ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

it was the poor that always pays the price...it was true in Dickens time and nothing has changed..we expect inflation to rise, unemployment to rise and interest rates to rise to maybe four or five per cent and yet the weakest and poorest in our society seem to be paying more than their fair share in the sacrifice department, why no interest rate rise in corporation tax, why not hit the highest earners on tax rates? Why no earnest proposals over the non-doms regarding tax loopholes...I could go one but why bother as nothing EVER changes....

Regressive? Progressive? I don't really care as I have no idea what they are talking about.

All I and everyone else knows is that we weren't promised we'd be better off over the next few years. So PLEASE let's not see any more would be leaders playing stupid about the mess they've left the country in.

I assume being a pensioner that I must be one of the poor people so I am looking hard to see where I'm going to be hit.

VAT rises won't be too much of a problem maybe a couple of pounds a week on essentials. Certainly won't be buying a car or plasma screen TV but hadn't planned to anyway. Zilch interest on savings under the last government have put paid to any of the smaller luxuries in life.

So really there's nothing that makes me weep apart from the possibility of a rise in inflation. Now that would have a drastic effect on the cost of living for poorer people living on a fixed income.

if there was any social justice banks profits would be taxed at 70% till the debt is paid off.

not everyone is rowing on the oars and there is no sense of responsibility from the banks.

House prices are far too high for the UK ever to become competitive again.... (a brief discussion)

The argument goes: to be competitive a UK company has to employ UK employees who can live near where they work. However house prices and thus mortgages take far too big a slice of the employees earnings to leave much left as a reward for working - also a similarly skilled employee in almost any other country in the World would be vastly better off (than a UK resident employee) if they received the same salary.

See for example: British Airways cabin crew - BA has to pay wages that meet living/housing costs near their place of work - however if the cabin crew were based in a less expensive country the same salary would eave them a far bigger disposable income after paying housing costs. To say nothing of the countryside where it is almost impossible for farmers to pay wages sufficient for their staff to live near their work.

This is the crime of the bankers and the idiots at the Bank of England/Treasury who have seen inflationary house prices as unimportant and even worse - a good thing. These men are responsible for destroying the country!

This is the inflation that cause the crash and NOTHING has yet been done to alleviate the situation - indeed the bankers are doing their best to ignore the problem. This debt must be de-leveraged and so must house prices fall substantially for the country to ever recover - as yet we are still in denial and worse still - taking steps to re-inflate the housing bubble - absolutely criminal economists and politicians!!!!

2 many Small amounts of people working their Nuts off Paying 2 much Tax for more and more people
who don't do or pay anything.

I don't give up, but I have given up paying Tax. (bit of a Muggs game)

#4 Yes John you are right. But people have got so used to their house value going up, they rely on that fact to fund other purchases, e.g. that new car, boat, expensive foreign holiday, add it to the mortgage they say.

Governments and banks loved the idea people investing in their future capital gains, but it might not happen! They spend the money before they get it. So everything will done be to keep those house prices floating ever higher, to fund consumerism, and keep the floundering economy afloat.

But this little snippet from the Migrationwatch website.. We must build a new home every six minutes for new migrants, if it's true, makes me think house prices won't be going down anytime soon! What do we do with an ever increasing population and a very low house building rate?

4 John from Hendon

I know you are always banging on about house prices and I agree with you.

I always feel that we have been deceived somewhere and that house price inflation should have been shown in the inflations indices. Had it been so then the inflation this would have shown would have been corrected very quickly by the BOE and prices would not have been allowed to get out of hand.

This would have helped keep the economy more in balance without the need for a more drastic correction now and the risks any writedowns would pose for the mortgage lenders.

At the moment you really have to work out your own rate of inflation dependent on your own choice of lifestyle as I do not believe there is any longer the same rate for all apart from that which the government chooses when it fixes pensions and benefits as well as public sector pay awards.

