I prefer the old one

If you’re not a communist by the time your 18 your brainless
If you’re not a socialist by the time your 24 your heartless

And if you’re not a Tory by the time your 35 your pennyless.

I assume Don is having a bit of fun, because I can not imagine that he beleives that Fraser really agrees with him about the future of welfare…

you *hyphen* re… Sorry, it bothers me. I know I’m not alone.

anyway, I agree largely with the tongue in cheek message of the op. Look at the difference some research makes, I’ll take Duncan-Smith ove Dorries anyday.

3 – hyphen?

Surely you mean apostrophe?

A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.

I’d heard it as:

If your not a socialist by your twenties you’ve got no heart
If your not a conservative by your forties you’ve got no brain.

“It’s a funny old world when ….. Thatcherites …. argue that the way to get people off benefits and into work is for the government to take a more active role spend more money during a recession to give handouts to working class people.”

Well, of course I see your point when it comes to common perceptions of what it means to be left or right wing, but this isn’t such an unusual right wing position. See Milton Friedman

1, 4, 5 – very good, there will be a modest and imaginary prize for the best version of this saying.

As ever, comments in breach of the comments policy will be deleted at random as and when I feel like it, so play nice everyone. After all, this thread is about how even the Thatcherites have joined our liberal-leftie consensus

…and if you’re still a libertarian by the age of thirty – don’t panic, you’ll grow out of it soon.

Stolen from an American

Who was the first liberal democrat?

Christopher Columbus. He left not knowing where he was going,got there not knowing where he was,left there not knowing where he’d been and did it all on borrowed money.

Don – to be clear, are you advocating that millions of tax £’s should be afforded to those on low pay instead of, or in ADDITION to lone parents on 200 quid per week?

I don’t think they’re agreeing with you Don – you’re agreeing with them unless you have a link of a two year thesis that you’ve produced.

@12 I am sure they are agreeing with Don. This is not the usual Conservative thinking.

10. Addition to it would seem.

3 – hyphen?

Surely you mean apostrophe?

Murphys Law anyone?

Bugger. If its any defence I wrote that while skiving at work…

The first thing that we need to do is to stop taxing people earning £200 per week.

Then we need to give everyone a CITIZENS BASIC INCOME. That will really incentivise the young girl regarding which kind of labour she should choose.

Glad to see both right and left are coming round to the idea.

To be honest with you, I would have a lot more sympathy for the Tories position on this, if they admitted that their policies have been directly been responsible these disparities. If I saw a single Tory stand up and say ‘Sorry, we got it wrong’ then, yes, I could be persuaded that the leopard had changed its spots. Then again, I would also like the left or the media question IDS et al on what his party expected to happen when they destroyed the labour market with nearly two decades worth of anti labour (both organised and unorganised) legislation.

The Tories destroyed every bargaining chip those on lowest incomes had and the price of labour promptly fell to the equivalent of benefit levels. Does that surprise anyone? Is there anyone with an IQ over 45 who think it is a coincidence? Surely, this is exactly the market forces at work doing exactly what it says on the tin, i.e. drive the cost of unskilled labour to with a few pennies of the equivalent benefits? Cutting benefits will only drive the wages of the poorest workers still further.

If you want to ‘make work pay’ you need to drive up the cost of labour, all this flaffing about with the benefits system is merely re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

10 – “Don – to be clear, are you advocating that millions of tax £’s should be afforded to those on low pay instead of, or in ADDITION to lone parents on 200 quid per week?”

IDS’ recommendation is that the millions of tax £s should be given to low paid workers in addition to lone parents on 200 quid per week. His report said that it ruled out changing current benefit levels.

@16 Indeed, hurrah!

Here’s one I heard at Lib Dem conference last year.

“They say a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. Actually, a liberal is a conservative who’s been arrested.”

Pagar @ 16

The first thing that we need to do is to stop taxing people earning £200 per week.

Yeah, how do you manage that? Someone on £200 quid is hardly paying income tax at all. The real killer taxes are VAT, exise, and good old Council tax for those on lowest incomes. Income tax is a progressive tax and should be largely left alone, if there is scope to cut tax then abolish the council tax for the low paid.

Jim

“how do you manage that?” negative income tax? to compensate for VAT etc. see Milt link at #6

You can’t agree with the government and agree with IDS at the same time. You said that they are advocating extra money for working class people, but what they are advocating is extra money for working people.

For the record, I agree with IDS.

Yay! Comrade Praguetory joins the liberal-left conspiracy on welfare.

actually Jim, sorry, a negative income tax applied only to wage earners would differ from Friedman’s proposal, which has more in common with a CBI.

[Interesting comment on why it was never adopted: "The negative income tax was never adopted in the end, because of concern that a payment large enough to support an urban family of four might induce many to go on the dole." and if it wasn't enough to support a family, it wouldn't be acceptable as the totality of welfare support. I think a similar dilemma is still the primary barrier to the adoption of CBI ]

I’ve never believed that old saw about how a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. I was mugged when I was about 19 and I’m still about as liberal as it gets on a wide range of issues.

I’ve always thought yer small-c conservative was just someone who just reacts to any given political question as if he’d just been mugged, which is a horrible condition to find yourself in. Paranoia, anger, self-pity, unfocused resentment and violent revenge fantasies… Imagine being in that state all the time for absolutely no reason then chuck in a couple of handfuls of naked spite, and you’ve got the basic formula for modern conservatism, ready to be garlanded with a lot of transparently self-serving waffle about “choice,” “freedom” and “justice”.

