Webchat with Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, Tuesday 30 May at midday

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello,

We’re pleased to announce a webchat with the leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn on Tuesday 30 May at midday.

Jeremy has been MP for Islington North since 1983, and has been Labour leader since 2015, having been re-elected when Owen Smith stood against him in 2016. Labour’s manifesto for the election on June 8 proposes ‘a Brexit deal that puts our economy and living standards first’, tax rises for the top 5% of earners, the renationalisation of the railways, free school meals for all primary pupils, the abolition of university tuition fees, and a £250 billion investment fund for infrastructure and the economy.

Please do join the chat on Tuesday at midday, or if you can’t make it, leave a question here in advance. Please do share the webchat on social - the more, the merrier!

As always, please remember our webchat guidelines - one question each, follow-ups if there’s time and please keep it civil .

(As we approach the General Election we will endeavour to offer you a balanced diet of webchats with politicians from different parties. More announcements coming soon.)

Thanks
MNHQ

Angie - how are labour investing in industry and investing in jobs by

Putting up corporation tax
Adding red tape
Putting in place collective bargaining
Putting in place £10 min wage
Adding 4 additional bank holidays
Adding a surcharge into wage bills if they pay people at high levels
Putting a ratio in place for pay between the top and bottom
Adding a financial services surcharge tax

How is this going to create jobs?

@angieC1965 my dh used to earn over the threshold but we have a mortgage and are trying to save for pensions etc. Plus European Time Working Directives have rinsed him of his overtime so it's just not financially going to happen for us. Some weeks I get paid £500+ and then other weeks I don't get a fraction of that.

Even when I worked full time it wasn't financially reasonable for us.

Also no nurseries round me offer it as they are so oversubscribed as there are lots of deprived areas in my city. Two close family members work in nurseries and say the free hours aren't worth anything for them sun 3 years. They'd rather not offer them and have space for a full fee paying child.

i'd take a return of means tested education maintenance grants for 16-19 year olds over free childcare and meals for the wealthy any day thanks.

Plus European Time Working Directives have rinsed him of his overtime

Can he not opt out of it? DH works around 68 per weeks as do many of the people he works with.

Sorry, just realised it may be one of the jobs that you're legally not allowed to opt out of. Ignore me.

@TheHiphopopotamus nope. The company won't let him. His income has dropped around £40k pa but he's working pretty much the same amount of hours in some roundabout way. It's been a huge pita.

Lots of dead time. Idle time etc. Loads of H&S box ticking which is "one size fits all" and not relevant.

He's currently on a scheme that basically involves him being sent home pretty much every day which the view that he can be called in on a whim if something comes up. So childcare is effectively useless in that respect anyway because we'd be paying (or government) for dc to go to nursery when actually someone is there to watch them. But then it's not guaranteed.

It's like hanging around the dock waiting to be selected for work.

rather sarcastic glitterglitters. hardly representative of JC or labour. more in keeping i would have thought, with the tories suggestion that we take a year off, unpaid to care for our elderly relatives. after a year of course we sell their house to pay for their care, whether they agree or not.

glitterglitters this is childcare is not offered on means testing nor the amount of money earned. like i said i qualified and everyone would if they had a 2 year old. however it is not compulsory either. the working time directive have been here forever and it does not stop anyone working longer than the number of hours recommended, under the tories your husband will probably work more hours for less pay. nurseries are over subscribed and under funded thank the current government. there is talk of some schools having to reduce to a 3 day week because of funding cuts. how will that impact on our children.

aren't you lucky then Honeybadger vote labour and get EMA and the bits you don't want. nice to not have to rob one part of society to fund another isn't it

glitterglitters if the company won't let him that is the company nothing to do with the EU working time directive.

It's more that they are using it to their advantage.

As for all the parties, tbh I've not seen a single manifesto that actually subscribes to what I'd hope for for my family and our situation.

Spoilt ballot I think.

how is this going to create jobs? well firstly we don't just want "jobs" there is no point in having jobs that don't pay well with rubbish working conditions and no security. we need jobs that pay us to live and are secure in order to boost the economy. jobs are created by investing in projects that demand labour, such as housebuilding. gathering more money from the proposed tax increases, and they are not extortionate, i would be paying some of them and i'm not crying lol, will be used to finance projects to increase employment. paying people £10 an hour will enable people to spend more , trickle down does not work, and that will increase the economy and also provide more jobs

I think it took me longer to type ds1's post than Mr Corbyn spent on mumsnet

Well, I missed the webchat because I was at work and it's taken me ten minutes to scroll through and find any of JC's comments. MN, surely you should have clarified the amount of time he had available?

I thought his answers were good and made sense.

Please, please could we drop the not-at-all-funny biscuit question?

I'm definitely voting Labour on June 8.

Zero hour contracts are a terrible thing, Labour wants these to end and unpaid internships. There is also a late payment cap for small business.

I'm so worried about cuts to education, our school will have to get rid of teachers or teaching assistants. Have you seen some schools have sent out begging letters for basic supplies like glue?

I really don't think it is surprising that such a document would avoid stating anything much about the State of Israel!

And yet he doesn't exactly hang back when it comes to something which affects the Palestinians: www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/usa-war-on-terror/789-now-how-about-a-minutes-silence-for-the-dead-in-afghanistan-iraq-pakistan

Well, that was a damp squib...

I'm a natural Lib Dem voter who has tended towards Labour in the past for pragmatic reasons. I would love to be able to vote Labour this time round, but I'm completely failing to find any good, positive reasons to do so only negative "if you want to avoid the Tories, you have to vote Labour" reasons. This web chat has only underlined that problem for me

@LovelyBath77 It's for the child's benefit/outcomes; not the parents'.

But do children at 2 years old really need 30 hrs childcare a week? it's around 6 hours a day! I thought they only really benefit from the age of 3. I find this a bit unnecessary really. Especially if someone has become a SAHM why would they need to put them in long sessions of childcare at the age of 2? If not working.

Hilarious, all the corbynista "love yooooo jezza" and embarrassing fawning by the usual MN suspects and he cant even be arsed to stay and answer more than about 5 of your safe questions!

Jam?

The important thing is, I now finally have something I can agree with him
On. Shortbread biscuits. Thanks for that Jezza, it was enlightening.

@MooPointCowsOpinion

I admit to feeling let down, I'd like to know what questions he was actually given to choose from, no way was he sat there reading all of them.

We always advise webchatees to read the advance questions and when they arrive we give them a print out of questions arranged into subjects to help them negotiate the thread. JC and team had certainly read the thread before they came in, as they had a clear idea of some questions they wanted to answer.

We see our role as pointing out the issues on which there are multiple questions and keeping webchattees abreast of new questions that come in, but the truth is 25 minutes isn't long enough to cover the ground and we only realised he was only going to be here for that long half way through his visit, when his adviser told us he needed to catch a train.

At that point we urged speed and succinct answers and suggested a few key topic areas where there were multiple questions - had we had longer I'm sure he would have covered more of those topics.

Well, he well and truly stuffed you there MNHQ. What a total waste of your time and that of his mumsnetter supporters. How utterly arrogant.

YY to what Flumper said.

Little bit OTT Flumpernickel. Undoubtedly he is busy being leader of the opposition with a snap General Election on the way but it's disappointing he couldn't stay after agreeing to come in. It sounds like a few things went wrong on their side today.

All these questions have not half shown up what a mess this country is in. I frequently think we have higher demands of JC than of the regular crowd of distant lying propagandists, but blimey we need some kind of miracle. The tories certainly aren't it.