Ex Lion Tamer

Number of part-timers people looking for full-time work doubles to 1.45m Overall unemployment rate falls to 7.7% but mostly part-time jobs Four out of five new jobs since 2008 have gone to part-time women http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2417392/Part-time-Britain-Record-numbers-jobs-employed-work-25-hours.html

If idiots gets in financial trouble then the state has to pick up the pieces by giving benefits etc. Better to protect people in the first place.

Sorry to dredge this up, but I thought it was very striking last night how Andros Townsend's pace was able to open up the defence of a team that was parking the bus. We could definitely improve our goal threat if we get someone with pace in Jan.

Well done for completely ignoring the point in hand and getting personal instead

Thanks for the advice all. The thing for me living in London is that £50 for a ticket is still cheaper than the train to Southampton plus a ticket on top!

Ok thanks. But maybe Chelsea?

LOL! Those whinging unemployed. How dare their raise awareness of their plight. They should shut up and gratefully accept the crumbs that fall from the top table. I agree with you about Brand etc though. It has improved recently but for a while it was embarrassing that some celebrity would take the non-politician left wing spot rather than an intelligent commentator. Medhi Hasan's letter wasn't public knowledge when he went on the show, the Mail leaked it to punish him, in the same way they try to intimidate anyone who criticises them. The letter is certainly embarrassing, but he still hit the nail on the head with his speech and is allowed to make a mistake in his younger days. It was the way he whipped up controversy on abortion a while ago that lost him my respect.

Apologies if this is a really obvious question, but I am inexperienced in these matters. Given that I have yet to make it to a game this season, do I have any chance of picking up a ticket for this one?

I don't deny they work hard, even harder than most people. But poor and middle class people work hard as well. And it's impossible to work even 10 times harder, there aren't enough hours in the day

They haven't. And anyway, look at the graphs, they have at a guess 20 to 30 times as much wealth as even middle class people. Have they worked 20 times as hard as, say, a supermarket worker? Is that even possible?

The exact amount is irrelevant, we know that the profits are huge. They can't be expected to memorise every statistic. It was a different time, such drastic action wasn't deemed to be necessary then, he had work within the guidelines of his party strategy, which was still operating under the neo-liberal orthodoxy. When are you saying they are going to raise prices? By the end of the freeze the market will be properly regulated. There is a risk that they will rise before it is introduced but I trust the calculation that they won't rise much more than they would have done anyway - after all, we don't even know if Labour will get elected and the energy companies shouldn't want to risk damaging their reputations any further. It's also hilarious to hear a Tory making accusations of populism, after the dumb immigration, benefits and Europe policies we've had to put up with. And there's no need to use cheap insults by calling me a dreamer. It doesn't add any weight to your argument.

Straw man argument. Of course there has to be disparities of wealth to encourage people to work hard and do boring / hard jobs. But there's easily scope for a more equal society without the sky caving in. And it's only fair that once you have a certain level of wealth, you should have to work harder to increase it.

Because taking money from a rich person will impact on their lifestyle less than if you do so to someone who is struggling to pay their heating bill each month? Isn't that obvious? 'The rich' pay a disproportionate amount of tax to make up for the fact that they're fabulously wealthy compared to everyone else. :

So he didn't know the exact figure, big deal. If thats the criterion we should appoint the Grandmaster of Memory as PM and be done with it. His overall point is right - everyone knows Centrica made big profits, thanks to big price rises and poor investment levels. The point about Tesco is that if food prices are too high, it is easy for people to shop elsewhere. With energy, people find it a hassle to switch all the time (especially if they need their landlord's permission). The market is dominated by the big 6, who are slow to reduce prices when wholesale prices fall, and who bamboozle people with a range of tariffs and misselling practices. Its a failing market that needs better regulation. Dont forget that this is just a temporary freeze to protect people's living standards until Labour can put in place a framework to properly regulate the market. They're not bringing back price controls on everything. The is a good article: http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/09/labours-plan-reform-our-broken-energy-market-deserves-cross-party-support This is also good: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/ed-miliband-resetting-energy-market Also, Andrew Neil is a Tory who wear a ridiculous wig.

The story is a bit unclear in explaining the methodology, but as far as I can tell they had to estimate the number of houses covered and relied on "contradictory" and "incomplete" data to guess their values. And yet their results are held up as a really reliable figure. There will have been multiple points where they will have had to make decisions which could have made the end figure higher or lower. And of course they would choose the ones that make it lower. When it comes to working with that sort of in-depth data work I would only trust independent policy researchers with substantial research qualifications, not a bunch of estate agents. I would admit Labour has an incentive to over-estimate, but they will at least be held to account if they fail to reach their target. And the point I probably should have made in the first place was even if it only makes £1bn, that's still worthwhile.

Surely you can see that the people who did that research and who are quoted have a massive vested interest in trying to discredit the mansion tax?

For three years he's been criticised for not having any policies. I think it's great that he's now got some. And ones that will help the ordinary public too.

It was a monumentally stupid thing to say. Sadly I think he probably believed it. Even very clever people get things very wrong when they get caught up in group-think.

Indeed. I would admit that Blair and Brown deserve some blame for not regulating the banks enough (although lets not forget that it was an international crisis). But I don't think that necessarily tells us anything about the Labour Party now. As a party of the left, Labour is more likely to have learnt the lesson of getting too close to the bankers, compared to the Tories who are instinctively closer to business interests. The Tories are funded by wealthy businesses magnates, for a start.

Good job the Tories have learnt the lesson and aren't stoking a new housing bubble

They're all chums with the bankers, the Tories as much as Labour under Blair/Brown. Labour just happened to be in power at the time. Tories would have done nothing different.

I think the argument is that if a suspect is named then it encourages witnesses and and other victims to come forward. I can totally see the counter argument however that people's lives are being ruined by false accusations.

Awful today and most of the time for us to be honest. However, when/if he realises that he needs to pass rather than taking on the man every time, he will be a good player. It's decision making rather than talent and he ought to be able to learn

This is the fundamental difference of opinion. You see Britain and its wealth as 'ours' to be hoarded whereas others see that the planet is everyone's and we should share everything in it. The way I see it we don't work any harder than people overseas, we were just fortunate enough to be born in a country that many years ago managed to build up its economy, education systems etc whereas other countries are held back for a variety of reasons, usually lack of education, poverty etc. If people in other countries are trying to bend the system in order to get a share of the cake, then fair play to them. We have an obligation to share our good fortune with others.

- It's assuming guilt even if the wording is careful to say 'suspected' - if you were wrongly accused of shoplifting would you want your arrest plastered all over Twitter by the authorities? - Why doesn't the Home Office do this for other crimes? Why is illegal immigration so terrible that it warrants public shaming? - As a civil service department, the Home Office is supposed to be politically neutral. So why has it adopted the inflammatory rhetoric of the Conservative party? - I don't see illegal immigrants as bad people. They have mostly come from places with extreme poverty and are just trying to make a tolerable life for themselves. Sure we have immigration rules and they need to be enforced, but parading around suspects and demonising them is unnecessary and undignified.