Was it just me or did anyone else find Tuesdays NN a little bit special, magical perhaps.
I'm not sure why i felt this way about this particular edition of NN.
We were offered an Andy Burnham doing a Kamikaze with his career, he who was up against some Tory blonde. She made it look so simple; she made him look so simple.
NN finally put Obama under a magnifying glass. Its hard for some to realise they may have been duped into buying a pup that turned messy and dangerous. We had the usual left right Demo and Republo giving their take on the President..he who is golfing and hooping on a $50k a week holiday spot on Martha's vineyard. Anyhow, maybe Barry Obama is not all he's cracked out to be...a bit like when Tony Blair first made his appearance. Remember Tone-the-saviour turned out to be just another smooth talking lawyer who had a thing for going to wars - well he never actually went himself, he sent others for that task. Obama is from the same mold as Blair, only a lot worse. The forces operating Obama are without doubt, highly malevolent.

Dutch elm disease. Maybe it was this report that had my magical response button pressed. I heard the drone and twang of a sitar in some English town, listened to a poem giver. The mention of 1776 and American independence, the planting of trees...an English landscape lost forever.
Was there an allegorical subtext to this little story of the Dutch elm disease. Was my imagination running off with me somewhat?!

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

POWER=MONEY MONEY=POWER (#3)

Westminster is an integrity-free zone where money and power are like energy and matter - interchangeable. And we connive.

Recently we were told how much money the various Labour leadership candidates had WITH WHICH TO BUY VOTES. Ed was reported as bleating because D had more money (aka could buy more votes than he could). At General Election, one vote bought is a criminal offence, and one vote COERCED, by false instrument (dodgy advertising) likewise. But nothing is enforced - indeed, the watchdogs are fitted with statutory blinkers.

How come we can 'export' democracy, and rule of law, whan we have so little ourselves?

Oh - it's all going awfully well.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT (#8)

A moving post Kev - very 'now' - cleverly composed.

But I claim priority in the Obama-Blair identity. Yes I can!

STATESMAN MILIBAND D - ALL OF THE WORDS BUT NOT NECESSARILY ANY MEANING

AND he is talking of 'comradely' competition - there's a word to savour.

But why doesn't the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ question his motives openly? This is a man who supported Blair; that is Tony Blair, the 'visionary of righteousness' (for Blogdog). The man who many a powerless prole had the measure of, a decade ago. So the question for Miliband D is: "Are you a fool or a knave?" Did Miliband D ACTUALLY SEE Tony Blair as worthy of respect and service? If so, Miliband D was, and presumably is, A FOOL. Did Miliband D suck up to Tony Blair, in callow furtherance of his ambition? If so HE IS A KNAVE of the first water, with serious culpability in conniving at Tony's 'questionable deeds' (for Blogdog).

And ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, you stand awaiting sentence also. Are you fool or knave? Do you leave the Milibands of this charade unchallenged, because you RESPECT them? Or do you simply opt to LIVE WITHIN THE LIE, and back it all with musack and Ar'-Bozo?

At least there can be no doubt about me - knowingly spending so much time shouting in this bucket. FOOL it is then.

#9

A man playing a pup has brain made of pulp.

Unpalatable. As long as the disease doesn't spread, I feel there might still be the case for an Englishnan.

"3. At 1:08pm on 25 Aug 2010, jauntycyclist wrote:
if there was any social justice banks profits would be taxed at 70% till the debt is paid off."

And there's the problem (or at least one of them). 'Social Justice' has a technical meaning in the context of John Rawls Liberal Theory of
Justice:



just as 'meritocracy has a technical meaning in the context of Michael Young's work 'The Rise of the Meritocracy'. To rationally discuss these matters one has to make the effort to find out how terms are used or else everyone ends up talking past each other - which is why there is so much squabbling on NN these days I suspect?.

As to the banks, well, some of them are international. They only settled here because of the good Corporation Tax rates. Tax them and they will move, and given the economy is largely built around them what would happen then? This is the problem politicians now face. It is real.

