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Don't know if there's any snooker fans but I was looking up the Ronnie O'Sullivan fuss and at the end of his BBC interview he mentioned the Happy Gathering chinese. Never been there but he was so effusive you'd almost think he'd been paid to mention it.

I've always thought it looked a fairly ordinary place but I've never tried it. There are so many restaurants around Cowbridge Road some of them must be good.

Happy Gathering is fab - I think the Riverside edges it though.

Don't know if there's any snooker fans but I was looking up the Ronnie O'Sullivan fuss and at the end of his BBC interview he mentioned the Happy Gathering chinese. Never been there but he was so effusive you'd almost think he'd been paid to mention it.

I've always thought it looked a fairly ordinary place but I've never tried it. There are so many restaurants around Cowbridge Road some of them must be good.

I went on the 9th Feb, the day after new year, for my son's birthday, and the place was full to the brim with Chinese families.We all had the £23:50 banquet (Menu D) and it was well worth the money. Generally old staples of UK Cantonese cuisine but large portions of high quality food.

http://www.happygatheringcardiff.co.uk/ ... t_menu.pdf

The Riverside is good quality too but the service can be appalling

I'm not sure I buy the stuff about voting behaviour. Newcomers have been known to complain about the food in the House of Commons where thanks to the influence of Tory MPs there's lots of roast dinners and nursery puddings, just like a 1960s public school.

The point wasn't about food choices - it was about consumer spending and political attitudes. My parents lived in Rhiwbina and were pretty well off and adventurous about what they'd eat. They came from valley and gog backgrounds though and never spent anything more than £10-15 per head on a meal even on special occasions. In the same way they always voted Labour or Plaid and would never dream of voting Conservative - despite it often being in their economic interests.

I suggest it would not be in their own economic interest to vote conservative.

As well as seaming having a problem in this country, in this age, with people identifying as working class, we also have this myth that relatively affluent people with good disposable incomes would be better off voting Conservative, or that business and the economy do better under that party, and it's not true.

Well he was referring to the past Simon. I'd freely admit that my grandmother's self-interest was probably served by voting Tory. All this 1% stuff is rather recent. You'd need the most remarkable 'false consciousness' to pull that off in the long run. The Tory party has been very adept at offering a reasonable deal for the affluent middle class as well as the rich, who aren't an election winning coalition in and of themselves however much funding they might provide.

The alternative to the Tories, the Labour party, no doubt claim to be the 99%. However the party's history has always involved privileging the unionised over the non-unionised, those with a greater ability to take industrial action than those who didn't. Of course the party can never acknowledge this itself. I remember one of the Rolling Stones on TV was asked why he was supporting the Tories in a general election and his response was basically 'I was working class and the Labour party never did anything for me.' Just look at Labour's 2015 general election performance outside former heavily unionised usually mining areas and ethnically diverse cities. It was diabolical.

Sorry I've rather drifted off the point here.

Well he was referring to the past Simon. I'd freely admit that my grandmother's self-interest was probably served by voting Tory. All this 1% stuff is rather recent. You'd need the most remarkable 'false consciousness' to pull that off in the long run. The Tory party has been very adept at offering a reasonable deal for the affluent middle class as well as the rich, who aren't an election winning coalition in and of themselves however much funding they might provide.

The alternative to the Tories, the Labour party, no doubt claim to be the 99%. However the party's history has always involved privileging the unionised over the non-unionised, those with a greater ability to take industrial action than those who didn't. Of course the party can never acknowledge this itself. I remember one of the Rolling Stones on TV was asked why he was supporting the Tories in a general election and his response was basically 'I was working class and the Labour party never did anything for me.' Just look at Labour's 2015 general election performance outside former heavily unionised usually mining areas and ethnically diverse cities. It was diabolical.

Sorry I've rather drifted off the point here.

Suffice to day, I don't agree. Just because the Labour Party isn't perfect, it doesn't follow that it has done nothing for the population. Furthermore, I don't know anything about your grandmother, but I suggest that unless she was particularly minted and lived in isolation, she too would not have been best served by that choice. My grandfather was a shopkeeper, and did pretty well out of it, but he knew that it wasn't in his best interest if his customers were squeezed. Same with many large businesses. Despite favourable policies on corporation tax, this administration's austerity measures haven't done Tesco any favours at all. Political parties that stand for the interest of a tiny minority need to persuade people at the bottom, middle, upper quartile and beyond that they stand for them, but it's just flim flam and spin. You can draw parallels with how people without health insurance in the USA, have somehow been persuaded that Obamacare is not in their own interest.

If people only voted in their self interest, Donald Trump wouldn't be in danger of winning the Republican nomination. There probably wouldn't even be a republican nomination!

