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    They'd be better off with Gonch Gardner. He could raise some money for the party by running a toast bar on the side.

    Barry was good in the 2017 election, in fairness to him. But he's not distinguished himself since.

    Comment


      If you are poor and don't own a car then a carbon tax still affects you. The food you buy makes it to the supermarket in diesel trucks.

      Basically, in a carbon economy, a carbon tax slapped on to fuel costs is going to drive up living costs and basic necessities across the board. That kind of baseline increase in living costs is going to affect you relatively more the poorer you are. It's the definition of a regressive tax no matter how you square it.

      If you want a progressive carbon tax then tax the rich and use the money to invest in carbon-free infrastructure.

      Comment


        I thought "Here we fucking go"… I really didn’t want to go in there but before I could fob him off politely he carried on telling me about those halcyon days when Sicily was so fantastically great (he never clarified was era he was referring to, "the past" in general most probably, and I certainly wasn’t going to ask him for clarifications), he went on about when Sicily had the farming, the fishing, the olive oil etc. (I’d sort of switched off at this point) before the other (much younger) Italian waiter said something to him in Italian and the Sicilian rushed to another table (don’t know what the younger waiter said but probably "Haway man stop yabbering, we’re busy" or maybe "Stop talking such fucking bollocks").

        he's clearly talking about the reign of Roger II, when Palermo was truly the centre of the world. (For values of the "world" that reach 2,000 miles from palermo in each direction. That wasn't exactly an age of monoculturalism though. Roger couldn't get enough of the Muslims, or the Jews, or the Orthodox lads.

        Comment


          Well, Roger II's reign was remarkably tolerant for the time, but that's overstating the truth somewhat.

          Comment


            It's also a tax that most people can mitigate fairly easily by driving less. All sorts of taxes go up. Our borough council tax went up by 3.7% this year, which a few people would have felt. That tax rise didn't come with any sort of deal whereby it was less if we modified our behaviour, unlike petrol tax. And to my knowledge, nobody went apeshit over it because "the real issues are corporations and the rich". What's happening with petrol taxes is that "freedom" is felt to be at stake.

            We used to have a fuel duty accelerator here, till a bunch of folk, cheered on by rightwing media and William Hague, shot it down. What happened? Did the tax all get levied on the rich and corporations? Nah. Some of it probably did, lots of it didn't get levied at all or levied on regular folk, including those who were doing the right thing by not driving all over the place. Predictable result was that the cost of driving fell in real terms, and there was less money available to invest in alternatives.

            Comment


              My wife has been pestering me for the last half hour to watch this TV Brexit debate, I wish she would stop and accept to suffer that shite on her own, I'm not interested. I popped my head round the door to see what the fuss was about and saw Rees Moog and Gardiner, that was enough. Absolutely zero interest. The only thing I sort of lazily wondered is why isn't Starmer there instead of Gardiner? Isn't Starmer one of the better Labour guys? (I don't really know, I lost interest in Labour a long time ago, well, since Brexit)

              Comment


                It's also a tax that most people can mitigate fairly easily by driving less.
                Or eating less.

                How many children do yo have to get to school, Tubby?

                Comment


                  Corbyn interviewed

                  https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1071847650239107074

                  Comment


                    I meant as employees primarily. He already had a lot of the others. Everyone had had a go at running sicily before the Normans.

                    Comment


                      We don't have any kids. If they were primary age, they'd go to one of the village schools about 400 yards away. If secondary age, they'd go on the bus towards Neath with all the other kids. The cheapest housing round here is in the towns and handy for schools and bus stops to schools.

                      Comment


                        One thing you do get here that's very striking is people driving very long distances to work, towards Cardiff and beyond to Newport. I can see that fuel duty is a nuisance to them. Then again, there's all manner of housing of similar affordability to Neath Valley nearer to where they work. If you choose, long term to live that faraway from your work, that one is on you.

                        Comment


                          The reliance of the western economy on fuel means that it's more than just a question of people driving cars around. Fields are ploughed with diesel driven combine harvesters, and produce shipped to processing factories in trucks, and then taken to supermarkets, etc.

                          If you want to decarbonise western economies then you need to redesign the whole thing from scratch.

                          Comment


                            Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View Post
                            One thing you do get here that's very striking is people driving very long distances to work, towards Cardiff and beyond to Newport. I can see that fuel duty is a nuisance to them. Then again, there's all manner of housing of similar affordability to Neath Valley nearer to where they work. If you choose, long term to live that faraway from your work, that one is on you.
                            That sounds to me like people are choosing to live in their hometowns, since it’s not like the Usk Valley is expensive.

