This is what Jeremy Corbyn is about

[blacksunday]

If you're genuinely interested in hearing what he is about, here's an Andrew Marr interview where there is actually a discussion of his Corbyn's campaign, the issues, and what his political programme would look like:

Corbyn: I want to convert Labour into a 'more social movement'

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02y2ffn

Corbyn triumphed at PMQs - while Cameron's stock responses showed him up as out-of-touch

Laughs from the bench every time a member of the public's name was mentioned? The classy Conservatives strike again

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I doubt many people woke up this morning envious of Jeremy Corbyn. After promising to change the ‘theatrical’ nature of Prime Minister’s Questions and faced with the initial task of reducing 40,000 submitted questions to six, the new Labour leader had his work cut out for him. All eyes were on him - and not many of them friendly.

What a relief, then, that he triumphed with a set of razor-sharp questions focused on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. Fortunately for Corbyn, of course, this is an area that the Conservative party continually fails to concern itself with.

Cameron’s lack of compassion and stark inhumanity was obvious from the outset. His detachment from the reality of food banks and employment insecurity across modern Britain was more apparent than ever. Cameron’s responses were scripted and rehearsed, while Corbyn’s questions were plainly sincere.

This was most obvious when it came to the questions on mental health. Devoid of realistic consideration about the serious problems faced by those who suffer from conditions like depression and schizophrenia, Cameron offered warnings on Labour’s apparent economic incompetence in response to a question about the lack of access to mental health support. His stock answers, which may as well have been cut and pasted from a Tory manual, were insufficient in the face of Corbyn’s new, straightforward and honest politics. Study after study shows that Britain’s mental health is in crisis, with current estimates stating that 2 million more adults will experience mental health issues by 2030. Corbyn’s response to this crisis – the creation of a dedicated shadow Minister for Mental Health position – is practical and sensible. Cameron’s generalistic responses at PMQs, meanwhile, fail to inspire; little wonder considering his government has slashed mental health services.

Using questions from the public was a radical but hugely successful approach for a party that was crying out for parliamentary reform. Cameron’s boasts of Labour’s belief in ‘unlimited welfare’ were undermined by the fact that Jeremy Corbyn's questions came from real people who are reliant on support due to skyrocketing rents.

When Corbyn attached the names of the respective people who suggested the questions to his statements, there were loud sniggers from the Tory benches - as if a ‘Marie’ could ever be truly interested in the housing crisis. Needless to say, this tactic was wholly unconvincing. No longer can the success of a Prime Minister be measured on the volume of his fellow MPs’ brays and jeers; it must be measured by the real people who those MPs have now openly mocked.

Though the Prime Minister remained calm throughout Corbyn’s questioning, the mask soon slipped when it came to scrutiny from the SNP. Turning his back on SNP members, raising his voice and bashing the despatch box, Cameron showed that he just isn’t ready for the frank and factual debate Corbyn wants to turn the Punch-and-Judy-esque PMQs into. He may have intended to play the charitable statesman, but ultimately he lost his cool among Corbyn’s new politics.

Today, Corbyn entered the commons battered and bruised by recent headlines, but he left on the upper hand, spurred by the fact that he is genuiely in touch with the real difficulties and aspirations of the people of Britain. In the battles that lie ahead, this will be Corbyn’s greatest strength; his wish to pose questions on behalf of the British people is not a PR strategy, indeed it has been his lifelong cause. Last week, Corbyn promised to change politics - and today, he’s made a ground-breaking start.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/corbyn-triumphed-at-pmqs--while-camerons-stock-responses-showed-him-up-as-outoftouch-10503772.html

Probably the quietest and most civilised PMQs I've ever seen or listened to.

I don't know if it can remain that way but it was a refreshing change

Did anyone see the Times newspaper today?

Three or four pages ridiculing and belittling JC.

Wow, the media handmaidens to the establishment really don't like him do they...

Just makes me support him all the more

Not just the Times but I had the unfortunate experience of being on the L. Underground reading the evening standard. SHOCK flabberghast at the anti-Corbyn content.

It's really biased isn't it squid

Wonder why that might be...

Corbyn triumphed at PMQT

Corbyn is meant to be the Leader of the opposition, but how "in touch" is the parliamentary equivalent of a 'phone in' asking the public's questions that the leader of the opposition should know will make Cameron's Conservatives look good e.g. the Conservatives council/social housing record before 1997 and after 2010, which makes Labours look pants.

Yes Corbyn gets in a little anti Tory additional dig in to float his own pathetic little boat, but in policy substance Labour loses the point.

But who needs 'killer points' at PMQT when a leader wants an ideological movement, not to win an election?

The SNP question, the same one all 50 odd odd MPs would ask every session, "we can't get enough power(s) Captain" Cameron handled well, initially looking to let fly, but cracked a joke and suggested for once why don't they LIST the powers Cameron thinks they have - rather than spend their whole time bitching while spending more money per head than every person in England gets under the Barnett Formula - they'd lose under independence and be financially Donald (Ducked) with oil at $40 a barrel.

