May is one of the few Tory Home Secretaries to be booed at a Police Conference. She tried and failed for six years to reduce immigration, on her watch the prison system is a disgrace and at breaking point. Border Agency and Olympic security issues, passport shambles, Hillsborough, sex abuse scandals. The only surprise is she was thought to be a safe pair of hands.
May is one of the few Tory Home Secretaries to be booed at a Police Conference. She tried and failed for six years to reduce immigration, on her watch the prison system is a disgrace and at breaking point. Border Agency and Olympic security issues, passport shambles, Hillsborough, sex abuse scandals. The only surprise is she was thought to be a safe pair of hands.
Diane Abbott could be the first Home Sec to not be able to attend a Police Conference due to there not being a venue big enough to hold 250000 people
I have equal respect for @Chizz, @Fiiish on one side, and @Dippenhall and @cafcfan on the other. A shame therefore to see them at loggerheads.
What swings me towards the Chizz/Fiiish viewpoint is this:
If there is one thing we ought to have learnt in the last 30 years is that if you ask ordinary working people to put their future wellbeing in the hands of the UK financial services industry, they will be done like kippers. I think its Ok to have top ups from the private sector for people like you two who are smart enough both to see the value of putting your money away and probably to avoid the worst excesses. But to insist the mass of ordinary people depend on private contingency, well; I guess it depends on whether you think we should have a society more like the USA or like Germany. No prizes for guessing where my vote goes.
Nice to see you in bromance mode prague... Can you count me in.
Eh?
Lighten up
Whatever you say, Chips. But since you are here, i am curious how you feel to find yourself on the same side of the arguments here as Chizz, Fiiish, Bournemouth, Charlton Madrid, Muttley (to name just some of the Remainers you tried to troll) and I. Don't you recall us trying to point out to you who the politicians are whom you were backing with such mindless aggression on the Brexit thread?
Never mind, mate. You've got your country back. Now you can look forward to strong and stable leadership for the next 5 years. What a time to be alive.
I have equal respect for @Chizz, @Fiiish on one side, and @Dippenhall and @cafcfan on the other. A shame therefore to see them at loggerheads.
What swings me towards the Chizz/Fiiish viewpoint is this:
If there is one thing we ought to have learnt in the last 30 years is that if you ask ordinary working people to put their future wellbeing in the hands of the UK financial services industry, they will be done like kippers. I think its Ok to have top ups from the private sector for people like you two who are smart enough both to see the value of putting your money away and probably to avoid the worst excesses. But to insist the mass of ordinary people depend on private contingency, well; I guess it depends on whether you think we should have a society more like the USA or like Germany. No prizes for guessing where my vote goes.
Nice to see you in bromance mode prague... Can you count me in.
Eh?
Lighten up
Whatever you say, Chips. But since you are here, i am curious how you feel to find yourself on the same side of the arguments here as Chizz, Fiiish, Bournemouth, Charlton Madrid, Muttley (to name just some of the Remainers you tried to troll) and I. Don't you recall us trying to point out to you who the politicians are whom you were backing with such mindless aggression on the Brexit thread?
Never mind, mate. You've got your country back. Now you can look forward to strong and stable leadership for the next 5 years. What a time to be alive.
Ffs grow up
Not a flag for chippy
Of course not. We are on the same side now. Aren't we, Chips?
Blimey. The most significant thing about this tweet is the author of it.
Yes and he is quite wrong. There was never going to be a polite negotiation over leaving the EU. The EU is far bigger and more powerful than the UK and exists to perpetuate itself through the four freedoms. There is no reason for the EU to give the UK a good deal and every reason not to. It really makes no difference how 'positive' 'friendly' or 'conciliatory' we are,they are out to screw the UK. We would be better off walking away from the talks and getting on with working out our future free from the illusion that we can strike a deal with the EU bureaucracy.
Wow. So you are not just a Brexiteer, but a hard Brexiteer.
Well it looks like you might well get your wish. Not sure how happy most of your fellow citizens will be when they find out what it all means.
Blimey. The most significant thing about this tweet is the author of it.
Yes and he is quite wrong. There was never going to be a polite negotiation over leaving the EU. The EU is far bigger and more powerful than the UK and exists to perpetuate itself through the four freedoms. There is no reason for the EU to give the UK a good deal and every reason not to. It really makes no difference how 'positive' 'friendly' or 'conciliatory' we are,they are out to screw the UK. We would be better off walking away from the talks and getting on with working out our future free from the illusion that we can strike a deal with the EU bureaucracy.
