Comments by "80s Music" (@eightiesmusic1984) on "Liz Truss's third and final (?) PMQs" video.

18 months ago average dual fuel bills were £1000 a year. Now they are going to be approximately £5000 per year by next April. This is not a saving, far from it. This time last week the energy support package was going to be in place for two years, now it has been scrapped to reassure the markets. Reinstatement is inevitable but in the meantime, millions will be terrified that they will not be able to pay, with all the attendant stress it will cause.
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@saulgoodman2278 Blackford is an effective parliamentarian. His opponents will recognise this if they are honest just as Sturgeon's opponents understand that she is a formidable politician. Both are playing their part in delivering independence, which is inevitable. It is coming. I wish them luck from England so the Scottish people can be freed from the dead hand of English nationalism.
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He is much better than Starmer, quicker on his feet and more articulate by far.
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@Soraviel I meant to type £5000 approximately when the energy support runs out in April 2023. Yes, it will be a disaster. Labour was only committed to 6 months support, which is what the Tories have now reverted to. I have edited my post to correct the figure.
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Productivity has not gone up. It was 17% lower than in France and Germany even in 1980. There are many reasons for it and the unions are not militant, having been neutered by the Tories in the 1980s and Labour's failure to reverse anti trade union laws under Blair and Brown. Productivity is a huge issue the political class has failed to address, It is one of the reasons for relatively low unemployment because it takes two or three workers to do the work that one would be doing in France or Germany.
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@saulgoodman2278 Whatever. They should be accountable as a government. The reason the SNP is in government is that there is significant support for independence, and it will come. Lower case v for vanity by the way.
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@Crashawsome I think you have misunderstood. It is a statistic produced by economists and does not refer to specific jobs in a list by occupation. It is an aggregate. Why don't you look it up in order to verify it instead of asking me? Rest assured though it is fact. French productivity is higher and it is surprising you are unaware.
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@leighparr7961 Explain. Good luck.
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@Hangingshawlevel Agree. UBI is the way forward and it is sustainable growth the planet needs. The obsession with GDP is central to the problem but most people fall into the trap of talking about it. But in the current context which no-one is willing to change at present, low productivity does put Britain at a disadvantage. Climate meltdown will change everything and it is probably already too late, it is that bad. Not an argument against trying but the situation is bleak. We have arrived at this point due to the greed of the bosses and exploitation of workers. The US government was warned in 1977 about the risk of runaway climate change when Jimmy Carter was President but action so far is too little, too late.
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@leighparr7961 A right wing PLP committed to largely the same policies as the Tories. Unless they are more radical in government the Tories will be back as both parties are on the same page on many policies.
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@saulgoodman2278 Could be a lot worse. Independence will fix it.
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@containsthestrange3902 Time will tell.
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@ianashton1593 Agree unaffordable. Don't Pay campaign is irresponsible as the money will still be owed and the grief people will go through will compound an already traumatic situation. That said, if millions refused to pay the situation would be different. Millions refused to pay the poll tax under Thatcher in the late eighties and it was only in 2006 that the government wrote off losses from money not retrieved from those due to be taken to court. In reality the energy support package will have to be reinstated. Don't Pay did not really gain traction on a huge scale even before the government intervened with the energy support package.
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@cameronburnard2301 I have seen no evidence to suggest that poor productivity in the UK economy is due it being more service based. UK productivity was 17% lower than in France and Germany in 1980 at a time when Britain had not abandoned manufacturing to the extent it would have done by the end of the decade. The example of hairdressing is irrelevant to the issue.
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@benedicthampus4964 Yeah, I read it in The Guardian. It is a newspaper. Aggregate is not backtracking, it is context. Clearly the idea of British productivity being poor upsets you. Just go and read about it and then you can explain to anyone who questions it why economists are wrong. I will say look it up if I wish. Economists are fully aware of the problem with UK productivity.
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@Jay_Johnson There is a regional imbalance, correct. London and the SE has pulled away from the rest of the UK for a long time. Income inequality has not been addressed by successive governments and education standards in the UK are very poor, no matter how much vested interests like to pretend otherwise (teachers and the unions, including the head teacher unions). Labour did invest in education, but it did not significantly raise standards. The idea of the Northen Powerhouse was a slogan, little else. There were various pots of money for investment but a lack of co-ordination to properly drive it. More like the northern soufle. There is zero prospect of education improving in the UK due to poor quality teaching, shortages across subjects, weak calibre of entrants who have not been educated to a high standard (vicious circle), poor behaviour that little to nothing is done about and a major problem with disengagement by students. Many Science teachers do not even have a 2:2 degree or above. Many teachers at all levels do not possess the gravitas to maintain control. They are also often not supported by management but if they are ineffective, it makes no difference. An OFSTED report in 2014 found that in some schools up to a day a week of learning is lost due to so-called low-level disruption (downgraded by the system to brush it under the carpet years ago). Behaviour has worsened significantly since then. Education is broken and cannot be fixed because almost no-one admits the problem exists. By the time the problem reaches the top of the agenda as it will need to, it will be too late.
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@benedicthampus4964 I could but it is up to me. Look it up to verify and if you find evidence to the contrary let me know.
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@upendasana7857 There are various reasons. Strong unions mean better working conditions which translates to better productivity. The 35 hour week ( with some exemptions) has been a great success, meaning the workforce is not exhausted as in Britain. The French work to live not the other way around as is enforced on people by the boss class in the UK. It is worse in the Anglo Saxon English speaking economies than anywhere else in the world (excluding dictatorships).
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@jake751 Starmer is the establishment candidate to lead the Labour Party. No-one with a knighthood should lead the so-called party of the workers. He will be no friend of the workers if he becomes PM. Scotland has opted for social democracy under the SNP as a rejection of the Blairite nonsense of 1997-2010 and its people are no fools. It is still a spectacular failure of Labour that it contrived to lose most of its seats in Scotland but it happened due to a collapse in confidence in the party as voters shifted their allegiance to the SNP because they had nowhere else to go and the SNP is demonstrably on the side of the people. When the day of independence dawns it will be a happy day indeed. Nationalism is not socialism but in the context of the appalling policies of the UK Tory government, independence will be the best thing to happen to Scotland.
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@containsthestrange3902 Not at all clear what your point is. Scotland will achieve independence via a referendum. What matters is how the issue progresses in the next couple of years.
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@Soraviel Truss has a middle class background in Leeds.
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