Do Bad Ideas Eventually Die ?

[crazy canuck]

Indeed and I'm surprised by the bile the Tories are spewing at the young unemployed people, the very people amongst the rest of us who don't bear some responsibility for the 2008 crisis.

Wow. That's a new level of low.

Not even close to approaching the kind of intolerance that is going on within the Province of Quebec atm. 

[derspiess]

Wow, the Tories found a backbone on something?

[merithyn]

Indeed and I'm surprised by the bile the Tories are spewing at the young unemployed people, the very people amongst the rest of us who don't bear some responsibility for the 2008 crisis.

Wow. That's a new level of low.

Not even close to approaching the kind of intolerance that is going on within the Province of Quebec atm.

What does one have to do with the other?

[crazy canuck]

Indeed and I'm surprised by the bile the Tories are spewing at the young unemployed people, the very people amongst the rest of us who don't bear some responsibility for the 2008 crisis.

Wow. That's a new level of low.

Not even close to approaching the kind of intolerance that is going on within the Province of Quebec atm.

What does one have to do with the other?

You said it was a new level of low.  While it is low, in my view, it is less severe than the kind of legislation the Quebec government has tabled and so Cameron's comments are not a new low but somewhere on the continuum of outrageous to contemptable with the Quebec government being further down that continuum.

[merithyn]

Okay.

[Admiral Yi]

It has simplified the issue for me come the 2015 election; still don't know who I will vote for but it won't be the tories. I think miliband's price controls are rather pathetic but prefer them to this nastiness.

Can you elaborate a bit on the bile being spewed?  Have read nothing about it.

[Drakken]

Indeed and I'm surprised by the bile the Tories are spewing at the young unemployed people, the very people amongst the rest of us who don't bear some responsibility for the 2008 crisis.

Wow. That's a new level of low.

Not even close to approaching the kind of intolerance that is going on within the Province of Quebec atm.

[crazy canuck]

And the people that perpetuate the intolerance are the worst of all.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It has simplified the issue for me come the 2015 election; still don't know who I will vote for but it won't be the tories. I think miliband's price controls are rather pathetic but prefer them to this nastiness.

Can you elaborate a bit on the bile being spewed?  Have read nothing about it.

Well you are asking me to elaborate on mongers' term, which is not the term I would use, but I'm nevertheless displeased with the Tories.

We have an expanding welfare bill here in the UK so there is a problem with trying to balance the books. The reason I'm annoyed with the Tories is that they have chosen to focus on the young unemployed and are using them as the scapegoats. So, point 1, there is a degree of intellectual dishonesty in their attacks on this group which I find distasteful. Take a look at this breakdown of UK expenditure http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_welfare_spending_40.html . The payments of unemployment benefit are a trivial component.

Secondly, they have plans to not pay such benefits to unemployed people under the age of 25. The idea seems to be that these young people can sponge off their parents. That is fine if your parents are still a functional family with a middle-class income and you haven't fallen out with them. Those without such backup face the risk of total destitution.

I don't like it and I suspect that the majority of the people in the UK political centre (far to the left of the US center) don't like it either. Perhaps the Tories don't want to get elected in 2015, either that or they have no clue of how people outside their true-blue areas regard these matters.

To get a proper feel for it you need to have followed the Conservative Party Conference, a most depressing experience.............even worse than following the Labour one 

[Agelastus]

I do not expect intolerance to ever die, the targets for intolerance will change of course.

Indeed and I'm surprised by the bile the Tories are spewing at the young unemployed people, the very people amongst the rest of us who don't bear some responsibility for the 2008 crisis.

I was under the impression that the worst of the bile was aimed at the long term unemployed; what's the age-balance of this group? I was unaware that it was majority young unemployed yet but I could be wrong?

Although, yes, I agree with you that the bile is excessive and that the "plans" are stupid. What was it...

Either

(1) "Tailored courses" - for which there'll be inadequate funding, as always.
(2) "30 hours Community Service" - when are they supposed to look for work then, considering travel times and breaks?
(3) "30 hours per week jobhunting in the jobcentre" - so where are the jobcentres going to get the funding, room, or staff for this?* Not to mention there's actually a mental limit to how much useful jobsearch, a repetitive activity with only so many choices for what to do about it, can be done per week - and it's less than 30 hours.

Not that I think you'd agree with my solution, which is draconian and very uncaring in another way and based solely on the principle of "saving money"; still, I'd love it if someone in government would have the guts to do a 2 year study of 2 comparable areas. In one keep all the programmes currently used going, in the other drop all of them (just have the jobcentre signing people and checking they are actually jobsearching - probably giving a little advice as well), and see at the end of the two years just how much "value added" in terms of people getting and keeping jobs all these programmes add up to.

I'm fairly confident the number would be a lot smaller than most people would be comfortable with.



*Seriously; my local jobcentre would actually have the room for this (since it was built as a combined jobcentre-benefits office and the benefits section has moved) but they've shed half their staff by not renewing contracts and seem to have two computers and two phones usable by the public and jobseekers (since the government have shut down all the obsolete "jobpoints" about two months ago.)

[Agelastus]

Secondly, they have plans to not pay such benefits to unemployed people under the age of 25. The idea seems to be that these young people can sponge off their parents. That is fine if your parents are still a functional family with a middle-class income and you haven't fallen out with them. Those without such backup face the risk of total destitution.

----

To get a proper feel for it you need to have followed the Conservative Party Conference, a most depressing experience.............even worse than following the Labour one 

Ah, somehow I'd missed that bit about "under 25s" not being able to claim.

That's very nearly as stupid as Milliband's Energy policy, and, as you said, a lot more vile.

I must admit that (and it's not based on this, I'd already come to this conclusion) the only reason that I'll probably vote Tory in the next election is that voting where I'd prefer to would waste a vote and simply let Labour in. The plans of Milliband and Balls still sound like very expensive silliness compared to what the country needs to me.

At the moment the main parties are starting to make PR look attractive...and I never, ever thought I'd find myself saying that!

-----------------------------

Incidentally, my local town council ward just had a by-election. Town Councils are a complete and utter irrelevance in British politics, with no real funding and no real duties.

And yet along with the three "usual suspects" both UKIP and the BNP were able to find candidates willing to stand!

There's an awful lot of disgruntled voters out there at the moment; disgruntled and despairing.

[viper37]

And the people that perpetuate the intolerance are the worst of all.

And here I thought all we needed was a little self confidence...  Religious people really lack this trait, or is there something more to this sentence that mostly everyone here seemed to agree on last time?
Even if the propsed Charter wasn't against Quebec's own charter of human rights&freedoms, it would still be far from being racist and xenophobic.  Even if we were to go as far as France, I would still fail to see how it is racist that religion should be kept private and not public.

As it is, the charter is a fucking mess, totally unenforceable, and most likely won't pass the vote in the National Assembly.  Yet, when you look at honor crimes on the rise, when you look at 100 forced mariages a year in Ontario, something tells me the "do nothing an shut your eyes" approach isn't exactly working wonders.

[crazy canuck]

So Mongers, there you have your answer.  Bad Ideas dont eventually die.  People keep having them.

[mongers]

So Mongers, there you have your answer.  Bad Ideas dont eventually die.  People keep having them.

Hmm. 

It was sort of a rhetorical question to frame the young woman's story, rather than just say, Nazis hah, hah, yah boo sucks.

Though the various comments on various forms of intolerance are well made, and somewhat depressing. 

[Siege]

socialism and nazism still around, despite their epic fail in the last century.