                            In which case, why contribute to communities being atomised more, when you can’t even offer them a good alternative to driving as the railways are shit? It’s not their fault there’s fuck all jobs in the valleys.

                            Comment


                              I'm sure that it's what you say, people living in hometowns. The railways aren't bad really for a fairly low density population. A decent number of trains run, most of the decent sized places have a station, and it focusses very much around the biggest place by far, Cardiff. The new franchise, set up for the first time by the Welsh Government ought to improve things like the age of the rolling stock.

                              Comment


                                Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View Post
                                It's also a tax that most people can mitigate fairly easily by driving less. All sorts of taxes go up. Our borough council tax went up by 3.7% this year, which a few people would have felt. That tax rise didn't come with any sort of deal whereby it was less if we modified our behaviour, unlike petrol tax. And to my knowledge, nobody went apeshit over it because "the real issues are corporations and the rich". What's happening with petrol taxes is that "freedom" is felt to be at stake.
                                You're right, in fact that particular French tax is a year old I think or at least 9 months old. Last April, they ran a petition in France on that tax and it went unnoticed. Until a month ago a couple of people on Facebook mentioned it again, set up a group page and it kicked off from there.

                                It's to do with context too IMO. You see, up to last spring-May the regal Macron (monikered Jupiter) was in a dream: growth had been good in 2017 (2.2%% - most of it and the impetus was Hollande's but Jupiter took all the credit of course), his reforms to the labour laws in the autumn 2017 had gone well (hardly any strikes and industrial action), a good half of the French public agreed with his eagerness to push on with long overdue reforms of the SNCF (predictably watered-down in the end), he had approval ratings of up to 50%, his handshakes power games and bromance with Trump seemed to have placated the lardy orange buffoon, he was lecturing and humiliating Putin in public, was sidelining Merkel in Europe, he'd charmed the pants of the easily-impressed international media who saw him as both the Saviour and the Future, was lording it over Brussels and had no domestic casseroles (scandals) hanging off his arse. Opposition was weak, divided or AWOL (the Socialists & the mainstream right with their invisible/unpopular new leaders; the Front National embroiled in financial scandals with both the french judiciary and Brussels; Mélenchon was using a lot of energy fighting pointless rearguard battles with the French media and whoever would wind him up). There seemingly was a sort of resignation from the opposition and maybe the media that we'd have no choice but to put up with Macron for another 4 yrs - and then he'd probably win again because he could do no wrong. The man was walking on water. There were whiffs of discontent and rebellion but nobody was managing to make it stick and capitalise on it.

                                Forward to September 2018 and the picture couldn't be more different. I won't itemise the batterie de casseroles Macron had picked up along the way since spring 2018 but there was a fair collection of them, with the Benalla Scandal in July-August the jewel in the kitchen, the first real full-on crisis of this gvt. The opposition woke up, felt emboldened, regrouped and even united (eg the Front National applauding Mélenchon in the National Assembly and RTing him - all unifying under the "the enemies or my enemies are my friends" banner), the media laid into Macron more forcefully, and the mood music started to change. Suddenly, the hitherto relatively nugatory scrapping of the wealth tax (ISF), a minor tax in reality but a highly symbolic move by Macron, and tax breaks for the rich (€4bn per year, Emmanuel Macron branded 'hero of the rich' for cutting taxes for the wealthiest in new French budget, cf this too) became highly-publicised and angered many people.

                                Which is why in June or July I wrote in the French thread that Macron was playing a dangerous game and ought to be very careful as there was a great swell of anger coming from "les territoires", what people now call the regions/(aka "la Province") in France, i.e anything outside of Greater Paris. I don't even live in France but I felt it and gathered talking to relatives or friends in France, from ordinary citizens. But Macron is now notorious for not listenign to anyone (had a massive row with his wife during the Benalla Scandal in front of other people about this - not tittle-tattle but genuine info by the sound of it, was leaked by insiders close to him at the Elysée Palace's -, his wife was urging him to listen more to people around him, not to his court's sycophants but to his few advisers and the LREM MPs trying to warn him; apparently he doesn't listen to her anymore, he's never been good at listening to anyone but used to listen to her to some extent that but he's gone all Louis XVI now and won't hear any criticism). Macron’s high-handed manners and regular stupid comments about "the French" (this site has listed the main ones) further fanned the flames of public fury.