All of which rather explains the tone of the modern right wing tabloid, which feeds mightily on the small-c conservative’s near-bottomless reservoirs of resentment, grandiose sense of entitlement and panic-stricken horror at the prospect that somebody, somewhere might be handed some small chunk of government cheese.

That’s just British small-c types, by the way. The manias of the American right would make Freud blush.

jeebus FR, if you’re projecting that lot onto anybody who disagrees with your politics*, no wonder you find them so objectionable.

* well, those who are right of centre.

if you’re projecting that lot onto anybody who disagrees with your politics… well, those who are right of centre.

More the type of knee-jerk ignoramus who clogs up the BBC’s Have Your Say pages whining about how you’re not allowed to use racial epithets on Radio Four any more, and how they took the golliwogs off the jam jars and such. Yer retired major types mostly, although much of the same psychology is evident throughout the movement, especially when we hit financial policy.

FWIW, I have similarly uncharitable thoughts about a large number of people who share a lot of my opinions as well, I just don’t express them very often because a) a lot of people get paid very well to have a go at lefties and don’t need me to give them pointers and b) my pool of online pals would shrink to roughly zero.

Conservatives are blessed with an unlimited capacity to tolerate the suffering of others.

Liberals believe that everyone will agree with their policies as long as they are explained properly.

ah – by small c conservative, I had in mind moderate types like everybody’s favorite likeable conservative ex blogger, blimpish, and say Michael Oakeshott. On reflection, that wasn’t a terribly sensible interpretation of “small c” because it would have rendered what you wrote absurd. caught myself breaking Luis Enrique’s First Rule of Blogging again. Curses.

[25] I’ve always thought yer small-c conservative was just someone who just reacts to any given political question as if he’d just been mugged

There were around an estimated 1.1 million violent incidents which resulted in injury in 2008/09.
http://www.poverty.org.uk/87/index.shtml

But what are we to make of these stats when we have the likes of Prof Shepherd who state – “We found that only 23 per cent of accident and emergency cases where people were treated after all attacks were recorded by police”
http://www.cf.ac.uk/125/getinvolved/mycardiff/100408.html

Funnily enough I was reading an interesting essay today which claims;
“In 1921, the year of my mother’s birth, there was one crime recorded for every 370 inhabitants of England and Wales; 80 years later, it was one for every ten inhabitants. There has been a 12-fold increase since 1941 and an even greater increase in crimes of violence”.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_4_oh_to_be.html

I think some conservatives will always be worried when hoodies are prepared to break into your house and rape you at knife point.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=24&art_id=iol1254227177328D454

Personally I do not think it is good enough to merely deflect our anger toward the Daily Mail, or shrug with a resigned air because hoodies raped even more pregnant women under the previous Tory regime.

luis @ 21

Yes, I have read a bit about negative income tax, but I believe it misses the wider point regarding taxation.

People at the bottom of the income scale pay little relatively little tax. The real killers are indirect taxes and means tested benefits. If you want to introduce a negative income tax, you are going to have to pay for it in some other way.

A) You have to increase direct taxation on the rich, which leaves you with the same problems off avoidance/resentment that such taxation would bring.
B) You have to increase indirect taxation, thus more than negating any benefit the poor receive in a negative income tax.

You can, of course, tinker around the edges of the working tax credits system, but that appears to be replacing one bureaucracy for another. At the end of the day, however, until we change the supply/demand dynamic of the labour market, then the plight of the poor is not going to change one iota.

“Yay! Comrade Praguetory joins the liberal-left conspiracy on welfare.”

There’s nothing left-wing about incentivising work – it’s the opposite of what Labour has done. Right now, the UK has the deepest welfare trap in the West. IDS’ policies if followed, would reduce the cost of welfare in the medium term.

“A social democrat is a conservative with some research”

There’s something in that. “Intellectual” and “academic” have long been used as pejorative expressions in British politics.

Always remember what Disraeli wrote for the thought has long exercised unscripted influence on conservative thinking: “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.”

So much for all that silly theory stuff.

The late President Ronald Reagan was given to mocking economists by claiming they were forever saying: “It works in practice, but does it work in theory.”

Of course, Reagan was too stupid to appreciate that thought was precisely what motivated Newton when he set out to formulate the equations describing how forces operated in the universe.

But then, as John Stuart Mill wrote in a letter (1866): “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.”

32. So what’s the course here, top up wages, bring down welfare, then phase out wage top ups to save cash and be back where we started a few decades ago?

PragueTory @ 32

“There’s nothing left-wing about incentivising work – it’s the opposite of what Labour has done”

What utter rubbish! Where is your evidence for such an idiotic claim. The p[eople who have ‘de-incentiving work’ has been the free market. They have bben driving wages, terms ans conditions down for the last twenty or so years.

“Right now, the UK has the deepest welfare trap in the West”

Again, in your rush to blurt out some more nonsense, you have neglected to show your evidence.

“IDS’ policies if followed, would reduce the cost of welfare in the medium term.”

Yep you guessed it. Evidence?

Mmmm, ‘incentivising work’ – nice nuTory euphemism that. It actually means forcing people to work harder for the same amount of money.

Bob B – I thought that everything I had said was pretty much accepted wisdom. Obviously, the bit about IDS’ proposals reducing welfare costs require you to understand the dynamic effects of incentivising work which probably involves concepts beyond your range. But even you can grasp the other bits.

From a report before the 10p tax increase.