Wow. So you are not just a Brexiteer, but a hard Brexiteer.
Well it looks like you might well get your wish. Not sure how happy most of your fellow citizens will be when they find out what it all means.
I have always thought there is just Brexit,and supported it for democratic reasons. The choice was in or out which was right because the EU cannot compromise,as it showed when Cameron begged for concessions and was refused,and as it will show over the next year or so. May has made this election about Brexit. This is the opportunity for our fellow citizens to vote for or against it. I will be voting for (again).
Funny how this is a matter of principle to some people. The reality is how intertwined everything in this country is with the EU. Their simplistic principle of "control" has no basis in reality. I doubt intellectual property law matters to anyone on here but me, but it underpins so much of every aspect of.your lives (including aspects of competition law) and leaving the EU will foul this country up big time I'd be interested to know how in the wider scheme of things we'd be actually better off
Blimey. The most significant thing about this tweet is the author of it.
Yes and he is quite wrong. There was never going to be a polite negotiation over leaving the EU. The EU is far bigger and more powerful than the UK and exists to perpetuate itself through the four freedoms. There is no reason for the EU to give the UK a good deal and every reason not to. It really makes no difference how 'positive' 'friendly' or 'conciliatory' we are,they are out to screw the UK. We would be better off walking away from the talks and getting on with working out our future free from the illusion that we can strike a deal with the EU bureaucracy.
Wow. So you are not just a Brexiteer, but a hard Brexiteer.
Well it looks like you might well get your wish. Not sure how happy most of your fellow citizens will be when they find out what it all means.
I have always thought there is just Brexit,and supported it for democratic reasons. The choice was in or out which was right because the EU cannot compromise,as it showed when Cameron begged for concessions and was refused,and as it will show over the next year or so. May has made this election about Brexit. This is the opportunity for our fellow citizens to vote for or against it. I will be voting for (again).
While Brexit will be the backdrop for much of the election, I hope that that will not be the only reason behind the choices made by the electorate, because the policies (and, occasionally, the personalities) do matter.
But I must disagree with your statement about the EU. Because of its voting structures, it cannot operate at all without compromise - it's about as far from the picture your statement paints as it is possible to be. And, indeed, in the case of David Cameron's demands, firstly, what he got (which was the most that could be achieved without a treaty change) was compromise and, secondly, what Cameron stated that he was seeking could not have been achieved within the timescale that he (arbitrarily) set and by the methods he chose (any half-intelligent being with a vague understanding of the EU would have known this in advance).
Cameron was not refused compromise by the EU, he was grandstanding for public consumption in the UK, and demanded more than was possible. EU treaties, like other international agreements, including Brexit and any post Brexit trade deal with the EU, require negotiation and much detailed work - meeting Cameron's demands would have been a capitulation rather than a compromise, and would have necessitated redrawing treaties and a wave of associated referendums across Europe (with no guarantee that the changes would have been accepted).
Blimey. The most significant thing about this tweet is the author of it.
Yes and he is quite wrong. There was never going to be a polite negotiation over leaving the EU. The EU is far bigger and more powerful than the UK and exists to perpetuate itself through the four freedoms. There is no reason for the EU to give the UK a good deal and every reason not to. It really makes no difference how 'positive' 'friendly' or 'conciliatory' we are,they are out to screw the UK. We would be better off walking away from the talks and getting on with working out our future free from the illusion that we can strike a deal with the EU bureaucracy.
Wow. So you are not just a Brexiteer, but a hard Brexiteer.
Well it looks like you might well get your wish. Not sure how happy most of your fellow citizens will be when they find out what it all means.
I have always thought there is just Brexit,and supported it for democratic reasons. The choice was in or out which was right because the EU cannot compromise,as it showed when Cameron begged for concessions and was refused,and as it will show over the next year or so. May has made this election about Brexit. This is the opportunity for our fellow citizens to vote for or against it. I will be voting for (again).
That's an interesting way to look at it. Because, in that case, if the majority of our fellow citizens vote against the Tories (yet again), we should assume that's a vote to Remain.
I have equal respect for @Chizz, @Fiiish on one side, and @Dippenhall and @cafcfan on the other. A shame therefore to see them at loggerheads.
What swings me towards the Chizz/Fiiish viewpoint is this:
If there is one thing we ought to have learnt in the last 30 years is that if you ask ordinary working people to put their future wellbeing in the hands of the UK financial services industry, they will be done like kippers. I think its Ok to have top ups from the private sector for people like you two who are smart enough both to see the value of putting your money away and probably to avoid the worst excesses. But to insist the mass of ordinary people depend on private contingency, well; I guess it depends on whether you think we should have a society more like the USA or like Germany. No prizes for guessing where my vote goes.
