The Political Thread

[Tjm86]

FPTP is the root of all of the shit we've suffered in recent history. Kill that and everything potentially changes. But I can't see it ever happening.

Aye and nope .... in that order ...

Fair point on the rest.  It's depressing watching the London labour party crawl up its own arse all the time.

[IndigoPrime]

They're all awful. That's the problem. I'm certainly not going to go down the route of arguing all parties are the same. But in this one area, they are all awful, with the sometimes exception of the SNP, Plaid and—less often—the Greens.

FPTP screws us all. Blair could have changed that, but his Cabinet said no. So the Jenkins Report (on AV+ — not even proper PR!) was hurled into a skip. GOOD WORK, EVERYONE! But Corbyn! Breath of fresh air! Surely you support progressive politics and PR, Jeremy? "No." Yet he did support PR for... the Lords. FFS. Now we even have a Lib Dem leader soft on Commons PR(!) It's fucking insane.

I do find some people on Twitter a bit too excitable about this subject. That notion parties should campaign on a single-issue ticket (PR) and have only the best-placed go up against a Tory, win, and then have another GE in six months. That's just madness—and could feasibly result in an actual Tory majority. But Labour, Lib Dems and all the others should without doubt put PR at the heart of their manifesto, regardless of the GE outcome. (So if Labour somehow squeaks a majority, it should still be fully committed to electoral reform.)

Starmer has at least made some positive noises in this direction, but I still can't see it happening. A Labour-led coalition looks unlikely when Labour's sitting there punching its own face off and, come a GE, will spend more time fighting with the Libs, nats and even Greens (which will mostly be reciprocal) than the Tories. I hope I'm wrong. I hope by 2024, all these parties have their collective shit together. But after the last GEs, the ongoing arrogance of Labour, the sheer ineptitude of the Libs, the stubbornness of the Greens, etc, I just don't see it.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Seems like the Donnie 'n' Rudy Clown Show is pretty much finished. I realise Trump will still be screaming in our faces for a long time, but as scary attempted coups go, it has been comedy gold.

[Rately]

If, as has been reported by a few people on the Twitter, Georgia Republicans deface their Senate Run-off ballots with Trumps name, thereby handing the Senate to the Democrats, I may well laugh for a week or two.

Republicans protect Trump, Trump throws them under the bus. Poetic. And something many Political Commentators warned them of at the time.

[JayzusB.Christ]

If, as has been reported by a few people on the Twitter, Georgia Republicans deface their Senate Run-off ballots with Trumps name, thereby handing the Senate to the Democrats, I may well laugh for a week or two.

Republicans protect Trump, Trump throws them under the bus. Poetic. And something many Political Commentators warned them of at the time.

Divide without the conquer. Like it.

[Funt Solo]

A harsh reality in coal country - with or without Trump - a tale of economic boom and bust that goes some way to explain an innocent enough reason to vote for Trump. (File under: "It's the economy, stupid.")

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Period poverty: Scotland first in world to make period products free - Oh, Flower of Scotland!...

[Barrington Boots]

Period poverty: Scotland first in world to make period products free - Oh, Flower of Scotland!...

This is such a classy move by Scotland. A bit of cheer in the gloom of 2020 politics.

[IndigoPrime]

About fucking time a country did this. You can bet it would have happened decades ago had men had to suffer this.

[The Legendary Shark]

I doubt this will be free. I'd guess that this service will be funded by expanding government debt, thereby increasing tax demands to pay for the products, organisation, distribution, bureaucracy, interest on the loan, etc.

[TordelBack]

Or to put it another way, distribution of the cost across society so that one particular segment doesn't have to bear all the cost of a necessity. TANSTAAFL, but we can split the bill.

[IndigoPrime]

Exactly. Nothing is 'free' free, but we have the choice of sharing the load or paying by need. Some things are required for existence to be tolerable. Others are nice-to-haves. Sanitary products for women are without doubt the former, and so I don't really give a shit if my tax burden goes up microscopically to pay for that.

[Bolt-01]

Amen, brother.

[The Legendary Shark]

Exactly. Nothing is 'free' free, but we have the choice of sharing the load or paying by need.

No. You don't have the choice, that's my point. If you wanted to help before, you could have started a charity, donated to a charity, bought the products and donated them to maybe a food bank or your local high school or whatever - which maybe you chose to do anyway, I don't know.

This is my problem with mandatory taxes - you are forced to fund bullets, bombs, and bailouts along with properly helpful things like this. To support good, one must also support evil. It's madness - toxic madness at that.

To be clear, in this instance I object to the method and not the intent. (For bullets, bombs, and bailouts I object to the method and the intent.)

[TordelBack]

A very fair point, Shark, but we might be waiting. It would require quite the charity infrastructure to fund and supply to roughly 25% of the population on a regular basis, and we already have that in place through existing institutions, plus precedent in other supports for specific groups. So until the whole system is replaced with a workable alternative, this seems like a good use of centralised redistribution to alleviate an unfair burden.

Can't happen soon enough in this neck of the woods.

[IndigoPrime]

No. You don't have the choice, that's my point.

Good. The needs of society shouldn't be reliant on whether or not enough people would be willing to donate to a charity and for that charity to then fund people. This is what we currently have with food banks, which were once an unfortunate necessity but an aberration but that have now been broadly normalised.

The issue you mention is more about how taxes are spent rather than taxation itself. You also, as has been shown in the past, live in a world where you assume people wouldn't be selfish arseholes when presented with the option to support rather than the requirement. We in the USA see where that leads with things like healthcare provision. We also see that in the UK in terms of arts funding, which is now in the toilet.

So until the whole system is replaced with a workable alternative, this seems like a good use of centralised redistribution to alleviate an unfair burden.

Or that, not least given that the utopian model is a pipe dream, but the existing taxation system already exists. And to be clear, I'm fucking furious about the way tax is used in the UK. But I'd still prefer to have a system where certain things—health; education; infrastructure—are funded by default than relying on the goodwill and charity of millions of people who suddenly have to start thinking about these things and in many cases ultimately decide against throwing some cash into the pot this month. "After all, I don't have kids/health issues/interest in the arts, so why should I be funding schools/the NHS/museums?"