Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

'






'Leading the debate on employment, poverty and social security.'




Author: Rachel Reeves, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary

It's a huge honour to be asked by Ed Miliband to head up Labour's shadow work and pensions team. It's a big responsibility with some tough challenges but also I think some real opportunities to lead the debate on employment, poverty and social security and campaign for a positive agenda rooted in Labour's values of work, responsibility and decency.

Families facing a cost of living crisis want to know we have a social security system that is fair and sustainable, with costs kept under control but there for them when they need it.

The Tories seek to use every opportunity to divide this country and set one group of people against another. But their approach is failing – with the result that people are left out of work for year after year and costs to the country continue to rise. The Work Programme isn't working, the roll-out of Universal Credit is in disarray, the Youth Contract has been a flop and there is mounting anger at the degrading and disgraceful treatment of disabled people by ATOS.

The complacent Tories are congratulating themselves about a long-delayed recovery. But almost a million young people are out of work. For those in work, increasing numbers of them aren't being paid a living wage, are stuck on zero hours contracts or working part time when they want to work full time, and are being hit by soaring rents because levels of house building are so low - all of which drive up the benefits bill.

Labour will control the costs of social security by getting more people into work, rewarding work and tackling low pay, investing in the future, and recognising contribution. We'll strive to make the right to work a reality for people with disabilities, working with them to design services and benefits that enable them to play their part.

A One Nation social security system will be one with responsibility at its heart - people receiving benefits who can work have a responsibility to look for work, prepare for work and take jobs that are available to them, but government has a responsibility to treat benefit recipients fairly and decently, help and support them and work with employers to ensure there are real jobs opportunities available.

Our compulsory jobs guarantees for young people and the long term unemployed, funded by repeating the tax on bank bonuses and limiting pensions tax relief for those on more than £150,000, would ensure there is work for under 25s out of work for more than a year and adults out of work for more than two years. These would be proper paid jobs - and people would be expected to take them or face losing benefits.

And unlike the Tories, we'll put an effective cap on structural social security spending by getting tough on the causes of unemployment and rising benefit bills: low pay, lack of economic opportunity, shortage of affordable housing.

We would repeal cruel and counterproductive measures like David Cameron's Bedroom Tax. I see constituents week in and week out with heart breaking stories about how this policy is hitting them and their families. Around the country hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people, many of them disabled, are being penalised by this perverse policy which could end up costing more than it saves because of the distress and disruption it's causing.

And we'll keep up the campaign for the living wage, and for the economic reforms we need to ensure that prosperity is fairly shared and welfare is not a substitute for good employment and decent jobs.

Poor Rachel Reeves must have a memory loss.

''And unlike the Tories, we'll put an effective cap on structural social security spending by getting tough on the causes of unemployment and rising benefit bills: low pay, lack of economic opportunity, shortage of affordable housing''.
2517

Union boss 'Red' Len McCluskey hails Ed Miliband as the best leader since Michael Foot (who took Labour to worst ever defeat)

Unite leader used a speech to hail Miliband as best leader for 30 years
Declares that New Labour is no more as party lurches to the left
Foot was responsible for 'longest suicide note in history' manifesto

ard-left union chief Len McCluskey has praised Ed Miliband as Labour’s best leader since Michael Foot.

The Unite boss used a speech to hail him as the most radical leader since 1983, the year of Labour’s ‘longest suicide note in history’ manifesto and worst election result since the War.

And he gloated over the fact that under Mr Miliband, New Labour and the centre-left policies pioneered by triple election-winning Tony Blair had been abandoned.

The trenchant speech will raise fears over Mr McCluskey’s influence over the Labour leader, dubbed Red Ed by critics. Unite is one of the largest trade unions, and the unions are responsible for three quarters of Labour’s funding.

Mr McCluskey gave the lecture in memory of Jimmy Reid, a left-wing activist who led a group of dockers who took over shipyards on the Clyde in 1971.

He praised Ed Miliband’s speech to last month’s Labour conference, when he promised 1970s-style price controls for energy bills and suggested developers who refuse to build on their land should see it confiscated by the state.

‘We should ask if the glass is filling up or draining way,’ he said. ‘Put like that, the answer cannot really be in doubt.

‘Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour conference was – some would say – the most genuinely radical we have heard from a Labour leader for nigh on 30 years.’

