Labour Conference
 

I think this deserves a thread, it's bound to generate some friendly encouraging replies to much of the 'promises' we'll hear ;)

Labour conference: Reeves promises £28bn a year to make economy greener

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58699072

Sounds too good to be true?

Re: Labour Conference
 

Any thing with green in the title just means massive price increases, and huge tax bills.

Re: Labour Conference
 

You're getting that with this Govt.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Greengrocers, Anne of Green Gables, Evergreen Terrace…

Re: Labour Conference
 

They first have to win elections - so far this years conference has been a embarrassing disgrace for them. My dad was a life long Labour supporter and he said the party is unrecognisable to him.

But so far this years conference has been a showering shit show of:

• Rayner "****" remarks at a fringe event. I discovered earlier, she has blocked me on twitter for commenting on the person who revealed the disgusting remarks from her yesterday, badge of honour to be blocked by her.
  
• LBC Political Editor thrown out of JVL event yesterday, by Tony Greenstein, who was expelled from the Labour Party for anti-semitism. He was in the event Jewish Voice for Labour: https://twitter.com/theousherwood/st...75566787059712
  
• Keir Starmer's claim that it is wrong to say only women have a cervix.
  
• And Mark Ferguson, a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, who told delegates at the Labour Brighton conference: “I am afraid, and I am not speaking from a position of particular strength here, there are too many white men putting their hands up.” https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/l...r-b957344.html

Re: Labour Conference
 

They certainly seem to be doing their best to achieve a 4th place finish in the next general election don't they :D

Re: Labour Conference
 

yes you're right.

Re: Labour Conference
 

And even so - I would never vote Labour, it is a toxic element in today's politics. There are still many in the party whipping up Steptoe, despite him losing two elections, the last one, devastatingly so. :rolleyes:

Re: Labour Conference
 

Neither would I.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Labour's best hope is that 23-year-old Marcus Rashford quits football and stands as Labour leader. :D

Labour's second-best hope is Keir Starmer, who to be fair, enjoyed a victory against the left-wing of his Party recently. :angel:

Re: Labour Conference
 

Oh dear, Andy McDonald quits shadow cabinet.

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/atta...1&d=1632764126

Re: Labour Conference
 

Just to point that that this isn't the Labour Conference proper. JVL aren't an affiliate it contains people who've been kicked out of the party for antisemitism so this was a 'fringe' event not sanctioned or set up by the Labour Party.

Overall I think Labour's leadership will be happy so far. They've managed to get the EHRC's measures adopted despite being opposed by Momentum, they've got their General Secretary who suspended a lot of members to be approved despite Momentum saying they had the numbers to stop him and most importantly they got their rule changes passed to make it harder for candidates with little support amongst MPs to become the leader.

Starmer has managed to see off a lot of challenges from the Corbyn wing of the party this week. In fact, the last remaining pro-Corbyn member of the shadow cabinet has just resigned as well on the same day that a Jewish MP who had left the party under Corbyn has returned: Ex-MP Louise Ellman rejoins Labour after anti-Semitism rule change.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Did I read that right, a national minimum wage of £15 PPH, £ 28,890 per year!

Re: Labour Conference
 

A recipe for bankrupting most small employers.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Labour conference not going to plan in typical Labour fashion. Totally embarrassing, who needs to watch Peter Kay when you have this bunch of clowns? :rofl:

Re: Labour Conference
 

And of course the differentials will have to be maintained, so somebody in a supervisory role will have to be paid more than £15/hr. Then if this is to be the minimum wage, just think what the "Living Wage" will be. More Final Salary schemes will fail as the Final salary paid out has jumped upwards without the supporting money having been paid in the past.

The average wage will shoot upwards, bringing with it the ludicrous definition of the poverty level, meaning whole hordes of people will be defined as being in "poverty", without pay going down or prices going up. Those on this new minimum wage will still be classed as being in poverty.:confused: Those currently above the poverty level will suddenly be drawn in below the new level.