                                All of this hugely weakened Macron and his approval ratings plummeted: from 45-50% in the spring to 30% in August (post Benalla Scandal), to about 20% now, even 18%). So when the Gilets Jaunes started with a few likes on Facebook a month ago, the context was ripe for an explosion.

                                Comment


                                  wales , as you've pointed out, Tubby is an exception.

                                  Comment


                                    Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
                                    wales , as you've pointed out, Tubby is an exception.
                                    Everywhere's different, but it struck me that South Wales the sort of place you might think at first glance, with lots of poor small towns, where petrol tax would be an absolute killer. I don't think that it is, in most cases. The Welsh Government does its best and with more money (which you could get from petrol duty) could do more. It's hard to think of anywhere in England like South Wales- I suppose Lincolnshire, maybe, at least as it looks to me on every other Brexit documentary. I expect it's less well served than South Wales, but that's politics. I expect the Scottish government have a reasonable go too.

                                    Otherwise, for poverty aren't you mainly talking urban areas in Britain? Some stats on child poverty after housing costs here.

                                    http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/po...our-area-2018/

                                    Despite very visible gentrification, it's still very much the "inner cities" out in front. My old ward in Tower Hamlets comes fourth in the whole country. So I think we can overdo the talk of the poor being hammered. I don't say there aren't other things you might want to do to the tax system, but there's a lot more right with petrol taxes than wrong. Talking of Wales, I think the poorest part is Rhonnda Cynon Taf. It's child poverty rate by this measure is barely a third of Tower Hamlets'.

                                    I see from the Guardian that there's a big report setting out an agenda for the EU on inequality and emissions, so I understand better where people like Blakeley and Klein are coming from. You need people to fly kites, but taxes of £800bn, on an EU wide basis, with all the countries having to agree not only to levy these amounts but to do it in these specific ways, is a kite that's not going to get close to getting off the ground and is going to risk disillusion.

                                    Comment


                                      Originally posted by Pérou Flaquettes View Post
                                      You're right, in fact that particular French tax is a year old I think or at least 9 months old. Last April, they ran a petition in France on that tax and it went unnoticed. Until a month ago a couple of people on Facebook mentioned it again, set up a group page and it kicked off from there.

                                      It's to do with context too IMO. You see, up to last spring-May the regal Macron (monikered Jupiter) was in a dream: growth had been good in 2017 (2.2%% - most of it and the impetus was Hollande's but Jupiter took all the credit of course), his reforms to the labour laws in the autumn 2017 had gone well (hardly any strikes and industrial action), a good half of the French public agreed with his eagerness to push on with long overdue reforms of the SNCF (predictably watered-down in the end), he had approval ratings of up to 50%, his handshakes power games and bromance with Trump seemed to have placated the lardy orange buffoon, he was lecturing and humiliating Putin in public, was sidelining Merkel in Europe, he'd charmed the pants of the easily-impressed international media who saw him as both the Saviour and the Future, was lording it over Brussels and had no domestic casseroles (scandals) hanging off his arse. Opposition was weak, divided or AWOL (the Socialists & the mainstream right with their invisible/unpopular new leaders; the Front National embroiled in financial scandals with both the french judiciary and Brussels; Mélenchon was using a lot of energy fighting pointless rearguard battles with the French media and whoever would wind him up). There seemingly was a sort of resignation from the opposition and maybe the media that we'd have no choice but to put up with Macron for another 4 yrs - and then he'd probably win again because he could do no wrong. The man was walking on water. There were whiffs of discontent and rebellion but nobody was managing to make it stick and capitalise on it.

                                      Forward to September 2018 and the picture couldn't be more different. I won't itemise the batterie de casseroles Macron had picked up along the way since spring 2018 but there was a fair collection of them, with the Benalla Scandal in July-August the jewel in the kitchen, the first real full-on crisis of this gvt. The opposition woke up, felt emboldened, regrouped and even united (eg the Front National applauding Mélenchon in the National Assembly and RTing him - all unifying under the "the enemies or my enemies are my friends" banner), the media laid into Macron more forcefully, and the mood music started to change. Suddenly, the hitherto relatively nugatory scrapping of the wealth tax (ISF), a minor tax in reality but a highly symbolic move by Macron, and tax breaks for the rich (€4bn per year, Emmanuel Macron branded 'hero of the rich' for cutting taxes for the wealthiest in new French budget, cf this too) became highly-publicised and angered many people.

