not much an employer can do to wriggle out of an automatic fixed-hours contract requirement, and all of those provisions are bringing zero-hours in line with the legislation on fixed-hours agency work, which works pretty well.

 

Uh, no, zero-hour contracts are really NOT necessary for anyone except employers who don't want to give their employees decent working conditions. And that very article highlights how easy it would be for employers to wriggle out of these so-called "requirements". They could simply let go of a person on such a contract after 11 months, a month before the "requirement" to give them a fixed contract kicked in, and then get someone else on a zero-hour contract to replace them; or they could bully the person into "opting out" of a fixed contract, which would not be very hard when people on zero-hours typically are young and know their job prospects elsewhere were bleak so they'd just have to settle for what they had got already. These requirements are so flimsy and pointless, they're not worth the paper they're written on.

 

This will go exactly the same way as their feeble pledge to "incentivise" employers to pay a proper wage; i.e. nowhere. The reason the energy price freeze was Ed's one and only big hit to date is because he said the energy firms would be made to do it whether they liked it or not, with no woolly words or loopholes or "triangulation" to try and appease the fat cats. We all know that the elite are out of control and will not voluntarily do anything that harms their narrow self-interest, no matter how many "incentives" or "encouragement" you throw at them-- therefore, you either MAKE them do it, or they won't do it.

Edited April 24, 201411 yr by Danny

Zero hours contracts are fine as long as they are freely agreed between employer and employee. The problem lies when they are purely for the convenience of the employer. In general they should be used as a way of allowing an employer to call on extra staff if they need them. That also means that an employee on a zero hours contract should not be barred from working for another employer. What is not acceptable is for an employer to have the majority of their staff at a certain level on these contracts.

Zero hours contracts are fine as long as they are freely agreed between employer and employee. The problem lies when they are purely for the convenience of the employer. In general they should be used as a way of allowing an employer to call on extra staff if they need them. That also means that an employee on a zero hours contract should not be barred from working for another employer. What is not acceptable is for an employer to have the majority of their staff at a certain level on these contracts.

Basically this.

 

I've mentioned it before but I was on a zero-hours contract for G4S, where stewards sign up to events they can work at online and get told well in advance whether they'll be doing them. You got a text every time something in your region was made available and another one if an event was short-staffed in case you wanted to sign up for full pay.

 

Obviously that's a relatively rare case - a huge employer with a huge number of casual workers spread out over an entire region. But it's exactly why it'd be counterproductive to completely ban them outright. Legislation needs to be careful to tip the balance in favour of the employee, any suggestions on how you'd do it Danny?

Personally, I would legislate that 0-hour contracts can only be given for contracts up to 3months in length. Anything longer than that should require a commitment to a set number of hours per week.

 

Temporary event staff should be put on a register, that works in the manner described by Charlie above, and every time they sign-up they are given a 'contract' that covers the event and the hours to be done during the event.

 

Anyone working longer than 3 months somewhere is not a temporary worker that needs to plug gaps but someone who should be given a commitment to a set number of hours.

Obviously that's a relatively rare case - a huge employer with a huge number of casual workers spread out over an entire region. But it's exactly why it'd be counterproductive to completely ban them outright. Legislation needs to be careful to tip the balance in favour of the employee, any suggestions on how you'd do it Danny?

 

I appreciate there might be rare cases where people genuinely do favour a zero-hours contract over a fixed-hours contract, but I think it's just impossible to regulate them without banning them outright. While they're legal, no matter how many well-intentioned "restrictions" are placed on them, there's always going to be too much scope for employers to abuse them. In this climate, to many people it's going to seem like either a choice between a zero-hours contract or unemployment, so of course from that perspective people are going to choose a zero-hours contract. But the only reason it seems like that is the choice is precisely because many employers feel they can get away with only offering zero-hours contracts to many of their employees. As things stand, it's a vicious circle and it seems to me the only way of stopping it is banning them outright.

 

(I maybe shouldn't've made this post when I'd only had 2 hours sleep last night, because re-reading it it seems to make even less sense than my posts usually do, but meh.)

Edited April 24, 201411 yr by Danny

I appreciate there might be rare cases where people genuinely do favour a zero-hours contract over a fixed-hours contract, but I think it's just impossible to regulate them without banning them outright. While they're legal, no matter how many well-intentioned "restrictions" are placed on them, there's always going to be too much scope for employers to abuse them. In this climate, to many people it's going to seem like either a choice between a zero-hours contract or unemployment, so of course from that perspective people are going to choose a zero-hours contract. But the only reason it seems like that is the choice is precisely because many employers feel they can get away with only offering zero-hours contracts to many of their employees. As things stand, it's a vicious circle and it seems to me the only way of stopping it is banning them outright.

 

(I maybe shouldn't've made this post when I'd only had 2 hours sleep last night, because re-reading it it seems to make even less sense than my posts usually do, but meh.)

I see where you're coming from, and I do agree that employers would for the large part be able to provide proper contracts for anyone currently on zero hours if they were banned outright. But as Suedehead said, temporary staff should be able to work for more than one company at the same time - meaning that a lot more companies would have far more staff overall, making these kind of contracts where the employee picks the hours more feasible.

Suggestions that Labour might renationalise the railways:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27273672

 

With this coming hot on the heels of a surprisingly good announcement about pulling fat-cat landlords into line, might the Progress Tendency/Ed Balls have finally been put back in their box?

As a general rule, no one who is/wants to be Chancellor should be allowed anywhere near Transport. See also Alistair Darling.

 

That said, Ed seemed to be one of the few who didn't lose his mind over HS2.

Suggestions that Labour might renationalise the railways:

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27273672

 

With this coming hot on the heels of a surprisingly good announcement about pulling fat-cat landlords into line, might the Progress Tendency/Ed Balls have finally been put back in their box?

Yet again, you're conjuring a paper tiger. The 'Progress tendency' are far more split on the railway nationalisation issue than you'd think, and most of them applauded the rents move.

LMFAO, I've just read that letter to the Observer calling for rail renationalisation. The vast majority of those PPCs are IN Progress!

Well then I'm glad that even they have seen sense on this one, and hope a similar wave of commonsense washes over them on other "anti-business" policies/taxes/austerity.

 

However, the fact that according to the Guardian, Ed "reverse midas touch" Balls opposes railway renationalisation, even when apparently the Progress Tendency back it, really shows what an utter tool he is and how comically awful his political judgement is.