Who in their right mind would want to start up a business in this country, that could be started elsewhere. You can't expect long-term investment, if even the short-term is so unknown.

Re: Labour Conference
 

I do wonder if it's actually a positive result for Starmer? McDonald served under Corbyn and seems to support a minimum wage close to £30k so is likely to be to the left of the Party. With many people distracted by more basic things like petrol at the moment, such a resignation will make less of an impact than it might normally do.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Re: Labour Conference
 

and pushing prices way up, which then defeats the object of a higher wage

Re: Labour Conference
 

Which in turn makes exports less competitive and imports more competitive. Usual all-round winning policy from Labour and the Lib-Dems etc.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Looking forward to this one tomorrow, should raise a few chuckles I'm sure:

From 2.15pm, Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas Symonds will address the failures on policing and the immigration crisis by Priti Patel, and set out Labour’s approach to tackling crime.

Crime, at a guess, will be another £10billion of tax payers money to put more police on the streets to arrest criminals, and a further £8billion spent on human rights lawyers ensuring they're then set free :rofl:

Re: Labour Conference
 

Starmer can pretty do anything at the moment with the pumps crisis overshadowing everything else. Infuriating if things are going well for him, useful if they're not.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Well, they should spend more on the police. For a lot of crimes the main purpose of reporting it is for a crime number over the last few years, they're too understaffed.

People do actually want crimes investigated and anti-social behaviour stopped.

Re: Labour Conference
 

:clap::clap::clap:

Re: Labour Conference
 

Even if all the pumps in the U.K. burst into flames and we had no fuel for six weeks, Starmer could not make any political capital out of it. He’d be claiming motorbikes had cervix’s, HGV tankers had wombs, Lisa Nandy had testicles and Angela Rayner was a deranged knobhead…..…..(only one of those is true).

I’m not that old, but I won’t see a Labour Government again in my lifetime. You could stick a blue rosette on a blonde Alpaca and it would beat anything Labour put out.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Totally agree, although arresting criminals is only the start IMO.

It's what we do afterwards where it starts to get 'complicated', with what many see as soft judgements and the cries that a custodial sentence isn't the answer.

I'd like to see some really tough stuff introduced, things that would - hopefully - make people think twice about doing it again, but that won't ever happen :(

Re: Labour Conference
 

It depends on what the crimes are. I think violent crimes should equal prison whereas others on a case-by-case basis. I've had stuff, expensive stuff, stolen and to be honest it's the lack of anything happening that's distressing. If they were caught and got some punishment, even if it's community service or a fine, I would feel better than just effectively being told 'well, sucks to be you'. The police didn't even turn up. Just took a call and give me a crime number.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Opposition don't win elections, the incumbents lose them, after a certain time people just get sick of the sleeze and corruption and give the other side a go, might help them if their wasn't quite so much choice for your left leaning voter though

I doubt it would make people think twice, we can't get harsher than hanging and deportation and yet we still had crime back then including hanging children for stealing bread. The only thing that makes people "think twice" is if they think there's a good chance of them getting caught, not the fear of the punishment

Re: Labour Conference
 

I sometimes think the police just don't bother with some crimes, not because they don't care, but because the final outcome will feel like a failure.

I bet if you posted some nasty racial stuff on facebook they'd come knocking though . . all to do with 'this months focus on crime' . . or something ;)

Re: Labour Conference
 

You misunderstand my point.

I'm not saying Starmer can make political capital out of the pumps crisis, I'm saying that whatever he does will be overshadowed by the pumps crisis. He could have a terrible, amazing or indifferent conference. But for 99% of the population, they won't be listening, they just want to fill their cars up.

Re: Labour Conference
 

£15 an hour, on what planet ?

Its like the old nonsense of the average uk salery being £29,600.
No one in my family (except me) earns anywhere near that per year.

