Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38068358

Autumn statement today. So far the following has been released to the press.

Obviously Brexit is going to be the main theme of the budget. The Guardian is speculating that there will be one more big announcement which will be either positive, fuel duty cut or faster personal allowance increase, or negative relating to Brexit which would be why they've released so much of it ahead of time.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Wasn't too scary and a definite change in tack for the government .Increased borrowing for major infrastructure projects and what appears to be a curtailing of austerity .I'm not bothered about the extra borrowing needed ,extra borrowing always been an alternative to austerity .

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Does make the last few years a bit of a waste. Especially when they spent so long rubbishing Labour's 2015 economic plan.

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They raised NI http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/na...bb4e456d42c484

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

They also raised IPT, which is a tax on the prudent, and disproportionately hits the young and those who have already had bad luck.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38090977

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

And real wage growth will be the worst in 70 years says IFS.

http://news.sky.com/story/real-wage-...s-ifs-10670075

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Stagnating wages is a big part of the cost of living crisis and anger in general. This could cause more issues in the future. No one is even discussing how automation might make matters considerably worse.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

l was talking to my parents the other day who are retired praise be to god and we were talking about how difficult its going to be for those who are much younger compared to my parents when then were of working age as they are quite well off now with several nice pensions coming in each and no mortgage anymore to pay as they retired at a earlier age as well compared to what will be the state retirement age now and into the future and add everything else on top of that and it is certainly much harder now and looking into the future for the younger generations.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

It's appalling for young people now. Housing, wages, pensions... Society is so skewed to to the older 'voting ' generation - free buses, free tv licences - do wealthy pensioners really need these? Will the youngsters get this when they get old ? Will they even ever be able to afford to retire or afford a house? Will they *******. But they still are subsidising those that don't need the money, who lived it up large in the 60's and continue to do so. To top it all, the older generation have taken us out of Europe to further screw up the future of the next generation

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

The next generation will continue to get shafted by politicians for as long as they persist in demanding democracy by tweet.

The ballot box is there to be used. They have only to put their smartphones down long enough to use them.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Yes it is an issue but the Govt. haven't exactly moved with the times on voting . That, plus making registration less straightforward, anyone would think they don't want the young to vote.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

How the hell is voter registration less straightforward ,i presume that because the teenager is responsible for registering themselves instead of relying on daddy to do it that makes it complicated and not straight forward .Any teenager thinking that does not deserve the right to have a vote.It's more complicated registering for facebook :rolleyes:

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Whatever, the net result has been 800k dropping off the register. Not good for democracy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a6845796.html

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

While there might be some that have dropped off the register Mr K there are quite a lot who are just too lazy and can't be bothered to register for voting so there are no excuses for them not to register as all its takes is a few minutes of their precious time.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

It's not hard to do too. I am deeply unhappy about the way generational inequality has been reinforced over time.

But it isn't hard to vote. There is a Holier-than-thou attitude towards voting where people proudly abstain from voting for 'the lesser of two evils'. I remember in 2015 they talked to some 'young people'* and there was one guy who was complaining that although he liked some things about Miliband there were other things he didn't like and so was abstaining.

Nobody in life gets everything they thought they were going to get and no one is going to give you everything you want but for some reason many people believe this is what they're entitled too. It's fashionable to celebrate cynicism in politics but I think a lot of it is people are given unrealistic expectations of what politicians can deliver. Politics is about compromise and building coalitions of different groups of people to enact change and getting what you can. But you look around and everyone seems to go to uncompromising politicians who claim they can deliver what they specifically want, such as Corbyn.

Drives me mad.

*incidentally these groups always seem weird. Most young people don't go around proclaiming themselves to be the voice of young people. For some reason news companies only seem to attract odd balls to those kind of things.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Lets be serious anyone with a double digit IQ has no trouble registering to vote that's not the problem with our system. Biggest problem is we basically have two parties and whichever one you vote for we end up with the same so a growing number of people just don't bother because neither one ticks enough boxes. It's not that we don't get everything we want it's that whatever party holds power gives the majority very little that they need.

For younger voters the system doesn't make you want to go out and vote as all they hear is working till 70 and likely longer, generational mortgages because we are so stupid in this country in relation to house building and that they must embrace technology that takes jobs for a bigger profit in an older persons bank balance. Those same young people can see pensioners who by and large are sitting pretty and they know they will spend most of their working lives paying for things they will not get when it's their time. Is it a wonder they see little reason to get involved.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Well there is one way to get them voting but no one seems to want to grasp the nettle of fining those who won't vote.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

No they haven't, yet more utter bollocks you speak, becoming ridiculous now. :td:

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Someone with a different opinion again Michael ? Oh dear can't have that.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Sorry but fining people who do not vote, I find far fetched, we do not live in a dictatorship.

Some people do not vote for a variety of reasons, lazy is one of them but there are many other reasons, fining people is just a bad solution because all it will do is make people spoil their ballot papers. I have not voted in every Election and if I was forced to for fear of being fined, I would certainly spoil my paper for sure.

