Corbyn did win, what's next?

[Aber]

Except except except ...

This isn't "financial legislation" in the sense that a bill or amendment was passed in The Commons. It's being handled by a "statutory instrument" and was never part of the election manifesto. In fact Cameron specifically denied they'd do it.

If the Tories do these things through technical means they can hardly complain if others undermine them with technicalities.

Except except except except except...

Statutory instruments' status in terms of the conventions is unclear, but generally they have rarely been challenged before.

Cameron's pre-election pledge was on child tax credits, which are different.

It will certainly make politics more interesting if the rule book gets torn up.

 

[asydhouse]

Funny how the concept of a universal allowance for necessities was just swept aside in favour of bashing my life-style choices, and whether or not my art is good enough to justify my continued existence.

But my quality/quantity of accomplishments in artistic work is beside the point! Everyone should have a basic income provided by our society, and that would free up everyone to study or create or whatever and make some choices that fulfil their true interests and talents. Despite the mess, the world is more affluent now than ever before, and will continue to become more affluent, unless the complete lack of urgency over global climate change reduces us all to survival mode, in which case there won't be any factories in which to dull the mind and crush the body anyway.

All of the economic discussion I see here is based in suppositions such as Ziggurat's that the scarcity economics and consequent societal organisation is the only mode of thought which should ever be applied to how we do things (including apparently an exact accounting of the monetary value of time and effort and product).

Unemployment is a part of the current organisation, and if I choose to be unemployed, someone else can have the job I would otherwise be unhappily occupying. Some of the time I have made use of the social security net, some times I have travelled and done seasonal work such as fruit-picking, or temporary factory jobs through agencies, etc. Despite your characterisation of that way of life as theft, I have been a positive and well-liked contributor to the communities in which I have found myself. You don't find me committing road rage, or beating up people on a friday night to blow off the steam of doing a nasty job all week.

But again, this is not about my choices, it's about our society's choices, and we can afford to change the agreements that are the "social contract", and decide to start everyone at £100 per week, or whatever, and go from there. Happiness and fulfilment in the society will be higher!

That's the intangible I was referring to. Everyone more fulfilled and happier, means everyone healthier in a healthier culture.

As I said, since someone mentioned that Switzerland is going to actually give this decades-old idea a try, I hope it becomes something that can be seriously discussed instead of evoking rabid responses from the business-as-usual vultures that haunt economics threads (in my experience, for which I am neither equipped nor motivated to enter again).

 

[MikeG]

........Everyone should have a basic income provided by our society.......

No. Just no. And just who on earth do you think should pay for it?

 

[Ziggurat]

Funny how the concept of a universal allowance for necessities was just swept aside in favour of bashing my life-style choices, and whether or not my art is good enough to justify my continued existence.

Funny how you can't seem to represent opposing arguments with anything even approaching honesty.

It's not your continued existence that your art needs to be good enough to justify, it's people paying you for that art that it needs to be good enough to justify.

But my quality/quantity of accomplishments in artistic work is beside the point!

No, it isn't beside the point. You made it the point, not me, when you used your production of art as justification for having the state pay you money extracted under threat of violence from other people.

All of the economic discussion I see here is based in suppositions such as Ziggurat's that the scarcity economics and consequent societal organisation is the only mode of thought which should ever be applied to how we do things (including apparently an exact accounting of the monetary value of time and effort and product).

There is no kind of economics except scarcity economics. Scarcity is part of the very definition of economics. You can pretend that we don't have to deal with scarcity, but that won't make it true, that will only make you delusional.

Unemployment is a part of the current organisation, and if I choose to be unemployed, someone else can have the job I would otherwise be unhappily occupying.

The lump sum theory of jobs is as false as the lump sum theory of wealth.

Despite your characterisation of that way of life as theft

I never called it theft.

You don't find me committing road rage, or beating up people on a friday night to blow off the steam of doing a nasty job all week.

That's setting the bar rather low.

But again, this is not about my choices, it's about our society's choices, and we can afford to change the agreements that are the "social contract", and decide to start everyone at £100 per week, or whatever, and go from there. Happiness and fulfilment in the society will be higher!

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

 

[MikeG]

......... if I choose to be unemployed, someone else can have the job I would otherwise be unhappily occupying.........

There is a strand of thinking (we'll call it that) which goes something like this: We should all throw rubbish out of the window of the car, drop it in the streets, open our fingers and let it fall where it may, because that is providing a social service: employment to street cleaners. That is pretty analogous to your argument about benefiting society by not working.