"2. At 12:58pm on 25 Aug 2010, virtualsilverlady wrote:
Regressive? Progressive? I don't really care as I have no idea what they are talking about"

The same goes here. One has to at least TRY to find out what someone is talking about. How has it come to the stage that adults make a virtue of stating that they don't know what something means where the programme and its blog should be able to assume that viewers and readers are at least prepared to make an effort to understand the context? It might help if the Newsnight Production Team provided some definitions for those willing to learn, otherwise you may as well not bother using the terms and just pitch the to educational level of the Sun etc..

#14

You keep flashing out some 'theory of justice' but are you sure your own actions are not illegal, tb01?

Singie

Perhaps your #1 is nothing more than a gimmicky and spooky part in the game by 01, for example?

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN HE LAY DOWN HIS DOGMA TO AN END.

An end to one branch of damaging falsehood, that hog-ties humanity.

I ask the Pope to disband Catholicism, on the grounds that it is a man-made fiction for the purpose of empowering a hierarchy and disempowering the common man.

MPs BEHAVING BADLY

Just asking: Have they closed those 19 bars of Westminster yet?

After all, Britain has an undisputed alcohol problem; surely we can look to the Coalition to set an example in the seat of democracy and the rule of law - as advertised globally?

"progressive" as the government say, or "regressive"

These are euphemisms. What we are on about is whether the policies reduce the gaps between rich and poor. I'm not even talking about those on benefits, but about those in work who still find it a struggle. I find it disgusting that those who invest money into a business get so much more reward than those who invest their lives into a business by working for it. It is the massive amount of disproportion than is obscene.

The focus must be on creating jobs, providing ways in which people can earn money. Jobs are created by providing things which people want and are prepared to pay for. An increase in GDP is meaningless if it does not also achieve more employment. A few well paid people in Finacial Services may help turn round our GDP (more because of opportunity than skill), but if it doesn't result in an increase in jobs it will not alter anything as we will be back to 2007.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

#17

Dogmas die just like those who 'invent' them, singie.

14

if knew the blog you would know my meaning of justice is different to those who believe equality rather than the good is the highest idea of the mind. equality is an idol that literally demands human sacrifice.

social justice in their case is a parasite that clouds the mind.

so real social justice is not about forcing others to subsidise anyone else rich or poor but allowing each to concentrate on what they do well..

cat woman doesn't come across as 'sorry'?

if there was an official punishment for the animal cruelty maybe people wouldn't feel the need to 'vigilante?'

17. At 5:50pm on 25 Aug 2010, barriesingleton wrote:

"I ask the Pope to disband Catholicism, on the grounds that it is a man-made fiction for the purpose of empowering a hierarchy and disempowering the common man."

But that's what Protestants demanded in the 16th Century when Catholicism (Christianity) was the state. England had a revolution much like the one in 1917 to remove the 'oppressive' Tsar, and like that one, within a decade the rule of the common man iwas abandoned as it didn't work. Oddly, there was an exodus to the USA by Puritans, where they then pursued a wild kind of freedom which brought them not equality but the greatest divide between the rich and poor this planet has even seen!

Surely one has to ask who abuses the oppressed common-man myth to change the status quo to whose advantage? As I see it, the common man is disempowered because he has no power, but not because anyone ever took it away or deprived him or her of it. In most cases, he or she never had the cognitive ability or temperament to wield or hold on to it in the first place. They just squandered it down the pub, in the take-away or at the horses etc. Having said that, like children, the common man and woman needs protection from those eager to enrich themselves by promising freedom from oppressors, who usually regulated in the common man's best interests to the best of my knowledge.

At 7:34pm on 25 Aug 2010, jauntycyclist wrote:

"if knew the blog you would know my meaning of justice is different to those who believe equality rather than the good is the highest idea of the mind. equality is an idol that literally demands human sacrifice.

social justice in their case is a parasite that clouds the mind.

so real social justice is not about forcing others to subsidise anyone else rich or poor but allowing each to concentrate on what they do well.."

