Should I Come Back To LONDON This Year?

luka

Well-known member
or are the economic prospoects too grim? should i go somewhere else instead? (not in england, english people make me uncomfortable)
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
I can wholeheartedly endorse Canada although your experience will vary dramatically depending on what city you go to and what you're like.
 

luka

Well-known member
id consider it sickboy but its hard for me cos im a 32 yr old idiot. not many countries want a 32 yr old idiot otherwise i would definitely investigate toronto and vancouver.
australia and nz dont have any choice. they have to take me cos im a nz citizen.
whre do you live again? toronto?
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Having just come back from Oz and NZ luka I'd categorically say no, stay that side. Europe's finished certainly. Canada's a good bet too maybe. If I had my choices though I'd be in Oz.
 

luka

Well-known member
where did you go and what did you do? i like cities and the cities in aus are verey depressing. very very depressing.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Toronto sounds kinda cool. But are the winters cold enough to cause severe trauma? I'm trying to decide where to go live when Britain definitively descends into the inevitable generation of Toryism which began last year.
 

luka

Well-known member
aus and nz are commonwealth but not easy for poms to escape to unless they hav skills and qualificaions. i have nieither. i am not bing self-effacing when i say i am a 32 yr old idiot. i am a 32 yr old idiot. i have nothing to reccomend me to any country. it narrows my options down a lot. given th choice id live in japan for a bit.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Toronto sounds kinda cool. But are the winters cold enough to cause severe trauma? I'm trying to decide where to go live when Britain definitively descends into the inevitable generation of Toryism which began last year.

Before the last GE Mervyn King said he thought whichever party got in would make such swingeing cuts they'd be unelectable for a generation to come after their four years in power. It's a nice thought, but it does rather hinge on Labour getting their act together in a pretty serious way.

Not that a Labour government would be the magical cure-all to our problems but it might be a bit better.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I hate Miliband so much that it'd be a push to vote for him myself, and I'm sure others would be even more put off.

Mervyn King's statement seems a bit stupid given what happened in 1983 and 1987.

Labour government would be much better; not good, but much better. I dont' think they're electable with miliband though, so hoepfully leadership election will happen next year.
 

e/y

Well-known member
Toronto sounds kinda cool. But are the winters cold enough to cause severe trauma? I'm trying to decide where to go live when Britain definitively descends into the inevitable generation of Toryism which began last year.

lived there for three years. in the winter, the temperature would go below zero fairly often (iirc, -5, -10), didn't snow particularly often. a few heavy snowfalls, though. the wind is the worst part - University Avenue, for example, has a lot of tall buildings, so it's like walking through a wind tunnel. but I got used to it after a few months, it's not that bad. summers are pretty hot and humid.

it's a great city, I really want to move back.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Mervyn King's statement seems a bit stupid given what happened in 1983 and 1987.

Well of course a lot of people did very badly out of Thatcher's permiership but a lot of people did well, too. If she'd been unambiguously bad for everyone, or even nearly everyone, she wouldn't have been re-elected twice. Whereas the % of people who are going to be materially better off after four years of Dave & Co. will be pretty small.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Well of course a lot of people did very badly out of Thatcher's permiership but a lot of people did well, too. If she'd been unambiguously bad for everyone, or even nearly everyone, she wouldn't have been re-elected twice. Whereas the % of people who are going to be materially better off after four years of Dave & Co. will be pretty small.

But that's assuming that people act rationally in their own self-interest. For a lot of people, they'll vote Tory because they perceive them to be 'being tough' where they perceive such toughness is required, even if personally they are doing worse off. Thatcher's approval rating was about 13 per cent (?) in 1981, way lower than Cameron's has ever been, yet the Falklands resurrected her career. it is true that Thatcher must've gained votes by home ownership divide and rule over a lot of working class/lower income people, but I think Cameron has done divide and rule in a different way, stirring up hate vs lots of groups (from Occupy to Dale Farm to interpretation of the riots, and racism has certainly stirred its ugly head over the past year in a big way). Conservatism is largely about convincing people who aren't winning that they are, or at least scaring them into criticising the wrong people.

But also, no leader is ever unambiguously bad for everyone - some people are doing just fine under Cameron (obviously a hell of a lot more than 1%, which is why that slogan palls after a while, as it neglects reality).
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Miliband has to be the most anonymous opposition leader that I can remember. He makes IDS seem like some kind of hellfire preacher.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
It really winds me up when people complain about him being anonymous, though. It's like when people moaned about Brown being a "weak" leader but couldn't name anything "weak" that he'd actually done apart from not having the right friends in the media to give him good writeups...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
But that's assuming that people act rationally in their own self-interest. For a lot of people, they'll vote Tory because they perceive them to be 'being tough' where they perceive such toughness is required, even if personally they are doing worse off. Thatcher's approval rating was about 13 per cent (?) in 1981, way lower than Cameron's has ever been, yet the Falklands resurrected her career.