                                      Which is why in June or July I wrote in the French thread that Macron was playing a dangerous game and ought to be very careful as there was a great swell of anger coming from "les territoires", what people now call the regions/(aka "la Province") in France, i.e anything outside of Greater Paris. I don't even live in France but I felt it and gathered talking to relatives or friends in France, from ordinary citizens. But Macron is now notorious for not listenign to anyone (had a massive row with his wife during the Benalla Scandal in front of other people about this - not tittle-tattle but genuine info by the sound of it, was leaked by insiders close to him at the Elysée Palace's -, his wife was urging him to listen more to people around him, not to his court's sycophants but to his few advisers and the LREM MPs trying to warn him; apparently he doesn't listen to her anymore, he's never been good at listening to anyone but used to listen to her to some extent that but he's gone all Louis XVI now and won't hear any criticism). Macron’s high-handed manners and regular stupid comments about "the French" (this site has listed the main ones) further fanned the flames of public fury.

                                      All of this hugely weakened Macron and his approval ratings plummeted: from 45-50% in the spring to 30% in August (post Benalla Scandal), to about 20% now, even 18%). So when the Gilets Jaunes started with a few likes on Facebook a month ago, the context was ripe for an explosion.
                                      He seems like a bellend, to use not very parliamentary language. He's a very odd figure in having risen to the very top so quickly in such an unusual way. He's clearly been very tactless- I think there' some "wonk" support for the wealth tax cuts, so it might not be quite like Osborne's cutting the top rate of income tax in 2010 which everyone said cost money. But it's clearly poor politics and it makes it harder to do other stuff. I suppose we'll have to see how things go in term of what the cuts do.

                                      Does he actually want to be around for very long?

                                      Comment


                                        Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
                                        wales , as you've pointed out, Tubby is an exception.
                                        To be fair, much of what Tubby describes could be Teesside (poorest people using the bus rather than driving, cheapest housing and generally poorest areas being in the most central parts of town, kids getting the bus to school, reasonable public transport etc.) People who drive around here very much do so by choice unless they have an unusually long commute (and even then many people commute to Newcastle/York/Leeds by rail.)

                                        France's situation is different, because a lot of the poorer areas are rural, and it's generally a much less densely urbanised country so many of the rural areas are genuinely remote (which is true of hardly anywhere at all in the UK, or certainly England.)
                                        Last edited by Fussbudget; 09-12-2018, 22:12.

                                        Comment


                                          IDS predicts "Paris style riots" if Brexit is stopped. Though on the plus side, I think Andy Burnham's stopped talking this rubbish.

                                          Funny old game. I remember the Tory right going mad at some Labour MP who predicted "a long hot summer" if the Poll Tax wasn't stopped.

                                          Comment


                                            Originally posted by Fussbudget View Post
                                            To be fair, much of what Tubby describes could be Teesside (poorest people using the bus rather than driving, cheapest housing and generally poorest areas being in the most central parts of town, kids getting the bus to school, reasonable public transport etc.) People who drive around here very much do so by choice unless they have an unusually long commute (and even then many people commute to Newcastle/York/Leeds by rail.)

                                            France's situation is different, because a lot of the poorer areas are rural, and it's generally a much less densely urbanised country so many of the rural areas are genuinely remote (which is true of hardly anywhere at all in the UK, or certainly England.)
                                            Thanks, Teesside is a much better comparison with South Wales than Lincolnshire or Cornwall, or whatever I came up with before. It's good that there's reasonable buses where the poorest live, but I'm sure fares could be lower. Buses in one area where I think Corbyn could do very well.

                                            I can see some low income places with not very high population density, particularly Occitanie. Neath Port Talbot doesn't seem very densely populated to me, but it's over 4 times the density of Occitanie. So that will be make the effect different.

                                            Comment


                                              Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View Post
                                              He seems like a bellend, to use not very parliamentary language. He's a very odd figure in having risen to the very top so quickly in such an unusual way. He's clearly been very tactless- I think there' some "wonk" support for the wealth tax cuts, so it might not be quite like Osborne's cutting the top rate of income tax in 2010 which everyone said cost money. But it's clearly poor politics and it makes it harder to do other stuff. I suppose we'll have to see how things go in term of what the cuts do.