“Britain now has the deepest poverty trap in the Western world, with thousands of people stuck in low-paid and part-time work because any extra money that they earn by finding a better job or working longer hours would have to be handed over to the Treasury.

Just under 800,000 working parents lose more than 70p in every extra pound they earn, and nearly 400,000 lose more than 90p in the pound. About 34,000 people lose more than £1 for every £1 they earn.

The study says: “The combined effect of different means-tested benefits has been to create a system which actively dissuades millions from bettering their position. Incentives to work have weakened, not strengthened, since 1997.” ”

Source.

Everything I write is substantiable.

“Mmmm, ‘incentivising work’ – nice nuTory euphemism that. It actually means forcing people to work harder for the same amount of money.”

Not at all. We all end up taking less money home as a result of having to support able-bodied people who should be working. If we were in a situation where work and enterprise were encouraged, you would see a spike in employment and market wage rates would rise.

38 – “We all end up taking less money home as a result of having to support able-bodied people who should be working.”

Good to see Comrade Praguetory is now slagging off Maggie Thatcher’s government.

Logical leap??? Are you even reading what I am writing? I refer you to my post on supertax for the masses under Labour.

I love it when bloggers cite their own posts as evidence in support of their argument. See here for an example.

Any danger of you contributing an argument to this thread, Neil?

Any chance of you gracing this thread with some evidence that supports your bland platitudes, rather than discussing-the-discussion?

I don’t usually post on here but I was moved to do so after reading the a&e charge nurse above, mainly because of the misinterpretation of statistics in the post!

If we take each point in turn:

“There were around an estimated 1.1 million violent incidents which resulted in injury in 2008/09.”

Indeed. And there were, according to the report you cite, 2.4 million in 1995. Not something you might have guessed from many tabloid news stories, I guess.

“But what are we to make of these stats when we have the likes of Prof Shepherd who state – “We found that only 23 per cent of accident and emergency cases where people were treated after all attacks were recorded by police””

But the data quoted (e.g. 1.1 million violent incidents) is from the British Crime Survey, not police records. Since the BCS is a self-report survey, whether the police actually recorded these incidents is neither here nor there. It’s whether the BCS respondents thought the incident was violent which matters. (The BCS has an annual sample of c.40,000, by the way, which is why it can come up with accurate national estimates for this type of thing.)

“Funnily enough I was reading an interesting essay today which claims;
“In 1921, the year of my mother’s birth, there was one crime recorded for every 370 inhabitants of England and Wales; 80 years later, it was one for every ten inhabitants. There has been a 12-fold increase since 1941 and an even greater increase in crimes of violence”.”

As the linked report shows, rates of crime do fluctuate over time. Crime rates plainly have increased since the mid-20s, not least because there’s just so much more stuff around to nick now, and so much more money for people to spend on booze, but not by nearly as much as is sometimes assumed, I think.

For one thing, there are lots of reasons why a higher proportion of crimes might get reported now than in the past, thus inflating the apparent increase in crime. For example, increased prevalence of home insurance, a greater expectation that ordinary people have the same call on the services of the state as do the well-off, even virtual 100% phone ownership making it easier to do. There are many more.

On the other hand, I can think of many fewer reasons why a *lower* proportion of crime might get reported now than in the past. One that’s always given is ‘people don’t think it’s worth it any more’ – but where’s the evidence? And even if people don’t trust the police to do anything, anyone who wants to make an insurance claim has to.

I think some conservatives will always be worried when hoodies are prepared to break into your house and rape you at knife point.

Because of course no one got raped before 1960.

Prague Tory @ 37

Wait a minute though. You stated ‘Labour’ had been responsible for dis-indecisivising work, but that is not true is it? Welfare benefits has always been means tested; therefore, it always has clawed back money above the means tested threshold. That was equally true under the last Tory administration. If you have any real evidence that Labour have introduced changes to benefits that result in tightening those thresholds up, then I would seriously like to see it.

The charge normally laid at the Labour’s door is that they have been too generous with benefits not that they have really tighten the grip on out of work benefits.

What this report from a ‘right of centre’ think tank misses out is that the ‘dis-instentive’ is caused by a surplus of labour and a lack of opportunity.

This has kept wages low, which in turn dis-incentivises work, not the welfare state. If you tighten the labour market, the incentives to get back into employment will be provided by the free market.

Again, you have failed to explain were the savings would come from if IDS half arsed scheme was introduced. The most he will do is stir the unemployment pot, not a shred of evidence that he will reduce unemployment.

Hi Ne Type,

That’s an excellent contribution – thanks for commenting

Hi Jim,

According to IDS, his reforms will make savings of c. £600 million in better health and lower crime. I couldn’t find any evidence for these assertions (and good luck to any government which tried to make these savings “more people have got jobs, so we are closing your local hospital and sacking half the beat bobbies) but Comrade Praguetory might know more detail – it is a very long report which I only skimmed.

IDS also has calculations for the number of people who will get jobs as a result of his reforms which seems to assume that the only variable about whether people are out of work or not is whether they could maximise their earnings by working rather than being on benefit – nothing about e.g. lack of childcare or there not being enough jobs for people who want to work.

Prague Tory @ 38

“Not at all. We all end up taking less money home as a result of having to support able-bodied people who should be working.”

Do we really? Do you think it is a simple as that? Where are those jobs that these people could be doing? Surely the whole point of closing factories that are losing money is to increase profits? Isn’t that the point of making people unemployed is to make others better off? Aren’t low wages rates for some, higher profit margins for others? I thought high unemployment meant low inflation? Wasn’t that the message of Thatcherism?