I won't wade into this too much, except to say you both make some fair points and then run too far with them.

With inequality of incomes, about two-thirds of the population live in households with less than the mean (average) income. So if people's behaviour remained unchanged, two thirds would benefit financially if you redistributed completely so everyone had the same income. Should we all vote for such a party?

No, because incentives matter. People are selfish, at least to some extent. If you equalise completely, theres no financial incentive for me to work hard and get ahead. So I slack off.

One of the key divides between "left" and "right" is how to trade off "redistribution" on the one hand, and "incentives" on the other. And the other is just how "steep" that trade-off is, and how much, if any, redistribution, actually is good for growth because while it weakens incentives, it allows less fortunate people to take a fuller more productive role in society, the economy etc.

So actually it can be in in the interests of relative affluent people to vote for "more redistribution" if we're doing too little redistribution to enable such participation. On the other hand, it can be in the intersts of relatively poor people to vote for "less redistribution" if we have a system that weakens incentives so much that it constrains the economy.

Similar arguments can be made for things like workers rights, etc. Trade-offs. Its why I'm a political moderate.

I won't wade into this too much, except to say you both make some fair points and then run too far with them.

With inequality of incomes, about two-thirds of the population live in households with less than the mean (average) income. So if people's behaviour remained unchanged, two thirds would benefit financially if you redistributed completely so everyone had the same income. Should we all vote for such a party?

No, because incentives matter. People are selfish, at least to some extent. If you equalise completely, theres no financial incentive for me to work hard and get ahead. So I slack off.

One of the key divides between "left" and "right" is how to trade off "redistribution" on the one hand, and "incentives" on the other. And the other is just how "steep" that trade-off is, and how much, if any, redistribution, actually is good for growth because while it weakens incentives, it allows less fortunate people to take a fuller more productive role in society, the economy etc.

So actually it can be in in the interests of relative affluent people to vote for "more redistribution" if we're doing too little redistribution to enable such participation. On the other hand, it can be in the intersts of relatively poor people to vote for "less redistribution" if we have a system that weakens incentives so much that it constrains the economy.

Similar arguments can be made for things like workers rights, etc. Trade-offs. Its why I'm a political moderate.

you once described yourself as centre left - as you've aged you've shifted right, as do most people. the dream of equality is idealism when faced with the harsh fact that we are not all equal. i'd love to be banging the goals in for Barcelona just like Messi, but sadly I'm not equal to the standards set by the man.

I'd love to be banging the goals in for Barcelona just like Messi, but sadly I'm not equal to the standards set by the man.

Have you considered Swansea?

Simon you have to realise that Britain is not America - where strangely enough socialism has become de rigour amongst students. I accept some of the trends on inequality are similar but in the US they have been much longer lasting. My grandmother may have voted for Thatcher, but only because she also voted for, I presume, Baldwin, Churchill, McMillan Heath and later Major. I don't think you can accuse them all of being for 'the 1%', but many middle income people felt they were a better bet than Labour and had a point.

I won't wade into this too much, except to say you both make some fair points and then run too far with them.

With inequality of incomes, about two-thirds of the population live in households with less than the mean (average) income. So if people's behaviour remained unchanged, two thirds would benefit financially if you redistributed completely so everyone had the same income. Should we all vote for such a party?

No, because incentives matter. People are selfish, at least to some extent. If you equalise completely, theres no financial incentive for me to work hard and get ahead. So I slack off.

One of the key divides between "left" and "right" is how to trade off "redistribution" on the one hand, and "incentives" on the other. And the other is just how "steep" that trade-off is, and how much, if any, redistribution, actually is good for growth because while it weakens incentives, it allows less fortunate people to take a fuller more productive role in society, the economy etc.

So actually it can be in in the interests of relative affluent people to vote for "more redistribution" if we're doing too little redistribution to enable such participation. On the other hand, it can be in the intersts of relatively poor people to vote for "less redistribution" if we have a system that weakens incentives so much that it constrains the economy.

Similar arguments can be made for things like workers rights, etc. Trade-offs. Its why I'm a political moderate.

The term "political moderate" is meaningless because where we set the origin is arbitrary. A political moderate for example in the US would be at a very different part of the political spectrum than here. To be honest, from our own perspectives, we are all political moderates, as we set our own personal postion as the centre.

Besides, no party is suggesting that we have complete equality of income. It's just that when the top 5 individual earners have the equivalent combined income as the bottom 20%, I don't think it's particularly radical to suggest a bit more redistribution is in order. Bear in mind also that it's not the case that income level has particularly good correlation with skills, hard work or achievment anyway.