 

[GlennB]

A level-headed analysis, imo, of the tax credit affair:

How George Osborne got himself into a fix over tax credits

 

[Giz]

the world is more affluent now than ever before, and will continue to become more affluent, unless

Unless… everyone behaved as selfishly as you? (Hint: a lot of people would like to be paid despite not working. It would be nice to be paid to pursue hobbies. But most people realize that as responsible adults, they should make an honest effort to find a way to provide for themselves.

if I choose to be unemployed, someone else can have the job I would otherwise be unhappily occupying.

I dare say quite a few people are in jobs that are not particularly thrilling. Garbage and sanitation workers spring to mind. Thank goodness they keep slogging away rather than becoming virtuously unemployed.

You don't find me committing road rage, or beating up people on a friday night to blow off the steam of doing a nasty job all week.

Oh, aren’t jobs just the worst!?!!1!1!!
The things they drive people to; I heard of this one guy in Germany who couldn’t follow his dream as a painter but instead of becoming happily unemployed, he went and got a job (in politics IIRC) and he ended up so angry!

That's the intangible I was referring to. Everyone more fulfilled and happier,

Except the poor worker, who has less money to spend on his kids because some ‘adults’ want to live without responsibility.

 

[Henri McPhee]

This reform of the House of Lords business has been dragging on for most of my lifetime. Nothing much ever seems to change.

I remember that poll tax business under Mrs. Thatcher, when a university student and single mothers were expected to pay the same council tax as Andrew Lloyd Webber. It was obviously unfair, and it led to riots on the street. I remember great queues of heridetary peers, who had never attended the place before, lined up to vote for the poll tax, and for Mrs. Thatcher.

I thought at that time it was the death warant for the House of Lords. In the end it was most of the hereditary peers who lost their right to attend the House of Lords. I think there are still some left. That was under Blair. I think there is now a Supreme Court which is the final Court of Appeal. In the past it was the House of Lords.

There have been allegations of corruption with regard to the House of Lords going back into history. There was a corruption scandal involving the prime minister Lloyd George years ago about cash for honours. I think the going rate to purchase a Lordship now is half a million pounds.

There has been a problem in the past in that the House of Lords became a retirement club for mediocre Cabinet ministers and Trade Union officials. There are also some experts there, and some people with wide and practical experience. My father used to say it would be a pity if the intelligentsia in the House of Lords was lost as this would lead to unintelligent government.

As W.S Gilbert once wrote the House of Peers throughout the war did nothing in particular and did it very well.

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Except except except except except...

Statutory instruments' status in terms of the conventions is unclear, but generally they have rarely been challenged before.

Cameron's pre-election pledge was on child tax credits, which are different.

It will certainly make politics more interesting if the rule book gets torn up.

I don't pretend to be an expert, but so far as I can see the GlennB has got a point.

http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/salisbury-doctr

In practice, it means that the Lords does not try to vote down at second or third reading, a Government Bill mentioned in an election manifesto.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/1-2/13/section/

The Parliament Act 1911 applies to Bills, and Money Bills specifically. It does not apply to Statutory Instruments. Bills become Acts; SIs become Regulations.

If a Money Bill, having been passed by the House of Commons, and sent up to the House of Lords at least one month before the end of the session, is not passed by the House of Lords without amendment within one month after it is so sent up to that House, the Bill shall, unless the House of Commons direct to the contrary, be presented to His Majesty and become an Act of Parliament on the Royal Assent being signified, notwithstanding that the House of Lords have not consented to the Bill.

What is more, the House of Lords in 2008 expressed the view that some money measures are not fittingly dealt with by SIs.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200708/ldhansrd/text/80702-0003.htm

What the amendments seek to address is an important principle, which is that you should not be able to make a significant change to tax or national insurance without primary legislation.

I'm quite happy to be corrected in this, but I can't see any merit in the " constitutional breach " argument.

 

[GlennB]

I'm quite happy to be corrected in this, but I can't see any merit in the " constitutional breach " argument.

And The Speaker confirms this.

Meanwhile, Cameron's pre-election tap-dancing around the question of working tax credits/child tax credits/child benefit are documented all over the UK news media, including original video and transcripts.

If the Tories are really claiming his words, taken literally, give them an "out" then it's a seedy move indeed. A very clear impression was given, and deliberately so.

 

[Craig B]

I remember that poll tax business under Mrs. Thatcher, when a university student and single mothers were expected to pay the same council tax as Andrew Lloyd Webber.

More, probably, they would they have paid. The average millionaire lives in a more prosperous city or county than does the average low paid worker. The tax fell with greater weight on poorer areas, so poor working people paid more than rich people.