I always like the example given to me.
In a room of 10 people, the average monthly pay was £1,450.
So they were all paid quite well, right ?
Wrong ... 9 were paid just £500 a month, the other got £10,000.
Averages are pretty meaningless.

A minimum so high would would drive many out of business, as they could never afford it.
The rest would have to raise prices to the point where people could not afford them any more.

Re: Labour Conference
 

What they simply don't understand is that there can't be a one salary fitting all situations. What is suitable for a 16-year-old living with their parents, is not suitable for a married person with half a dozen kids. That gap can only be covered by the benefits system or as it was in the past, by the tax system(adjusting their tax code). No way around that.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Didn't the Tories say the same when the minimum wage was first brought in? Be interested what the minister for levelling up has to say about it

Re: Labour Conference
 

If rasing the minimum wage has no impact, why not raise it to £1m/hour and see what happens?:rolleyes:

How's the High Street been doing in recent years?

Re: Labour Conference
 

Or you could wind your neck in and read what's there instead of jumping in with pathetic eye rolls, all I reminded people of was the tory opposition to a minimum wage and that we now have a minister for levelling up

Re: Labour Conference
 

I think you're getting a bit over-excited about something that's dead and buried. No large political party is advocating a £15ph minimum wage.

---------- Post added at 08:47 ---------- Previous post was at 08:39 ----------

A room of 10 people means that the average is liable to distortion by one person. But if it's a room of 20m people then it's far more accurate.

I'm sure a few stats bods will leap in with explanations of standard deviation, mean, median and mode if requested!

Re: Labour Conference
 

Anti white labour conference

Too many white men putting their hands up to speak, Labour delegates told


https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/nati...elegates-told/

Re: Labour Conference
 

They don't actually want £15 an hour, they want to get rid of Starmer and get a Corbyn ally back in and are creating a fuss to do so. Corbyn's own manifesto had the same pledge as Starmer of £10/h/

Re: Labour Conference
 

Re: Labour Conference
 

Funnily enough I did have objections to a minimum wage, whilst for many it would set their pay higher for many more it became their wage for years, when the Eastern Europeans arrived all the jobs that paid a quid or two above the minimum disappeared to be replaced by a standard barest minimum wage, it's why I supported Ukip for years, campaigned for them and hated the way British workers were treated and its why brexit for me happening when it did was quite tragic, after all those years the Eastern Europeans weren't prepared to live six to a house, didn't want to do 70 hours a week for the barest minimum and things were changing, in my experience anyway!

Re: Labour Conference
 

Well a pro-Corbyn Union has disaffiliated from Labour.

The rift between the Corbyn Labour and the Starmer Labour has started and will probably culminate in Labour ripping itself into two, as predicted by many when Labour lost the last election.

Ironically both factions are equally unelectable.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Corbyn's got rid of a Corbyn-supporting trade union, he puts his stamp more firmly on the Party. A result for him.

Why do you feel Starmer unelectable?

Re: Labour Conference
 

It started long ago. This conference has been largely Starmer winning the internal battles:

• Got the EHRC provisions passed
• Made it harder for someone to get a nomination for the leadership without the support of the PLP
• Made it harder for an existing MP to be deselected
• Got his General Secretary passed despite Momentum saying they had the numbers to stop it
• Momentum has lost more power on the NEC (Labour's ruling body)

Re: Labour Conference
 

Anyone that can’t state the unarguable fact that only women have cervixes, on national Live TV.

Well if you can’t acknowledge a fact that the vast amount of the electorate would agree with for fear of upsetting a minuscule % of the population……………well how to square that circle with anything?

Re: Labour Conference
 

So Momentum has lost (oho!) momentum then …

What a pathetic bunch though. Not a patch on the Militant Tendency. They really knew a thing or two about Trotskyist entryism, unlike this hopeless lot.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Well done Sir Keir then ! I knew you'd come round to him eventually Granted Boris doesn't set the bar high on competency but Sir K has surpassed it.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Sir K is still leaning how to limbo and doing badly.

