Tough choices Labour style.

It really is quite amusing on the other forum seeing all those better off pensioners who inhabit the place whingeing about poor hard done by pensioners losing handouts to fund a big pay increase for junior doctors, after years of Tory pay cuts.

If you ask me who is most valuable to us and in greater financial need? Struggling junior doctors doing a vital job? Or affluent retirees getting handouts they don't need having not done a days work in years.

Fair Society (a username that invokes Orwellian double speak because he believes in anything but) is ranting about lazy arse junior doctors and lazy arse GPs, having not himself done a days work in years, with no concept of irony. I broke my own golden rule and posted there. There is probably much gnashing of teeth in response by now. Don't know if I dare look.lol

For my sins I got into a dingdong about it with some of the usual suspects there. But thats enough of them now. Trying to talk sense into many of them is like trying to teach the theory of relativity to a bunch of baboons, enough said. lol.

I will stick here but when I am in debating mode it is a bit hard to do when here is so quiet. Already they have a thread about these matters many pages long, even though most of it is whingeing drivel. Yours is the only response to this thread here so far.

So far, so good. And a deal with the junior doctors which should see waiting lists fall and people get back to work. Tories looking worse every minute. 

In general, whilst I disagree with Keir's conduct re the rebel MPs - after all there are nearly always rebels and 7 was a drop in the ocean compared to their massive majority so his action was needlessly and excessively authoritarian, better to just say nothing and let it go - I am happier with most of the actual policy positions and stated aims of the government so far than I expected to be.

Actions are speaking far louder in winning me over than yours or anyone else's words were ever likely to. What we have seen so far is a vast improvement on what we have endured these past 14 years, on so many levels. Some of it so far is just words awaiting delivery but as a signal of intent, if followed through will make this country a better place for most of us, I am just tentatively beginning to dare to hope.

Giving the doctors 22% was badly needed because we risked having none left and total NHS collapse. Incidentally, my best friend who works for the DWP has learned that the government is accepting the pay review body's recommendation of a 5% pay increase, the first real terms increase rather than cut for 15 years. 

Which is good. 

The stated aim of building much more social housing as well as affordable housing to buy, reforming the planning system to do so all sounds good. The last Labour government failed dismally to even address the declining stocks of social housing. This one is signalling a very different and more positive statement of intent. Legislating to ban no fault evictions and protection against excessive rent hikes in the private sector is also good. Likewise the extension to that sector of the same minimum standards as in social housing. Whilst signalling an intent to make it easier for landlords to evict when they have just cause. If they get the balance right with all this it could be transformative.

The guarantee to extend full workers rights from day 1 is a massive positive step, because the current situation makes a lot of people, especially if they are getting on a bit or have medical or disability issues, reluctant to give up the security of the job they have for another where they are vulnerable to dismissal for little reason for the first couple of years. People will feel far more confident going for that better paid job were this not an issue, so will allow more people the confidence to fulfil their potential, which can only serve to boost growth. And a big crackdown on zero hours contracts except where both employer and employee genuinely want them is also good. A vast precariat class of workers has been created which is not good for them or their prosperity, nor in the long run the country either.

Even lifting the de facto Tory ban on new onshore windfarms is good.

Initially Labour was too slow to be critical of Israel when it should have been, which from my time in the party hardly surprises me at all when the default assumption of almost all centrists was that criticism of Israel was itself evidence of antisemitism; It thus became in the party the one state you could never criticise. Some of the centrists are in the pockets of the Israel lobby. This is the main potential fly in the ointment in the months and years to come, and is already having a negative effect electorally in some places.

But domestically at least, thus far it mostly looks good. And if the Israel Palestine issue can be addressed even-handedly instead of being primarily used as a stick to beat the left with, then maybe any damage being done there can be undone too. I am not too hopeful on that score but still hope to be proven wrong.

To be fair I started this thread because no one was discussing the abolition of winter fuel payments on the one you want to merge this one with. The other thread is about Labour pledges and the possible breaking of them. Abolition of winter fuel payments for better off pensioners was not something they pledged not to do, so as an issue does not belong in a thread about Labour pledges.

I started this thread after checking the other one out. No one there was talking about this. Had I made the OP as a post there it would have been ignored. Which is what always tends to happen when you bring a different topic to an existing thread when everyone else in that thread is talking about something else.

Better to start a new thread devoted to that topic, which is what I have done.

Sorry Steve, I don't understand what you mean here?

Ah, I was assuming a taper was a taper. So a small increase in any of the three would see a matching decrease in winter fuel allowance