UK TV debate

[Craig B]

I'll accept that it was misleading, and apologise for that......but it wasn't deliberate. I should have said public sector workers.



She's just said it again on the Radio as I sit typing this.

Go to 4:30 of this interview and hear it from her own mouth.

I don't have access to youtube. But meantime can you comment on the sources I have given? I'll happily look up more.

If somebody says £x per hour for everyone, that person means, for all workers receiving a wage. Universal benefits are never expressed as pounds per hour. And I have already quoted the Greens saying that this increase would benefit 5.2 million people, or 17% of wage earners. Not "all people".
ETA This is what "for all" means. From the Guardian 24 Sept 2014.

On the first day of its annual conference in Birmingham, Natalie Bennett, the party leader, will call for the minimum wage of £6.31 to be immediately raised to the level of the living wage, which is £7.65 for everywhere except London, where it is £8.80.

In a new manifesto pledge, she will call for the different levels of minimum wage for young people and adults to be abolished, leading to a £10 minimum wage for all by 2020. The Greens said the rate should then be linked to living costs to ensure that it rises alongside inflation.

That is, all people on the minimum wage regardless of age and place of residence should get the same amount, and it should be increased, as suggested by the Greens. It couldn't be clearer.

 

[The Don]

I'll accept that it was misleading, and apologise for that......but it wasn't deliberate. I should have said public sector workers.

You might have also "clarified" that:

• At least some of the "extra" £160bn is to be raised by increases in taxation
• That the extra £160bn wasn't solely to pay for the additional 1 million public sector employees (as you implied) - there'd also be additiona benefits payments and investment in capital projects

That's not to say that raising government expenditure from around 40% of GDP to 50% is a good idea or is affordable but.....

Borrowing 160 billion extra EACH YEAR to employ 1 million extra civil servants

Is very misleading...

Spending 160 billion extra EACH YEAR and employing 1 million extra public sector employees

Is less misleading, of course from their perspective it's more like....

Increasing investment in the country by 160 billion every year, ensuring that the NHS and other vital public services are adequately staffed by increasing employment by 1 million and making investments in a sustainable national infrastructure to the tune of (however much it is)

 

[Information Analyst]

Whilst I suppose all government employees can be called civil servants, the term IMO has come to mean pen pushers.

Tch! That's so passé. We push keyboards these days.

 

[The Don]

Cite for high-lighted claim, please.

I've got a sort of a cite for some of it.....

From a Daily Telegraph summary of the Greens' manifesto...

The Citizen’s Income, a £280 billion scheme that would reduce the need for work by giving everyone £72 a week in benefits, would be subject to a consultation, but it would not be implemented in one term.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...ad-building-and-impose-billions-of-taxes.html

The £280 billion number aligns with MikeG's claim though the details appear to be significantly different (though not, IMO, any less barmy).

 

[Craig B]

I've got a sort of a cite for some of it.....

From a Daily Telegraph summary of the Greens' manifesto...



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...ad-building-and-impose-billions-of-taxes.html

The £280 billion number aligns with MikeG's claim though the details appear to be significantly different (though not, IMO, any less barmy).

No. Read your source again.

What has gone
A series of radical policies from Policies for a Sustainable Society, the Green policy book, do not appear in the manifesto.
- The Citizen’s Income, a £280 billion scheme that would reduce the need for work by giving everyone £72 a week in benefits, would be subject to a consultation, but it would not be implemented in one term.
- Proposals to legalise prostitution do not appear in the summary manifesto.
- Similarly, plans to decriminalise the membership of terrorist organisation, dismantle the armed forces, impose levies on major pop stars or impose new taxes on large gifts have been dropped.

 

[Craig B]

The £280 billion number aligns with MikeG's claim though the details appear to be significantly different (though not, IMO, any less barmy).

This is the Guardian's report on the issue.

Citizen’s income is an unconditional, non-withdrawable income for every individual, including children, given as a right of citizenship. The idea has won support in the past on both sides of the Atlantic from left and right, and was until 1996 a Liberal Democrat policy. It was finally rejected as utopian.

It was proposed as a replacement both for tax allowances and for most benefits, so much of the cost would be recovered. Unfortunately for the Greens it penalises poorer citizens, who would be worse off under it.

The Citizen’s Income Trust (CIT), which has given advice to the Green party and been repeatedly cited by the Greens, has modelled its scheme and discovered it would mean 35.15% of households would be losers, with many of the biggest losers among the poorest households.

So, it's not in the manifesto and has nothing to do with the proposed minimum wage.

 

[MikeG]

I don't have access to youtube. But meantime can you comment on the sources I have given? I'll happily look up more.

If somebody says £x per hour for everyone, that person means, for all workers receiving a wage. Universal benefits are never expressed as pounds per hour. And I have already quoted the Greens saying that this increase would benefit 5.2 million people, or 17% of wage earners. Not "all people".
ETA This is what "for all" means. From the Guardian 24 Sept 2014. That is, all people on the minimum wage regardless of age and place of residence should get the same amount, and it should be increased, as suggested by the Greens. It couldn't be clearer.

Interesting that you could endorse a party without knowing one of their principle policies, Craig. A policy that would be more fundamentally changing of society than bringing in the NHS. The most expensive single item policy that any party has proposed. You'd have thought you might have noticed that before saying that you support their policies........but hey, what's the odd unfunded couple of hundred billion between friends?

 

[Information Analyst]

Interesting that you could endorse a party without knowing one of their principle policies, Craig. A policy that would be more fundamentally changing of society than bringing in the NHS. The most expensive single item policy that any party has proposed. You'd have thought you might have noticed that before saying that you support their policies........but hey, what's the odd unfunded couple of hundred billion between friends?