Surely, if one were to do a law, philosophy or politics degree, and have to do a finals paper on Social Justice, and one just gave one's own personal meaning, one would get very low marks for the question as one would be showing that one didn't know how to use the term? If one did that with other questions, one would end up with a bad degree or none at all. If one then went on espousing one's personal views with no reference to accepted convention (a convention which those in the educated and professional community respected as part of a common language) one would just be treated as eccentric if not worse, ignored?

My point is that one can't just go about making up terms and expecting others to know or respect what one is talking about. What Rawls published in 1971 was logical, not a bit of creative writing which one can readily ignore..

CIA admits US backs global terrorism including Irish republican terrorism-

In George Osborne's budget speech he said that Housing Benefit had doubled in the last decade and that was why he wanted to cap it, set its rises to CPI instead of RPI inflation measures and even cut it by 10% to those still unemployed after 12 months. Well the reason that it has doubled is because the cost of living in a private rented home has doubled in that time, and most of the people who would, in previous times, have lived in low rent social housing now have no alternative, and end up claiming Housing Benefit as a top up or because they lose their jobs.

If they are concerned with 'fairness' and being progressive then why not legislate to cap private rents to the same level as Housing Associations? In Germany for instance private rents are capped in that way, they wouldn't dream of inflicting the kind of housing poverty on their people that our government does. Wouldn't that save just as much if not more money?

On the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ programme about coping with the downturn that was on a few months ago Andy Verity visited a man who works as a watch repairer for about 20k per year. Somehow he had acquired a portfolio of 100 properties and at the start of the recession was in danger of going bust, then interest rates fell to almost nothing and he now pays on average Β£40 per property per month!! I wonder if he has passed that saving onto his tenants or if he is sitting back and raking it in while his tenants, who will be struggling with pay cuts, higher food bills, or even unemployment are forced to claim hundreds a month in Housing Benefit.

Its a 'kick the poorest' budget, after all the one commodity that is getting cheaper year on year is labour. Why bother to look after people when they are so expendable?

MIGHT SUCH UNSCRUPULOUS PEOPLE BE CAPABLE OF A 'FALSE FLAG' ATTACK? (#26)

Say 9/11? Perish the thought. They wouldn't kill their own people - only 'barbarians' (Petraeus) do that.

25

NN blog is not an exam.

my definition once defined is as good as any other. Unless one subscribes to a priesthood.

as your wiki link starts

..Social justice generally refers to the idea ...

so not exclusively to any ONE idea and then goes on the list many differing ideas. But you think there is one idea and that is the one you believe in?

so rather than find my meaning of it [and there are several as we have seen] or accept there are several meanings you choose to come down the holy mountain and impose your personal preference in some kind of outraged vestal virgin tone? Very lefty.

...If you ask a lot of people to define social justice you’re going to get many different definitions. Definitions will be based on a variety of factors, like political orientation, religious background, and political and social philosophy. If you ask a postmodernist about this concept, he or she is likely to tell you it’s a fairytale that is not in any way achievable in any form of society....

you accuse me of making up terms when you are making it exclusively whatever you believe which is just one of many. maybe this is why you are so outraged and hysterical at my post? That you do not know there are many social justices depending upon ones point of view? The view i defined of justice is that of Plato [Socrates] in the Republic. did you not know that?

@28 Two words, Operation Northwoods-

ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ2 2night Very Much enjoyed The Gorrilas and The Allways Eccellent Coast.

V.D. Sexually TranSmmited Bugs

1st time I got A dose, goninerear, It was very Painfull,

A Big Jab in one of The Buttalks, limping down the corridor with nurses Gigiling. (did they No)

I have more than 2 times 2 children, how did that happen I'm still A Virgin. (watching the God Illusion,Prof Dawkins)

Explain That 1 2 Me (imac con)

can I look after that Pig she needs A bath.

Politicians live in a different world don't they? Even in Denmark where Lord Kinnock's son's issues with the tax-man are making political waves:

In Denmark 'Gucci Helle' believes in higher taxes ... but .. um .. for other people than her hubby - who is Lord Kinnock's son?!

balls has it lost his Idiot Guide or is it 2 much of an Idiot 2 understand 1

Both

Trust the above with my Children? what do you think, I will go with the O Neg

Very dramatic and an excuse to swear but Ch4 news actually named Dennis McShane as one of the MP's involved in their report of the said incidents earlier this evening !