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Well, when you saying the same crap over and over again about how doomy and gloomy you think it is going to be when you have absolutely no idea what it is going to be like, what do you expect? And I will not tell you again, I am known as Mick on this forum.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

So what if people spoil their papers..Hopefully there will be enough who may just get their arse in gear and make a decision instead of sitting on the fence..

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

If there was compulsory voting there'd have to be an abstention box. Be a bit embarrassing if 'abstention' won though...
Making it easier to vote would be better.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

There is nothing hard about the process in being registered to vote. :dozey:

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

This is the 21st century Mick yet we're still using a crappy pencil on the end of a string. Online voting, mobile voting, telephone voting - none of them less secure than the current system where anyone can say a name with no id and vote. If the next generation disengages from politics then its a disaster.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

It is less secure. It's very hard to commit any wide scale fraud in the current system. People can vote without an ID but so what? There is no evidence that has led to real fraud. Online voting would be open to interference, hacking and mass fraud.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Can you hack a piece of paper, in your church hall from Russia?

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

IfWe can secure online banking why not voting? Even a simple change like having voting over weekends would help turnout. There seems to be no real interest in this increasing turnout or concern that the young are increasingly seeing politics as irrelevant.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

We need online voting to be more secure than banking. A General Election conducted via the Internet would be a much bigger target.

Online we would need verification and confidence in each step of the process. That the vote was placed by the voter at the machine, that the vote wasn't changed en-route to the server it arrives at, that the server itself tallies the votes correctly and that it doesn't switch them. That the machine correctly stores votes if it the infrastructure goes down. At the end you need confidence that the 10,000 votes it says it has are actual votes.

It's remarkable how resilient the paper process is. The vote is identifiable each step of the way. The voter gets a paper, they place the ballot into a locked box, the box is opened in full public view, each ballot is a vote and everyone can see what was marked. Very hard to replicate that on computers were there the 'vote' will always be an abstraction of a digital interaction.

I agree about the weekend thing. France have their elections over a weekend, Saturday and Sunday, with the vote revealed Sunday night. I like that system. At the very least election day should be made a bank holiday IMO.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Why is it that our glorious leaders and their chums in big business are so keen for us to be reduced to doing everything online when they clearly can't adequately protect the stuff we currently do? Anyone would think they have a sinister ulterior motive like being able to switch our lives on and off at the touch of a button somewhere should they feel the need...

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Well there's an easy way around that - just don't bother with insurance. It's not as though that's a growing problem is it...

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

With the current state of online security no way in hell would i support online voting and given some of what i heard from younger people in the referendum we really don't want it as a five second thing they do between facebook. A clear difference between the political parties will be a start and if nothing else corbyn has put space between labour and the Tory's ideally though we would have two electable options.

People need to feel their vote does matter and too many now don't feel it does in general elections, the EU referendum was a good example of that people did feel their vote would count so more got out and voted i know my polling station was the busiest I've ever seen. Fining people for not voting is an absolute no no for me personally unless we get a "none of the above" option but neither will happen so that's a dead end.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Instead of fining people for not voting how about rewarding those that do, everyone's council tax goes up 50 quid and if you vote in all elections you get 75
of your bill. We could do the same for doctors and hospital appointments, put prescriptions up to 15 pounds but you get some back if you attend appointments, it might not be self funding but I doubt it would cost a fortune, might be a good idea to change the voting day as well, it'd mean the schools wouldn't have to shut as well.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

:jk:Agreed!

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:tu:

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Interesting idea..However what sort of society must we be if we have to pay people to vote? We could go even further and make that to be a British citizen one has to vote or lose citizenship.;):jk:

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Paper vote is a good and traceable way of doing things with far less chance of interference than electronic. And it feels more connected to make you mark on a piece of paper and post that into a box.

Choice was reduced when they raised the deposit but it is still only £500.

And a the long time period on a Thursday is still a good time. Plenty of opportunity to vote even with odd work patterns. My wife and I plan to get to go to vote together. And since many polling stations are in churches, Sunday voting wouldn't work.

Fining is not a good idea, what if you suddenly couldn't vote in some unexpected manner. People may feel disenfranchised but they need to get out and vote anyway. Support that minor party so they don't lose their deposit. I think it would be great fun if we had a parliament of independents.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

One where people don't vote for a variety of reasons, do we do something drastic about it or do we just let it roll along, at what point do by elections with 11% turnouts just become to rediculous to stand or government's can't realistically claim to have mandates because no one voted for them, it's not just here, that great bastion of democracy only had a 54% turnout the other day apparently. Besides I've thought of a catchy name for it now, the democracy belief rebate

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Compulsory voting is only done in 22 countries as of 3 years ago and only 11 of those 22 countries enforce these laws in practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

How many of those countries have void ballot papers returned and what percentage?

You can lead a horse to water...

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

But you can't make him drink....:)

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Yes it would be nice to know the answer to that.

Re: Autumn Statement : Brexit Edition
 

Well perhaps a minimum turnout or quorum might be the answer. If it's not achieved the election is null and has to be rerun? But that won't work for those that would see it as a means of trying to get the 'right' result.

At one time I thought education was the key but having had to teach 'citizen' lessons in Social Education classes I soon learned what a turn off politics and the constitution is to the average teenager. :(