“If we were in a situation where work and enterprise were encouraged, you would see a spike in employment and market wage rates would rise.”

Of course, if wage rates rise then inflation rises or profit margins are cut. Then what? We have to offshore and increase unemployment to take the sting out of the labour market.

Don @ 47

“According to IDS, his reforms will make savings of c. £600 million in better health and lower crime. I couldn’t find any evidence for these assertions”

So, during when the left told everyone that increasing unemployment was damaging the Country and causing long term damage, the right dismissed this as scare mongering. It turns out that IDS now believes this is true.

Where was he in 1984?

“The charge normally laid at the Labour’s door is that they have been too generous with benefits not that they have really tighten the grip on out of work benefits.”

Which is exactly what I am saying!!!!! Due to the impact family tax credit withdrawal, doubling of income tax rates from 10p to 20p, NI rises etc etc the financial incentives to go from part-time to full-time or indeed work at all are incredibly weak.

“Again, you have failed to explain were the savings would come from if IDS half arsed scheme was introduced. The most he will do is stir the unemployment pot, not a shred of evidence that he will reduce unemployment.”

I don’t know what you mean by stir the unemployment pot. Greater incentives to work mean that people who previously did not see the point in working would have an incentive to do so. On our poorest estates, such people would set an example setting in train a virtuous cycle.

Don is struggling to imagine how multi-million pound savings can result. I think that shows a lack of imagination. I am sure that there have been studies which show that each delinquent child costs the state (the taxpayer) a million dollars. The costs associated with long term unemployment include additional social service, health and housing costs, lost tax revenues, direct criminal justice costs (don’t prison places cost C£300 a day) and indirect ones such as security measures and higher insurance costs.

Not to mention that one in six NEETs ends up dead.

“Don is struggling to imagine how multi-million pound savings can result. I think that shows a lack of imagination. I am sure that there have been studies which show that each delinquent child costs the state (the taxpayer) a million dollars. The costs associated with long term unemployment include additional social service, health and housing costs, lost tax revenues, direct criminal justice costs (don’t prison places cost C£300 a day) and indirect ones such as security measures and higher insurance costs.”

This is all good stuff – but these are long term savings, and also hard to actually realise. IDS seems to be assuming the extra spending will mostly pay for itself over 3-4 years, which is less realistic.

But the key point is that your points above are all things which lefties have been saying for ages, and it is nice to see you and your Thatcherite comrades in agreement.

[44] – which stats did I misinterpret?

I highlighted a few links demonstrating that crime is far more than just a figment of the Tory imagination (alluded to by FR – 25) – people can decide for themselves which particular prejudices they wish to reinforce from the various sources.

By the sound of it, you seem to be of the ‘things have always been bad’ school, in fact twice as bad a few short years ago – while sinister hoodies where performing acts of sexual violence (on pregnant women) when Spurs last won the double.

By the way while I accept that a % of feckless young men have always been around, the long term trend, if we compare today to the inter-war years, for example has been one of a steady rise in criminal behaviour (even though there was far greater poverty back then).

The ‘more stuff to nick’ argument is a particularly weak line, since it implies that tens of thousands of robbers are so feeble-minded that they are unable to control even the most rudimentary antisocial impulses – but with so many apologists bending over themselves to remove any sense of personal responsibility nowadays it is hardly surprising that they fail grasp the corrosive effect their violent and selfish behaviour has on the wider community (be it either 1 million, 2 million or a mere 500,000 souls who are affected – depending on which stats turn happen to you on).

Don is presumably thinking of this article:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/5336871/part_4/how-to-spring-the-benefits-trap.thtml

the government needs to spend billions of pounds more in topping up the wages of low paid workers with cash benefits

This flatly is not going to happen, because the government no longer has billions of pounds more per year to spend on anything. Any incentives will have to be ones that save the government money.

PragueTory @ 50

“Which is exactly what I am saying!!!!! Due to the impact family tax credit withdrawal, doubling of income tax rates from 10p to 20p, NI rises etc etc the financial incentives to go from part-time to full-time or indeed work at all are incredibly weak.”

You think any of that is true? The income tax thing was a mistake, but then again hardly a disincentive to work. Who would give a job to ‘save’ two pounds a week in income tax. The problem with the ten pence tax thing was it a few people who fell through the tax credit dafety net. These people lost out because they are not entitled to any benefits other than the basic benefits. They were not compensated by family tax credits, because they have no dependant children. These people would be entiltled to 60 quid a week dole money. Who would give up a a full time job for sixty quid a week?

The real barriers are not direct taxation, but things like council tax (not a labour invention) high rents, the cost of childcare, the cost of transport etc. These are the areas that you need to tackle. A good, well funded transport system would make work more acceptable.

“I don’t know what you mean by stir the unemployment pot. Greater incentives to work mean that people who previously did not see the point in working would have an incentive to do so. On our poorest estates, such people would set an example setting in train a virtuous cycle.”

Yeah, that would assume that there are a surplus of unfilled jobs eargly awaiting to be filled by these retureners to work. If so, why is the price of labour so flat.

There is a huge surplus of labour out in the real world and nothing is going to change that. The best you can do is displace people who are in work, with people who are not. You need to create more jobs, not have more people chasing the same jobs.

“they fail grasp the corrosive effect their violent and selfish behaviour has on the wider community”

Why would they? There are only so many times you can tell people “it’s all over for this country” before something snaps.

