Poe’s Law conundrums (Millipede Jr’s 2014 Conference Speech edition)

Is this a typical Gruniad sub-editing fail or have they just repeated the briefing notes verbatim:

The Labour leader’s big six goals are designed to restore a lost faith in the future. They are:

  • Ensuring as many school leavers go on to apprenticeships as go to university.
  • Help working families share fairly in the UK’s wealth.
  • Meet the demand for new homes by doubling the number of first-time buyers from the current 200,000 a year to 400,000.
  • Halve the number of low paid – defined as those earning two-thirds of median earnings – from 5 million to 2.5 million.
  • Create a million more hi-tech green jobs in a bid to overhaul the number of Germans and Japan.
  • Restore the NHS by integrating health and care services, ensuring joined up preventive care to keep the healthy out of hospital.

3 Comments

  1. john77 says:

    I hope that you are right, but it is possible that Labour is so desperate for a good press bite that it is designing its policies around press bites instead of reality.

    Labour doesn’t need to build any houses – it has found an easier solution
    “Meet the demand for new homes by doubling the number of first-time buyers from the current 200,000 a year to 400,000.”
    Presumably the mansion tax will free up all those houses in London currently owned by foreign millionaires.

    It will spread the health costs equitably by raising taxes on tobacco companies
    “The cost of smoking to the NHS is put at between £2.7bn and £5.2bn.
    The Treasury earned £9.5bn in revenue from tobacco duties in the financial year 2011-12.”
    More than half the price of a cigarette goes straight to the Treasury in duty, more than one-third of the rest goes to the Treasury in VAT, some more goes guess where from the NI and income tax on employees’ earnings and corporation tax. Last year Imperial Tobacco had UK sales of £5 billion and paid tax of £6 million on its UK profits, implying after-tax profits of £20 million less than 1% of the amount the Treasury already takes.
    A nasty little gesture that will do nothing to help the NHS.

    Just how many healthy people are there in hospital right now?
    “Restore the NHS by integrating health and care services, ensuring joined up preventive care to keep the healthy out of hospital.”
    The care services are facing massive obstruction by NHS bureaucrats when they try to get unhealthy people into hospital or keep them there until they are fit to leave.

    • Misanthrope Girl says:

      I thought about commenting on the ‘proposals’ themselves but decided that, like Rory Bremner*, I’d just repeat them and let the audience (readership) grasp the absurdity of the ideas all by themselves.

      *I think it was either him or one of Bird and Fortune who said that at times they just read some Blair-era Labour policies out to the audience and waited for the incredulous laughter to start.

  2. Dioclese says:

    I was sickened this morning listening to Harriet Harman (although in fairness I am sickened whenever I listen to Harriet Harman) banging on about how Milipede needs ten years to repair the damage done by the Tories.

    What about the 13 years Labour spent screwing it all up in the first place?