Re: Labour Conference
 

You tell em wolfie

Re: Labour Conference
 

Starmer's keynote conference speech is being interrupted by constant heckling and there are members showing red cards.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Are those red cards for a deliberate handball, a dangerous foul, or kicking the ball away in a petulant huff? :D

Re: Labour Conference
 

Re: Labour Conference
 

Do you think any intrepid reporters will question him on that? :D

Re: Labour Conference
 

That used to be the case but he's now developing some policies helping the Party become stronger.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Two years ago these people ran the party. Now they're reduced to shouting in a hall.

Re: Labour Conference
 

That’s all they did when they ran it. Nothing but aged student protest groups.

Burnham is their only hope of having a leader of any credibility ( I mean you don’t know until he’s in place). If they don’t get him in now they’ll just lose 3 years.

Starmer loses the next election, so why let him fight it?

Re: Labour Conference
 

Because they’re going to lose no matter who’s in charge. Barring some unprecedented calamity in the Tory party, there’s just no chance of overturning a majority as big as the one BoJo presently has. Nobody in Labour with serious ambitions to actually be PM rather than just party leader will challenge him until after he loses.

Re: Labour Conference
 

I think they view him as Kinnock or John Smith than Blair. He is going to sort out the party for the next guy.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Yes, Burnham is a good bet unless he blemishes his copy book before the 2028 general election.

Re: Labour Conference
 

I was waiting for the weather report before 1am on BBC News.

All I got was Waffler Starmer saying that all schoolkids will have to study music and learn an instrument.

More political fiddling with the school system and curriculum.

Re: Labour Conference
 

I heard that they want to bring back two weeks' work experience for children which Cameron had axed. This sounds like a good idea to me though I suspect they won't be able to drive trucks. ;)

Re: Labour Conference
 

Well we are apparently short of musicians :shocked:, so he may have a point

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...ge-occupations

Re: Labour Conference
 

Is this what you're referring to.
The requirement just moved to post-16.

I was lucky, decades ago I had a 3 week work experience job as a lab assistant. I doubt most of the possible work experience jobs are like that. I was the first one for that scheme to have a job like that.

There still schemes out there arranging such work experience, including the one that arranged mine. There just aren't going to be the sort of opportunities that kids are eager to do.



Every scheme that has tried to give young people some work experience has been criticised as being "slave labour".

---------- Post added at 19:33 ---------- Previous post was at 19:30 ----------

Not quite sure how many skilled Orchestral musicians that or anything else, would produce.

Re: Labour Conference
 

It's going to rain tomorrow. Lots of rain. Hope that helps.

Guess you must used to it down there? ;) It never rains in Swansea so my Welsh Dad used to say, move there? Not sure he always told the truth tbh ...

Re: Labour Conference
 

Yup, although the sentence wasn't just about music:
Also on education:

Re: Labour Conference
 

Labour conference is one massive clown car, except the occupants seem to have no idea they’re in a circus and everyone’s laughing at them.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Yes, I think it is slave labour.

I have never been on ‘work experience’. I went straight into my first job following an interview, and was then subject to a probationary period, but I got paid for it.

The Labour Party really is not helping anyone here. They want to see unpaid work experience and they keep tightening up on employment laws which deters employers from taking on inexperienced people as paid employees in case they are hopeless and then have to dismiss them, which is a right palaver these days.

Labour needs to get real and stop pandering to knee-jerk employer-hating advocates.

Re: Labour Conference
 

I'm sure Jeremy Corbyn's bunch would call it that but if you can show a child a workplace and perhaps their parents have never worked then I think potentially you're doing the country a huge favour.

---------- Post added at 13:49 ---------- Previous post was at 13:48 ----------

I think it's a bit raw whereas others tend to be more stage-managed.