Poor people have relied on mutual societies to provide security long before the welfare state. It was the culture from which trade unions evolved. Life assurance is just a modern form of mutual society.
I'm not out of touch, I just grew up when the norm was to hope you never needed welfare, not use it as an excuse for not taking personal responsibility. We had a man from the Pru visit us every week to collect the 2p premiums. It was the norm for working people to insure against the worst, not to pretend the state would provide adequate welfare.
I'm not talking about those already reliant entirely on state welfare, The impact for those families is simply the package of welfare benefits changes. I'm talking about the majority. Every family with a breadwinner can afford insurance, or is already covered by company insurance, and any suggestion people are poorer now than 50 years ago and can't afford to protect their family with insurance is bollox.
You still haven't addressed the question of people with pre-existing conditions or those who are unable to maintain the premiums due to illness or periods out of work. And that's before we get into the whole issue of the changes in work patterns and housing costs in the intervening periods that mean your assumptions about what families with a bread winner can afford are likely to be somewhat flawed.
"Every family with a breadwinner can afford insurance", in the same post as "I'm not out of touch", in a thread that includes the Prime Minister's sanguine normalisation of nurses needing to visit food banks.
You still haven't addressed the question of people with pre-existing conditions or those who are unable to maintain the premiums due to illness or periods out of work. And that's before we get into the whole issue of the changes in work patterns and housing costs in the intervening periods that mean your assumptions about what families with a bread winner can afford are likely to be somewhat flawed.
Only a relatively small proportion of individuals have pre-existing conditions at the time they marry and start a family. Also you can insure against losing you job/periods of illness. (They're called things like STIP, MPPI or PPI. The latter will be familiar to most!)
There are approx 19mn families in the UK and 8mn people living alone, giving us 27mn households. Then there are (sorry these figures are again approx) around 9mn Sky subscribers, 4mn Virgin Media cable subscribers and around 2mn BT and TalkTalk subscribers. That's a total of 15mn. Again approx there could well be some double counting.
It seems to be extraordinarily difficult to get accurate stats for individuals with life cover. But according to the ABI, there are around 6.3mn life insurance product holders but only 300,000 people with income protection cover.
I guess that means there are around 9mn households that think watching football on TV is more important than protecting their own family's future. How many on here are in that category? Is that why some are being so defensive?
BTW, if my ravings have prompted anybody to get some insurance. Please think carefully about what product you opt for.
To my mind, an expert might be along soon to say something different, so-called whole of life products are pretty toxic really. Certainly that applies to those over 50 plans heavily advertised on TV. (They are heavily advertised for a reason - they are very profitable and it would be very difficult for an adviser to recommend them because they have to offer best advice. So insurers have to rely upon punters self-selecting.)
I am struggling to think of any circumstances where it would be good for anybody to choose one of these products as their main cover rather than a with-profits policy.
I take your point about the "man from the Pru" era. I think you have rather avoided mine. That is, that Thatcher swept away that reasonable, regulated, and self-disciplined approach. Building societies were changed into banks and their entire character and modus operandi with it. Estate agents started flogging mortgages with life insurance attached, as opposed to the more traditional repayment one. I took chose the new one, in 1985, attracted by the lower monthly repayments and totally unaware of the drawbacks. Nobody warned me. I wasn't the only one because in the 90s I was successfully compensated for mis-selling, and I was one of millions. (Were you not?)
You know better than most that vast tracts of the financial services industry are leeching a living by offering products of dubious value, to millions of us who find it difficult to evaluate such things. That's my worry.
If I thought this private provision were to be strictly regulated, then I might be more comfortable with the idea. But we have a dreadful record of installing such regulation. That's down to the politics. Such private provision is mainly proposed by the Tories. But many Tories also hate regulation, of anything. So you get watered down, toothless regulation, until it all goes tits up. Then our justice system swings in,not to mention the Consumers Association and, to be fair, people do get compensation, more so than in other countries. But the perpetrators are not held to account. They get off scot free with their riches, a small proportion of which finds its way back into Conservative party coffers. Or, nowadays, UKIP.
The Germans don't and won't stand for that kind of nonsense. And it does not seem like its economy is collapsing under the burden.
Sad really that in one of the richest countries ever we are regressing to a period where we have some of the most essential members of any functioning, advanced society resorting to charity to feed themselves and others proposing that this is in some way their fault and a conscious decision.
