Where do I start?

[Suff]

This piece of excrement from the Guardian is virtually a canonisation piece for Miliband.

Never mind the airy fairy "fairness" and "wealth sharing" bollocks that they are spouting, what it really means is higher taxation on businesses for less profit. Those taxes to be used for the grand scheme of "giving it away to the 'Needy'....".

When it tries to spin some ideal of workers with pay rises above inflation when the whole world is heading for recession and goods won't sell if they are too expensive, I just grind my teeth. Then he blathers on about a workforce with the "right skills". Well Mr Miliband, I'm one of those very highly skilled workers, I've taken a 50% pay cut since the Labour Party trashed the world. Where is my pay rise? Where is my job? Where is my benefit? Ah sorry I forgot, I'm a rich B'stard so it's right and proper to shaft me.

He comes out with this blather

“Wealth creation and wealth distribution are not separate arguments. The Tories think productivity comes from the top and trickles down. I think productivity must come from every part of the working population. What we need and have failed to achieve for decades is a high-productivity workforce.”

Every single person who runs a business knows that productivity comes from the correct workforce with the correct tools in the correct environment with the correct incentive. Also every single person who runs a business knows that productivity without orders means a broken business and orders are usually generated from the top..... This is exactly the same kind of asinine thinking that gets us into this mess every time. A business is a team, without each part working correctly the business will struggle or fail. You cannot suddenly unbalance the workforce with this kind of thinking, or you have broken companies. In most large corporates, you could dismiss the entire executive staff and distribute their pay to the rest of the workers and it would come to less than £2 a day for everyone. Of course pretty soon nobody would be earning anything because there would be no company to employ them.

Zero hours contracts? That is a consequence of the minimum wage. They didn't exist before the minimum wage and they won't exist after. However, what is to stop someone having 15 Zero hour contracts and working for whoever has the work? Any firm calling you in to work when someone else has already requested you is told "sorry I'm working at my other Zero hour contract". Could even be good for the worker, 50 hours a week at minimum wage?? OK for the young. Businesses would soon adjust and stop the practise where they had true roles to fill that were being impacted by multiple overlapping Zero hour contracting. Ah, but I forgot, that would be enterprising. You know the place that wealth and economic growth comes from. The place that Labour shuns......

However, I must admit that the piece de la resistance is this one...

If that sounds more entrepreneurial than Miliband has on other occasions, his aides say the numerous Labour speeches, conferences and position papers on the UK productivity question have hardly set the pulse racing on many news desks.

But the Labour leader recognises that the media focus is now on. “The phoney war is over and the real battle has begun. I can tell people are starting to turn their minds to vote at this election.”

How do I interpret this one? Ah, yes, I know.

If that sounds like Miliband was telling you the truth before.

But because it really matters now and people don't like the truth.

He's going to lie his ass off until the election so that you vote for him.

Finally, just to prove that he is as out of touch with the country as he is with the business of running the country.

And finally the dreadful polls in Scotland suggesting an overall majority may be unobtainable? “We have a got a huge fight on. Scotland could play a critical role in this election and shape the outcome. They just show the choice at this election in Scotland is between a Conservative and a Labour government

NO you pillock. The choice at this election in Scotland is between "Doing to" and "Being Done To". The Scots have decided that if they all get together and have a Single representation which is Scottish, they can do the "doing to". Remember they have their own parliament. Then can vote in Labour or Tories or whoever they want for their local stuff. At a Westminster level they seem to be saying "Batten down the hatches, here we come". Of course I think Labour is about to be roundly abused in 2016 too in the Scottish Government elections, but, still, I think the Scots have decided it's time to get their, erm, stuff together and shove it to England.

Miliband is a Midget in Giant's trousers, politically. If he wins it will be the biggest tragedy for the UK since the mid 1970's.

[pederito1]

The real tragedy started in 1945 with that miserable wretch Attlee, since then every labour administration except the last one has been either a tragedy or a disaster and that one was both.

[Suff]

Hmmm, Distragedy??? Sound like "New Labour" to me....

[Workingman]

Miliband is talking theoretical economics as though he has a tabula rasa to work from. It must have passed him by that there is a real world out there with an economic system that has evolved over the centuries into what we have today. It cannot be changed overnight no matter what he says.

Throwing out the phrase "a more equal society is a more efficient society,” is word play. What does he mean? He talks about a fairer society and closing the gap between the richest and the poorest, and he might have a point, but how close should the gap be, because one always will be there. If he were to visit one of the poorest of bushmen tribes he would still see the gap. We will always need wealth creators and workers, however, if the creators are "punished" too much for ideological reasons they have the resources to pack up and leave. The result of that would be a closing of the gap, but If did happen would the workers be richer or poorer?

I see from his other great crusade - tax evasion and tax avoidance - that Bermuda has come out fighting and told him in no uncertain terms that the Bermudan economic contribution to the UK directly or indirectly employs about 100,000 people. The hint being to "back off".

He also appears to be confused about tax evasion and tax avoidance. Avoidance has always been with us, it is a perfectly legal method of controlling one's finances. The rules are the same for someone on £8 an hour or on £8,000. The difference it that tax avoidance for one is a complete wast of time whereas for the other it is reasonable to spend a few thousand on an accountant to save tens of thousands in unnecessary tax. Tax evasion, on the other hand, is illegal and he might want to ponder on ways to reduce it. However, it is probably harder to solve, so will not get that much attention.

[cromwell]

If Ed Miliband wants to crack down on tax avoidance he can start a bit nearer home. With his brother, for instance.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... close.html


Or Ralph, Ed and David Miliband and their "deed of variation" on Ralph's estate.
https://cyberboris.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... tax-abuse/


Or just the Labour party.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... nation-tax

And then they wonder why people are contemptuous of politicians, and why the number of people bothering to vote keeps falling.

[Suff]

Let's be blunt about what Miliband is talking about with "Share the wealth".

It is communism. The same failed communism which destroyed the USSR.

In the late 1980's the USSR was unable to feed itself efficiently. It imported food at ruinous cost whilst crops in it's incredibly massive fields rotted on the ground for the lack of harvesting.

Gorbachev enacted revolutionary legislation for the USSR. He "gave" small strips of land, around these huge commune fields, to the farmers to grow their own crops which they could sell at market and keep the profits. Within a few short years the USSR went from being unable to feed itself to having sufficient and a small surplus.

Why was this effective? Because before the strips of land, there was absolutely no incentive to do anything else. The farmers had the same food and the same pay and the same crap life no matter how much they produced. If they produced more, then others benefitted, not them.

Since the USSR fell, with the same fields and a smaller workforce, Russia now produces everything it needs and exports a full 25% of the entire world grain market. In fact it produces as much as, or more than, the USA.

The more we try to "close the gap" the less we create incentive to excel. Eventually we will reach the point where there is no point in even succeeding, let alone excelling.

If you don't believe me, just look at our schooling system. Where those who go through are treated the same whether they succeed or they fail. So what possible benefit is there in putting in the work to excel? It is only habit which produces the results we see today. Another two decades of the same and standards will be even lower than they are today.

I must admit I'm sick and tired of Labour and it's BS. Yes they have stopped the massive abuse of great landowners who refuse to pay their workers a fair wage. Yes they've created social Justice. Yes these things were needed. But NO this does not justify turning the UK into some lacklustre miserable failing Communist state.

But that is what they are trying to sell.