The Telegraph article clearly says that the "Citizen's Income" scheme is now absent from the manifesto. Even so, the claim that it would "cost" £280 billion seems suspect given that it is a basic universal bennefit that would presumably supersede some existing ones, such as both CB and IB JSA, and Child Support. £72 per week is £3,744 per year, which even multiplied by the entire UK population of 64.5 million only gets to £241.5 billion.

 

[The Don]

The Telegraph article clearly says that the "Citizen's Income" scheme is now absent from the manifesto. Even so, the claim that it would "cost" £280 billion seems suspect given that it is a basic universal bennefit that would presumably supersede some existing ones, such as both CB and IB JSA, and Child Support. £72 per week is £3,744 per year, which even multiplied by the entire UK population of 64.5 million only gets to £241.5 billion.

The cost isn't annual, I think it's a total cost of the scheme over life of the parliament.

I think it's also the total cost, not the marginal cost so would not take into account the other benefits that were not being paid.

 

[The Don]

No. Read your source again.

Yes I realised that, I guess I assumed that people would read the article.

 

[Craig B]

Interesting that you could endorse a party without knowing one of their principle policies, Craig. A policy that would be more fundamentally changing of society than bringing in the NHS. The most expensive single item policy that any party has proposed. You'd have thought you might have noticed that before saying that you support their policies........but hey, what's the odd unfunded couple of hundred billion between friends?

I have no idea what you mean. I have shown that you were mistaken in thinking this is a manifesto policy. You have confused it with the minimum wage "for all" which I have explained.

I don't intend to vote Green, but SNP, in this election.

The Citizen's Income is not as radical as you think, though I have no strong enthusiasm for it. It is intended to replace many social benefits and tax allowances with a single flat money payment. How much it would cost at the end of the day, I don't know.

As I have cited, both Left and Right thinkers have toyed with this idea, and the Lib Dems once had it as a policy. It is not in the Green manifesto, as has been shown from the sacred pages of the Torygraph, no less.

The original formulators of the idea have now concluded that it would penalise the poor; and seem to have gone back to reassess it.

But what you were previously stating was wrong, and was a complete misunderstanding of the Living Wage proposals.

 

[MikeG]

I have no idea what you mean........

You said this:

If you think Green policies are bat crap crazy then your POV is justified; but I don't think that. I hope if there's a substantial Green vote the main parties may pay regard to some of the issues they have raised.

You don't think they're crazy, and you would like them to attract a substantial vote. You said that without any idea that their leader only a couple of months ago discussed this "flagship policy" with Andrew Neil. So when I said that you endorsed them without knowing what they stood for, in terms, that is what I was referring to.

I will happily acknowledge that I didn't pay much attention to the minutiae of their offering after the point that this loony policy was discussed. After all, you don't need to bother checking what the Monster Raving Loony Party's policy is on, say, the National Curriculum, do you, once you've realised they are just a bunch of fools. The difference between the Green's economic policies and the MRLP is that at least the latter tried to be funny. So, I concede that I confabulated the minimum wage with the flat payment to all citizens. Big deal. It's all crackpot.

All of this is a huge pity. The biggest pity is that it makes really serious environmental concerns seem like the exclusive preserve of utter loonies. Take the Green's environmental policies and give them a centrist economic and social programme, and I'd vote for them (well, if they had a competent leader). But attach some interesting environmental policies to the biggest load of bollocks ever written down in a post-war party manifesto and the environmental positives are of course utterly drowned out, enabling the right-wing to categorise all (valid) environmental concerns and policies as the mutterings of the deranged.

 

[skeptichaggis]

Yep I'm voting SNP as well, my gramps was a lifelong labour man,who I think would not recognize labour today. Nic sturgeon was right when she indecated that labour are just tory-lite nowadays. A lot of folk I know don't even give to the unions anymore ,saying that the union bigwigs long ago stopped representing the rank and file workers.
Scotland will always have strong cultural, social,political and economic ties with our southern neighbours but we should not have to live under foreign rule. I actually feel for england for they have a real selection of dumb and dumbers to choose from. Rich out of touch labour or rich out of touch torys. The only difference is that the torys haw-haw when they laugh.
Actually, kidding aside I could not give a damn how rich a politician is so long as they do the job without treating voters like fools.

 

[Craig B]

You said this:

You don't think they're crazy, and you would like them to attract a substantial vote. You said that without any idea that their leader only a couple of months ago discussed this "flagship policy" with Andrew Neil. So when I said that you endorsed them without knowing what they stood for, in terms, that is what I was referring to.

You also referred to my level of support for them, to wit

I hope if there's a substantial Green vote the main parties may pay regard to some of the issues they have raised.

I stick by that. They raise important issues. And I have said that the Citizen Income is not as radical as you seem to think; but in any case we have been informed its not in the Green Manifesto. Finally, you seem to have confused it with Green policies on the minimum wage - a different issue.

So, I concede that I confabulated the minimum wage with the flat payment to all citizens. Big deal. It's all crackpot.

All of this is a huge pity. The biggest pity is that it makes really serious environmental concerns seem like the exclusive preserve of utter loonies. Take the Green's environmental policies and give them a centrist economic and social programme, and I'd vote for them (well, if they had a competent leader). But attach some interesting environmental policies to the biggest load of bollocks ever written down in a post-war party manifesto and the environmental positives are of course utterly drowned out, enabling the right-wing to categorise all (valid) environmental concerns and policies as the mutterings of the deranged.

As pointed out, the Citizen Income policy seems to have been part of the Lib Dem platform until 1996. But if you want to take that view of environmental policies because of something that isn't in the Green manifesto, then that's up to you.