                                              Does he actually want to be around for very long?
                                              He is a bit of a charmer, or was anyway, his charm has long faded. He came across fairly well during the Presidential campaign and, through luck and tactical nous (Fillon’s scandal and persuading centrist Bayrou to pull out of the race and "give" him his 1.5m+ votes, which is what happened) he managed to reach the 2nd round. But he is far too arrogant for his own good, more inexperienced than he'd like to think and he isn’t a "born politician" as such (he'd never been elected to anything before last yr's Presidentials) unlike all previous French presidents wh were dyed-in-the-wool career politicians (they'd been regional councillors, mayors, MPs etc.). I don't think politics wasn’t ever a calling for Macron, he sort of ended up in the political arena after doing ENA via a stint in an investment bank, it was more opportunistic than anything else. So it’s moot whether he’ll want to stay more than 1 term at the top IMO. He might do a Cameron and fuck off after 1 term if the going gets a bit tough although I think he'll try to do at least 2 terms, he's the sort who will probably want to "leave his mark" in French political history, not in the post WWII record books sense because that's impossible now with the 5-yr term but in other pompous ways.

                                              Then again, life is very sweet outside of politics for ex French Presidents (they stay on the state's payroll for life - €250,000 a year - are given an office with a secretary, a chauffeur, security etc.) and they can cash in on the super lucrative consultancy/speech business while advising various corporations and dodgy regimes, eg Blair, dominique Strauss-Khan etc. - DSK was never a president of course but he convinced himself of the opposite; DSK earned a cool €5m last year advising various African dignitaries, especially in Morocco where he lives, he's even just set up a "political club" in Paris, they had a big launch a few days ago, prompting rumours of a DSK comeback in politics - unlikely. Macron likes the high life so that sort of reconversion would suit him perfectly IMO, it is very pissy and lucrative. It’ll depend on the circumstances and the state of the opposition, a lot can happen until 2022.

                                              The Gilets Jaunes might run for the Europeans, and who knows afterwards too perhaps, and Macron would defo benefit from them emerging politically (the GJ would primarily nick votes off Mélenchon and Le Pen of course). An Ipsos poll conducted this week has the GJ at 12% voting intention for the Europeans, I haven't looked at how exactly Ipsos has done it (for instance, if respondents were given the full list of all the likely parties who will field candidates, there will be about 18 parties in total) but 12% doesn't sound too outlandish in the current barmy situation. If they do run for the Euros, their manifesto could be something else never seen again in French politics... More is starting to be known about their many self-proclaimed leaders, journalists are starting to inspect their social media accounts etc., well, as expected really, there are some prize cranks in there.

                                              https://twitter.com/Micbloch/status/1071545286001156101

                                              https://twitter.com/Micbloch/status/1071545453748121600

                                              Comment


                                                I'd go for Northumberland as the area in England where there is a true sense of remoteness.

                                                Comment


                                                  Originally posted by Tubby Isaacs View Post
                                                  Thanks, Teesside is a much better comparison with South Wales than Lincolnshire or Cornwall, or whatever I came up with before. It's good that there's reasonable buses where the poorest live, but I'm sure fares could be lower. Buses in one area where I think Corbyn could do very well.

                                                  I can see some low income places with not very high population density, particularly Occitanie. Neath Port Talbot doesn't seem very densely populated to me, but it's over 4 times the density of Occitanie. So that will be make the effect different.
                                                  Tubby, I succinctly wrote about this (France's ruralité and what it means in terms of wealth distribution) here (basically what Fussbudget is saying), particularly in relation to the GJ, in France or in Spain the money is far more in the urban areas (obvs) and on the littoral, the coast (unlike in the UK, well, big swathes of the coastal UK anyway). There are many exceptions of course (Alps, Alsace, Provence - although plenty of poor areas inland - Bordelais etc. but by and large the further away from the coast, or the main towns/cities, the poorer)
                                                  Last edited by Pérou Flaquettes; 09-12-2018, 23:12.

                                                  Comment


                                                    Fuel taxes are regressive, of course. Just like taxes on booze and fags. It doesn't mean they are wrong. It's still essential to drive down CO2 emissions, and the best way to do that is to make them more expensive. Ideally, you'd spend the money raised from fuel taxes ameliorating the impacts of those fuel taxes on the poorest. And of course you need to tax carbon pollution from business. But you shouldn't stop taxing fuel just because the impact is hardest on the poorest.

                                                    Comment

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