to believe Rachel Reeves was crying because

[LargeDeviation]

1. she was upset when Lindsay Hoyle told her to keep her answers short

2. she had an argument with Keir Starmer (possibly about her keeping her job, or about how to handle the inevitable questions about the new £5.5bn per annum black hole) just before PMQs

3. Keir Starmer refused to say she would keep her job in front of the whole country. If he genuinely wanted her to stay, he would just say 'of course she's going to still be Chancellor' and that would be that.

4. she is under immense pressure because she knows she will have soon to breach her fiscal rules, she knows she is responsible for many of the decisions that will lead to that, and she knows the how serious the consequences of her failure will be. We have seen recently (even just today) how vicious the bond market can be.

In short, I believe she was crying because of professional pressures (understandable ones, though largely of her own making, and about which I have little sympathy) and not nebulous 'personal' reasons.

If her parent or partner or child or grandparent or pet is ill the natural thing is to just say 'sorry, a close relative is in hospital and my emotions got the better of me'. Everybody would understand. You don't need huge reams of evidence but you need to give the bare bones of an explanation. She is trying to style it out but we can all see through it.

I will apologise if I'm wrong but long experience shows that 'personal reasons' almost always means 'I'm skiving or jobhunting' when a colleague in the workplace uses it to excuse their time off.

I believe it means even less when uttered by a politican.

@Lalgarh it would be interesting to see the impact of that action re: VAT. I guess with the cost of living crisis and lack of expendable income people have it could be risky. Still something I'd like to see at some stage.
I think a huge problem is we have to scale up defence spending dramatically in a very short time frame. Conservatives didn't bother with this during their years.

Poor life decisions or lack of social mobility in the U.K.?

Do you have a link to this? Nevertheless, as I said I’ve no issue with people criticising her on that basis. It’s the next step people take to declare she’s not qualified for the role which is egregious.

Then why should anyone bother going into care? Aren’t you seeing why it is an issue?

I’ve got to know though how is this worse than Boris hiding in a fridge to avoid questions? Is it becuase that’s funny for a silly man like Boris to do?

Try as I might,I find it very difficult to feel any sympathy for this woman. She has caused me a lot of worry and fear since the announcement in March this year about the welfare reforms, primarily the tightening of the PIP rules. I spent a a couple of months fretting about what was going to happen, fearful that we were going to given vouchers instead of money,or that the PIP application process was going to be impossibly tough. I rely on my PIP payment each month to keep my head above water. Without it,I'd be totally screwed. So sorry if I sound nasty,but I think that maybe she knows now what it feels like to be upset.

Because horses for courses? I’d like to be an Olympic show jumper, but I’m a very average rider, so I did something else instead. Care is bloody hard, but low-skilled. And the same remuneration as doctors? Be serious.

You honestly think we would be saying how wonderful it is if Starmer broke down in the House of Commons over a ‘personal issue’?

Me too @JohnTheRevelator but for different reasons. Zero fucks we’re given by Rach from accounts about all the children (many with SEN) who had to leave school and friends because of the VAT increase. Cruelty motivated by 6th form ideology. I’m just hoping that bursars up and down the land are planning gargantuan VAT reclaims after capital projects that will piss all over the puny little bit of extra cash this raised - enough to run about a nanosecond of the NHS.

Because they don’t have to make a commitment to six years of university tuition fees and living cost loans, a very hard degree, two years of basic training on a salary not much above a carers but at a variety of locations determined by lottery, followed by possible unemployment as you compete against tens of thousands of overseas doctors who have equal priority to you. And if you get a specialist training place another six or so years of training and unsocial shift work and very expensive exams you have to pay for. Plus of course the responsibility of constantly making life or death decisions. They get to avoid all that so perhaps their renumeration should reflect it?

I think carers need to be a better recognised and paid profession but it is ridiculous to suggest they should get paid the same as doctors.

The grown ups are in charge? That’s a laugh.

As for Reeves - wallowing in her own self-pity. How utterly undignified.

She did not work as an economist - she worked in Complaints. See link below which the former Director of Operation’s at Lloyd’s Bank, where RR worked, put on his LinkedIn page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/243331015137514/posts/560488350088444/

Investors can no longer trust Labour after its multiple about-turns, bond giant Legal & General (L&G) has warned.