Re: Labour Conference
 

I want to get rid of the SNP in Scotland, So I have not much choice but to vote Labour or Liberal as the Tory will never win here,

Re: Labour Conference
 

It’s a bit tricky in the central belt isn’t it. Where I presently live the Tories always have a fighting chance (and have previously held the constituency) so I’ve never yet been faced with the prospect of tactical voting.

I’m likely to be moving house early next year and while it is presently proper SNP bandit country it is one of the seats previously held strongly by Labour. I might just have to hold my nose and vote for them, because the Nats have thoroughly Balkanised Scottish politics now. It’s all about nationalism and identity and nothing to do with policies. So you have to either vote for the Nat, or vote for the person most likely to unseat the Nat.

Re: Labour Conference
 

It's education. These are schoolkids who don't get paid anyway.

My two weeks at the NCB were the highlight of my school year.

Re: Labour Conference
 

I think you'd need to be supping at Jeremy Corbyn's table to seriously think it's slave labour.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Re: Labour Conference
 

If nobody wants one person to mean one equal vote in this country, then that's the way it is. We had the chance to move to PR but rejected it. Both of the main parties campaigned against it , and we voted as we were told, as usual. I'm sure you voted for PR at the time? That way you wouldn't have to contemplate voting for Labour, and you could be assured your vote counted.

Unless you are in one of the marginal constituencies, your vote means diddly squat. That's democracy, UK style.

Re: Labour Conference
 

I see Starmer thinks the next James Bond should be a woman. Funny name for a woman…James.

Anyway, even funnier as Starmer doesn’t seem to know what a woman is.

I’m looking forward to watching “On Her Majesty’s Secret Cervix”

Re: Labour Conference
 

Re: Labour Conference
 

At the next election Sir K, just has not to be Boris Johnson and he's won, simples :)

Re: Labour Conference
 

Wow.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Unfortunately Labour are finding out in Scotland that they can’t rely on generation after generation of lemmings to vote for them because their ancestors did.

At the last Scottish election I posed the question if any member of this forum could name a single Labour policy. While some could link to manifestos of woolly statements, nobody knew this off the top of their head.

If they want to wave the Union Flag the Tories have that covered, but it’s dismissing about half of the electorate out of hand.

---------- Post added at 21:30 ---------- Previous post was at 21:28 ----------

Hold the bus folks. I’m agreeing with OB here.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Really hard to say anything in the trans area and for someone not to take offence or disagree passionately...on either side of the debate. There's a definition of women and men born as women and men and there's a definition of those identifying as women and men. You meant one definition, Starmer the other.

:D:D:D

---------- Post added at 22:10 ---------- Previous post was at 22:04 ----------

Starmer actually stepped up and announced some policies this week. I think he's been trying to keep the party together with zero policies which you can only get away with for a limited time. This week, he actually found some.

Oh dear, the end of the world must be nigh! :D

Re: Labour Conference
 

Dream on.

Re: Labour Conference
 

He said it’s not right to say only women have cervix’s ( and the idiot Lammy had waded in and said the same)

Which is incorrect, only biological females have cervix’s, Trans-women do not.

Unless he meant that Trans-men can have a cervix, which is correct as they were born as biological women, but I don’t think that’s what he meant and it certainly isn’t what Lammy meant either.

Any it’s good to see him dealing with the issues that will help him win back the red wall, the trans-debate is a hot topic on the streets of Hartlepool.

Re: Labour Conference
 

The trans issue is fundamentally a toxic trap. I’m not sure who set it but it leaves Labour in contortions around language to not offend a tiny minority who have decided it’s important.

Quick win for the Tories. “Men are men, women are women, biological fact. We are more interested in jobs, covid recovery, make Brexit work, etc.”

97% of the population find one of those messages far more compelling than the other.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Labour, the party of Palestine and pronouns. Those red wall seats are in the bag.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Hi definition of women was for those who identify as women, yours is the more common biological definition. The Express, Sun, etc will have enjoyed the moment but the Party does seem to now be focusing on policies and not terminology which for most people doesn't get the bills paid.