Dear NN/Auntie
How Come You can bucking/mucking/sucking/lucking/rucking/DUCKing/pucking/etc can swear and I cant on this/these posts.

I call that Discrimination, You and me outside 2 the europissin court.

P.S. glad 2 c that Emily doesnt look like Uncle Joe 2night

I have a family member who is an MP and has been for a number of years now. Its absolutely dreadful this new system. People don't realise how much hell it has caused MPs. It is ridiculous that MPs cant live comfortably whilst working in London, the whole system is flawed. Just because some MPs break the systems rules, why should the majority of MPs suffer the unfair criticism targeted at them. A great deal of MPs have lived a respectable hard working life where they have earned their place in the job they do, most of them taking pay cuts, and they still cant live in relative comfort. In no way am i saying that all MPs are like this as their are many who have accumulated much wealth. Many haven't, many have lived in moderation but also don't expect to be stabbed in the back by the country they serve so well.

How is it regressive if you ask people claiming false benefits to start working again and cut their benefits!? It's this thought that is regressive. Encouraging people back into work should be considered as progressive. How long can a minority of hard working, tax paying people support an ever increasing number of benefit scroungers? Working as a doctor I can see how so many people (especially young fit people) are abusing the benefits system. The country has an ever increasing number of people who 'choose' not to work. This cannot be allowed in a progressive society. If this trend continues, soon we will have no one in work and everyone wanting to claim benefits. How could this be sustainable!?

Just watched Tom? MP explaining how aggrieved MPs feel about their expenses. Of course he is sorry his colleagues have abused IPSA, even though he thinks its iff that they had a freedom of information request for a document no MP knew they were keeping. But he asks us to appreciate how inept IPSA is.

Well I am sorry, but most large firms have a dysfunctional IT system that seriously annoys its employees who need to use it to claim expenses.The id ea is to dissuade staff from claiming things because of the hassle involved. Now if MPs want to start a national campaign to free everyone of such stressful efforts to reclaim their own money they will get some public support. But if they are intent on changing their own system because they think its beneath them to use it and feel that bullying the staff who have to manage the system, they should be ashamed of themselves.

MPs Expenses

I find this hard to believe, a group of individuals that have shown abuse of a system complain about remedial action.

If I submit false expenses I am committing fraud, and my Company would sack me without hesitation.

MPs wake up! - live in the real world - you are meant to represent people, not spend their taxes for your benefit.

Also, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ please explain why you had to use actors to put across this story, is this a correct use of the the annual fee?

Progressive / Regressive taxation

I would prefer to see much more intelligent debate than that shown in the programme, the presenter shouting 8% difference between rich and poor to a (ok not verbatim) - what reply did you think you were going to get, intelligent debate is good, anything other is otiose.

F
Disappointed in the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ again (but mainly MPs also again)

F

TONY IS GOING TO BE SO UPSET (#30)

Do you think he will give his medals back (and the money) when he realises the sort of people he's been dealing with?

"...If you ask a lot of people to define social justice you’re going to get many different definitions."

That's why we don't do that. In fact, that's what formal education is for, for if we didn't do that and conform to standards/conventions, there would be chaos, i.e nobody would be able to understand what each other was talking about (or know that each was understanding the same sentences in the same way). This is happening quite a lot these days as more people ignore the value of formal education and no longer respect conventions but just make things up hoping others will know what they are taking about, but it's a self-centred sign of the times, that's all.
The cost is anarchism. You probably don't see that if one writes according to one's own definitions and everyone else were to do the same none of us would have any languages which were fit for purpose. That is, as I say, why we have formal disciplines and conventions. Ignore those, and, believe it or not, one WILL be ignored. It is inevitable given what I say above. Think about it..

HONOURABLE MEMBERS (#38)

I need you assistance footsal1.

