Corbyn: set the controls for the heart of the sun

I was born in 1951. In 1958, I had to have a tonsillectomy at the now demolished St Helens hospital. It was horrendous. When I compare that hospital to Barnsley General, there is just no comparison. When I compare the experience of the treatment then to the treatment now, there is just no comparison. Being told that you had cancer then was a death sentence. It no longer is. The standard of the health service then cannot be compared to the standard now, but all of these things cost a lot of money. We have an aging population and they are making more and more demands on the health service, and that too costs more money. Difficult choices are having to be made, choices that any government would struggle to make. It is all well and good for an opposition leader to promise Utopia, but somebody has to pay.

Tonight, before I wrote my first piece, I had a look what Mr Corbyn was promising. It was Utopia, but almost nothing was costed and there was no mention of where the money would come from to pay for it all. There was just this Utopian dream, where everyone was equal and everyone lived happily ever after. Now I know very little of the Welfare State and I hesitate to get into a debate about it because my ignorance would soon show. I hope that there is still a safety net to catch those who cannot look after themselves, but we probably have a different definition of who they might be.

My dad was a labour party supporter all his life as was his dad, and he passed his values on to me. My dad and mum married during the war and my dad was posted to India to fight against the Japanese. When the war ended he returned home and they lived in one room of a large house on Huddersfield Road. They saved hard for 3 years until they could afford the deposit on a small house of their own. They had been married for 10 years before I came along, because they did not want to start a family until they could afford it. They did not own a car, my dad smoked 5 fags a day and went for a drink on Sunday only. They taught me the meaning of living responsibly, and self-reliance and those value still echo with me. I can never remember my dad being envious of someone because they had more than him or because they lived in a bigger house.

I am absolutely behind giving people a hand up when they fall on hard times, of the state acting as a safety net when the unexpected happens, but I am also for individuals taking some responsibility for their actions. I am sorry, but the way that some of you describe socialism is not how I remember it back when it was needed more than it is today in our comparative affluent society. I am no longer actively part of society but I do still have my own grasp of right and wrong and it is unaffected by any party political dogma. The values that I was taught are as strong as ever, and they are in perfect accord with my understanding of socialism. I have never voted Tory and I cannot see the day when I would contemplate doing so, but I cannot in all conscience vote for Mr Corbyn either, and that is what I find is so sad.

 

You haven't responded to any of the points raised in response to your initial point,which makes me extremely cross given that you like to think of yourself as someone who enjoys a debate. In fact, that post suggests that you haven't even read most of them.

 

I can assure you that I have read all the posts in this thread. However, I have chosen not to respond to them all.

My original post was about my view that the Labour Party had lost its raison d'etre because the class war had been fought and won and because of that it has now re-invented itself as the party of envy. I replied to Jimmy Cricket because he suggested that as people aged they moved right. I was trying to show that my belief system originates from my parents, who were Labour Party supporters all their lives, but who had a different view of socialism from the one being outline on here. As I said in my reply to Jimmy Cricket, I do not have enough knowledge to debate the welfare system, but I suspect given my upbringing our definitions of those in need would not be the same.

There was also a long debate about social housing, but once again, I guess that my definition of social housing would not agree with yours.

My post was a sort of requiem for the party supported by my father, and my father's father and an attempt to say why I do not think I could vote for it as long as it supports the current list of policies, which, as I say, I did look at. I would love to debate with you, but if I am honest, I do not feel strongly enough about the subject to do it justice.

 

Out of interest what is your definition of social housing?

 

Evidently.

 

When I was young, my mother used to get very upset when the subject of Council Houses came up. She was far from the laid back character that my dad was, in fact she could be a bit feisty and was known to speak her mind when perhaps she should not. Anyway, as I said, she and my father had scrimped and saved to buy their house, whilst down the road, another couple went out and spent all their money on booze and fags and holidays in Torquay etc, but lived in a house that was probably better than the one that she and my dad were still paying for. My dad knew that these were the choices that couples had made and was easy with it, but it used to wind my mum up that her rates were subsidising the housing for couples with more money than she had.

I think that social housing should be there for those in need and that this housing should be provided by the private rental market, but paid for by the council when need can be proven. The council should not pay for housing of those who can afford to pay a commercial rent, but who have chosen to spend their money in other ways. I do not think that it is the job of the council to build and own housing stock because they are then responsible for meeting a demand that can never be met and at a price that can not be afforded. Councils stepped in to meet a housing shortage caused by the second world war. As I understand it, it was never intended to be anything but a short term measure to meet a desperate need.

