It's a recession when somebody you know can't afford an ipad, it's a depression when you can't afford an ipad.

Err they have reduced the deficit. They didn't talk about reducing the debt because they actually know how deficits work.

No one ever said they would create a budget surplus straight away.

Scots or Gaelic?

and then that thing that made you proud is something essentially produced by the Scottish Enlightenment

ofc cultural continuity - whether invented or real - was/is important in contemporary Scottish politics. that's not a bad thing. [edit] or a new thing.

Scots

What was it and in what way was it produced by the enlightenment? I was pretty drunk when I said that by the way. Pride isn't a word I like to use too often.

not necessarily. sometimes yes, sometimes no. 'culture' is a lot of things.

Actually 200m people have brought ipads, which considering they are a pretty pointless luxury suggests people are not quite so poor as they would have you believe.

And anyway, this is a political forum. People make political decisions based on what they see in their everyday lives. They don't engage in endless empirical research during a 5 year term in order to make the best possible choice. Political choice is entirely a subjective experience, and in my experience the middle classes are doing very well tyvm and the ipad story is just an anecdote that illustrates this point.

Yea God forbid we try to use actual objective evidence and detached reason to make informed political choices, much better to keep it utterly subjective and anecdotal thats bound to lead to much more optimal outcomes.

The rules around supporting arguments with evidence apply just as much here as any where else. Arguments backed by actual data>>>>>>>>>>argumenst backed by my friend did X.

Also to reduce politics to the "choice" someone makes every five years is just as idiotic.

Its amazing how you dont mind if people use evidence and stats to expose cliched lazy narratives in sport, but do it in politics, oh nooooo. Its about the choices.

Its still impressive to increase the national debt by 50% in five years though. Imagine the narrative if Labour had done that.

Errm, slight difference because although I'm conservative minded I'm open to changing my decision based on new evidence, either anecdotal or empirical.

In sport, you don't pick a team based on objective data, and you don't change it based on new evidence. Although you do support Chelsea, so I guess "trophies won" played a big part in your decision so you're probably more "objective" than most.....

Oh no, don't mention Gaelic. I could rant all day about that one.

Picking a team based on objective data is exactly how the Red Sox finally won their first championship for 86 years.

Yes, and it's a sign of how anti-Left most of the media is that this point hardly gets a mention.

The posters who are saying that the idea of real poverty in Britain is a mirage aren't far off the truth, however much this pains me (as a person broadly of the Left) to admit it.

I've spent some time in West Africa so find it very hard to accept the measure of poverty used in the UK (and probably other countries) as income below a % of a measure of "average" earnings.

In an affluent country that could mean that you're deemed to be in poverty if you can't afford to replace your HD TV with a UHD box, when the term becomes effectively meaningless (as well as pretty insulting to large numbers of people around the world).

For me, the real problem in the UK isn't poverty or even the threat of it, it's how the current implementation of capitalism (eg eschewing investment in favour of short term profits) has led to the effective entrenchment of hopelessness by area and/or class that for the majority of those people means that unless they're either very gifted or very lucky their lives will be largely mapped out from birth, and will probably have very little hope of attaining a measure of independence from the state that many of us take for granted.

it's also exactly how the eugenics movement gained traction in the 1930's.

That's an interesting point. If it hadn't been for the Nazis adherence to Eugenics-type programmes it's quite possible that we'd have had some form of it in the UK (several leading progressive "thinkers" such as Wells and Shaw were very much in favour of it at the time).

Yes, unfortunately the endless extraction of wealth by the western world from all over the world puts many into poverty; who woulda thunk it eh?

But do you think it is right that food bank use is necessary on such a scale in the UK?

Labour did do that. They inherited the deficit and the economy that labour forged over the previous thirteen years.

I thought that this was what the left wanted. Tame unambitious drones to work in dull state run industries, taking home their minimal pay to some dismal council house on a faceless estate somewhere near S****horpe, all the while watched over by Jeremy's coterie of right-on apparatchiks, lest one of them actually have an original thought.

It's the left who have bemoaned the loss of 'traditional' state-run industry, be that British bloody Leyland, British bloody Rail, or deep-mined coal. Industries where the product was either utter crap or required endless subsidy to keep the unions in check for fear of continual striking.

I mean the only reason that people are even considering re-nationalising the railways is because they've forgotten how completely, totally **** British Rail was and how passengers were held to ransom annually for the usual round of above inflation pay claims.

People choosing to get free stuff instead of budgeting properly isn't a good argument. Britain has no absolute poor. It only has relative poor.

I know as someone who is relatively poor whilst I'm a student and I can still budget out an international trip every six months on top of all my bills rent, travel costs and so on. I receive minimal help from family (ie I paid rent when briefly living with them and actual rent when I didnt) and have an income of nine grand a year between my student loan/grant and paid internships every summer.

No one has any excuses for not being able to make ends meet. They just need to budget better and make smarter choices.

So everyone using a food bank is making bad decisions? What about people who have lost their homes?

And really a foreign trip twice a year on 180pw paying your own bills rent and food travel etc? Nah I don't believe it.

There's a breakdown of student accommodation costs here Average student private rented is £123pw in 2012 that comes to over 6k per year so unless you were in subsidised accommodation it's going to be very difficult doing anything else on your 9k, especially given that average book costs are over 1k, leaving you about 2k. If you were in subsidised accommodation then it should count towards your income.

In any case i'm not interested in calling anyone a liar, maybe you got the best deals available and whatever but you did very well indeed on 9k.

Some people think subsidising people to work is better than subsidising them not to.

This is a great soundbite, but the practical effects are that these people then have zero incentive to do something else that is actually generates revenue, and so they remain in these jobs for life. The costs are huge and never, ever go away.

Unemployment is subsidising them to find work.

I don't think that anyone could sustain a serious objection to closing the mines - the problem is that some other nationalised industry should have been created in its place.

So what do you expect the children of ex miners and those brought up in old mining communities to be doing given that they are no longer subsidised to work. How many of those communities have never recovered?

They could try to commute using train lines that don't exist on trains that they couldn't afford to use even if they did.

You can get an I-pad for £180 on ebay. Should poors not have an internet capable device in the house? To be anacdotal, all the poors I know have I-pads but no PC. Have 1-pad must not be poor seems ******ed.

A brand new I-pad costs £400. How does someone on 1.5K a month buying a £400 item mean the economy is growing?

why not look at where skills are required and develop that? just because you are in any way socialist doesnt mean you want to live in 1949.

**** going down mines. no **** in their right mind will want to do that