Sad really that in one of the richest countries ever we are regressing to a period where we have some of the most essential members of any functioning, advanced society resorting to charity to feed themselves and others proposing that this is in some way their fault and a conscious decision.
What a fucking mess.
Agreed - it makes you want to cry at what we are becoming as a society.
Comments
12 x 25 = 300
Doh.. must get some new specs
And the day after the Superbowl.
Well it looks like you might well get your wish. Not sure how happy most of your fellow citizens will be when they find out what it all means.
Funny looking random underweight actors
May has made this election about Brexit. This is the opportunity for our fellow citizens to vote for or against it. I will be voting for (again).
I'd be interested to know how in the wider scheme of things we'd be actually better off
But I must disagree with your statement about the EU. Because of its voting structures, it cannot operate at all without compromise - it's about as far from the picture your statement paints as it is possible to be. And, indeed, in the case of David Cameron's demands, firstly, what he got (which was the most that could be achieved without a treaty change) was compromise and, secondly, what Cameron stated that he was seeking could not have been achieved within the timescale that he (arbitrarily) set and by the methods he chose (any half-intelligent being with a vague understanding of the EU would have known this in advance).
Cameron was not refused compromise by the EU, he was grandstanding for public consumption in the UK, and demanded more than was possible. EU treaties, like other international agreements, including Brexit and any post Brexit trade deal with the EU, require negotiation and much detailed work - meeting Cameron's demands would have been a capitulation rather than a compromise, and would have necessitated redrawing treaties and a wave of associated referendums across Europe (with no guarantee that the changes would have been accepted).
"
I'm not out of touch, I just grew up when the norm was to hope you never needed welfare, not use it as an excuse for not taking personal responsibility. We had a man from the Pru visit us every week to collect the 2p premiums. It was the norm for working people to insure against the worst, not to pretend the state would provide adequate welfare.
I'm not talking about those already reliant entirely on state welfare, The impact for those families is simply the package of welfare benefits changes. I'm talking about the majority. Every family with a breadwinner can afford insurance, or is already covered by company insurance, and any suggestion people are poorer now than 50 years ago and can't afford to protect their family with insurance is bollox.
There are approx 19mn families in the UK and 8mn people living alone, giving us 27mn households. Then there are (sorry these figures are again approx) around 9mn Sky subscribers, 4mn Virgin Media cable subscribers and around 2mn BT and TalkTalk subscribers. That's a total of 15mn. Again approx there could well be some double counting.
It seems to be extraordinarily difficult to get accurate stats for individuals with life cover. But according to the ABI, there are around 6.3mn life insurance product holders but only 300,000 people with income protection cover.
I guess that means there are around 9mn households that think watching football on TV is more important than protecting their own family's future. How many on here are in that category? Is that why some are being so defensive?
To my mind, an expert might be along soon to say something different, so-called whole of life products are pretty toxic really. Certainly that applies to those over 50 plans heavily advertised on TV. (They are heavily advertised for a reason - they are very profitable and it would be very difficult for an adviser to recommend them because they have to offer best advice. So insurers have to rely upon punters self-selecting.)
I am struggling to think of any circumstances where it would be good for anybody to choose one of these products as their main cover rather than a with-profits policy.
I take your point about the "man from the Pru" era. I think you have rather avoided mine. That is, that Thatcher swept away that reasonable, regulated, and self-disciplined approach. Building societies were changed into banks and their entire character and modus operandi with it. Estate agents started flogging mortgages with life insurance attached, as opposed to the more traditional repayment one. I took chose the new one, in 1985, attracted by the lower monthly repayments and totally unaware of the drawbacks. Nobody warned me. I wasn't the only one because in the 90s I was successfully compensated for mis-selling, and I was one of millions. (Were you not?)
You know better than most that vast tracts of the financial services industry are leeching a living by offering products of dubious value, to millions of us who find it difficult to evaluate such things. That's my worry.
If I thought this private provision were to be strictly regulated, then I might be more comfortable with the idea. But we have a dreadful record of installing such regulation. That's down to the politics. Such private provision is mainly proposed by the Tories. But many Tories also hate regulation, of anything. So you get watered down, toothless regulation, until it all goes tits up. Then our justice system swings in,not to mention the Consumers Association and, to be fair, people do get compensation, more so than in other countries. But the perpetrators are not held to account. They get off scot free with their riches, a small proportion of which finds its way back into Conservative party coffers. Or, nowadays, UKIP.
The Germans don't and won't stand for that kind of nonsense. And it does not seem like its economy is collapsing under the burden.
What a fucking mess.