BlackSunday...re your PMQT This was most obvious when it came to the questions on mental health. Devoid of realistic consideration about the serious problems faced

It is true that mental health care suffered over the past several years, but Cameron answered that it is now on parity with everything else within the NHS and new targets in place.

Not only that Cameron is putting more money into dementia research, he is putting £8 billion a year more into the NHS Labour couldn't - and even hosted a dementia summit in London to try and eradicate it within decades - so hardly doing nothing your ignorant propaganda above suggests.

Maybe you can tell us what Labour's specific policies were over 13-years on the issue, but in the meantime if the NEW politics are lying through your teeth and being so wrapped up in your own bullsquirt you don't look at whats already being done, it looks awfully like the OLD politics..

www.gov.uk/government/publications/2010-to-2015-government-policy-dementia/2010-to-2015-government-policy-dementia

Government pledges £300m on dementia research
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31566064

G8 'will develop dementia cure or treatment by 2025'
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25318194

Leading nations have committed to developing a cure or treatment for dementia by 2025 at the G8 dementia summit.

Health ministers meeting in London said it was a "big ambition" and that they would significantly increase funding for research to meet that goal.

The UK has already said it aims to double its annual research funding to £132m by 2025.

but Cameron answered that it is now on parity with everything else within the NHS and new targets in place.
Yep there is now parity allegedly
And yet by most reports between 50% and 70% of those with mental health issues get very limited or no support, in many areas the provision of beds, even for those taken into custody by the police for their own safety, is virtually non-existent and more than 30% of all NHS trusts have reduced their long-term support (talking strategies/CBT) by up to 40%

Yes the long-term investment in support and research for Alzheimers/dementia is very laudable and yes it is far more than Labour did in their last Govt but that is just one issue within the spectrum.

But hey, if you want to accuse others of propaganda you might want to think about your own tendency to propagandise

A letter in the paper this morning suggested that JC could become the poster boy for the Peter Principle.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

But hey, if you want to accuse others of propaganda you might want to think about your own tendency to propagandise

The difference might be that I both tend to use the internet to CHECK 'facts' before I post them, and stand ready to debate my views - and admit that I was w-w-w-wrong if indeed I am - as shown on other threads yesterday to posters antimatter and (even) claig.

The largest paragraph of BlackSundays post on PMQT re mental health and Cameron's answers was not only clearly inaccurate, but was 'made up' because Corbyn had appointed a Mental Health Minister that the poster wanted to 'big up' - saying that NOTHING was being done and services were "being slashed".

The difference might be that I both tend to use the internet to CHECK 'facts' before I post them

But would you not agree that you are, shall we we say, selective about which facts you use?
I do appreciate why that is a common debating technique (and a legitimate one if you have a certain world view)

Services across the NHS are being slashed simply because of the financial restrictions imposed and Cameron pointing out that parity for mental health has now been achieved just ensures that those services are now in the same (sinking) boat.
Not so much "We're all in it together" as "They're all in it together"

GasStreet …. selective as I look at the bigger picture, selective as I don’t accept left wing anti Tory propaganda without challenging ….probably.

When YOU say “the financial restrictions imposed” you are being selective are you not – as who in the main imposed them ON the NHS?

From the late 1990’s to 2008 despite unprecedented NHS government spending via annual budgets and Private Finance Initiative debt (the Kings Fund says only 2% of funds got to the front line), there were around 13,000 fewer general and acute beds, as our population went up over that time, what 3-4 million?

That NHS Trust budgets were mullahed for up to 30-years by contracts Labour entered into with the private sector.

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9356942/Blair-defends-PFI-as-NHS-trusts-face-bankruptcy.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8779598/Private-Finance-Initiative-where-did-all-go-wrong.html

So whereas the lefties would say to a Tory government putting in far more money a year from 2010 'that you cannot blame Labour after 6-years of Tory administrations for the current NHS problems;

I would look at the DEMAND that built up over 13-years, the unprecedented what 7% annual spending increases under Labour that left fewer beds, and the ridiculous fixed costs Labour’s PFI deals have put on Trusts for 30-years, not just 6- years – and call them fecking hypocrites.

Similar to Labour’s demand/build housing record, whether the Conservatives inherited a £153 billion annual government budget deficit/overspend or not, any government from 2010 could never have compensated for that ‘nice, money no object decade’ from 1997 to 2007 that was lost, when so much needed to be achieved and wasn’t - and that DOES make me angry.

The Tories have working with the Head of the NHS on a plan to plug the holes in the health dyke while putting more money in and at the same time asking for efficiency savings.

NHS efficiency savings, checking those on sick benefits, would/did any of Labour’s five Health ministers ever even think of such reforms when throwing money at the NHS, when in effect ‘paying ever more, for less’?

Apparently not.

financial restrictions imposed

Here was the last total PFI figure I saw, which hopefully is included within the current £1.6 trillion of UK National Debt, that was £403 billion in 1997 - before Labour embraced capitalism and put so much pressure on annual government services budgets for decades to come.

“Crippling PFI deals leave Britain £222bn in debt”
www.independent.co.uk/money/loans-credit/crippling-pfi-deals-leave-britain-222bn-in-debt-10170214.html

”Every man, woman and child in Britain is more than £3,400 in debt

without knowing it and without borrowing a single penny – thanks to the proliferation of controversial deals used to pay for infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.”

