I am not at all surprised by the tory proposal to give away the bank shares to their supporters . It is all part of the something for noting society for the middle class that tories so much like.

Welfare for WASPS.

Headline grabbing incoherence?

Bailing out huge private businesses (banks) was always wrong. They should have given the money (about £50,000 each!) to the consumers, let them decide where and how to spend it – creating an opening for a cooperative-style banking system owned by, run by and run for the people.

Slap my left(y) hand for suggesting the collapse of the current financial system would have been a benefit to society.

Just have to wait till next time happens, that much is guaranteed.

I utterly deplore any policy pandering to curtain twitchers. We hound benefit fraudsters but not tax evaders even under Labour. Its truly bloody awful.

If a teaching assistant was believed to be “unable to sustain emotionally intimate relationships” and also had a “chaotic, unstable lifestyle” they could be barred from ever working with children.
If a nurse was judged to suffer from “severe emotional loneliness” and believed to have “poor coping skills” their career could also be ended.

Reading between the lines, that sounds like they’re trying to screen out people with borderline personality disorder, as that’s suspiciously similar to the diagnostic criteria.

I’ve actually come across nurses in my professional life (I’m in child and adolescent mental health services) who struck me as probably having a personality disorder, and who were behaving in such a disturbing way that I wound up filling in child protection referrals about them. This includes cases of Munchausens Syndrome by Proxy.

But I’ve also come across nurses who I reckoned had a personality disorder but were still good, competent nurses.

What particularly disturbs me about that report is that it says that the decision could be made by someone who hasn’t met the employee and who has no minimum qualification.

If an employer thinks a nurse has a personality disorder and that’s affecting their ability to do the job, then the nurse should receive an occupational health assessment, with input from a consultant psychiatrist, and thought should be given as to whether they merely need a bit of support rather than be barred from working. The decision shouldn’t be made by ringing up some unqualified administrator who hasn’t met the person.

When the individual does it, it is benefit scrounging, when the corporation does it, it is essential economic stimulus.

“Workers judged to be lonely and to have a chaotic home life could be barred from working with vulnerable people, even though there is no evidence that they pose a risk, according to guidelines from the Government’s new vetting agency…”

This is the same “vetting” agency that will decide, on behalf of parents, who is and is not fit to be in their childrens company. A process under which anyone could, quite legally, be denied (even voulantary, unpaid) employment, not because they were on a sex offenders register, or even have a criminal record for shoplifting a can of coke aged 16, but because of “Police and other intelligence sources”. In other words your nosey next door neighbour from 10 years ago saying “Yep, him at No 42, always thought he had funny eyes, kept himself to himself, definite wrong ‘un”.

It’s trial by hearsay, reminiscent of the worst excesses of paranoid Stalinism.

Sally – When benefit claimants get something for nothing it’s called “social justice/equality/redistributive fiscal policy” when people who actually pay tax in the first place have the bare faced cheek to expect to get something back for it, its “something for nothing”. No wonder the country is bankrupt.

According to the polls, the Conservatives are losing support but I feel sure that ditching George Osborne real soon could improve their election prospects no end.

“Workers judged to be lonely and to have a chaotic home life could be barred from working with vulnerable people, even though there is no evidence that they pose a risk, according to guidelines from the Government’s new vetting agency…”

Presumably, procreation licences will shortly be on the political agenda as a low cost solution for anti-social behaviour. After all, it was only a few years ago that Tony Blair was telling us: “Early intervention in ‘hard to reach’ families is more effective in rooting out social exclusion than throwing money at the problem.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5315776.stm

How about Lebensborn camps – renamed with a suitably British title, of course – to ensure good genetic provenance? HG Wells, one of the founders of the Fabian Society, was an enthusiastic advocate of Eugenics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

This is far more cross-political than the author tries to make out. The problem is not, after all, giving money to anyone (and given this entire website is pretty much devoted to the idea of taking as much money as possible from its enemies and giving as much money as possible to their friends, no one here is in any position to criticise the Tories for anything). It is unaccountable and woefully ill-considered State power. The State wants us to spy on each other. We will. The State wants to have the power to destroy people’s lives and careers on a whim or suspicion. It will get them. By way of contrast giving away shares is sensible.

We need a return to a more liberal Britain in the best sense. That is, the State should be a limited, rule-bound servant of the people. Not this Juggernaut without mercy for the weak.

“Osborne’s claim that selling bank shares at a discount “would reward taxpayers” is simply an insult to the intelligence. The only reason anyone would buy bank shares – even at full price – would be if they offer a higher expected return than gilts.

But if this is the case, then the taxpayer loses money by selling bank shares and using the money to reduce public debt – because such debt reductions are, in effect, purchases of gilts.”

Tsk.

While the banks are in public ownership there’s always the risk that their loan plans will start to be politically determined. The risk of Ed Balls allocating hundreds of billions of them would cost us far more than any loss on hte gilts/equity return.

But take your point as being valid. Turning one (N Rock) or all of them into mutuals would be an even worse deal of the taxpayer, wouldn’t it? A straight gift from taxpayers to depositors in those institutions. Without even being able to purchase a few gilts with the proceeds.

@9: “We need a return to a more liberal Britain in the best sense. That is, the State should be a limited, rule-bound servant of the people. Not this Juggernaut without mercy for the weak.”

Quite so. For decades, Social Democrat governments in Sweden conducted an active sterilization programme for those deemed incompetent to beget children:

“In 1997, following the publication of articles by Maciej Zaremba in the Dagens Nyheter daily, widespread attention was given to the fact that Sweden once operated a strong sterilization program, which was active primarily from the late 1930s until the mid 1950s. A governmental commission was set up, and finished its inquiry in 2000.

“The eugenistic legislation was enacted in 1934 and was formally abolished in 1976. According to the 2000 governmental report, 21,000 were estimated to have been forcibly sterilized, 6,000 were coerced into a ‘voluntary’ sterilization while the nature of a further 4,000 cases could not be determined. The Swedish state subsequently paid out damages to many of the victims.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization

“The common theme here is that these stories show that the state is not a rational force for justice, but rather a means of bullying the vulnerable whilst handing cash over to its favourites.”

Finally, a socialist gets it.

12
It gets pretty boring having to keep restating that the state has got nothing to do with socialism particularly a state in a capitalist society. It is no friend of the many and works only in the interests of the economic elite. The entire working-class of this country once put their faith in the state,and you only have to see what happened within the state machinery of the Soviet Union.