Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

I expect it could be seen as a practice run before Brexit. The pandemic is proving a gift to certain people in some ways, isn’t it?

Going back a couple of years, and I heard an Urban Rumour that over summer "they" were subtly organising roadworks across the UK to be able to quickly move to prevent any mass disturbances.

When I was reading about this, I did notice a few stretches of road around Birmingham were lanes were coned off, but no work was ever done, and a few months later, the cones disappeared.

I've also seen council (Well "Amey") trucks moving unrecorded diversions around in the late evening towards the city centre.

All most odd.

I wonder if they kept the plans for resisting Operation Sealion up to date ? If they did, it's a shame their pandemic plans weren't kept as fresh.

Bcf the ultimate problem with benefits and single mothers is currently the cost of housing (and who is entitled to council housing) means that some single mothers without jobs - if they are receiving child maintenance - have more disposable income than those in privately rented or owned accommodation working full time. This is leading to a sense of unfairness.

I do know two mothers in this situation. One has 5 kids including a disabled daughter. She isnt yet on universal credit and shes going to have one hell of a shock when she does. The other one is on universal credit and does ok because of the child maintenance she gets. Without it she would struggle financially. Neither is particularly good with managing their money though and i slightly despair of their priorities.

The pair of them dont help the situation. One feels massively insecure living in an affluent area, so felt the need to throw the biggest birthday party in the entire year for her daughter to demonstrate she can keep up with the Jones. Both subscribe to the 'lets have a mountain of presents' for Christmas mentality too.

Ultimately my friendship with them went down the pan for a number of reasons but not least of because of how much they were eating out during the week when the kids were at school. I simply couldn't afford to keep up with them! Nor could my waistline.

Personally i do think its good for the area to have a mix of council housing and tenants for better social cohesion but there is very much a tension going on. Most other households here are professional middle class homeowners on two incomes as thats the only way to afford a home here.

Its a fine line and i very much appreciate that one would be screwed if her ex lost his job and the other is guaranteed a shock. Both could do with educating in financial management and responsibility because they take the attitude that they are the states responsibility whereas for everyone else here there is effectively no longer the safety net of a council house if they fall on hard times.

In terms of economic security, covid-19 has had an effective on different groups of people in very different ways. Some people who previously were more economically insecure have been a lot more comfortable and secure than others who 6 months ago would have been thought of as very secure. Those in council homes here have, ironically, been much more cushioned because theyve a guaranteed income and home in a way that a household with two professionals hasnt necessarily been. Further down the line, i fear there is going to be fall out for that situation which wont be pleasant.

I know that some around here would be happy to 'socially cleanse' the area and move them out of the area to a much cheaper area so that the housing can be sold off by the council for profit and 'problem families' and anti social behaviour can be 'dealt with'.

I think the situation is deeply complex and comes back to the high cost of housing rather than the benefits system itself.

I do understand why the tension exists and tbh i do think there is a problem, but i dont think its the one that people think it is.

I do think we are in danger of going the same way as Brazil with affluent areas walled off with private security to keep out the undesirables in the uk slums.

It needs to be on motorways and key roads mainly rather than in city centres/near homes.

Doing it to Trafford would be particularly difficult due to its location and how certain places are located. My understanding is that the outbreak there has been in some of the more affluent areas which are on the outskirts of the borough rather than the more central ones.

Theres also the big Trafford Centre question, especially with its owner Intu in deep financial trouble.

It is indeed a complex issue with many underlying factors which are sometimes family specific. I feel very strongly that if these families were supported by the absent fathers they wouldn't be so "needy" but I do agree a lot have issues with money maintenance. I can see where it comes from psychologically - as you said keeping up with J's when you know you are being judged is tempting. There are a lot of courses for women down here who have been abused physically and emotionally to learn to budget and cook, for example, which really do seem to make a big difference. One of my friend's exes wouldn't let her heat the house while he was at work, for example. Not physical stuff but it knocks your confidence in your own abilities which can make money management hard. Some of these men really know how to enforce coercive control and it has long lasting impacts.