”The UK owes more than £222bn to banks and businesses as a result of Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) – “buy now, pay later” agreements between the government and private companies on major projects. The startling figure – described by experts as a “financial disaster” – has been calculated as part of an Independent on Sunday analysis of Treasury data on more than 720 PFIs. The analysis has been verified by the National Audit Office (NAO).”

”PFI’s were the brainchild of the Conservative Party in the 1990s, but were swiftly embraced by New Labour..PFI-funded schools, streetlights, prisons, services, police stations and care homes can be found across Britain.”

”Responding to the findings, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Crippling PFI debts are exacerbating the funding crisis across our public services, most obviously in our National Health Service.”

”Margaret Hodge, has spoken of Labour’s promotion of the deals during its time in power: “I’m afraid we got it wrong...we got seduced by PFI.”

Why do you think it is wrong NOT to let the Conservatives take the blame for that shit stack they inherited - especially as the Labour Party and SNP wants the government to keep borrowing more - but when the government does, it is wasted?

...and getting that shit-stack under control, is apparently called austerity. Guffaw.

Austerity is an ideology like any other. The Tories manage to repeatedly blame labour for the problems created by the financial crisis. You spit out your own medicine.

Isitme, I can't speak for all Corbyn supporters, but I agree with you about Blair, Blair's labour party and the Blairites.

Most people who voted Corbyn did so because he is not Blair, JC was one of few MPs to oppose TB, and this is why we did not vote in Yvette Cooper, Andy B or the other one.

Blair was a destroyer. Corbyn us a disruptor. The disruption has already begun which is what we wanted.

Andy Burnam, (Another Blair's Babes) is personally responsible for PFI. He should never work again.

Isitmebut
As a student of political history I am sure that you are aware that PFI wasn't originated by the previous Labour govt and that up until 2003 even the National Audit Office concluded that PFI deals generally offered good value for money.

That it was badly used by all and sundry I don't disagree nor will I bother to point out that those in opposition (from whichever party) loudly condemned its use by the govt of the times.

I should also gently point out that you are presuming that my reference to "financial restrictions" did not take PFI into account

Please don't engage with isitmebut. He'll only end up spamming the thread even more than usual.

GasStreet … I do not need to be a student of the history of the PFI it is there on the links above, and while the PFI was indeed the business brained Conservatives that thought of the concept, it was the Labour Party probably without a single business/contractual brain cell between them – that screwed the PFI pooch.

As no doubt the ‘drop the propaganda shit and run’ BlackSunday might recall, I liken blaming the Conservatives for the Labour negotiated PFI debt debacle to blaming Samuel Colt for every death by an idiot using his revolvers.

Squidzin ….. the Labour Party if for once acknowledging the problems for the UK economy on their watch, cannot cleans themselves by blaming Blair in the last administration, as although as PM he was ultimately responsible – it was not Blair running the UK economy and you know who was.

Clearly looking at the above PFI figures and departmental record, what was highly disingenuous was the Labour Party’s electoral platform that the NHS was not safe OUT of Labour hands and that it would be the Conservatives handing out NHS contracts to the private sector – and it would have been those and similar disingenuous accusation forgetting Labour’s own record over 13-years that would raise the political temperature at the likes of PMQT when made to the then coalition.

Moreover Corbynomics can hardly cleans the Blair years as he is not apologising for the levels of government debt under their watch and saying, at least interest rates are low funding it. Oh no.

Corbynomics (and the SNP) say interest rates are low, lets find all sorts of fancy ways to borrow shed loads more government money to invest and provide public sector growth/jobs – rather than continually encourage the more efficient private sector to both stump up the cash, invest as create jobs as has been happening since 2010.

Far too many Corbyn/more debt people still don’t realise that it is the private sector that can pay for the public sector, whereas it can NEVER happen the other way around unless a government borrows every year.

Which might be possible when the National Debt is £400 bil, and happened after 2002 when the budget balanced, but not the £1.6 trillion now and our Base Rate has been the lowest since the BoE was founded over 320 years ago – and likely to keep going up soon, albeit at a slow pace putting up our costs of borrowing to god knows what.

erm, actually the public sector / tax payer does indeed pay for the private sector to an estimated £3,500 a year per household.

If Corporate zealots got their claws out of our government, that kind of money would come in handy against "austerity".

www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/07/corporate-welfare-a-93bn-handshake

Sorry I will disengage now, the wise words of blacksunday once again.

squidzin .... so taking the Guardian article on face value, the State 'gives' corporates £93 billion.

Yet the UK government is spending around £760 billion a year.
www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/

Where do you think that honking great difference comes from if not the taxes of the private sector, companies, their investment and their employees - versus public sector employees who's salaries/pensions are 100% funded by those taxes?

Corbynomics is different to socialism as doesn't just assume there is a socialist money tree, its convinced there is a money tree forest in Shangri La La land.

seamagic Ive found that too regarding JC, the more they try to demonise him the more I like him