The Political Thread

[COMMANDO FORCES]

From his own mouth on the radio tonight. Peter Stringfellow may enter politics and run against Nick Clegg at the next general election.

[The Legendary Shark]

Well, Stringfellow does own a club and Clegg has all the ferocity of a baby seal...

[Emp]

That seems to be a ploy to make you vote for Clegg given that the opposition is an even bigger useless fucktard.

Satan really has to dig deep to keep up his end of the bargain as far as Clegg goes

[Hoagy]

http://newint.org/features/2013/01/01/waging-war-on-poor/

[Frank]

http://newint.org/features/2013/01/01/waging-war-on-poor/

The New Internationalist is obviously approaching that issue from a particular ideological perspective, but that article makes an interesting observation regarding the way the tax burden has been shifted in recent years from large private institutions to the middle classes - setting one against the other and replacing the post-war political consensus regarding the general utility of universal health and welfare provision with a spurious faith in the operation of markets.

HAVE YOU MET THE POOR?

[Charlie boy]

Slightly off topic but you're all bound to know about how the Home Office made a load of redundancies last year. This was done so they could then start hiring via temping agencies so they don't have to pay the temps full overtime, a pension, the same wage as another Home Office worker etc (I know a few people who worked in the Home Office, took redundancy and have now returned to their old jobs this way). A friend of mine recently had a computer exercise at a temping agency to get into the UK Border Control part of the Home Office and, having passed, was told to wait a total of six weeks for his security check to go through. With 2 weeks to go before his check is completed, it's announced UK Border Control are striking next month. Thanks to new laws brought in- if my friend refuses to cross the picket lines, he'll be waving away his rights to JSA for up to 3 years. This coalition really does believe in divide and conquer, doesn't it?

[Old Tankie]

So, people are taking redundancy money from the Home Office and then going back there to work for an agency and you think that's a bad deal!

[COMMANDO FORCES]

This is what a lot of nurses do as well (not the redundancy bit but the leaving bit) and then get paid more.

They can work via NHSP, which is when they still work for the NHS and just want the overtime and not just at their own place of work. Then there are the agency nurses who have left the NHS and want to still do nursing but on a better wage paid for by the local trust.

Where my good lady works, they try to only use the NHSP nurses but at a last resort they will cough up for the agency ones.

[Charlie boy]

In response to Old Tankie (my computer isn't allowing me to use the quote option for some reason) if you take redundancy and then join a temping agency, the temping agency is bound to tell you how you can get off JSA and do what you were doing before, albeit at a lower wage. However, these people going to the Home Office via a temping agency are not part of the union and are therefore not covered/ allowed to strike, so they have to cross the picket lines if they don't want to lose a job and be sent back to the job centre where they will be forced to say they refused to work and lose their entitlement to JSA for three years because of it.

[Stan]

After observing someone combining the issue of abortion and gun control I think it's finally time Facebook banned political updates via the sharing of crappy fan page pics.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

After observing someone combining the issue of abortion and gun control I think it's finally time Facebook banned political updates via the sharing of crappy fan page pics.

No. Just No.

You cannot censor social media. If you have a social media page, you control the content on that page. You censor what shows up on it yourself. Well at least I do, and I'm not comfortable with giving someone else that power.

If Facebook ever did adopt such a policy, they would have to update their Terms of Use Policy. And that policy would have a clause saying that you agree to give Facebook the right to censor your free speech. And most people wouldn't read it and would just click agree, before getting back to posting pictures of what they had for tea and suchlike.

Until one day, they read a facebook post, or a tweet, about some celebrity (probably one of those 'controversial' types) getting censored on social media. And there'd be a big uproar about how Facebook hates free speech, even though most people had agreed to be censored without knowing or needing it.

[Stan]

I was being a tad facetious and completely agree. I'd just have more respect for someone who's willing to type a few sentences and take ownership of their mini-rants than a person who relentlessly shares annoying pics from various fan pages. It's almost like they feel they can get away with being 20 times more asinine because it wasn't really they themselves who made the original argument/statement or whatever.

[House of Usher]

After observing someone combining the issue of abortion and gun control I think it's finally time Facebook banned political updates via the sharing of crappy fan page pics.

I presume they were making the perfectly reasonable point that 'pro-life' actually means anti-abortion, which is a much narrower concern than 'pro-life' makes it sound, and life isn't really very important to a lot of U.S. political organizations and activists who espouse a world view which includes being anti-abortion.

That said, just sharing a vitriolic or satirical caption put together by somebody else doesn't really say much for one's own understanding of the issues.

[Stan]

No, but I agree on the definition for some. I personally prefer the version of pro-life which doesn't involve bombing the living daylights out of people for no good reason.

I had to double check because it wasn't really my intention to get into a huge abortion debate. The image was from Move On, which explains the partisan silliness. For one thing it's been scientifically established that outlawing firearms doesn't prevent gun violence. And secondly, I've never heard a pro-lifer of any definition claim abortions would no longer happen if they were made illegal.

[House of Usher]

I had to double check because it wasn't really my intention to get into a huge abortion debate...

And secondly, I've never heard a pro-lifer of any definition claim abortions would no longer happen if they were made illegal.

No, I don't want to get into an abortion debate either. However, it seems self-evident that campaigners who want abortion to be made illegal want it to be made illegal because they believe that will result in fewer abortions, not because they want abortions to be nastier, unregulated, unofficial and possibly carried out by amateurs.

P.S. - I think it's the haphazard, devil-may-care use of the word 'prevent' in that slogan that makes it so stupid.

P.P.S. - and the use of the phrase 'outlawing guns,' seeing as I don't know of anyone, anywhere, currently advocating such a move.