@Praguetory

There’s nothing left-wing about incentivising work – it’s the opposite of what Labour has done.

Oh for crying out loud. Do Tories still delude themselves that this is true? No government has ever had as many people in work as this Labour government. Not one. It reached a record of some 29 million workers a few years ago.

Now, Thatcher’s Tories on the other hand managed to govern (if that’s what you call it) for the entire 18 years between 1979 and 1997 with unemployment stuck steadfastly above the 1.4million bequeathed to her rotten regime in 1979.

And still Tories bleat that they are better stewards of the economy than Labour. There is no evidence for this hoary claim at all.

“But the key point is that your points above are all things which lefties have been saying for ages, and it is nice to see you and your Thatcherite comrades in agreement.”

Really. Only Frank Field on the Labour benches seems to have been making these arguments. What I, Fraser Nelson and most of the Conservative PPCs I know who would describe themselves as being on the right of the party is that we believe in personal responsibility – and therefore rewarding success not failure.

“@Praguetory

There’s nothing left-wing about incentivising work – it’s the opposite of what Labour has done.

Oh for crying out loud. Do Tories still delude themselves that this is true? No government has ever had as many people in work as this Labour government. Not one. It reached a record of some 29 million workers a few years ago.”

Britain has never had such a high population so that doesn’t cut any ice.

At least until recently, Britain had the highest employment rate of working-age people among the big EU economies and, as has been mentioned here before, welfare benefits in Britain tend to be rather mean as compared with welfare benefits in other west European countries.

In 2007, before the financial crisis developed, the burden of taxation in Britain – meaning: total tax revenues as a percentage of national GDP – was lower than in most European countries: the most notable exception being Germany, where the burden was marginally lower. Try this OECD source:
http://lysander.sourceoecd.org/pdf/factbook2009/302009011e-10-04-01.pdf

“Scarcely any rich country has stable public finances. America’s public debt is expected to double as a fraction of GDP by 2018. Britain faces many years of budget deficits and a rising debt burden. There is no end in sight for deficits in the rest of Europe either.”
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14419200

Not quite the messages that George Osborne and Philip Hammond have been trying to put across.

@Jim,

“There is a huge surplus of labour out in the real world and nothing is going to change that. The best you can do is displace people who are in work, with people who are not. You need to create more jobs, not have more people chasing the same jobs.”

Indeed. This seems blatantly obvious; the elephant in the room.

In that sense, I can’t help seeing IDS’s plans as precursor to future policies where this newly “incentivised” bottom quintile has the welfare safety net slowly pulled out from under its feet, and the scramble for work sees the winners become “the respectable working class” and the (inevitable and economically-necessary) losers form an entrenched, ghettoised, abandoned underclass that would make the commonly-held image of our current underclass look like the Bullingdon club.

I can never understand why neo thatcherite posters post on a left of centre blog.
Mr T, CjCjC (whatever) and A + E nurse.
Why ?
You remind me of the Python sketch about wanting an argument, 5 minute or the full 1/2 hour.
Wanting conflict show severe psychological problems.
For your own good blog on right wing sites such as Harry’s place, Guido’s and Iain dale. You will feel much better.
As for the statement about heart and brain (we lose brain cells and memory as we get older) so we get a little more dense.
We get more right wing as we get older because we earn more money and get more insecure

61
I have certainly got more left-wing as I’ve grown older, perhaps I’m bucking the trend or maybe it’s because I haven’t lost that much memory.
There has been research in the past which has shown that the tories attract the older vote, I’m not sure if that’s still the case. If older people have retained their memory of the Thatcher government, they will be all too aware that if they require social care, they will be means-tested and charged dearly.
And I think that the tories aren’t all that certain about older people and memory loss, I see that part of their manifesto will be some form of financial assistance with social care needs for the elderly.
Has there been any research about cynicism and the elderly?

Praguetory @ 57

“Only Frank Field on the Labour benches seems to have been making these arguments”

You simply don’t get it, do you? IDS ‘research’ is nothing new. We have been telling you this since 1979 and the entire time, you have ignored or argued with us. Every policy you brought in we told you it was wrong.

When you people started to destroy industries we told you it would lead to the economic destruction communities.
When you people started to destroy the economic bases of communities, we told you it was a bad idea, as it would lead to mass unemployment.
When you people managed to get unemployment up to three million, we told you that was putting intolerable strains on families, causing family breakdowns, poor health and high crime.
When you kept putting people on the dole, we told you that you where condemning large areas of the Country to mass, long term unemployment.
We told you that mass unemployment would lead to the collapse of the labour market.
We told you that low wages would condemn people to a lifetime of benefits.

We predicted everything and still you went on and did. You got what you wanted, you wanted mass unemployment, you wanted huge economic blackspots, you wanted a total collapse of the labour market, you wanted wealth removed from the regions into the home Counties.

Now IDS is telling us that people are better off working! Yeah only thirty years too late! No apology, no admission of guilt no contrition, not even the decency to acknowledge we where right all along.

What is worse, the deafening silence from the media. The same the Tory yes man Andrew Marr who was eager to put Brown’s personal health into the spotlight will never ask IDS to explain why his party perused these destructive policies. I wouldn’t piss on a Tory if he was on fire.

63
As an ex-miner, living in a tory economic destruction area, your post is probably the best I’ve read since joining LC
As for not pissing on a burning tory – well said

Steveb @ 64

Cameron talks about broken, Britian, I am the only person in the Country that wants to ask him who broke it? Does he think it coincidence that the areas that show much decay are the areas that Thacter targeted to be dismantled.