Tory MP condemned for claim BAME people breaching lockdown most

Dogwhistle racism to distract attention from continual government mishandling of this crisis
We've seen this from some MN posters too

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/31/tory-mp-craig-whittaker-condemned-claim-bame-people-most-covid-19-lockdown-breaches

I've felt for a long time that scrapping non-disability related benefits entirely and replacing them with a universal basic income for every citizen, with more finely graded (5 to 10 tax bands) progressive taxation plus integration of National Insurance with income tax would solve a good whack of the resentment around benefits. The housing crisis is the biggest part of the problem, though, and what's really needed is a massive social housing building programme. Oh and properly funding schools to mitigate the differences between good and poor catchments. It'll never happen, of course.

JSP: I don't heat the flat when the children are at school. It's the result of how I was brought up. I don't feel worth it combined with the need to save money due to fear of poverty. To be fair this is how dad felt and why he behaved that way too. He was bought up as one of the youngest in a large family in council house where their rations were distributed to the workers in the family.

Rationing went on until the 80s and 90s. Only one cup of milk a day and that had to be at bedtime. Two eggs a week. Only one egg at a time. I had one school skirt to last the last couple of years of secondary. There were only two of us who still had bread, dripping and salt sandwiches. The poor kids.

80 years on and I am still suffering the consequences. It is unnatural to let the children help themselves to milk. They are allowed to but it feels stressful and somehow wrong to me. Ds came home from his aunt's talking about this amazing food made with eggs with stuff in it in a pan... An omelet I don't book them because they take too many eggs. I am feeling twitchy now as ds has helped himself to orange juice.

I also stayed far to long in a DV relationship.
Off to look at the petition.

I've felt for a long time that scrapping non-disability related benefits entirely and replacing them with a universal basic income for every citizen, with more finely graded (5 to 10 tax bands) progressive taxation plus integration of National Insurance with income tax would solve a good whack of the resentment around benefits.

But how does that satisfy the majority of the electorate who feel that being poor is Gods will ? And have repeated expressed that view by voting Tory, whatever they tell YouGov, or the nice person with the clipboard.

I do think we are in danger of going the same way as Brazil with affluent areas walled off with private security to keep out the undesirables in the uk slums.

I lived in Latin America, in a walled off area with private security.
People from the slums went in and out regularly for work such areas used a large amount of labour.

Actually Brazil itself has fairly strict Labour laws and the middle classes are finding it increasingly difficult to have as many staff as they were used to.

I think the U.K. is very far away from Latin America because ultimately people on low incomes expect to rely on the State and in Latin America they expect to work or starve.

The bedroom tax kicked off while I was out there and locals couldn't even imagine getting help with housing let alone complaining about the number of rooms it covered.

There is a very long way to go before the UK is similar to Latan.

Dgr i think its now at a point where the state social security doesn't offer anything for the middle classes because so much money is tied up in property and the benefits system has been so undermined and personal debt is so high.

Essentially there is no fall back safety net for the lower middle class. If they lose a job they are utterly screwed. They are fucked because of the level of debt theyve been encouraged to take. Theres no council housing left.

So to all intents and purposes there isnt a safety net for many once if you arent already in the system and have a council house. You are caught in the trap of high cost private renting or temporary accommodation.

So this group dont want to fund a system that they feel offers nothing rather than thinking about supporting policy which seeks to rebuild the safety net.

Until Labour can make this core central message and argument instead of the nonsense of identity politics, they wont get anywhere.

I have always said that I think we need roadblocks to contain areas.
East Kent will need to be fully blockaded in January because of mass smuggling
Portsmouth will be interesting to cut off

So maybe a bit of "roadblock" practice now is a good idea

@ListeningQuietly

I have always said that I think we need roadblocks to contain areas. East Kent will need to be fully blockaded in January because of mass smuggling Portsmouth will be interesting to cut off

So maybe a bit of "roadblock" practice now is a good idea

I wonder if drones can fly the channel yet ?

Speaking of aircraft, why I was saying months ago that you can kiss goodbye to a return to the days of mass cheap globetrotting

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-53549861

Hit by the collapse in demand for flights due to Covid-19 commercial airlines have parked their grounded fleet in some of the most remote locations in the world.

(contd)

But it isn't the planes that will be the problem. It's the skills. Valuable flying hours have been lost meaning pilots are slowly losing their certification to fly ...

Here we go again www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/03/topham-guerin-pr-firm-covid-19-contract-conservative-party £3m this time, a snip!

Have been chatting to LeClerc remember him, madman in France
and he pointed out that for Ian Botham to sit in the house of lords he has to move back to and pay tax in the UK.
BUT
like many Brexiters, Beefy lives in Spain ....