Ever since the Conservatives employed what appears to be a blatant 'false instrument' (in Newbury but also in other constituencies) to gain votes in the 2010 General Election, I have been contacting a variety of MPs for comment and action (including Helena Kennedy by both email and snailmail) but none will engage. (Ms Kennedy is silent.) Might you ask your, clearly blameless, relative to contact me with an offer of support?

You are clearly aggrieved at the tarring of all MPs with the same brush, but how am I (for one) to explain a blanket refusal by MPs generally, to address a serious electoral misdemeanour?

These MP's take great pleasure in making laws that punish the majority for the actions of the minority. Then again, it was the majority of MP's who were on the fiddle so I have no sympathy for them. The MP who was on whinging about the system seemed typical of the sort of feather bedded, moaning public sector wimp who hasn't got a clue how the real world works. I wonder if he's ever had a proper job.

It's not surprising they're getting stroppy about the system, after all after systematically robbing us for years the vast majority of the electorate inexplicably voted for them again thereby endorsing their fiddling and corruption. If you voted for a sitting MP or any of the main three parties this is exactly the sort of behaviour you were endorsing and you shouldn't complain when they revert to form. You are getting exactly what you voted for.

Nice piece on the reformed system for MP's expenses. It sounds to me as if the system has only done half the job - MP's face an obstructive system similar to that which faces welfare clients, civil servants and the like. What is now required is zero tolerance for the types of abusive behaviour demonstrated by your dramatic reconstructions. As, in my experience, no claimant in a Jobcentre behaves like this, DWP would seem to have the required experience in dealing with "difficult customers". Perhaps some of their frontline staff could be seconded to the House of Commons, to educate our MP's?

After watching Coast and finding out what a wonderful country Denmark appears, I wonder if I can walk in there as all of europe does here?!

47 Did You forget the resting/rest of the World?

I take it you Love A bit/bite of Pork, The Odd Sausage eh

Duck More Soup

12. At 2:49pm on 25 Aug 2010, barriesingleton wrote:
But why doesn't the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ question...

There's another question right there. As with what is stated, or not. And by whom.

Our Economics editor Paul Mason will be delving into the report by leading economic think tank, the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS)



Quote: (The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, like The Guardian, told us that these claims came from a report by the β€œrespected” Institute for Fiscal Studies, neglecting to mention that the report had been commissioned by a Left-wing pressure group).

Objectivity in commission. Or errors of omission? Who to listen to. Who to believe?

I know where my vote would go. Though, in some cases, I don't seem to have one.

when the Tory party are having trouble putting people up to defend the undefendable they put Nadine Dorries up as she just talks at them that reduces them to a cosmotose stupor...it works with Jeremy as he just gives up but Emily battles on...and then she gives up....

the whole debate that fairness/equality=justice is such a deep darkness its hard to know where to start. The idea incomes should become 'more equal' is irrational. That poverty is a relative figure is ludicrous. No wonder its a plate of spaghetti.

a thief can rob everyone equally and in that way the thief would be held up by modern political thinkers as a model of multicultural fairness and justice. But it doesn't mean there is any good in it.

in the same way polices maybe be held up as models of multicultral fairness and justice and yet have no good in them.

many people have been brainwashed to unthinkingly parrot what the clever sophists have convinced them to say.

without the good as the highest idea of the mind there is neither fairness nor justice.

Mexico

A failed narco state?

power=money. if the state fails to crush organised gangs before they acquire vast wealth and so vast power then the state enters a negative spiral. In the uk under new labour organised gangs went from 900 to many thousands that take some 40 billion out of the uk population every year. the uk state with its present policing and legal structures is unable to stop this increasing trend.

Further to..

49. At 11:00am on 26 Aug 2010,



.. the 'D'Oh' outcome is that what is fair rather depends on who you are and whether you are inclined to agree or disagree with who tells you what it is.

Sadly mere facts can get clouded, so a degree of context can help frame things. And when such context is missing for some reason, that can in turn frame the future value of those sharing the opinions of others.