Yes, that's true of course, but let's take the specific case of a militaristic foreign policy. People in 1981 were jingoistic about the Falklands because it was seen as restoring national pride in the face of a vanishing empire and widespread economic stagnation. Compare that to Britain in 2012, where all but the most gung-ho armchair generals are sick of foreign adventuring. I hear what you're saying, but I think a much greater number of people were genuinely enthusiastic about the Tories 30 years ago than they are now. Even a lot of natural small-c conservatives as well as actual Tory voters are upset by the coalition's attacks on national institutions like public libraries and forests. Conservatives doing a pretty poor job of conserving things, in other words.

No leader is ever unambiguously bad for everyone - some people are doing just fine under Cameron (obviously a hell of a lot more than 1%, which is why that slogan palls after a while, as it neglects reality).

Yes, more than 1% but is it really *that* much more? It would be interesting to see projections of how many people will be better off, as opposed to worse, in 2014 compared to 2010. And while the economy is not the whole story it is *the* thing people are worried about these days I think, moreso even than the usual bugbears like immigration, law'n'order and so on (which are in any case intimately linked to the economy, as all but the densest can surely see).
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
lived there for three years. in the winter, the temperature would go below zero fairly often (iirc, -5, -10), didn't snow particularly often. a few heavy snowfalls, though. the wind is the worst part - University Avenue, for example, has a lot of tall buildings, so it's like walking through a wind tunnel. but I got used to it after a few months, it's not that bad. summers are pretty hot and humid.

it's a great city, I really want to move back.

thanks - what would you say are the best things about it? that it's very diverse is about all i know...
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"It really winds me up when people complain about him being anonymous, though. It's like when people moaned about Brown being a "weak" leader but couldn't name anything "weak" that he'd actually done apart from not having the right friends in the media to give him good writeups..."
You got me there - I can't name anything anonymous that he's done.
Or - yeah, of course his presence is a function of how much he's written about but he's the Labour leader for fuck's sake, he should be more visible than he is. At the moment the biggest thing he's remembered for is repeating the same quote seventy-four times in an interview.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
@Tea, I just don't see all that - I think that's a fairly widely-held misperception that is one of the great rewritings of 1980s history. Cameron is, on opinion polls, way more popular than Thatcher was at this point in his premiership, is the horrible truth. Take away the Falklands weighting, and his economic policies seem to be more widely accepted. From the 1981 figures, there were more Tories at that time who were genuinely upset by Thatcher's policies than there are now upset by Cameron's policies. I've head more people than I care to have heard, support him generally, always using the words 'but what about the deficit?'.

taking your point about such things as forests, but I think those are secondary to issues on which most Tory supporters (and others perhaps) think he is getting things right. I'm not sure about the libraries thing, as as is shown re the Hillingdon libraries, they'll just incorporate elements of privatisation to survive. Also, I dont' think the Tory leadership is stupid as regards its own popularity - it knows what would throw lots of trad supporters off-side, and it won't do it unless it's keeping them onside with other policies (possibly learning from thatcher's experiences).

Re the 1 per cent: yep, i think it is considerably greater than that. I as a fairly secure employed middle class person haven't seen my standard of living drop appreciably, even if I know the job market is tougher than it was. The cuts have hit a certain sector of society; until the realities around the NHS etc become clearer, then that's probably going to be the way it will continue. for people above a certain amount of thousands per year, nothing is gonna make much difference economically anyway, as they already earn more than they need.

It's also relative well-offness that is always going to matter to some degree. And then there's psychology - a lot of people are scared about losing int he same way as those worse-off have lost; but instead of fighting the oppressor, they'll cling closer as if that will save them somehow (illogically, of course). Not explained it very well, but I think that kind of self-defeating psychology is prevalent (was just discussing Doreen Lawrence taking an OBE and thanking the police last week, which led me to think along these lines, and she's obviously been through unimaginably worse things than most people).
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Everyone's standard of living is going to drop who isn't having year-on-year wage increases that at least match inflation, which is around 5% at the moment. And with interest rates at the next thing to fuck all, any money you've got in the bank is rapidly depreciating.

I hear what you're saying but I think (and sincerely hope) that over the next couple of years the 'swindled middle' will start to realise the extent to which they've been conned. By which I mean that while it goes without saying that the Tories are going to cut taxes in a way that benefits the very rich and cut services in a way that harms the most vulnerable, most people are neither very rich nor very poor, and I think as time goes on it'll become increasingly clear that a Tory govt is not benefiting them either.
 
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