 | Forum
Reply | Levelling Up
at 10:51 28 Jun 2024
It will be very interesting to see the turn out next Thursday. I say that because far and away the biggest problem for the future, in my opinion, is the way the disconnect between the general population and the political class will develop. People are rebelling against how they are being governed and I see that getting worse as time goes on.
The possible ramifications of this will be far worse than the cost and difficulty of what i've suggested. Whenever ordinary people talk, whether on forums like this or when asked on radio phone ins or on TV they are always saying things like 'I don't trust politicians', 'they're all in it for themselves', 'I don't feel as if they understand my situation', 'they don't do anything that benefits me or my family or community' etc etc.
I could go on but the message is effectively the same. We are an Us and THEM society and the gap between us is widening.
Something radical has to change and saying let's do the same as we've been doing for the last three hundred years or whatever is definitely not the answer. People need to feel as if they have some connection with how they are governed.
Of course these ideas would be expensive. It would cost billions. But staying and doing the refurb would i'm certain rise to at least £50 billion. And we'd still have the London centric group in their disconnected bubble in charge as has been the case for centuries.
And the problems will get worse. |
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Reply | The billion pound five year deal
at 18:57 27 Jun 2024
It used to be that Clubs whose games were televised live would get £500,000. So twenty games would equal £10 million on that basis. And that was a few years ago. |
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Reply | Levelling Up
at 18:47 27 Jun 2024
Well said cat. It would be one of the best museums in the world attracting millions of tourists.
Currently it costs us £2 million a day just to keep it safe to use. That's £0.75 billion a year. If Labour stay in power for two terms that will be £7.5 billion (I was really good at maths in school) and we'll be in the same situation as now.
As a museum, with an entrance fee, the income would eventually pay for the refurb cost. |
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Reply | Levelling Up
at 14:43 27 Jun 2024
It would be a hell of a big job I agree. But if it's so obviously unviable why have successive Governments been considering the option of relocation ?
As regards the ministries, my first thought was that 99% of the people that work in them are just civil servants who go to work, do their job and go home again. The fact that the Government may have moved somewhere else wouldn't impact them in the slightest.
There would be a small number of senior people who may well interact directly on a daily basis with MP's in parliament. There are huge numbers of people who spend well over an hour commuting daily in to London to their jobs at present. Why can't those Civil Servants commute out of London to the new Parliament site ? What's so different ?
And now they've got HS2 to do it. |
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Reply | Levelling Up
at 10:06 27 Jun 2024
I've rewritten and extended an earlier post of mine in this thread with input from a post from the major  .
**********************************
NOTHING CHANGES
Millions of average voters say nothing changes whether Labour or the Conservatives get into power, that Labour are just Conservative light.
There are two MAJOR changes Labour should make that would change that mindset completely. And they are changes that the vast majority of voters, whether Labour or non Labour, would not only agree with but would relish. And the changes would show that Labour, rather than living in the Tory 17th Century live in the 21st Century where the real people of the UK live.
There has been a debate for some time now about whether to refurbish the Houses of Parliament or to establish a new seat of Government elsewhere. This is a question that will have to be addressed in the not too distant future so I propose that the new Labour Government make the decision now,scrap the idea of the refurbishment option and build the new seat of Government somewhere in the midlands. The second suggestion I would make is that they get on with scrapping the House of Lords, something regularly talked about but never acted on.
Achieving both these idea would take some time but, barring a disastrous first term Labour will almost certainly retain power in 2029 so will have ten years or more to achieve these things and to reap the benefits.
Firstly this is a list of just some of the problems facing the UK now that Labour will have to address.
An NHS with a waiting list of 7.5 million while being short of 20,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses.
A woeful lack of GP’s.
A fundamentally inadequate care service.
An education system short of probably at least 10,000 teachers.
RAAC schools crumbling.
Policing a complete shambles with the service short of 20,000 experienced officers.
The CPS in chaos.
The Prison System in chaos.
The armed forces cut to the bone, currently down to 72,000 servicemen.
Legal immigration of 750,000 each of the last two years.
Illegal immigration across the channel.
As a result of the above the basic pillars of a civilized society to a large extent are not there any more.
Just imagine the outcry around the country if, with all the above problems and the lack of money to address them the Government suddenly announced they were going to provide an open cheque book for the refurbishment option of Westminster.
This is a list of the benefits of going ahead with these changes.