That answer probably tells you that I am not a wise as my dad, but that I have the same tendency as my mum to speak my mind, and drop myself in a mess as a result.

 

Soz - been out.

What is this "social housing"?

Is it housing that is subsidised by other taxpayers?

And why is this?

Why should everyone not pay the same fair rent?

And how did my father exploit any arrangement by forking out 20k for a house that when he occupied was worth 3k and which he paid rent for 30 years to get the privelege of paying for?

And furthermore why, when many others bought their houses too, did the gardens start being properly tended, the drives suddenly start getting tarmacked, and everything else about the place begin looking a whole lot smarter?

Yeah let's leave the poor to their lot, stuck in rented houses all their lives.

Or are they supposed to aspire to owning their own houses, thus leaving the others to wallow in "social housing"?

 

The problem with that is that if a council home needs subsidising in order to offer the needy a place to live at a low price then surely a private home would also need to be subsidised in exactly the same way except with a private owner making money out of it.

Personally I believe that councils should own property that they rent out at the market value. This would make a profit for the council in exactly the same way that it makes a profit for the thousands of private landlords. Those who need a hand like you say should then be given help to pay but this would come from the profit of renting to those who can afford to pay full.

The problem is that by selling off all the housing stock the government has removed the profitability as simple maths will tell you that if you have a town with 1000 people needing help to pay and have 1100 homes then the 100 full paying tenants won't cover the costs of those who are subsidised but if you have 1000 people needing subsidies and 10000 homes then the 9000 full paying tenants are more able to cover those subsidies without needing to be funded externally by everyone else's taxes.

Everybody knows that if you outsource then a middle man takes a cut of the money

 

When your father paid £20k for his house what was its value? I don't care one bit what it's value was 30 years before he bought it, that is completely irrelevant as he wasn't buying it then

 

Not getting involved in all the complexities of this thread but Housing Revenue Accounts, in which council housing is held, are self-financing. They are financed through tenants rents. Not subsidised by tax payers. The building of new houses has often been funded by central government grants to make up the shortfall in build cost having capitalised the rental income of the completed home over 30 years. But the only reason this is needed is because central government won't allow councils to borrow against the value of their asset base, as countries such as Germany and the Netherlands have done. Billions of pounds of potential investment their without any tax payer involvement.

 

This thread is getting very complex now and sprouting lots of new roots. We are now on social housing. What's next in relation to the original post? Nationalisation of railways? Utilities? Thatcher's legacy?
I must confess I only tend to post when I'm half-jollied hence when I re-read my own thread I realised it finished off incoherently and I couldn't spell, but, it might be a good time to start another one now...
Although I have my own views about housing I just thought this thread was about Corbyn as a leader of the Labour Party.....

 

Did anyone actually go to listen to Mr Corbyn when he gave an address at the NUM recently? If you had, you couldn't help but be inspired by him.

 

Christ on a bike threadstopper. There's some real cognitive dissonance coming from you here.

Either you're trolling, or you genuinely can't see that you're arguing you should to be given the right to buy (at massive discount) a house you've been renting for a long time, provided it comes from the public sector (and therefore diminishes social housing stock).

If you're renting a house for a long time privately, you shouldn't get that right (even though this has no negative effect on the public sector).

This is basically the sum of your argument. And it makes no sense.

 

The point is that I am making is that it is the job of the council to provide a safety net. How that safety net is financed is a totally different discussion. You think that the finance comes from charging those who can afford it at the market rate and the profits generated going towards funding the costs of those who cannot. I think that that housing should be provided by the commercial rental market, which is in business to do that sort of thing and that it is not part of the councils job to finance and build new housing stock. Essentially, it does not matter how houses are built and financed. The only thing that matters is that those in need are provided for.

 

It would be fine if implemented correctly and if financed properly. You would need to look at it as being extra cost to the Welfare Bill rather than reducing costs. And you would also need to look at it as a long term project because you would need to build equivalent housing of a reduced size. It was also grossly unfair that it was applied retrospectively without there being any available housing of a reduced size for those impacted to go to.

I volunteer on a couple of projects and can see the financial impact of these ill thought out changes. We are storing up a financial time bomb for the very poorest but as you say in itself not a terrible idea.