Loss of skills can happen fast. I used to go back to school in September and had to think about what I was doing rather than just doing it. After about 3 days I was back into it. However I think that was behind the back to school nightmares that plagued the last few nights of the holidays - dreams of having to manage a class and forgetting how to do it.
I haven’t been to a hairdresser yet. I’ll let them get up to speed on other people first.

I haven’t been to a hairdresser yet. I’ll let them get up to speed on other people first.

Which OK for hair. Not sure I'd want to be in a plane where the pilots trying for the first time in 6 months.

@borntobequiet

Loss of skills can happen fast. I used to go back to school in September and had to think about what I was doing rather than just doing it. After about 3 days I was back into it. However I think that was behind the back to school nightmares that plagued the last few nights of the holidays - dreams of having to manage a class and forgetting how to do it. I haven’t been to a hairdresser yet. I’ll let them get up to speed on other people first.

Oh god, the "unruly class who won't be managed" nightmare. I'm sure it's a teaching regular, no matter how good you are at Behaviour Management.

And, in trade news, we've yet to sort out Vietnam https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exporting-to-vietnam-after-eu-exit?utmsource=bdbef310-e0d0-4335-b2c5-a844e6a97b50&utmmmedium=email&utmcampaign=govuk-notifications&utmmcontent=immediate
Surely this should be done and dusted, easiest trade deal in history, done in an afternoon, or I am getting confused with less important trade deals

"I haven’t been to a hairdresser yet"

I've been twice for a haircut, in May and last month

Currently sporting a very daring undercut - the hairdresser kept asking me every 2 minutes if I really meant this
I explained that retirement is the time to try out all sorts of new things

Can you still hear the dog whistling?:

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/03/coronavirus-80-new-cases-trafford-among-white-community
Coronavirus: 80% of new cases in Trafford are among white community

Exclusive: health chief says rise in Greater Manchester shows spread not just in BAME groups

But in Trafford, one of the wealthiest and whitest of Greater Manchester’s 10 boroughs, the vast majority of infections in the last week were in the white community. Just 14.5% of Trafford residents are black or ethnic minority, according to the last census.

Eighty-one people tested positive in Trafford in the last week of July – the third biggest number in Greater Manchester, after Manchester (178) and Oldham (130)

“We are continuing to see more cases than we would like and what’s worrying is our positivity rate is going up. That is the number of people per hundred that test positive. What you want to try to do is keep that to about 1%. We are at 3% at the moment, said Roaf. “Ninety-two per cent of cases had ethnicity recorded and of those 80% were white.”

She added: “The Trafford narrative is that it is a very white outbreak in Trafford. In other places the narrative is quite different. One of the anxieties is that we don’t end up with a complacent white middle-class thinking it’s not affecting them because they think it’s about overcrowding in ethnic minority families.”

And

Roaf said that two weeks ago many of the Trafford infections were young people, aged 17 to 22, whereas the rise last week was among 26- to 64-year-olds. She said people did not need to be overly worried about the major incident but it should “focus people’s minds” on the fact the virus is still spreading.

It doesn't surprise me in the slightest from what I've seen out and about and what I hear locally.

Red The issue is what do we want benefits for and how much are we willing to pay

The original idea when the welfare state was founded was to provide the basics of life for those who had no other means of support
i.e. it was never intended to provide support to the mc to keep paying their mortgage, car payments, horses, school fees etc

If an mc person suddenly lost income, of course they would receive benefits, but only the same basic rate as everyone else
Benefits - except for disability - aren't supposed to maintain the same standard of living for anyone, except the very poorest

From each according to their ability; to each according to their needs

There are alternative systems
e.g. in Germany the state unemployment insurance is income related, for which we pay a much higher amount,
in order to receive an amount that can more likely maintain current standard of living
Also, there are no limits on savings; it is literally a state insurance policy

There are of course non-contributory systems for the poorest, which pay a basic amount, more like that in the UK.

We have the situation now that benefits have been extended to a large chunk of the population,
not just the poor and those who cannot work ft - rather than those who don't want to -
which is imo why the system is causing resentment and becoming unmanageable

I'd like to see childcare costs for everyone heavily subsidised as in many other European countries,
but remove the financial support for either parent to stay home or to work pt after 12 months
(excluding disability etc of parent or family member)

Having dropped a stink bomb, off to the gym