This was unlike the mediaeval and early modern poll taxes, which were sharply graduated by social class, and members of higher classes paid more than commoners. An emergency tax was levied in 1660, graduated by social class or occupational status.

With the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Convention Parliament of 1660 instituted a poll tax to finance the disbanding of the New Model Army (pay arrears, etc.) (12 Charles II c.9).[2] The poll tax was assessed according to "rank", e.g. dukes paid £100, earls £60, knights £20, esquires £10. Eldest sons paid 2/3rds of their father's rank, widows paid a third of their late husband's rank. The members of the livery companies paid according to company's rank (e.g. masters of first-tier guilds like the Mercers paid £10, whereas masters of fifth-tier guilds, like the Clerks, paid 5 shillings). Professionals also paid differing rates, e.g. physicians (£10), judges (£20), advocates (£5), attorneys (£3), and so on. Anyone with property (land, etc.) paid 40 shillings per £100 earned, anyone over the age of 16 and unmarried paid 12-pence and everyone else over 16 paid 6-pence.​

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_per_head#14th_century

Younger readers may be informed that £100 is four thousand times the lowest rate of 6d. But under Thatcher the average duke (probably living in a rich area) paid less than the average office cleaner (probably living in a poor area).

 

[The Atheist]

If the Tories do these things through technical means they can hardly complain if others undermine them with technicalities.

This!

Meanwhile even independent economics think-tanks are outraged at the lack of openness displayed by this government in analysing the impact of the cuts.

And that.

 

[Darat]

Osborne and Cameron will be lashing out and revenge will happen; they are of a class of people that live in a world in which what they want is what they get and they do not cope very well with not getting what they want.

 

[Craig B]

Sorry, say that again. You think that having a short delay built into the implementation of a government bill is the start of a revolution? No, sorry......not A revolution............THE revolution?

"A short delay built into the implementation of a government Bill" is now looking even less appropriate than when you wrote it. Why did you write it, by the way? BBC is now reporting this

Downing Street said it would examine "how to protect the ability of elected governments to secure their business".
It will consider "how to secure the decisive role of the elected Commons in relation to its primacy on financial matters and secondary legislation".​

Mmm; that's getting closer to my tumbrils and guillotines fantasy.

 

[The Don]

"A short delay built into the implementation of a government Bill" is now looking even less appropriate than when you wrote it. Why did you write it, by the way? BBC is now reporting this

Downing Street said it would examine "how to protect the ability of elected governments to secure their business".
It will consider "how to secure the decisive role of the elected Commons in relation to its primacy on financial matters and secondary legislation".​

Mmm; that's getting closer to my tumbrils and guillotines fantasy.

Of course if the shoe were on the other foot and the House of Lords had just voted down a controversial piece of legislation which was in direct contradiction to a recently elected Labour government's manifesto, the Conservatives would not doubt be waxing lyrical about the second house providing necessary scrutiny for bad bills.

 

[Aber]

Of course if the shoe were on the other foot and the House of Lords had just voted down a controversial piece of legislation which was in direct contradiction to a recently elected Labour government's manifesto, the Conservatives would not doubt be waxing lyrical about the second house providing necessary scrutiny for bad bills.

IF
Any evidence that the Conservative party in the Lords have tried to do this recently?

 

[Ashorn]

According to an article in the guardian

"But Labour pointed out that in July 2008 Conservative peers passed an amendment requiring Labour only to raise the national insurance upper threshold through primary legislation."

So, recently in that that is the last time they were in opposition.

Whether the two votes are analagous is arguable I imagine

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

According to an article in the guardian

"But Labour pointed out that in July 2008 Conservative peers passed an amendment requiring Labour only to raise the national insurance upper threshold through primary legislation."

So, recently in that that is the last time they were in opposition.

Yes, that's right. There's a Hansard link in #769 to the 2/7/2008 debate and vote.

Useful link here explaining the law and conventions:
http://constitution-unit.com/2015/10/22/the-lords-and-tax-credits-fact-and-myth/

 

[MikeG]

Osborne and Cameron will be lashing out and revenge will happen; they are of a class of people that live in a world in which what they want is what they get and they do not cope very well with not getting what they want.

In much the way they lashed out after losing the Syria vote, you mean?

 

[GlennB]

Tories in disarray. Whatever your political leanings, this Guardian article is funny

'Faced with an urgent question from Labour’s Chris Bryant about the exact nature of the [tax credits] review, Grayling [Leader of the house] seemed genuinely confused by the whole issue. “The rapid review definitely won’t be rushed,” he insisted'

'For the first time, Corbyn stuck to the same topic for all six of his questions and Dave was left opening and closing his mouth like a demented goldfish...'