People who spent 18 years destroying society are hardly the ones who now purse their lips and say ‘look, at the mess our society is in’

To be honest I thought that the most interesting part of the article was the statement that “I have spoken to civil servants at the highest level in government who say, with exasperation, that there is no worm’s eye view of the 51 different UK benefits.”

You might have thought that the people running the benefits system would have made sure that they had some idea of what that system looks like to the people it is supposed to benefit.

Why was this not done before all the fiddling around that has been done to the system?

[61] last week (on LC) I was accused of NOT being an A&E C/N – this week I’m a ‘neo-thatcherite’ – I’m sure Ill regret asking this but perhaps you would be kind enough to point out which comment led you to such a bizarre conclusion?

#63: “We told you that mass unemployment would lead to the collapse of the labour market”

The fact is that by the last quarter of 1995, the standardised ILO unemployment rate in Britain was lower than in France, Germany or Italy, and the employment rate of working-age people was higher. Moreover, that remained so through to the credit crunch.

It seldom occurs to the anti-Thatcher brigade to question why the British electorate continued to re-elect Mrs Thatcher to government, in 1983 and 1987, and the Conservatives again in 1992, if she did so much harm. At the very least, that made the electorate complicit in the consequences of the policies.

There are substantive reasons for criticising Mrs Thatcher, as well as her successors through to the present, but posting ridiculous charges destroys the political credibility of those who try to demonise her.

For a dispassionate and hugely critical assessment of the policies – and the consequences – by British governments since the advent of Mrs Thatcher in May 1979, from a non-partisan perspective, try:

Simon Jenkins on: Thatcher and Sons – A Revolution in Three Acts (Penguin, P/B 2007)

“I thought high unemployment meant low inflation?”

Fundamental to Milton Friedman’s criticism of “keynesianism” was to say that it was entirely possible to have both high inflation along with high unemployment and to point to the general experience of developed countries during the 1970s as a glaring example of just that. Remember this? “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”.

In 1976, prime minister James Callaghan famously remarked: “We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.”
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Callaghan

Can I just say:

Wot Jim said @63.

Great post.

Bob B

“It seldom occurs to the anti-Thatcher brigade to question why the British electorate continued to re-elect Mrs Thatcher to government, in 1983 and 1987, and the Conservatives again in 1992, if she did so much harm. At the very least, that made the electorate complicit in the consequences of the policies.”

At the risk of doing a Matt Murno and making a complete twat of myself by failing to recognise rather obvious irony, I have to ask, is that a genuine statement?

The Tories won elections on the votes of the people who gained most from Thatcherism. The greedy, the bankers and the parasitic spivs in the city. They were wiped out in Scotland, Wales and the North. The “British” rejected Thatcherism and the vermin that ran it. The South Est of England voted in large numbers for the Tories in the sure knowledge that the ‘pain’ was being suffered in the North, while the money was being funneled into the pockets of the wealthy.

Isn’t funny that the Tories were rejected in economic blackspots and couldn’t buy a seat in Scotland for example, but we are now told these people vote for Labour to keep them unemployed! If that is true why did the Tories get rejected in mining, steel, iron, manufacturing communities? Many of these people lived on benefits during Thatcherism, so why werent they voting for the job destroyers?

@63 great post

68
Margater Thatcher’s greatest achievment was her creation of ‘loadsamoney’, her free-market philosophy convinced quite a few people that this was the way, particularly as the economy became awash with money, correlation is everything. But, of course, this is not the same as causality, and in fact, the reason for this was the fact that she had sold-off the family silver. The post-war settlement was, in fact, paid for by the majority of tax-payers within the 1950s; social housing, gas. water etc . And there was the matter of the revenue from oil.
Her constant reference to the great Victorians,,who, in the 19th century were able to industrialize ahead of other countries and our status as economic leaders was attributed to this free-market. She failed to mention that this was more to do with the fact that our potential competitors were locked in revolutionary turmoil than the efficiency of a free-market.
It is little wonder that Thatcher is now viewed as an embarassment within her own party.

“The Tories won elections on the votes of the people who gained most from Thatcherism.”

As I recall, the Conservatives won the 1983, 1987 and 1992 elections with comfortable majorities, which suggests that the beneficiaries of Thatcherism were fairly widely distributed, at least in England. Until Nigel Lawson finally recognised that he had screwed up as Chancellor and resigned in 1989, employment in Britain was running at record levels.

A more fruitful line of attack than just demonising Mrs Thatcher is to analyse why a few areas of Britain failed to share in the general increase properity during the 1980s.

As for the increasing inequality of income distribution during the 1980s, try looking at the facts and ask why that inequality wasn’t reversed by New Labour governments?
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/taxbhi0608.pdf

Disturbing findings from a recent LSE study – social mobility in Britain lower than other advanced countries and declining:

- In a comparison of eight European and North American countries, Britain and the United States have the lowest social mobility
- Social mobility in Britain has declined whereas in the US it is stable
- Part of the reason for Britain’s decline has been that the better off have benefited disproportionately from increased educational opportunity.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTrust_report.htm

IMO if Tony Blair was correct about anything, he was right when he said: Education, Education, Education was the way to go.