Sonja Laud, the chief investment officer at L&G, said the decision to abandon key benefit reforms and reverse course on winter fuel payments had destroyed faith in the Government’s economic plans.

L&G is one of Britain’s biggest investors, managing £1.1 trillion of assets. It is one of the biggest buyers of UK government debt.

Ms Laud said: “[Markets] can’t trust that what’s been put forward will be put in place. You will see the adverse reaction. It was quite a big one yesterday.”

I don't recall David Cameron breaking down in public when his son died.

That’s right.

I wonder if there is some criteria for what qualifies as crying-compliant.
A ‘rough’ day at the office = OK (evidently).

Perhaps Reeves is on to something, and it will kick-start a national campaign of people openly sobbing when things don’t go their way.

Farmers,
Pensioners
Welfare claimants
Private school kids, parents and teachers
SME-Owners
Former non-doms

All of whom surely qualify for a sob-fest?

It's almost like individuals react differently to different events!

Did you read what I was replying to 💔 daft reply

But some people can’t afford to do that?! There’s very little social mobility in the UK. So the rich can stay rich and the poor can stay poor?

ETA - this is the issue with MN. Most of you are middle class yet think you represent the poor cos you’re hardly done to 🙄 do me a favour and actually think past your own lives for once.

There was plenty of social mobility in the UK. I was raised by a single mum on benefits in a council house. I got to grammar school (Conservative policy) and became the first person in my family to go to university (thanks to having my fees paid and a maintenance grant under another Conservative government - all abolished by Labour). Now we’re comfortably in the top 5% of household income. Does that make me working class or middle class?

If people want social mobility - and they should - we need to stop voting for socialists of any party affiliation, who are only interested in keeping their dependent client base. In the case of Labour, that used to be low-paid working people, but now their MO seems to be preserving their voters’ right to benefit dependency and endorsing worklessness amongst the young.

I’m still not sure why you think paying doctors and carers the same is a reasonable or tenable suggestion - care to elaborate?

She still looks happy though!!

Power to you.

You evidently took ownership and responsibility for your future. I am of a similar background. Unfortunately, the socialists do breed a dependency-culture, for some of the reasons you have mentioned.

I find socialism utterly reprehensible.

I never said they should be paid the same - - you’d think all that Tory education would help you read 🤔 You’re an exception, not the rule. The U.K. has very low social mobility, there’s plenty out there on it should you care to look. But I doubt you will since you don’t give a shiny shit.

I am the same as you, except I went to state schools. Yet somehow I can still recognise for the majority social mobility is difficult here.

ETA - I worked full time whilst at uni and still got a 1st (Russel Group) - yet I can see why others wouldn’t be able to. I didn’t have anyone to care for, and I didn’t have any placements on my course like a medical student would for example.

Lovely manners you have there @party4you - so characteristic of the left. (They wonder how a fuckwit like Farage becomes electable whilst calling everyone to the right of Chairman Mao thick as mince… 🙄) I was simply asking you to clarify your nonsensical 17.03 post.

I agree that SM became much trickier because successive governments have done away with things that actually helped, like grammar schools, assisted places and grants (all of which were Tory policies). 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’ve found the literature on SM rather partisan, as a lot of sociology studies are, and I also expect things to change with the current positive discrimination towards w/c applicants, but not necessarily for the better. There is a strong move towards this in law firms, for example, but I don’t believe it’s giving the profession higher quality applicants as a rule.

Everything worth doing is difficult. It wasn’t easy for me to stroll into a City law firm and convince them I’d make a highly profitable corporate lawyer, when the only other time I’d met a solicitor was when my mum used legal aid to try and extract CM from my absent dad. (You could do that, back in the day). I’m not playing poverty top trumps though. You’ve obviously done well in life and that’s great. Not everyone is cut out that way, and it’s easier to blame personal circumstances than accept that you perhaps didn’t make the grade.

Speaking of reading comprehension, grammar schools are typically state-run. Mine certainly was.

Why can middle class students go £100k into debt but not poor students? They both have the same opportunity to repay the debt from their studies.

Grammar schools were the policy of a coalition government enshrined in the 1944 Education Act. If it was a Tory policy successive Conservative governments have had long periods in office to reinstate them but they haven’t.