The last estimated cost of refurbishing the Houses Of Parliament that I saw was £25 to £30 billion. And it will likely end up costing far more, £50 billion maybe. The cost of a new build will be a fraction of that. And if it only involves a House of Commons and not a House of Lords it will be far less again. The money released and available for investment in public services would be at least £20 billion.
Along with the new House of Commons accommodation could be built to be used by the MP’s on parliament sitting days. I don’t know the cost to the taxpayer of the second homes MP’s currently use when in London but I imagine it is horrendous. Again, an enormous saving.
Then there’s the cost of peers attending the House of Lords. Again a horrendous cost where peers attending are paid £350 a day.
Another enormous benefit will be that this development would provide a huge ‘levelling up’ for the North, something the Conservatives completely failed to achieve. So Labour could point to having done their job for them. How many people in the ‘North’ would object to that.
And one huge non monetary benefit will be that the real or imagined corruption that has been going on regarding MP’s London accommodation provision and peers’ actual attendance when apparently signed into the House of Lords for the day will be removed immediately.
The finances released to put toward fixing the problems left over by the Conservatives will only go part way in addressing the many problems Labour will face.
But the psychological change in the mindset of the British people that this will bring about will be incalculable. The UK will be a far less ‘us and them’ place to live. The Westminster bubble will be finally burst.
And the new parliament can be, and should be, planned to be built in a way that will make it far more accessible to ordinary people. A simple example would be a far larger public gallery for instance.
And why not. We’ll be the ones paying for it.
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| Forum
Reply | Nigel Farage
at 18:41 20 Jun 2024
From memory the Conservatives fought them tooth and nail to try to water down even the regulation Labour imposed on the banks arguing for more deregulation.
So in theory, if the Conservatives had been in power then they'd have deregulated more and the crash would have been even worse. |
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Reply | Nigel Farage
at 10:07 20 Jun 2024
Hopefully you're wrong on both counts ohl  |
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Reply | Labour less popular now than under Corbyn?
at 18:31 19 Jun 2024
Yes cat that poll doesn't show a great support for Labour even though it's still around twice the Tory vote.
But as far as I can see, out of all the polls taken JON has picked the one with the worst numbers for Labour. Even the Telegraph tracker as of today puts them at 43%. |
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Reply | Labour less popular now than under Corbyn?
at 16:18 19 Jun 2024
Well I honestly believe things will be better under Starmer.
You're right, he isn't inspiring and the Tories are doing their best to lose it. But the fact that he's uninspiring doesn't alter the fact that he's done a fantastic job in turning around the Labour party after JC's disastrous efforts.
So maybe he'll do a very good job of running the country. |
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Reply | Nigel Farage
at 18:39 17 Jun 2024
When people talk about immigrants working in the UK they regularly say that the immigrants are needed because British people are too lazy to do those jobs.
One job they always use as an example is fruit/vegetable picking. A lady from Cambridge rang one of the radio stations a few days ago and she was asked about this very subject, that area having a huge number of that type of job. She said local people had always done those jobs but when employers had the chance to recruit overseas workers at cheaper rates that's exactly what they did.
In other words the British people, at least in this example, weren't lazy at all. The problem is the greedy b*s*a*d employers and the fact that successive Governments have allowed them to get away with it.. |
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Reply | Mumbles tram. A long term no brainer?
at 12:44 11 Jun 2024
Res - this thread has been about the possibility of Swansea Council subsidising the redevelopment of St Helens to the tune of £10 million. You suggested the money would be better spent on rebuilding the Mumbles Train or maybe a tram line. Others pointed out that the train costs were £235 million a long time ago and would be £500 million now, likely as not a lot more than that. And they quite rightly said it was too expensive and difficult.
Then you compare that situation with the cost of the Olympics, Crossrail, and HS2 saying they were not considered 'too expensive'.
The reason they were not considered 'too expensive' was because those projects were designated by Westminster as being for the benefit of the whole of the UK so the whole of the UK ended up paying for them. No matter the cost.
So the only reasonable comparison you could make would be if the UK government designated the rebuilding of the Mumbles Train as a project that would benefit the whole of the UK and that the whole of the UK would pay for it. No matter the cost
If you just guess that rebuilding the train would cost eventually £1 billion the cost to Wales (not Swansea Council tax payers) would be £50 million while the rest (£950 Million) would be born by the rest of the UK.
I'd imagine that if that was on offer the Council would take about a split second to say yes. |
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