Thirty years ago, Michael Foot led his party to a historic defeat, losing three million votes since the 1979 election.

His successor, Neil Kinnock, started the slow process of moving Labour towards the centre ground and making it more electable.

The trend is with Labour.Gap now up to 7 0r 8 % points.

Need just 38% of vote for overal majority.

The Tories must be getting something right - Joe Public seems to have plenty money to spend.

"(Reuters) - British retailers are set to enjoy their best growth in Christmas sales since the financial crisis, according to a report published on Monday which forecast consumers would spend at least 2 billion pounds more than in 2012.

Market research specialist Verdict forecast spending in the fourth quarter would rise 2.2 percent from the same period in 2012 to 88.4 billion pounds - the best since 2007 when fourth-quarter spending grew 3.1 percent to 82.4 billion pounds.

Improving consumer confidence and job creation, along with a pick-up in the housing market, were some of the reasons cited by Verdict, which also pointed out that a baby boom during the recession meant consumers now have more children to buy Christmas presents for.

Compared with the present far right tory party, with some of its members leaning over backwards to the "days" of "fascism", it is not surprising for them to consider Libs and Labour as far left from their own positioning.

Actually, as Cameron has tried to placate the UKIP members of the tory party and keep them in the con party pens he has wandered farther and farther to the right.

He has created a far right party detached more and more from the public and alienating more and more of the moderate con party, who are beginning to escape from and considering to vote for a more centralist labour party.

Also returning to the Labour party are the more centralist old labour members, who find the present tory leaders as distasteful.

The present labour party is far more "centralist" now, than any time in the last 50 year period.

Fascinating to watch the "swivelling" of Wavy Dave as he comes up to a disastrous elections.

========

But I would like to thank the tory party for providing me legally with the profits of RMG at the expense of the tax payers.

Their coffers seem to be needing a top up.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaa

OBC,

Fascism is an extreme form of socialism. You are far more likely to see it under Milliband or Brown than under the Conservatives, whose policies are classified as neo-liberal. Please do some research or ask your friend, Fishfinger, the thread's resident leading global economist, for confirmation.

It's bad enough that you spout shedloads of garbage, but please try to ensure that it is factually accurate garbage.

LOL, and that's another accolade for Fishfinger to add to his CV - "a leading global economist". Rumour has it that he's also just landed a bit part in the next Jaws movie.

Fred wrote

"But even better to see London becoming the play ground for the Chinese and Russian Mafia.

The take over has speeded up under Dave "


So Fred think's all Chinese and Russian imigrants are criminals and should be deported. How long have you been a member of the BNP Fred , your cover as been blown. ps Chinese are Triad's

Hairy one.

I suggest you compare the rhetoric of the 30s with that of your dear leader of the present.

Have a look at the elected "elite" of that period and review their actions and thei stated "ideology".


Your party seems to need better Goebbels to spin your the propaganda. Perhaps, you could volunteer to help Lynton Crosby.

You never know you might get use to the taste of an old Australian Ram.

Put whatever label you wish on the present con party and its conned party faithful, I expect as it lurches along to the next election it will move more and more to the the right and hopefully be rejected by the electorate.

.

Alds,

You appear to me to need help once more.

Suggest you re-read my post and then take it to the pub with you and ask some of your mates to explain it to you.

OBC,

One of the core tenets of fascism is that industries are nationalised and the state controls everything. Having just witnessed the bloke privatise the Royal Mail, if you think that Cameron is a practising fascist, then you really do have rocks in your head.

Check the practice.

Fred
You are talking about Nazism. That is not fascism. Fascism was a movement in Italy and is mainly about state control of every aspect of people's lives. Hence the Labour party are more fascist than the other parties.

NO Freds got it right.

Im afraid a few here could do with a revision course on economic and political history.

The fact is aswel the better growth is up to the election the more likely voters will turn to labour as any doubts of them on economic competence will have been dismissed.

Voters will feel safe and seek out the party offering better living standards ie, Labour.

Its good to see Rachel Reeves policy document today aswel, ive been in touch with Rachel and wanted to know if they would overal the tories policy of discriminating against disabled strivers those who have saved money and contributed to a private pension whilst able to work.

The answer is YES. No longer will the tories be able to claim the poor and disabled are better off working with this policy in place which means those who dont save and dont insure for their latter life contine to get benefits whilst those who have tried to look after themselves have benefits removed.

It will be changed.