This is the problem:

“Government figures show only 15% of white working class boys in England got five good GCSEs including maths and English last year. . . Poorer pupils from Indian and Chinese backgrounds fared much better – with 36% and 52% making that grade respectively.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7220683.stm

“According to the latest available figures, Britain was ranked 14th in a global skills league table.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4372738/Almost-24-million-adults-with-poor-numeracy-skills-say-MPs.html

Bob @ 73

As I recall, the Conservatives won the 1983, 1987 and 1992 elections with comfortable majorities, which suggests that the beneficiaries of Thatcherism were fairly widely distributed, at least in England.

For me it suggests that that the FPTP system of elections give people with less than a third of vote far too large a majority. 14 million votes from an electorate of 43 millions does not appear to be all that broad a support in my book.

“As for the increasing inequality of income distribution during the 1980s, try looking at the facts and ask why that inequality wasn’t reversed by New Labour governments?”

No real secret there, Bob. If you follow a broadly Thatcherite ecomonic policy, don’t be suprised to find that you get a broadly Thatcherite outcome.

Jim @75

We’ve known for decades that the FPTP electoral system doesn’t lead to outcomes representing voting shares – but there’s never been much appetite for reform in the two big parties.

Even so, why didn’t the electorate in England turn against the Conservatives during the 1980s if the consequences of the policies of her governments were so detested?

“If you follow a broadly Thatcherite ecomonic policy, don’t be suprised to find that you get a broadly Thatcherite outcome.”

If that is meant to suggest that the New Labour governments of the last twelve years have pursued “dryish” economic policies, I agree. If anything, the industrial policies of New Labour governments have much less interventionist than Thatcher’s ever were.

The fact is that the Thatcher governments poured billions of taxpayers’ money into propping up the coal board and British Leyland, along with its successor, the Rover Group. Grants were paid to Nissan to persuade the company to open a (high productivity) plant in Sunderland – the Honda plant in Swindon and the Toyota plant nr Derby were not grant aided. The Thatcher governments were hugely successful in attracting inward investment, which rather suggests they were pursuing the right kinds of policies to promote prosperity.

For all Labour’s rhetoric, almost all the industrial relations legislation of the Thatcher governments is still on the statute book unchanged.

But demonising Thatcher won’t disguise the fact that the British workforce – especially in some sub-regions – is lacking the skills that businesses want and can find in other countries now at competitive pay rates. Unless that fundamental fact is focused on and acted upon, it will just be futile blaming the predictable downstream consequences on Thatcher in 10 years time. Businesses are more concerned with market fundamentals than with demonising Thatcher or other political rhetoric.

By Eurostat statistics, inner London is the most prosperous region in Europe by a margin. According to this BBC Newsnight report in April last year about why London is different, 40 per cent of London residents were born abroad:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7368326.stm

The prosperity of London and the south east are due not to Thatcher but because businesses can usually successfully recruit the skills they want more readily than in most other regions in Britain.

How does this news report compare with Education, Education, Education?

“A school governor has called for a ban on parents drinking alcohol while picking up their children.

“Arthur Mitchell, chairman of the board of governors at Doncaster Road primary school in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, said a street drinking ban had been proposed after police received reports that parents had been seen drinking at the school’s gates.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/oct/04/stop-drinking-parents-told

Is that news likely to attract inward investment to create new jobs?

77
Very illuminating, we can infer that the lack of inward investment within Barnsley during the past week or so may have been due to parents drinking outside of a local primary school.
The north, and ;particularly the north east, Yorkshire and Humberside, suffered economically because of a decrease in manufacturing and heavy industry. Most of those jobs were replaced by low-paid retail/service jobs. Even within banking and other ‘white collar’ occupations, more and more jobs are based on short-term contracts, agency/seasonal employment, bank and casual staff. There has been an overall increase of female employees and a decrease in male employees, hence overall employment figures may not reflect this.
The north cannot compete with London and the south-east in terms of geographical access to Dover and the obvious fact that all capitals will attract a large variety and number of skilled workers..
I don’t suppose that demonising Thatcher will serve any practical purpose but it makes a lot or people, including myself, feel a lot better.

Bob B @”

“Even so, why didn’t the electorate in England turn against the Conservatives during the 1980s if the consequences of the policies of her governments were so detested?”

Well Bob, vast swathes of the population DID turn against the Conservatives. Obviously, 14 million people out of 42 million found mass unemployment perfectly acceptable.

As I said earlier, Scotland went from a position from being Tory heartlands were they could expect a 50% share of the vote, to a position where they were wiped of the map as a political force. They lost votes in the inner cities, most of Wales and the industrial centres. There are places were Thatcher is still detested, even to this day. Apparently, Thatcher is on record as saying she wants her funeral to be a celebration, yeah, well round about here, she needn’t worry, we will have street parties.

“The Thatcher governments were hugely successful in attracting inward investment, which rather suggests they were pursuing the right kinds of policies to promote prosperity.”

Not as simple as that though, I am afraid. This inward investment was always based on huge grants given to huge multinationals to relocate here. However, by the time the Tories left office, the contracts were up and the grants dried up, the Americans and Japanese firms upped and went away.

I live in what used to be called ‘Silicon Glen’, I remember Malcolm Rifkind et al were seen opening various enterprises, but it turns out that these contracts were actually for fixed terms and no-one was obliged to keep factories opened. By the time the Tories left power, these contracts started to expire and one by one these same factories closed.

Motorola for example. They used to employ three thousand people in West Lothian. They closed down the profit making factory and moved the work to its loss making AND more expensive plant in Flensburg, Germany. Germany having the among the highest labour costs and tightest employment laws on the planet. The Germans had the jobs sewn up before Labour had got into power. Were are the cheapest country in Europe to fire and my God it shows.

SteveB @ 78

I don’t suppose that demonising Thatcher will serve any practical purpose but it makes a lot or people, including myself, feel a lot better.

Well true, but if Marr can get Cameron’s dick out of his mouth, perhaps he could ask him about the 2.6 million on incapicity benefit that he thinks can work, which political party put 2 million on it in the first place. He could strain himself to ask ‘Given the fact that your party used incapicity benefit to hide the fact that there are too few jobs to go round, what has changed to ensure they can all get work now?”

#78: “The north, and particularly the north east, Yorkshire and Humberside, suffered economically because of a decrease in manufacturing and heavy industry. Most of those jobs were replaced by low-paid retail/service jobs.”

And Leeds flourished through the 1980s into the 1990s by (sensibly) growing high-value legal and financial service industries starting from a base in the early 1970s when the city had an industrial concentration of declining textiles and clothing businesses with low pay which were steadily losing out in international markets to competitive pressures from those very industries growing in world3 countries.

“Japanese firms upped and went away”

Nissan, Toyota and Honda still have working car making facilities in Britain.

It’s true that Ford moved car assembly operations to west European countries where labour costs were higher. That’s because higher productivity abroad overcame the disadvantage of higher labour costs.

We should take heed of that and worry about why Britain has relatively low producivity compared with peer group countries in western Europe. Very likely it is connected with this:

“Up to 12 million working UK adults have the literacy skills expected of a primary school child, the Public Accounts Committee says. . . The report says there are up 12 million people holding down jobs with literacy skills and up to 16 million with numeracy skills at the level expected of children leaving primary school.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4642396.stm

How come the Japanese car companies produce here? That’s because they were heavily over-subscribed with applications for new job vacancies and could selectively recruit new workers to greenfield sites well away from the traditional centres of the motor industry in Britain.

“The north cannot compete with London and the south-east in terms”

The truth is more like that parts of the north languishing at the bottom of the local education league table can’t compete with the skills and education of the workforce in London and the South East.

Btw do you imagine that (real) news reports like these helps to attract inward investment?

“A SPECIALIST police team formed to tackle crime across the whole of Yorkshire has seized more than £3.75m worth of cash and goods from criminals in its first year of operation.”

“Two out of every five UK metal thefts take place within a 15-mile radius of Barnsley, according to South Yorkshire’s Chief Constable, Meredydd Hughes.”

“The South Yorkshire Trading Standards Unit is to close on 31 July over a £14m shortfall in its accounts. The discrepancy came to light after the death of the unit’s general manager in December 2005 and is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.”

“YORKSHIRE and the Humber has emerged as one of the highest crime regions in the country in the latest annual Home Office figures . . The statistics show the region has the second highest level of overall crime recorded by the police. In figures compiled direct from the public – but not necessarily officially recorded – it has, by some distance, the highest rates of burglary and the highest rates of vehicle-related theft. The figures showed recorded crimes in Yorkshire and the Humber at 137 per 1,000 population – second only to London.”

“Yorkshire and Humberside suffered the highest levels of burglary, graffiti and vehicle crime in the FSB research and those in the north-west were most likely to to suffer robbery and vandalism.”

#80: “I live in what used to be called ‘Silicon Glen’”

Billions of taxpayers’ money went into attracting inward investment projects by those electronics companies into Scotland. I know because the grant applications used to pass across my desk.

The Scots need to ask themselves why, after the experience of setting up plants and operating in Scotland with the benefit of huge grants, those companies then chose to move out. What changed the minds of their boards?

Btw the facts are that at 29+ millions, employment in Britian pre-credit crunch was running at record levels, that the standardised unemployment rate in Britain was lower than in France, Germany or Italy and the employment rate of working-age people higher.

Impoverished South Yorkshire?

Never believe it. Try these news reports on the BBC website:

“A Sheffield suburb has been named as the wealthiest place in England outside London and the south east. A survey by Barclays has found that nearly 8% of people in the Sheffield Hallam constituency earn more than £60,000 a year. This puts it in 17th place in the top 20 of most affluent places ahead of traditionally wealthy areas such as Twickenham and Windsor. The only other district outside the south east in the top 20 is the Tatton constituency in Cheshire.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2191223.stm

“The richest people in England live in the north, not the south-east, once house prices are taken into account, a study has calculated. The study, from Barclays Private Clients, looked at people’s wealth in England and Wales after the cost of living – including house prices – were taken out. It found that eight of the 10 wealthiest places were in northern English counties.

“Tatton in Cheshire, home to David and Victoria Beckham, as well as ex-Tory MP Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine, topped the league.

“The study found the actual average wage in Tatton was £29,303.
But that was worth a “real” average income of £41,506 once the cost of living was taken into account, it said.

“Hallam in Sheffield came a close second with an average ‘real’ income of £41,289.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3025321.stm

81
Leeds is now struggling – as you say they jumped on the financial services/property band-wagon
83
There are areas of affluence in the north just as there are areas of poverty in the south.
There is also an influx of people from the south buying up the cheaper property in the north, especially those who are self-employed or who can work from home.
This has pushed up property prices and often local people cannot afford to buy within their own area.. Much like rural areas througout the whole of the uk. But you can google forever and you can apply your economic theory to every post that’s placed on LC, but to understand you really need to live and observe the blatant waste caused by the ‘buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest’ philosophy.