 

There are other people in the same boat as your dad is poor can't afford to buy ,social housing keeps a roof over their heads till either they are able to own their own or unable to live their anymore whichever comes first .sounds a good compassionate way to spend taxpayers money ey on for me ,
Your father buying the house takes someone else out of the equation as has been gone over and over again on this thread .
Sure people are gonna take advantage of right to buy .which wasn't designed to help the housing crisis but to destroy the principle of people unable to buy have a roof over their head whilst trying to get on in life and maybe even buying on the same level as other p property owners and leave the social housing for the next generation ,
Thus will not happen now as people will sell and the proceeds go to individuals .
I don't believe that you personally can't see the need to keep social housing as it is I think your justifying your father's decision to buy ,which is fair enough it's the govt that is wrong .if a govt came in and did the opposite with a policy of taking back social housing with a minimum price you would rightly go mad but it would only be a policy by a govt with an agenda just as the Tories had an agenda with right to buy.
PS
Social housing is fair rent and brings taxpayers profits over the long term.
If you are referring to the private sector that's a different story as therein lies the unfairness.

 

A shift to the right as we get older was not any sort of personal attack on you RR it's just a pretty uncontroversial analysis of voting patterns as we get older. There's lots of academia on the subject that makes quite interesting reading. Just looking at the age demographic. In the EU referendum tells us pretty much all we need to know.

The problem with nostalgia is that it ain't what it used to be. Harking back to the past is a dangerous business particularly in political terms. The Labour Party supported by your dad was more 'leftist' than the current model more revolutionary. It got sanitised and to a point neutralised by Blair. My grandad a Labour supporter all his life felt abandoned at the end of it by the Party he had supported. Felt that the big projects that he and his mates had fought for and won were being unpicked.

British workplaces are more aggressive with weaker support from trade unions than at any point since WW2. There is more real poverty than at any point in the last 50 years not my view but the view of the Red Cross. It's shameful for an advanced nation.

We have the new poor in the post Industrial Age. Poorly paid, no unions, little in the way of Health and Safety at the hands of unscrupulous employers like Sports Direct or Asos. These are the people I see coming to the Food Bank that I volunteer at every time possible not the unemployed and unemployable but normal working class people. Over the last. 30 years our attitude towards working class people has been changed by the media. They have gone from being the salt of the earth, to the enemy within and are now demonised as chavs as scroungers. I see them a lot the parents of the new poor both employed but still not able to make ends meet still not able to put food on the table. Anyone who doesn't think these people are desperate and stigmatised by action in food banks has never been to one. The change in focus has made it a default position to attack working class people rather than look at the broader reasons for poverty. It's been a brilliant reverse publicity campaign by Murdoch to be fair. The class war turned on its head to become a war within a class whilst the rich take even more both nationally and globally.

 

I cannot defend the positions taken by ASOS or Sports Direct. I believe that zero hour contracts are wrong and the government, no matter what colour or shade, should legislate against them. I am sure that there are lots of other practices that are unfair to individuals. The difference between us is that you take this as a sign that the political system is not working and that there needs to be radical change, whereas I see it as a sign that legislation is needed to remove a new unfair practice, just as legislation removed other unfair practices in the past. There is no doubt that a caring society needs to provide a safety net for those who cannot look after themselves, but we must be equally careful that we do not take away personal responsibility. I am sure that it is a very difficult balancing act and I am happy that I do not have to make that judgement.

Society needs people such as yourself, people willing to give up their own time to be of service to others. Your sacrifice places me at a great disadvantage in this discussion.

 

The IRA were and remain a noted terrorist organisation.

Old jezza was very well in with senior officials of sine fein the ' political arm' of the organisation and known to have frequented the company of convicted IRA members.

Let's not forget he refused to deal with unionist organisations.

He had **** all to do with any peace negotiations in fact if I recall correctly he voted against this in parliament.

Liked commemorating IRA dead. Even stood once and had a minutes silence.

Known attendee of Wolfe Tone Society meetings.

Refused then and still continues to refuse to condemn IRA bombings.

I could go on but I've made my point and unlike some I don't attempt to re write history.

And the other two of his stooges mcdonnell and Abbott aren't too far behind...

 

You do realise that the majority of the employees at both the organisations mentioned above are not directly employed by them but by external agencies...