---------- Post added at 09:16 ---------- Previous post was at 09:16 ----------

Good explanation.

---------- Post added at 09:18 ---------- Previous post was at 09:16 ----------

Pronouns seem to be popular everywhere now from corporates to higher education so I think it's a genuine cultural shift.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Yeah, I’m not convinced it goes much deeper than trying not to get cancelled or have their social media accounts trashed to be honest. Don’t be fooled by the echo chamber - the Twitter feed of a chocolate manufacturer or the university of the rest of England isn’t a very good social barometer. And any organisation can hoist that ridiculous flag and tick a box on its social responsibility checklist.

A recent leaked internal survey of civil servants in Scotland revealed that the SNP had asked them all if they would be willing to specify their pronouns in their email signatures. Only 17% do, 25% might if they were asked, and 58% said they wouldn’t.

https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,m...ail-signatures

As Starmer rightly pointed out, anyone can chant a slogan. Plenty of people will do so under social pressure. But most people haven’t gone nearly far enough down the rabbit hole to deny that only a woman has a cervix.

Re: Labour Conference
 

It may well be a genuine cultural shift, it might be a fad that fizzles out when people move onto something new.

If it’s the former we just need to look at homosexuality - a cultural shift that took generations. Even still footballers, rugby players and others are reluctant to come out when statistically it’s improbable that large numbers are.

It’s not going to win or lose the 2024 election, or the 2029 one. By the time it has gained critical mass - if it does - the Tories can seamlessly move onto that ground anyway with those who most object to it either dead, dying, outnumbered and with nowhere else to go politically.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Who'd have thought having or not having a cervix would be such political hot potato?

Frankly with the amount of time I have spent having mine painfully examined you wouldn't want one.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Re: Labour Conference
 

Plenty of students. ;)

---------- Post added at 10:23 ---------- Previous post was at 10:14 ----------

There’s a number of things at play in the wider debate however it is all being rolled into one and you’re either on their side or you aren’t. Pronouns isn’t really anything, costs nothing. I personally don’t use pronouns despite dealing with organisations who do. I have an obviously male name, I don’t see the point.

Do I want trans people to be able to go about their lives safely? Yes. Do I want people born male to compete in women’s sport? No. Trans rights shouldn’t erode women’s rights. Sex is a protected characteristic and isn’t a social construct the way gender is.

Re: Labour Conference
 

We are in complete agreement on that.

Re: Labour Conference
 

It's only obvious to someone familiar with British names. I often have to deal with colleagues where I genuinely have no idea of their gender/sex/cervical status. It requires some carefully worded discussions, either using "they" or their name.

Re: Labour Conference
 

A number of Popes, US Presidents, a Beatle, at least one well known astronaut and a famous fictional pirate share my forename.

I’m also not precious about being referred to it directly or as they/them if anyone is in doubt.

Re: Labour Conference
 

One-Eyed Willie? ;)

Re: Labour Conference
 

Re: Labour Conference
 

I'm still struggling with a pope named Ringo :shrug:

Re: Labour Conference
 

Actually John Paul and Ringo were drinking buddies in the Vatican bar. ;)

Re: Labour Conference
 

John-Paul I or John-Paul II were Ringo's drinking partners? ;)

I went to the Vatican early last year, just before it all kicked off, never found the bar just some overated painted chapel. Could have really done with a drink too.

Re: Labour Conference
 

Well, you’ve outed yourself, John!

Are you able to create white and black smoke, call Kim Jong-un insulting names like ‘Rocket Man’, compose a humongous pile of no 1 songs, take a space walk and balance a parrot on your shoulder while at the same time causing havoc on Cable Forum with your unpopular opinions?

If so, I’ll take it all back, every post!

What’s your take on Starmer’s speech, by the way?

Re: Labour Conference
 

Didn’t see it, the essay was enough for me.

Re: Labour Conference
 

I thought the only people who write essays these days were school children. :shrug: